Note i-399 — INTRODUCTION (continued 2)

In his Introduction to Selections from Cotton Mather (New York, 1926), xlix-li, K. B. Murdock agrees with I. W. Riley that The Christian Philosopher (1721) represents the first stage of the reaction from scriptural Calvinism to the scientific deism of Paine and Franklin. T. Hornberger's "The Date, the Source, and the Significance of Cotton Mather's Interest in Science" (loc. cit.) shows that "as early as 1693 Cotton Mather was expressing that delight in the wonder and beauty of design in the external world which Professors Murdock and Riley regard as deistic in tendency," that he "was unconsciously vacillating between two points of view."