Note 24 — Introduction.
Reading edition
Increase Mather’s Remarkable Providences is the work here alluded to; but the date should have been 1684 and not 1685. The book was issued in the Spring of 1684. Nathaniel Mather, in a letter to the author, dated Dec. 31, 1684, acknowledges receiving a copy on which “was written in your hand 7 ber 16.” (Mather Papers, p. 58.) John Bishop acknowledges the receipt of a copy, in a letter dated June 10, 1684. (Ibid. p. 312.) This erroneous date, and a typographical error in the Magnalia, vol. ii. p. 473, have led some writers to suppose that Cotton Mather wrote his first book on witchcraft in 1685. He was then twenty-two years of age. Before 1686 he published no works except Elegy on Rev. Nath. Collins, 1685, and The Boston Ephemeris, an Almanac for 1683, neither of which are in the printed list of his works. His first writing on witchcraft was issued in 1689.
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