The Renaissance of Sacramental Piety in Colonial New England

Abstract

J N i690 Cotton Mather, disturbed by the Paucity of sacramental manuals in New England, published A Companion for Communicants, a series of discourses on the nature and purpose of the Lord's Supper, along with instructions on preparing for Holy Ordinance.' The publication was a notable event, for it marked the first time that any sacramental meditation was ever printed on New England presses, which had been pouring forth religious treatises continuously since i639. The book portended a transition in the development of New England piety; it was the first of many sacramental manuals to be printed in the colonies. Sacramental meditations provide a singular insight into the changes in the New England religious sensibility during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They reflect the emergence of an evangelistic sacramental piety, oriented around practical and pastoral concerns, intended to evoke conversions and to fill the churches with regenerate visible saints. They also reveal a remarkable preoccupation with the dilemmas of overly scrupulous Christians who failed to come to the sacrament for fear that they were unworthy. In fact, the meditations suggest that concern for the scrupulous as well as dismay over the indifferent established the immediate context of the celebrated Stoddardean controversy. Furthermore, the meditations demonstrate that by the beginning of the eighteenth century, sacramental piety was becoming a highly visible and significant part of New England religious life.