ABSTRACT
In so warmly pressing the claims of John Eliot, apostle to the Indians, to be considered an evangelical hero, Cotton Mather identified a particular fulfilment of God's will achieved in New England and at the same time proclaimed his region as exemplary for the wider Protestant world in its commitment to the conversion of unbelievers. There could scarcely be anyone more self-consciously fitted to speak of religion's achievements in the region than Mather (1663-1728). He derived from the Puritan dynasty (which included his grandfather, John Cotton and his father, Increase Mather), and he exercised significant political influence in the troubled times of the late 1680s and early 1690s. He composed the most famous account of Providence at work in America, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702).
