CHAP. III.] DAY OF DOOM.&quot; 49 



formerly used as a school book in New England, and which 

 elderly persons known to him had been required, some seventy 

 years ago, to get by rote as children. This task must have occu 

 pied no small portion of their time, as this string of doggrel 

 rhymes makes up no less than 224 stanzas of eight lines each. 

 They were written by Michael Wigglesworth, A.M., teacher of 

 the church of Maiden, New England, and profess to give a poet 

 ical description of the Last Judgment. A great array of Scrip 

 ture texts, from, the Old and New Testament, is cited throughout 

 in the margin as warranty for the orthodoxy of every dogma. 



Were such a composition now submitted to any committee of 

 school managers or teachers in New England, they would not 

 only reject it, but the most orthodox among them would shrewdly 

 suspect it to be a &quot; weak invention of the enemy,&quot; designed to 

 caricature, or give undue prominence to, precisely those tenets of 

 the dominant Calvinism which the moderate party object to, as 

 outraging human reason and as derogatory to the moral attri 

 butes of the Supreme Being. Such, however, were not the feel 

 ings of the celebrated Cotton Mather, in the year 1705, when he 

 preached a funeral sermon on the author, which I find prefixed 

 to my copy of the sixth edition, printed in 1715. On this occa 

 sion he not only eulogizes Wigglesworth, but affirms that the 

 poem itself contains &quot; plain truths drest up in a plain meter ;&quot; 

 and further prophesies, that &quot; as the { Day of Doom had been 

 often reprinted in both Englands, it will last till the Day itself 

 shall arrive.&quot; Some extracts from this document will aid the 

 reader to estimate the wonderful revolution in popular opinion 

 brought about in one or two generations, by which the harsher 

 and sterner features of the old Calvinistic creed have been nearly 

 eradicated. Its professors, indeed, may still contend as stoutly 

 as ever for the old formularies of their hereditary faith, as they 

 might fight for any other party banner ; but their fanatical de 

 votion to its dogmas, and their contempt for all other Christian 

 churches, has happily softened down or disappeared. 



The poem opens with the arraignment of all &quot; the quick and 

 dead,&quot; who are summoned before the throne of God, and, having 

 each pleaded at the bar, are answered by their Judge. Some 



VOL, I. *C 



