Colonial Prose And Poetry
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH. Michael Wigglesworth, the most popular of early New England poets, was born in England, probably in Yorkshire in 1631, and died in 1705, at Maiden, Massachusetts, where he had been for nearly fifty years pastor. He was of sturdy Puritan parentage, was brought by his father to Charlestown when he was but seven years old, and soon taken thence to New Haven. Here he was fitted for Harvard, from which he graduated in the class of 1651. He taught there as tutor till 1654, preaching occasionally in Charlestown and in Maiden. He was called to the latter place in 1654, but not actually ordained till two years later. Meantime his father had died. The son in his autobiography pays a warm tribute to the father's self-sacrifice and pious trust in devoting him to the ministry. " God let him live t
...o see how acceptable to himself this service was in giving his only son to God and bringing him up to learning." The father's health had been frail, and the son seems to have inherited a feeble constitution. Ill-health delayed his ordination as we have seen, and it frequently interrupted his ministry. It was during these periods of enforced leisure that he composed his doggerel epitome of Calvinistic theology, The Day of Doom or a Poetical Description of the Great and LastJudgment. This was first published in 1662, and attained immediately a phenomenal popularity. Eighteen hundred copies were sold within a year, and for the next century it held a secure place in Puritan households. As late as 1828 it was stated that many aged persons were still alive who could repeat it, as it had been taught them with their catechism ; and the more widely one reads in the voluminous sermons of that generation, the more fair will its representation of prevailing theology in New England appe...
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