Mather, Samuel

, eldest son of the preceding, was born in Lancashire in 1626, and going with his father to New England in 1635, was educated at Harvard-college, of which he became the first fellow who took a degree there. In 1650 he returned to England, spent some time at Oxford, where and at Cambridge he again took his degrees, was chaplain of Magdalen-college, and often a preacher at St. Mary’s. He then went with the English commissioners to Scotland, and preached at Leith for two years. He returned to England in 1655, and having visited Ireland with Henry Cromwell, and Drs. Harrison, Winter, and Charnock, he was made senior fellow of Trinity-college, and became a favourite preacher. Wood says that though he was reckoned a congregational man, and a high nonconformist, yet he was moderate in his behaviour to the episcopals, when it was in his power to hurt them. When the lord deputy gave him and others a commission for displacing the episcopal ministers in Munster, he declined it, as he did afterwards in Dublin, giving as a reason that “he was called into the country to preach the gospel, and not to hinder others from doing it.” Soon after the restoration, he was suspended for preaching against the revival of the liturgy, on which he returned to England; but when the Bartholomew act took place, removed again to Dublin, where for some time he preached to a small congregation in his own house, until the laws against nonconformity obliged him to desist. He died Oct. 26, 1671. He published various tracts relative to the controversies of the times; and after his death appeared a course of sermons that were very popular, entitled “The Figures and Types of the Old, Testament explained and improved,” Dublin, 1683, 4to. He also wrote a pamphlet against Greatrakes, the noted quack but, says Calamy, he was not allowed to publish it, such a favourite was Greatrakes at that time. ²