Cotton Mather and the Sea Monsters

In 1726, a slave ship en route from Jamaica to West Africa, the "Elizabeth," was overtaken by mutineers, led by one William Fly. Under the Jolly Rogers flag, and renamed the "Fames' Revenge," Fly and his men sailed north and terrorized the Eastern Seaboard of the American colonies, capturing about five ships during a two month period, before the pirates were captured by sailors on a ship they were attempting to seize. Brought to Boston, sixteen pirates were tried, twelve being released, and four were convicted of the capital crime of piracy. While they were in chains, Cotton Mather famously met with the pirates and implored them to repent before they were hanged. Three of the men did so publicly -- Samuel Cole, Henry Greenville and George Condick -- but William Fly remained impenitent to the end. Whereas the others attended a sermon by Mather and at their own hangings confessed their sins and warned others to avoid their path, Fly instead warned ship captains not to mistreat their sailors. He claimed that he had mutinied because of ill treatment that he had received from his captain, and his two month rampage was an act of revenge against cruel captains like his own. He was, according to Mather, determined to die as "a brave fellow." He even protested that the knot of his noose was prepared poorly, reproaching the hangman for his inexpertise, and finally retying the knot himself. Ultimately, while all four pirates were hanged, Fly's alone was gibbeted in Boston Harbor as a warning to other pirates. Mather told the story of this episode in The Vial Poured out upon the Sea. A Remarkable Relation of CertainPirates Brought unto a Tragical End (1726), in which he wrote:

The Ministers of Boston...[bestowed] all possible Instructions upon the Condemned Criminals; Often Pray’d with them; Often Preached to them; Often Examined them, and Exhorted them; and presented them with Books of Piety, suitable to their Condition…. [P]erhaps, there is not that Place upon the face of the Earth, where more pains are taken for the Spiritual and Eternal Good of Condemned Prisoners.

Mather referred to pirates as "Sea-Monsters who have been the Terror of them that haunt the sea." Yet, as much as he loathed their conduct, he cared deeply for their souls. Partly because the port of Boston was a major center of both piracy and the legal efforts to stop it, and partly because Mather had such a heart full of concern for those wayward "Sea-Monsters," this witness to pirates was a thread that ran through his life-long ministry, as we see in extracts from his Diary, as well as in sermons and pamphlets that he wrote from time to time.

Mather's Diary (April 1699):

After the other public Services of the Day were over, I visited the Prison. A great Number of Pyrates being there committed, besides other Malefactors, I went and pray’d with them, and preach’d to them. The Text, in which the Lord helped mee to Discourse, was Jer. 2. 26. The Thief is ashamed, when hee is found. I hope, I shall have some good Fruit of these Endeavours.

Faithful Warnings to Prevent Fearful Judgments (April 22, 1704):

There has been a Time, when some have come and Seduced and Enchanted several of our Young Men, to Piratical Courses; and there were some Unhappy Advantages, which the Sinners took to shelter themselves in the Prosecution of their Piracies. But the Government of New England will by a severe Procedure of Justice, forever make it an Unjust thing, to Reflect on the Countrey, as if such dangerous Criminals might hope ever to be lately Nested here.

An Account of the Behaviours and Last Dying Speeches of the Six Pirates (1704) tells the story of John Quelch (executed following the first admiralty trial held outside of England) in which Mather writes:

God know the Prayers, the Pains, the Tears, and the Agonies that have been Employ’d for them.

Samuel Sewall was one of the judges who participated in his trial, and like Mather, wrote about Quelch's execution in his diary.

In 1717, nine crewman of pirate Samuel Bellamy were the sole survivors (out of a crew of 149) of a nor'easter which sank Bellamy's two ships. Possibly due to Mather's intervention, two crewman were spared, while six were convicted of piracy, and one, a Miskito Indian named John Julian, was sold into slavery to John Adams, Sr. (father of President John Adams and grandfather of President John Quincy Adams). Mather's final sermon to the six convicted pirates at the gallows was published as Instructions to the Living from the Condition of the Dead: a Brief Relation of Remarkables in the Shipwreck of above One Hundred Pirates (1717). Bellamy's ship, the Whydah Gally, was recovered in 1984, along with a massive treasure haul, and remains to this day the only fully-verified pirate shipwreck ever discovered.

Useful Remarks: An Essay upon Remarkables in the Way of Wicked Men (1724) tells the story of the crew of Ned Low, one of the most infamous pirates of all time, whose tale (along with that of Bellamy) is also recounted by the author of A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates (1724) [thought by some to be Daniel Defoe]. In this sermon, based on Job 22.15 ("Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?"), Mather gave nine propositions marking the way of sinful men, as warnings to his auditors and readers, and pointing out God's justice in the judgments rendered against such.

Charles Chauncy, president of Harvard College, relates an interesting anecdote, which is retold in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (For the Year 1800, Vol. VIII of the First Series, pp. 252-253):

At a time when the famous Low and other pirates infested the American coast, they proved very troublesome to the fishermen at the Shoals, though they could obtain but little booty from them. One of these fishermen, (Charles Randall) with others, were taken by them, and having no property, these barbarous pirates whipped them with much severity; after which they said to them, "You know old Dr. Cotton Mather, do you?" -- "Yes," they replied, "we have heard of him as a very good man." "Well, then," said the pirates, "our orders are to make each of you jump up three times, and to say each time, "Curse Parson Mather," otherwise you are all to be hanged." To save their lives they all complied.

Abijah Perkins Marvin, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, pp. 429-430:

Pirates infested commerce on our coast as well as other portions of the sea in those times, and it is stated by Dr. Mather that the pirates sometimes made the captive sailors whom they forced into service show their consent by cursing Cotton Mather. To be cursed by pirates was an honor to the sin-hating minister. But these same pirates, when in prison and facing death and the judgment, made choice of this minister for their religious guide. He visited them in prison, set before them their wickedness with uncompromising fidelity to the truth and to their souls, showed them an all-mighty Saviour to the penitent, and went with them to the scaffold as a friend.

When pirate John Phillips and his crew were caught in Boston, Mather recorded in his diary (May 31, 1724) how they besought him for both prayers and sermons:

The Pyrates now strangely fallen into the Hands of Justice here, make me the first Man, whose Visits and Counsils and Prayers they beg for. Some of them under Sentence of Death, chuse to hear from me, the last Sermon they hear in the World.

Thus in Mather's ministry to the pirates of New England, we find a remarkable example of one in whom "[m]ercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other (Ps. 85.10) and in whom "mercy rejoiceth against judgment" (James 2.13). It is a lesson to all of us in how we are relate to those who may be monstrous yet whose souls are precious.

Note: Reference and grateful acknowledgment is made to the most fascinating article "Cotton Mather, Preacher to the Pirates," by Cindy Vallar.

Laus Deo

Sprinkled throughout the Diary of Samuel Sewall, which he kept from 1674 to 1729, one finds the Latin phrase Laus Deo, "Praise God." He often wrote this short ejaculatory thanksgiving after returning safely from a trip and finding "all is well," reporting on the healing or comfort of the sick, or receiving other good news. For example,

Monday, about 3. mane, June 4 [1688]. My wife is taken very ill with pains like travailing pains, of which afterward has an abatement. Laus Deo.

Wednesday, Augt. 9 [1693]. There falls a plentifull Rain after a long distressing Drought. Laus Deo.

Jany 31 [1703/4]. Second day of the week, about four hours before day, my Daughter Hirst was delivered of a Living lively Daughter. Her mother went to her after the forenoon exercise Jany 30. Mother Hirst came the evening before. We have an Answer of Peace to our many Prayers. Laus Deo.

Feria tertia, March 25, 1707....Am well notwithstanding my journeying in the Rain, and find mine well; Laus Deo!

Lord's Day, June, 15th [1707]. I felt my self dull and heavy and Listless as to Spiritual Good; Carnal, Lifeless; I sigh'd to God, that he would quicken me.
June, 16. My House was broken open in two places, and about Twenty pounds worth of Plate stolen away, and some Linen; My Spoon, and Knife, and Neckcloth was taken: I said, Is not this an Answer of Prayer? Jane came up, and gave us the Alarm betime in the morn. I was helped to submit to Christ's stroke, and say, Wellcome CHRIST!
June, 19th. The measuring Bason is found with Margaret Barton just carrying of it to Sea, to Hingham; said she had it of James Hews, he gave it her to sell for him. Mr. Secretary sent her to Prison.
June, 21. Billy Cowell's shop is entered by the Chimney, and a considerable quantity of of Plate stolen. I give him a Warrant to the Constable, they find James Hews hid in the Hay in Cabal's Barn, on the Back side of the Common; while they was seising him under the Hay, he strip'd off his Pocket, which was quickly after found, and Cowell's silver in it. At night I read out of [Joseph] Caryl on Job, 5. 2. The humble submission to the stroke of God, turns into a Kiss -- which I thank God, I have in this instance experienced. Laus Deo.

June, 30 [1711]....Just as I had written this I went to look of the Rain at my East-Chamber, and saw a perfect Rainbow. I think the setting of the Sun caus'd its Disappearance. Laus Deo.

In reviewing the three volumes of Sewall's Diary, published in 1878-1882 in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, I came across about 113 instances of this expression of praise and thanksgiving over a 55-year period. Many more instances, I suspect, went unrecorded. In this way, Sewall exemplified the Apostle's injunction to "In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you" (1 Thess. 5.18).

Save Asia, Africa, Europe and America

Eve LaPlante (author of Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall and American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans.), "The Opposite of Thanksgiving," Boston Globe (Nov. 18, 2007):

Remarkably, [Judge Samuel] Sewall also left us a careful record of his devotions during a private fast day, providing a glimpse of the mental world of a devout Puritan and the deeply spiritual aims of fast and thanksgiving days. Sewall's description of a private day of prayer and fasting that he observed on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 1708, when he was 55, is "the most full and minute existing record of a private fast-day as kept by" devout Puritans, according to M. Halsey Thomas, a historian of Colonial America who edited the published volumes of Sewall's diaries.
...
First, Sewall retreated from family life. He and his 49-year-old wife, Hannah, who had watched seven of their 14 children die, still had three daughters at home. He went alone to an upper room on the second floor of his house, which occupied the southeastern corner of Washington and Summer streets in modern Boston, and was surrounded by gardens, orchards, and on one side a pond. (Shoppers who visited Filene's Basement, in Downtown Crossing, entered a space that was once the cellar of Sewall's mansion.) The window of Sewall's room overlooked Boston's noisiest thoroughfare, which is now Washington Street. He fastened the shutters and closed the door.

He may have prostrated himself on the floor, as his peer the Rev. Cotton Mather sometimes did in prayer, but he surely did not kneel, for Puritans were loath to kneel during prayer, a Catholic custom that seemed to them idolatrous.

"Dear God," Samuel began, according to his notes, "perfect what is lacking in my faith and in the faith of my dear yokefellow," his wife. "Please convert and recover our children, especially Samuel," his oldest son, age 29, who was struggling in his career and marriage, "and Hannah," his sickly 28-year-old daughter. Mentioning his other living children, he prayed, "Recover [18-year-old] Mary, and save Judith [6], Elizabeth [16], and Joseph," a 19-year-old student at Harvard College. He prayed for two servants: "Make David a man after thy own heart. Let Susan live and be baptized with the Holy Ghost, and with fire."

Sewall prayed for his own church. "Bless the South Church in preserving and spiriting our pastor, in directing unto [us] suitable supply, and making the church unanimous." Moving outward, he continued, "Save the town [Boston], the college [Harvard, from which he graduated with a master's degree in 1674], [and New England] province from invasion of enemies, open and secret, and from false brethren. Defend the purity of worship. Save Connecticut and the New York government."

Extending his prayer beyond the world that he physically knew, he went on, "Reform all the European plantations in America - Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch. Save this New World, that where sin hath abounded, grace may superabound...Save all Europe. Save Asia, Africa, Europe and America."

Sewall's goal was the reformation of the entire world - all its quarters - as well as his own small part of it. His prayer was a cry to God to help humanity.

Melvin Yazawa, ed., The Diary and Life of Samuel Sewall, pp. 30-31:

One of the finest descriptions of a "private day of prayer and fasting" appears in Sewall's entry for February 10, 1708. Isolated in an upper chamber of his house, with the shutters fastened, Sewall commenced his praying by beseeching God's help in perfecting "what is lacking in my faith, and in the faith of my dear Yokefellow." He then moved on to "other important matters," progressing smoothly from his immediate family ("convert my children, especially Samuel and Hannah"), to his servant ("make David [Sinclair] a man after thy own heart"), to the province ("steer the government in this difficult time, when the Governor and many others are at so much variance"), to other colonies ("save Connecticut...[and] N. York"), to the Western Hemisphere ("Reform all the European Plantations in America; Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch"), and finally to the world ("save Asia, Africa, Europe and America"). At the end, Sewall acknowledged the "bounteous grace of God" in helping him conclude a "very comfortable day."51

51 Ibid., 2:641, 961; 1:589.

Samuel Sewall, Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729, Vol. 2., pp. 216-217:

Court being to be made upon next Fifth day, Febr. 12 [1708], I pray'd God to Accept me in keeping a privat day of Prayer with Fasting for That and other Important Matters: I kept it upon the Third day Febr. 10. 1707/8 in the uper Chamber at the North-East end of the House, fastening the Shutters next the Street. -- Perfect what is lacking in my Faith, and in the faith of my dear Yokefellow. Convert my children; especially Samuel and Hanah; Provide Rest and Settlement for Hanah: Recover Mary, Save Judith, Elisabeth and Joseph: Requite the Labour of Love of my Kinswoman Jane Tappin, Give her health, find out Rest for her. Make David a man after thy own heart, Let Susan live and be baptised with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. Relations. Steer the Government in this difficult time, when the Governour and many others are at so much Variance: Direct, incline, overrule on the Council-day fifth-day, Febr. 12. as to the special Work of it in filling the Super. Court with Justices; or any other thing of like nature; as Plimo infer Court. Bless the Company for propagation of the Gospel, especiall Govr Ashurt &c. Revive the Business of Religion at Natick, and accept and bless John Neesnumin who went thither last week for that end. Mr. Rawson at Nantucket. Bless the South Church in preserving and spiriting our Pastor; in directing unto suitable Supply, and making the Church unanimous: Save the Town, College; Province from Invasion of Enemies, open, Secret, and from false Brethren: Defend the Purity of Worship. Save Connecticut, bless their New Governour: Save the Reformation under N. York Governmt. Reform all the European plantations in America; Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch; Save this New World, that where Sin hath abounded, Grace may Superabound; that CHRIST who is stronger, would bind the strong man and spoil his house; and order the Word to be given, Babylon is fallen. -- Save our Queen, lengthen out her Life and Reign. Save France, make the Proud helper stoop [Job IX. 13], Save all Europe; Save Asia, Africa, Europe and America. These were the genl heads of my Meditation and prayer; and through the bounteous Grace of GOD, I had a very Comfortable Day of it.

Of Periwigs and Puritans

When one views 17th and 18th century portraits it is apparent that at least some Puritans wore powdered hair or wigs, and the modern stereotype of a stern Puritan magistrate wearing a wig (often imagined presiding over a witch trial) is powerful, vivid image in our minds today. The modern European custom of wearing periwigs, or wigs for short, developed in France in the 1620s when King Louis XIII, who was going bald, began to wear a wig. Likewise in England, it was during the Restoration with the royal patronage of King Charles II that male wigs became popular. Before this, Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, had both employed them, but the practice became a symbol of social status for men in Restoration-era England. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary the first time he wore a wig to church in 1664: "I found that my coming in a periwig did not prove so strange as I was afraid it would..."

But while the custom caught on quickly, there were those among the Puritans who opposed it. William Prynne took an early stand in 1628 when he wrote that "the wearing of counterfeite, false, and suppositious Haire, is utterly unlawfull" (The Unlovelinesse of Lovelockes). The Scottish Covenanter John Carstares wrote in his preface to the reader to James Durham's Practical Exposition of the Ten Commandments (1665, 2002):

To over-costly, curious, vain and conceity dressing and decking of the body, and setting of the hair now after one mode, now after another. (Wherein, as in other vanities, many men, somewhat unmanning themselves, do now contend with women, partly by their unnaturally nourished long hair, and horrid bushes of vanity, as Mr. [Robert] Bolton calls them, and partly by their variously and strangely metamorphosing modes and colors of periwigs) --

James Durham goes on to say further (quoting Robert Bolton again at one point), pp. 334-337:

And therefore we say that in men and women both, there is condemned by the Lord:
...
2. Strangeness in the ever-changing fashions, and extravagant modes of apparel; whileas the Lord by nature has continued the shape of men's bodies to be the same. For what is meant else by strange apparel, so often forbidden in Scripture, but that which is commonly called the fashion, or new fashion, a new and uncouth garb?...There is a lightness in clothing as to color, mounting as they call it, etc, and in dressing of the body, which may be seen in these dressings of the hair, powderings, laces, ribbons, points, etc, which are so much in use with gallants of the time; this, especially in women, is insisted on and condemned (Isa. 3:16-17, etc.) Some things indeed there mentioned are not simply unlawful, especially to persons of higher quality, and at all times; but the following particulars are condemned....

There is in clothes a base effeminateness amongst men (which someway emasculates or un-mans them) who delight in those things which women dote upon, as dressing of hair, powderings, washing, (when exceeded in) rings, jewels, etc, which are spoken of, and reproved in the daughters of Zion (Isa. 3), and so must be much more unsuitable to men. Also interchanging of apparel is condemned; men putting on women's, and women men's clothes, which is unsuitable to that distinction of sexes which the Lord hath made, and is condemned in the word, as a confusion, an absurd, unnatural thing, and an inlet to much wickedness. Whereof the Dutch annotators, as several fathers did long before them, on 1 Cor. 11:14, make men’s nourishing and wearing of long hair to be some degree, it being given to women, not only for an ornament and covering, but also in part for distinction of the female sex from the male.

And here, having touched a little on this vain dressing of the hair (now almost in as many various modes as thee are fashions of apparel), especially incident to women; it will not be impertinent to subjoin a strange story, which learned, pious, and grave Mr. Bolton, in his Four Last Things, p. 40, repeats from his author the famous Herculus Saxonia, professor of physic in Padua:

The Plica (saith he) is a most loathsome and horrible disease in the hair, unheard of on former times, as morbus gallicus, and fudor anglicus, bred by modern luxury and excess; it seizeth especially upon women, and by reason of a viscuous, venomous humour, glueth together, as it were, the hairs of the head, with a prodigious ugly implication and entanglement, sometimes taking the form of a great snake, sometimes of many little serpents, full of nastiness, vermin, and noisome smell: And that which is most to be admired, and never eye saw before, these being pricked with a needle, they yield bloody drops. And at the first spreading of this dreadful disease in Poland, all that did cut off their horrible and snaky hair, lost their eyes, or the humour falling down upon other parts of the body, tortured them extremely. It began first, not many years ago, in Poland, it is now entered into many parts of Germany. And methinks (says Mr. Bolton) our monstrous fashionists, both male and female, the one for nourishing their horrid bushes of vanity, the other for their most unnatural and cursed cutting their hair, should every hour fear and tremble, lest they bring it on their own heads, and amongst us in this kingdom.

And John Eliot was one who viewed afflictions upon New England society as attributable in part to God's wrath against men wearing wigs, and prayed against the practice.

Convers Francis, Life of John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians (1836), pp. 322-323:

Mr. Eliot had a few whims, to which he was pertinaciously attached. One of these was an unsparing hostility to the practice of wearing long hair and wigs. He could not endure it; he regarded it as an iniquity not to be tolerated. The man, and especially the minister of the Gospel, who wore a wig, he considered as committing an offence, not only against decency, but against religion. His zeal about "prolix locks" was warm, but unavailing. He lived to see the practice prevail in spite of his remonstrances, and at last gave over his warfare against it with the despairing remark, "The lust has become insuperable!" The readers of New England history will remember, that in 1649 an association was formed, and a solemn protest published, against wearing long hair, by Governor Endicot and the other magistrates.

In this punctiliousness we see the influence of sympathy with the English Roundheads carried even into trifles. In England periwigs were permitted quietly to cover the head soon after the restoration of Charles. But for more than thirty years after that time, they were deemed by many a sore grievance in New England. Gradually during that period they were coming into use; but they need all the authority derived from the practice of such divines as [John] Owen, [William] Bates, and [Joseph] Mede, to find protection at last. The intolerance they experienced from Mr. Eliot was not, therefore, a singularity in the good man; he only persevered in his stern hostility against them longer than many others.

In 1675, as a response to the devastating consequences of the King Philip's War, the General Court of Massachusetts legislated against the sin of pride in wearing wigs:

Whereas there is manifest Pride openly appearing amongst us in that long Hair, like Womens Hair, is worn by some men, either their own or others Hair, made into Perewigs: And by some Women wearing Borders of Hair, and their Cutting, Curling, and Immodest laying out their Hair; which practice doth prevail and increase, especially among the younger sort.

This Court doth Declare against this ill custome as Offensive to them, and divers sober Christians amongst us, and therefore do hereby exhort and advise all persons to use moderation in this respect; And further do impower all Grand juries to present to the County Court such Persons, whether Male, or Female, whom they shall judge to exceed in the Premises; and the County Court being authorized to proceed against such Delinquents either by Admonition, Fine, or Correction, according to their good discretion.

Increase Mather, likewise, saw the wrath of God poured out against men wearing wigs and took note of them in a sermon following the burning of Boston, Burnings Bewailed: in a Sermon, Occasioned by the Lamentable Fire Which was in Boston, Octob. 2, 1711. In which the Sins which Provoke the Lord to Kindle Fires, are Enquired into. (1711):

Monstrous Perriwigs, such as some of our Church-Members indulge in, which make them resemble ye Locusts that come out of ye bottomless Pit. Rev. ix. 7,8, -- and as an eminent Divine calls them, Horrid Bushes of Vanity; such strange apparel as is contrary to the light of Nature and to express Scripture. I Cor. xi. 14, 15. Such pride is enough to provoke the Lord to kindle fires in all the towns in the country.

However, his son "Cotton Mather first wigged in 1691" (Bruce C. Daniels, Puritans at Play, p. 198) and defended the practice against those "who preached against an innocent fashion, taken and used by the best of men."

Cotton Mather's chief opponent on this score was Samuel Sewall, whose opposition to periwigs, as recorded in his diary, is legendary. He himself did wear a skull cap in his old age to keep his head warm, but he inveighed against the rising custom of wearing wigs in his day with great fervency. His diary (Vol. 1, p. 342) records his opinion of one sermon by Cotton Mather on hypocrisy:

In his proem said, Totus mundus agi histrionem. Said one sign of a hypocrit was for a man to strain at a Gnat and swallow a Camel. Sign in's Throat discovered him to be zealous against an innocent fashion, taken up and used by the best of men; and yet make no conscience of being guilty of great Immoralities. 'T is supposed means wearing of Perriwigs: said would deny themselves in any thing but parting with an opportunity to do God service; that so might not offend good Christians. Meaning, I suppose, was fain to wear a Perriwig for his health. I expected not to hear a vindication of Perriwigs in Boston Pulpit by Mr. Mather; however, not from that Text. The Lord give me a good Heart and help to know, and not only to know but also doe his Will; that my Heart and Head may be his."

One authority he cited against the practice was a sermon by Vincent Alsop, which appeared in the Cripplegate Morning Exercises, "What Distance Ought We to Keep, in Following the Strange Fashions of Apparel, Which Come Up in the Days Wherein We Live?", published in Puritan Sermons, 1659-1689, Vol. 3, pp. 488-530, and appended to the Soli Deo Gloria edition of Vincent Alsop's Practical Godliness: The Ornament of All Religion. While acknowledging that social status is lawful factor in the selection of one's apparel, Alsop saw little to no value in the use of wigs. Alsop even quoted Increase Mather against their use, which was likely known to Sewall.

INFER. II. All youthful periwigs and paintings, which are sinful in youth, are doubly sinful in the aged. (p. 507)
...
How do our gallants expect reverence, if not adoration, for their whistling silks and ruffling periwigs; and that all should rise and bow to their state, port, and grandeur! Thy silks and periwigs are but excrements; and the latter, perhaps, of one that died of the foul disease, or at the gallows. Tertullian nips this humour severely: Ne exuvias alieni, forsan immundi, forsan nocentis et gehennae destinati, sancto et Christiano capiti suppares.* "O, do not," says he, "wear on thy sacred and Christian head the hair of another, perhaps some foul-diseased fellow, perhaps one that was a malefactor and is now in everlasting burnings!"

* Tertullianus De Cultu Feminarum. (p. 513)
...
I know, both paintings and periwigs have their palliations and excuses: --

(1.) They that ruffle in their waving perukes, and look like the locusts that "came out of the smoke of the bottomless pit," whose "faces were as the faces of men, and they had hair as the hair of women," (Rev. ix.8;) do plead that they wear them upon good advice, for their health's sake, to divert catarrhs, to prevent consumptions.

ANSWER (i.) And is it indeed so, that the nation is become almost one great hospital? Are the generality of men among us just dropping into consumption? Then what other lust, what debauchery, has introduced a sinful necessity, and then taught them to plead it? But is it not evident, that the corruption is much larger than the pretended occasion? (ii.) But if cutting off the hair be in some degree useful for that end, are periwigs therefore so? Can no other thing substitute for the place of hair, but such a vanity? (iii.) But if this vanity be any ways useful, what does the curling contribute to it? and what does the change of the colour conduce to that effect? Is it no colour but one contrary to the natural, that will do the deed? Or if it must be so, what does the immoderate length signify to that end? How much more ingenuous had it been, to have confessed the sin, and yet persisted in it, than to palliate it with such slender, thin excuses? (pp. 526-527)

Solomon Stoddard also took a hard line against wigs in a letter to Samuel Sewall dated July 29, 1701:

I cannot condemn them universally. Yet there is abundance of sin in this country, in wearing wigs. Some cut off their hair, because it is red or gray; some, because it is straight; some, frizzled; and some, because it is their own. Some of the wigs are of an unreasonable length, and generally they are extravagant as to their business. They are wasteful as to cost. The wearing of them is pride, to make a vain show. It is contrary to gravity -- is light and effeminate. It makes the wearers of them look as if they were more disposed to court a maid than to bear upon their hearts the weighty concernments of God's kingdom.

There were those Puritans then who viewed wigs as an innocent fashion, and those who saw them as unnatural, effeminate, and vain, mixed with much that is sinful. Although we see some Puritans wearing them in portraits, even the Mather family itself was divided on the practice, and, lest we fall into stereotypes, we should recognize that not all Puritans approved of wigs, and some argued vehemently against them, with some nuances not to be overlooked (and I have here quoted from the opponents of wigs more extensively for the purpose of breaking that stereotype). Fashions are curious things, and while it is fashionable to view the Puritans as monolithic, the periwig controversy of the 17th and 18th centuries shows otherwise.