Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather was a New England Puritan minister and a prolific author whose books ranged across religion, history, science, and public affairs. The Comfortable Chambers, Opened and Visited belongs to his large body of sermon literature. Open Library records the work as a funeral sermon connected with Peter Thacher and notes a 1796 printing, while the title record also attributes Samuel Mather alongside Cotton Mather. That collaborator context matters because the surviving edition history is not simply a one-name publication. Born in Boston in 1663, Mather entered Harvard at a young age and later served the Second Church in Boston. He is especially associated with Magnalia Christi Americana, an extensive religious history of New England. His career also included an interest in natural philosophy and advocacy of smallpox inoculation during the Boston epidemic of 1721. The catalogue title here represents a narrower devotional work within a career that joined ministerial practice, historical compilation, and engagement with contemporary debates.