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 John Cotton (1584-1652) attended Cambridge University, and after graduation remained on as a lecturer. In 1612, the Anglican Church in Boston, England invited him to be their pastor, a post he held for twenty-one years. In 1633, King Charles appointed his fervent supporter William Laud the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Laud summoned Cotton to give an account of his Puritan teachings, he fled to some of his former parishioners in the New World.
His congregants had come to the New World a few years before, and out of honor to their pastor had named their settlement Boston. When Cotton arrived, he assumed the responsibility of teacher at the First Church. For the next nineteen years he preached, wrote, and championed the theological issues of his time.
Cotton’s writings fill more than 50 volumes. He had an hourglass at his desk that took four hours to drain. He would empty it three times (12 hours) to measure his daily work, what he termed “a scholar’s day.”
John Cotton’s famous grandson, Cotton Mather, once said about his eminent sire, “a most universal scholar, a living system of the liberal arts, and a walking library.”
His labor and his learning made him one of the most influential leaders in the New World. He is sometimes referred to as the “Patriarch of New England” and the “Father of New England Congregationalism.”
“Whatever he delivered in the pulpit was soon put into an order of court, or set up as a practice in the church.” (William Hubbard, Quoted in, John Cotton, www.nndb.com/people)
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