sermon. The resulting artifact produces something of the effect of a Russian doll, with Moodey’s text enclosed within Cotton’s sermon and bound up by three consecutive title pages—the innermost for the Cotton Jr. sermon notes, the middle for Moodey’s execution sermon excerpt, and the outermost for Templestone’s own title page. The odd physical configuration of the handmade volume is no doubt a series of negotiations of various practical considerations (Templestone’s initial interests in preserving particular texts, the relative scarcity of paper, and the difficulty in making handwritten pages run to a predetermined page length), but these resulting idiosyncrasies confound our sense of the separable roles of author, bookmaker, owner, transcriber, and reader.57
Figure 1. The outermost of three title pages for John Templestone’s compilation of two sermons, likely begun in 1687. Additional markings include pen testing, a possible later owner’s inscription, and a nineteenth-century library shelving label that normally would have been affixed to the book spine. 18.9 cm × 14.2 cm. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Figure 2. The second of three title pages for John Templestone’s sermon compilation, meant to introduce Templestone’s transcription of a print excerpt of an execution sermon by Joshua Moodey, and located within the inner pages of the manuscript book. The manuscript title page reproduces key textual elements of the print title page created for the Moodey sermon excerpt that was published together with Increase Mather’s A Sermon Occasioned by the Execution of a Man Found Guilty of Murder (Boston, 1687). 18.9 cm × 14.2 cm. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Figure 3. The final of three title pages for John Templestone’s sermon compilation, meant to introduce the main points (“heads”) of a sermon delivered by John Cotton Jr. Although incorporating some elements of a standard print title page, the transcription that follows appears to be based on auditor notes. 18.9 cm × 14.2 cm. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Massachusetts Historical Society records originally identified Moodey as the “Author” of the manuscript book, presumably because his was the one contribution that could be traced to a print version and because his text makes up the majority of the leaves. In a later recataloging of the item, Templestone became the “Author,” suggesting a bibliographical reassessment by which the materiality of the manuscript appears more important than the connection of that manuscript copy to a print source.58 Templestone functions as more than just the material creator of the manuscript, however. He also exerts judgment and discretion in his selection process, implicitly imprinting his own interpretive understanding of the two enclosed texts. The creator of manuscript sermon artifacts acts as an editor or a kind of collaborator alongside the named authors who provide the initial oral or print sermon. Templestone’s acts of juxtaposition are also interpretive acts as he physically links the two texts, enfolding them within the single volume.
Templestone’s particular choices of what to include and what to exclude require textual, contextual, and material consideration to understand. Increase Mather preached the sermon on Thursday, March 11, 1686—the day of James Morgan’s execution.59 But the condemned man had also specifically requested that Cotton Mather and Joshua Moodey “address his case in sermons to be delivered on the Sunday preceding his execution.”60 John Dunton, “an astute nonconformist bookseller from London” apparently recognized the great “commercial possibilities in the highly publicized hanging” and soon published the entirety of the two Mather sermons along with a lengthy extract from Moodey’s sermon. Inaugurating a popular new genre of Puritan sermon publication, Dunton’s execution sermon collection also launched Cotton Mather’s print career.61 Key to the dynamic energy of the print sermon compilation was the weaving together of various genres of spoken and written texts within the volume. Increase Mather’s sermon, for example, included the insertion of “a written communication from James Morgan” and ended with Morgan’s purported last words at the gallows, “O Lord receive my spirit, I come unto thee O Lord, I come unto thee O Lord, I come, I come, I come.”62 In the second edition, Dunton added more reported “last words” from the condemned man: “It seems that Cotton Mather had engaged Morgan in a last conversation as they walked together from Boston’s South Church to the gallows. Mather later produced a transcript of his dialogue with Morgan, apparently for personal use or private circulation. [The printer Richard] Pierce then took the liberty of procuring a copy of the transcript, ostensibly without Mather’s knowledge, for inclusion in the second edition of the collected volume.”63 In a neat reversal of the lay auditor preserving the minister’s words for future circulation, here the lay speaker is recorded, edited, and assimilated into the printed sermon three different times. The entire printed collection of execution sermons is, in fact, a patchwork of reported speeches and subjective transcriptions. The single event of Morgan’s execution triggers a proliferation of texts—oral (during the week of the event), print (in Dunton’s best-selling sermon compilation), and manuscript (thanks to the efforts of Templestone as well as many unnamed recorders along the way).
Templestone’s decision to copy out only Moodey’s excerpt (and not the sermons by the two Mathers) requires some conjecture on our part. According to Moodey, the portion of the sermon that he prepares for the first print edition is that section fulfilling two requests from the condemned man himself: “viz. That I would take some notice of him in my Sermon, and that I would give [w]arning to those of his Fellow-sinners that had been guilty of the like Evils, lest they also became like Monuments of Divine Justice.”64 Moodey’s extract is characterized by the drama of direct address and is punctuated with vivid descriptions of the murderer’s crime and his fitting punishment in the hereafter. It is entirely possible that vicarious thrill attracts Templestone to Moodey’s sermon excerpt, yet portions of the two Mather sermons are just as lurid, if not more so, than Moodey’s. As is typical in execution sermons, Moodey explicates the event as a “monument of divine justice,” evoking specifics of James Morgan’s case but also showing how the particulars are ultimately an emblem of man’s fallen state generally. Moodey inveighs directly against all those in his audience who swear and curse, who are drunkards or break the Sabbath, and those who might harbor their own undiscovered, murderous secrets. Beyond those nameable crimes, however, is the even more recalcitrant case of the ordinary sinner who is unaffected by godly preaching, whose lack of fear of divine judgment implies apostasy despite the evidence of any outward morality or attendance upon ordinary means of preaching. True to its genre, Moodey’s execution sermon strikes the balance between the specific case of the condemned and the inevitable guilt of the ostensibly innocent witness at the gallows. The section of Moodey’s sermon directly addressing James Morgan therefore implicates John Templestone, too, just as it implicates any sinner who hears the sermon or reads the words preserved by print, manuscript, or common report.
By essentially enveloping the Moodey sermon excerpt within the notes of a sermon by Cotton Jr., Templestone further drives home the universal applicability of Morgan’s case. Cotton’s sermon is not occasioned by a sensational event. Rather, it is a simple discourse comparing and contrasting man’s spiritual journey with a brief allusion to a footrace in Heb. 12:1 (“And let us Run with Patience ye Race / THat is set before us US.”).65 Cotton’s sermon was delivered on a Thursday, a day typically reserved for lecture sermons (the systematic coverage of theology and doctrine rather than the pastoral emphasis on personal salvation typical of Sunday preaching).66 The Cotton sermon does not appear to be composed for a special occasion (such as an execution, an election, or a fast day) but is simply one sermon out of his ordinary course of scriptural explication. The later selection and transcription of the notes on the sermon, on the other hand, imbues Cotton’s
