The devil's mousetrap

by Linda Munk

This study approaches the thought of three colonial New England divines - Increase Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Edward Taylor - from the perspective of literary criticism. Author Linda Munk focuses on the background of these men's ideas and the sources from which they drew, directly and indirectly, in framing their theology. She notes that the language used in the pulpit by Mather, Edwards, and Taylor is full of allusions to the Bible and the Apocrypha, to Puritan treatises, and, most remarkably, to post-biblical exegesis, Jewish and Christian. She proceeds to unpack these allusions that have, for the most part, proven to be unclear to contemporary readers, in order to provide essential insights into the construction of Puritan theology.