Editing Cotton Mather (section)

====Puritan resistance====
Generally, Puritan pastors favored the inoculation experiments. Increase Mather, Cotton's father, was joined by prominent pastors Benjamin Colman and William Cooper in openly propagating the use of inoculations.<ref>Stout, ''The New England Soul'', p. 102{{full citation needed|date=December 2021}}</ref> "One of the classic assumptions of the Puritan mind was that the will of God was to be discerned in nature as well as in revelation."<ref>{{Cite book |first=Alan|last=Heimert|title=Religion and the American Mind|page=5 |publisher=Harvard University Press |date=1966}}</ref> Nevertheless, Williams questioned whether the smallpox "is not one of the strange works of God; and whether inoculation of it be not a fighting with the most High." He also asked his readers if the smallpox epidemic may have been given to them by God as "punishment for sin," and warned that attempting to shield themselves from God's fury (via inoculation), would only serve to "provoke him more".{{Sfn|Williams|1721|p=4}}

Puritans found meaning in affliction, and they did not yet know why God was showing them disfavor through smallpox. Not to address their errant ways before attempting a cure could set them back in their "errand". Many Puritans believed that creating a wound and inserting poison was doing violence and therefore was antithetical to the healing art. They grappled with adhering to the [[Ten Commandments]], with being proper church members and good caring neighbors. The apparent contradiction between harming or murdering a neighbor through inoculation and the Sixth Commandment—"thou shalt not kill"—seemed insoluble and hence stood as one of the main objections against the procedure. Williams maintained that because the subject of inoculation could not be found in the Bible, it was not the will of God, and therefore "unlawful."{{sfn|Williams|1721|page=2}} He explained that inoculation violated [[The Golden Rule]], because if one neighbor voluntarily infected another with disease, he was not doing unto others as he would have done to him. With the Bible as the Puritans' source for all decision-making, lack of scriptural evidence concerned many, and Williams vocally scorned Mather for not being able to reference an inoculation edict directly from the Bible.{{sfn|Williams|1721|page=14}}