In the spring of 1697 the Reverend John Higginson of Salem finished writing a laudatory “Attestation” for Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana. Higginson was enghty-one. He had lived in New England for nearly seventy years, and sixty of them had been devoted to the ministry. He had, he worte, “seen all that the Lord hath done for his people” in the Puritan colonies and rejoiced that a younger colleague had recorded it in a volume of history and biography, because he was sure that the book was, in substance, purpose, and scope “according to truth” and would be of “maninfold advantage and usefulness”. In elaboration of this he listed in his “Attestation” some ways in which he thought the Magnalia would serve “great and good ends”.