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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 y^e 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 ordinary, everyday preaching with the special status of a text that has particularly touched at least one auditor: John Templestone. Accordingly, Cotton’s preaching is preserved by a series of private acts of recording, organizing, and duplication. By literally enveloping Moodey’s direct address to the murderer James Morgan within the universality of Cotton’s sermon, Templestone inscribes both texts with his own subjective experience. In doing so, he also brings fulfillment to Morgan’s original desire that the ordinary sinner should heed the “monuments of divine justice” as preached by Moodey. Templestone inscribes his personal response into the meaning of the two sermon texts by creating his own book and authoring the textual relationship between the preaching therein.

      Templestone leaves further clues to his rationale for putting the two sermons together by his design of their respective title pages. Around Cotton Jr.’s and Moodey’s respective title pages, Templestone inks in a thick black border, similar to the border that frames his own name on the front cover. The border has been drawn so thickly that the chemical makeup of the ink together with the physical pressure of pen against paper has caused the line to eat away the paper. At the open edge of the page, the paper has all but disappeared under Templestone’s emphasis of the border. No mere ornamental effect, the thick black line appears to be a deliberate inscription of what would be known as a “mourning border,” a design element found almost exclusively on printed funeral sermons of the period. Although the published collection of sermons on Morgan’s execution deals with death, the more precise theme is the applicability of the condemned’s fatal sinfulness to any given sinner’s spiritual estate. Accordingly, no mourning border appears on the title page of the print version. Templestone attaches the significance of the funeral to the Moodey excerpt, just as he does to the Cotton Jr. sermon notes, and even to his own name on the front cover, as if inscribing textual experience with an echoing frame of memento mori.

      As modern readers in the archive, we can only try to reconstruct conjecturally the implication of proliferating mourning borders in Templestone’s odd manuscript volume, but the simple design element is the most explicit key to the subjective textual connection between the two enclosed sermons. To the extent that the genre of the funeral sermon implicates the individual hearer or reader with its universal applicability, Templestone quite literally inscribes the disparate works of Cotton Jr. and of Moodey with the same reminder of the universality of death. Perhaps rooted in his own subjective reading of published and preached sermons, Templestone retools the textual meaning of Moodey’s execution sermon

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