his Diary:
"This day being our insipid, ill-contrived anniversary, which we call
Commencement, I chose to spend it at home, in supplications, partly on
the behalf of the College, that it may not be foolishly thrown away, but
that God may bestow such a President upon it, as may prove a rich
blessing unto it and unto all our Churches."

In the meanwhile, he renewed his attendance at the meetings of the
Overseers; having never occupied his seat, in that Body, with the
exception of a single Session, during the whole period of Leverett's
presidency. The Board, at a meeting he attended, on the sixth of August,
1724, passed a vote advising and directing the speedy election of a
President. On the eleventh, the Corporation chose the Rev. Joseph Sewall
of the Old South Church; and Mather records the event in his Diary, as
follows: "I am informed that, yesterday, the six men, who call
themselves the Corporation of the College, met, and, contrary to the
epidemical expectation of the country, chose a modest young man, Sewall,
of whose piety (and little else) every one gives a laudable character."

"I always foretold these two things of the Corporation: First, that, if
it were possible for them to steer clear of me, they will do so.
Secondly, that, if it were possible for them to act foolishly, they will
do so. The perpetual envy with which my essays to serve the kingdom of
God are treated among them, and the dread that Satan has of my beating
up his quarters at the College, led me into the former sentiment; the
marvellous indiscretion, with which the affairs of the College are
managed, led me into the latter."

Mr. Sewall declined the appointment. On the eighteenth of November, the
Rev. Benjamin Colman, of the Brattle-street Church, was chosen. He also
declining, the Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth, of the First Church, was
elected, in June, 1725, and inaugurated on the seventh of July.

It thus appears that Dr. Mather was pointedly passed over; and every
other Minister of Boston successively chosen to that great office.

Of course he took, as Mr. Peirce informs us, no further part in the
management of the College. While he considered, as he expressed it, the
"senselessness" of those entrusted with its affairs, as threatening
"little short of a dissolution of the College," yet he persuaded himself
that he had never desired the office. He had, he says, "unspeakable
cause to admire the compassion of Heaven, in saving him from the
appoint