Men to be great leaders must exalt their cause above themselves; and if so godly a man as the Rev. Increase Mather can be said to have had a human failing it was an inordinate love of money and of flattery. The first of these peculiarities showed itself early in life when, as his son says, he was reluctant to settle at the North Church, because of “views he had of greater service elsewhere.” [Footnote: _Parentator_, p. 25.] In other words, the parish was not liberal; for it seems “the deacons ... were not spirited like some that have succeeded them; and the leaders of the more honest people also, were men of a low, mean, sordid spirit.... For one of his education, and erudition, and gentlemanly spirit, and conversation, to be so creepled and kept in such a depressing poverty!--In these distresses, it was to little purpose for him to make his complaint unto man! If he had, it would have been basely improved unto his disadvantage.” [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 30.] His diary teemed with repinings. “Oh! that the Lord Jesus, who hears my complaints before him, would either give an heart to my people to look after my comfortable subsistance among them, or ... remove me to another people, who will take care of me, that so I may be in a capacity to attend his work, and glorify his name in my generation.” [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 33.] However, matters mended with him, for we are assured that “the Glorious One who knew the works, and the service and the patience of this tempted man, ordered it, that several gentlemen of good estate, and of better spirit, were become the members of his church;” and from them he had “such filial usages... as took away from him all room of repenting, that he had not under his temptations prosecuted a removal from them.” [Footnote: _Parentator_, pp. 34, 35.]