- Speaker: Cotton Mather
- Audience: Himself (diary entry) but written like it was for the public.
- Uncommon for a woman to be educated and accomplished
- Woman had strong faith in God and came to Mather for ministry
- Young woman with bad reputation - "returning sinner"
- Strategy: Diary entries and personal pronouns: "I" or "my Jesus Christ Himself"
- Religion requires to be rash, Mather wants to be polite
- Question of valuing religion or morals more
- Temptation of the woman leads away from religion - Satan
- Uses prayer and fasting to resist temptation - Biblical allusion
- Rumor of courtship - battle with Satan's temptation
- "devil has assaulted me" "impurities" "blasphemy" "atheism" "abandonment of all religion" "self-destruction"
- Rumors destroyed his reputation
- Believes all that has happened to him to be the work of the devil
- Didn't give into temptation like Christ
- Ends up with a different women in the end