Were Increase and Cotton Mather Pre-Trib?

This isn't me asking only to then answer myself, I honestly don't know.  The easy to find online for free versions of their writings have not had their texts modernized and so are difficult to read.  I tried once and gave up.

I've seen a number of websites cite Cotton Mather as being a Pre-Darby Pre-Tribber.  Some may also mention his father Increase Mather, but not always.  And I've never seen Increase mentioned without Cotton.  So there is always Cotton and sometimes there is Increase.

However they have never actually quoted them, or even said what book of theirs they said it in.  The only person I've seen actually quote them talking about The Rapture is a commentator on an article that didn't mention them at all citing them among people who they say were clearly not Pre-Trib.

Increase Mather (1639-1723): “That part of the world [Europe] was to be principally the Seat of the CHURCH of Christ during the Reign of Antichrist” (Ichabod, p. 64).

Cotton Mather (1663-1728): “…that New Jerusalem, whereto the Church is to be advanced, when the Mystical Babylon shall be fallen” (The Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 3).

The quote from Cotton there I don't see how it'd be Rapture relevant at all.  The Increase quote is definitely not compatible with Pre-Trib but it could fit Mid-Trib or Pre-Wrath.

The thing is, it's mainly people who are opposing Pre-Trib (and I would assume implicitly any other non Post-Trib view) who are citing them as such.  It used to be the Post-Tribbers clung strongly to the not before Darby narrative, but there is a trend now of people willing to push it back to the Puritan era.

A lot of views on The Bible began or arguably were revived in the English Speaking world in the 17th Century.  England was the largest and most prosperous nation where Protestantism had become the mainstream religion.  It took a while for that issue to be settled, but by the Reign of King James England finally found peace, and early in his reign finally settled on what would for awhile be the default English Bible.

The Levelers and Diggers and others were the source of a lot of modern Biblical Based political theories that I'm certain many of these Post-Tribbers revere.  Not to mention Roger Williams inventing the modern notion of Religious Liberty.  So only if you're Catholic would you reject the idea that that is naturally a time to expect new Biblical ideas to be discovered or rediscovered.  Back  before the 19th Century, Historicism was the standard Eschatology of the Protestant world, though some early Protestants followed Augustinian Amillenialism.

The agenda behind associating Pre-Trib with Cotton Mather is to then engage in a guilt by association smear campaign against Pre-Trib.  Because both father and son Mathers were involved with and sometimes partly blamed for the Salem Witch Trials.  Only a few of these sites mentioned that association, but I suspect they all know that a Wikipedia search for their names will lead to that coming up.  Especially since some even say outright they were the first Pre-Tribbers.

The thing is every doctrine has some guilt by association with it.  If you hold the Calcedonian position of how Christ's Divinity and Humanity relate to each other (which is the presumed position of all major Western Denominations, I personally am undecided), or the Miaphsyte one.  Then you subscribe to a doctrine that was popularized by Cyril of Alexandria, Emperor Theodosius II and his sister Pulcheria.  Who were involved in persecuting Jews and other non-Christians including the murder of Hypatia.

But on the subject of the Salem Witch Trails, the Mathers believed in the supernatural and thought what was going on was supernatural, which was hardly rare.  But they actually felt things got out of hand and opposed using "Spectral Evidence" as the sole basis for convictions.  Increase said something that reminds me of a quote of Voltaire I used to cite a lot, "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned".

Still I do not approve of what they did.

But returning to the subject at hand.  I don't know when they placed the Parusia.  I do vaguely remember them being Zionists from when I tried to read them before, which post-Darby has been strongly linked to Pre-Trib and least popular among Post-Trib.  But I don't know for certain.

Update: Well I have found a link to read Cotton Mather's The Threefold Paradise. For one thing their views were rather Historicist, but Cotton wound up developing something rather unique.

Without even getting to the book itself yet, the Introduction makes clear where the basis for a Pre-Trib accusation lies.  It's actually quite interesting reading it's analysis of how Mather's views changed over time.

Ironically he developed his belief that the Saints would be taken to Heaven to escape a "Great Conflagration" at the same time he abandoned his long held belief in a coming mass conversation of The Jews.  Making him certainly not compatible with modern Pre-Tribulationism, if it's accurate to call it Pre-Trib or even Pre-Wrath at all.

It seems one of the issues he struggled with was a basis for a popular hypothesis that a Supernatural Appearance of Christ would trigger their mass conversion.  He should have considered the option that when Jesus comes to take the Saints to Heaven, is that appearance.

Indeed I feel like maybe if I could have explained my basic Midway Point Rapture view argument to him, that it could have solved this confusion and made this rather contrived "Golden Key" of Bible Prophecy he developed unnecessary.

I was also surprised to learn there was a time when the Duel Fulfillment argument was considered insufficiently literal, and something that supposedly existed only to help the New Testament.  Judaism has it in some contexts as well, in fact if you reject it there is no basis for a coming Messiah Ben-David at all, cause Nathan's Prophecy in II Samuel 7 was clearly first fulfilled by Solomon.