opinion was entitled to weight, condemning in the strongest terms the doctrine of the chief-justice, as follows:  “All that I speak with much wonder that any man, much less a man of such abilities, learning, and experience as Mr. Stoughton, should take up a persuasion that the Devil cannot assume the likeness of an innocent, to afflict another person.  In my opinion, it is a persuasion utterly destitute of any solid reason to render it so much as probable.”  The ministers may have been among the first to bring on the delusion; but the foregoing facts prove, that, as a profession, they were the first to attempt to check and discountenance the prosecutions.  While we are required, in all fairness, to give this credit to the clergy in general, it would be false to the obligations of historical truth and justice to attempt to palliate the conduct of some of them.  Whoever considers all that Mr. Parris, according to his own account, said and did, cannot but shrink from the necessity of passing judgment upon him, and find relief in leaving him to that tribunal which alone can measure the extent of human responsibility, and sound the depths of the heart.  Lawson threw into the conflagration all the combustible materials his eloquence and talents, heated, it is to be feared, by resentment, could contribute.  Dr. Bentley, in his “Description and History of Salem” (Mass.  Hist.  Coll., 1st series, vol. vi.) says, “Mr. Noyes came out and publicly confessed his error, never concealed a circumstance, never excused himself; visited, loved, blessed, the survivors whom he had injured; asked forgiveness always, and consecrated the residue of his life to bless mankind.”  It is to be hoped that the statement is correct.  There were several points of agreement between Noyes and Bentley.  Both were men of ability and learning.  Like Bentley, Noyes lived and died a bachelor; and, like him, was a man of lively and active temperament, and, in the general tenor of his life, benevolent and disinterested.  Perhaps congeniality in these points led Bentley to make the statement, just quoted, a little too strong.  He wrote more than a century after the witchcraft proceedings; just at that point when tradition had become inflated by all manner of current talk, of fable mixed with fact, before the correcting and expunging hand of a severe scrutiny of records and documents had commenced its work.  The drag-net of time had drawn along with it every thing that anybody had said; but the process of sifting and discrimination had not begun.  His kindly and ingenuous nature led him to believe, and prompted him to write down, all that was amiable, and pleasing to a mind like his.  So far as the records and documents give us information, there is reason to apprehend, that Mr. Noyes, like Stoughton, another old bachelor, never recovered his mind from the frame of feeling or conviction in which it was during the proceedings.  His name is not found, as are those of other ministers, to any petitions, memorials or certificates, in favor of the sufferers during the trials, or of reparation to their memories or to the feelings of their friends.  He does not appear to have taken any part in arresting the delusion or rectifying the public mind.