Of Cotton Mather, more is required to be said.  He aspired to be considered the leading champion of the Church, and the most successful combatant against the Satanic powers.  He seems to have longed for an opportunity to signalize himself in this particular kind of warfare; seized upon every occurrence that would admit of such a coloring to represent it as the result of diabolical agency; circulated in his numerous publications as many tales of witchcraft as he could collect throughout New and Old England, and repeatedly endeavored to get up cases of the kind in Boston.  There is some ground for suspicion that he was instrumental in originating the fanaticism in Salem; at any rate, he took a leading part in fomenting it.  And while there is evidence that he endeavored, after the delusion subsided, to escape the disgrace of having approved of the proceedings, and pretended to have been in some measure opposed to them, it can be too clearly shown that he was secretly and cunningly endeavoring to renew them during the next year in his own parish in Boston.[A]

[Footnote A:  I know nothing more artful and jesuitical than his attempts to avoid the reproach of having been active in carrying on the delusion in Salem and elsewhere, and, at the same time, to keep up such a degree of credulity and superstition in the minds of the people as to render it easy to plunge them into it again at the first favorable moment.  In the following passages, he endeavors to escape the odium that had been connected with the prosecutions:—­

“The world knows how many pages I have composed and published, and particular gentlemen in the government know how many letters I have written, to prevent the excessive credit of spectral accusations.

“In short, I do humbly but freely affirm it, that there is not a man living in this world, who has been more desirous than the poor man I to shelter my neighbors from the inconveniences of spectral outcries:  yea, I am very jealous I have done so much that way as to sin in what I have done; such have been the cowardice and fearfulness whereunto my regard unto the dissatisfaction of other people has precipitated me.  I know a man in the world, who has thought he has been able to convict some such witches as ought to die; but his respect unto the public peace has caused him rather to try whether he could not renew them by repentance.”

In his Life of Sir William Phips, he endeavors to take the credit to himself of having doubted the propriety of the proceedings while they were in progress.  This work was published without his name, in order that he might commend himself with more freedom.  The advice given by the ministers of Boston and the vicinity to the government has been spoken of.  Cotton Mather frequently took occasion to applaud and magnify the merit of this production.  In one of his writings, he speaks of “the gracious words” it contained.  In his Life of Phips, he thus modestly takes the credit of its authorship to himself: