it was “drawn up, at their (the ministers’) desire, by Mr. Mather the younger, as I have been informed.”  And, in order the more effectually to give the impression that he was rather opposed to the proceedings, he quotes those portions of the paper which recommended caution and circumspection, leaving out those other passages in which it was vehemently urged to carry the proceedings on “speedily and vigorously.”

This single circumstance is decisive of the disingenuity of Dr. Mather.  As it was the purpose of the government, in requesting the advice of the ministers, to ascertain their opinion of the expediency of continuing the prosecutions, it was a complete and deliberate perversion and falsification of their answer to omit the passages which encouraged the proceedings, and to record those only which recommended caution and circumspection.  The object of Mather in suppressing the important parts of the document has, however, in some measure been answered.  As the “Magnalia,” within which his Life of Phips is embraced, is the usual and popular source of information and reference respecting the topics of which it treats, the opinion has prevailed, that the Boston ministers, especially “Mr. Mather the younger,” endeavored to prevent the transactions connected with the trial and execution of the supposed witches.  Unfortunately, however, for the reputation of Cotton Mather, Hutchinson has preserved the address of the ministers entire:  and it appears that they approved, applauded, and stimulated the prosecutions; and that the people of Salem and the surrounding country were the victims of a delusion, the principal promoters of which have, to a great degree, been sheltered from reproach by the dishonest artifice, which has now been exposed.

But, like other ambitious and grasping politicians, he was anxious to have the support of all parties at the same time.  After making court to those who were dissatisfied with the prosecutions, he thus commends himself to all who approved of them:—­

“And why, after all my unwearied cares and pains to rescue the miserable from the lions and bears of hell which had seized them, and after all my studies to disappoint the devils in their designs to confound my neighborhood, must I be driven to the necessity of an apology?  Truly, the hard representations wherewith some ill men have reviled my conduct, and the countenance which other men have given to these representations, oblige me to give mankind some account of my behavior.  No Christian can (I say none but evil-workers can) criminate my visiting such of my poor flock as have at any time fallen under the terrible and sensible molestations of evil angels.  Let their afflictions have been what they will, I could not have answered it unto my glorious Lord, if I had withheld my just comforts and counsels from them; and, if I have also, with some exactness, observed the methods of the invisible world, when they have thus become observable, I have been but a servant of mankind in doing so:  yea, no less a person than the venerable Baxter has more than once or twice, in the most public manner, invited mankind to thank me for that service.”