n put on trial,
from first to last; as was fully proved, five months afterwards, when
Sir William Phips, under circumstances I shall describe, bravely and
peremptorily forbid, as the Ministers failed to do, the "trying," or
even "committing," of any one, on the evidence of "the afflicted
persons," which was wholly spectral. When thus, by his orders, it was
utterly thrown out, the life of the prosecutions became, at once,
extinct; and, as Mather says, the accused were cleared as fast as they
were tried.--_Magnalia_, Book II., page 64.

The suggestion that caution was to be used in handling this species of
evidence, and that it was to be received as affording grounds of
"presumption," to be corroborated or reinforced by other evidence,
practically was of no avail. If received, at all, in any stage, or under
any name, it necessarily controlled every case. No amount of evidence,
of other kinds, could counterbalance or stand against it: nothing was
needed to give it full and fatal effect. It struck Court, Jury, and
people, nay, even the Prisoners themselves, in many instances, with awe.
It dispensed, as has been mentioned, with the presence of the accused,
on the spot, where and when the crime was alleged to have been
committed, or within miles or hundreds of miles of it. No reputation for
virtue or piety could be pleaded against it. The doctrine which Cotton
Mather proclaimed, on another occasion, that the Devil might appear as
Angel of Light, completed the demolition of the securities of innocence.
There was no difficulty in getting "other testimony" to give it effect.
In the then state of the public mind, indiscriminately crediting every
tale of slander and credulity, looking at every thing through the
refracting and magnifying atmosphere of the blindest and wildest
passions, it was easy to collect materials to add to the spectral
evidence, thereby, according to the doctrine of the Ministers, to raise
the "presumption," to the "conviction" of guilt. Even our Reviewer finds
evidence to "substantiate" that, given against George Burroughs, resting
on spectres, in his feats of strength, in some malignant neighborhood
scandals, and in exaggerated forms of parish or personal animosities.

VII.

ADVICE OF THE MINISTERS, FURTHER CONSIDERED. COTTON MATHER'S PLAN FOR
DEALING WITH SPECTRAL TESTIMONY.

The _Advice of the Ministers_ is a document that holds a prominent place
in our public history; and its relation to event