afflicted could not at all
observe the accused."--_Magnalia_, Book II., p. 61.

Indeed, throughout his account of the appearances and occurrences, at
the examinations before the committing Magistrates, it must be allowed
that he exposed a decided bias, in his own mind, to the belief and
reception of the spectral evidence. He commences that account in these
words: "Some scores of people, first about Salem, the centre and
first-born of all the towns in the Colony, and afterwards in several
other places, were arrested with many preternatural vexations upon their
bodies, and a variety of cruel torments, which were evidently inflicted
from the demons of the invisible world. The people that were infected
and infested with such Demons, in a few days time, arrived at such a
refining alteration upon their eyes, that they could see their
tormentors; they saw a Devil of a little stature and of a tawny color,
attended still with spectres that appeared in more human
circumstances."--_Page 60._

And he concludes it as follows: "Flashy people may burlesque these
things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country, where
they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them
to be _true_, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadduceeism
can question them. I have not yet mentioned so much as one thing, that
will not be justified, if it be required, by the oaths of more
considerate persons, than any that can ridicule these odd
phenomena."--_Page 61._

When he comes to the conclusion of the affair, and mentions the general
pardon of the convicted and accused, he says: "there fell out several
strange things that caused the spirit of the country to run as
vehemently upon the acquitting of all the accused, as it had, by
mistake, ran at first upon the condemning of them." "In fine, the last
Courts that sate upon this thorny business, finding that it was
impossible to penetrate into the whole meaning of the things that had
happened, and that so many unsearchable cheats were interwoven into the
conclusion of a mysterious business, which perhaps had not crept
thereinto at the beginning of it, they cleared the accused as fast as
they tried them." But, even then, Mather could not wholly disengage his
mind from the "mistake." "More than twice twenty," he says, in
connection with the fact that the confessions had been receded from,
"had made such voluntary, and harmonious, and uncontrollable
confessions, tha