uch--was attributed to the Devil. Every sufferer who had yielded
his mind to what was taught in pulpits or publications, lost sight of
the Divine Hand, and could see nothing but devils in his afflictions.
Poor John Goodwin, whose trials we are presently to consider, while his
children were acting, as the phrase--originating in those days, and
still lingering in the lower forms of vulgar speech--has it, "like all
possessed," broke forth thus: "I thought of what David said. _2 Samuel_,
xxiv., 14. If he feared so to fall into the hands of men, oh! then to
think of the horrors of our condition, to be in the hands of Devils and
Witches. Thus, our doleful condition moved us to call to our friends to
have pity on us, for God's hand hath touched us. I was ready to say that
no one's affliction was like mine. That my little house, that should be
a little Bethel for God to dwell in, should be made a den for Devils;
that those little Bodies, that should be Temples for the Holy Ghost to
dwell in, should be thus harrassed and abused by the Devil and his
cursed brood."--_Late Memorable Providences, relating to Witchcraft and
Possessions._ By Cotton Mather. Edit. London, 1691.

No wonder that the country was full of the terrors and horrors of
diabolical imaginations, when the Devil was kept before the minds of
men, by what they constantly read and heard, from their religious
teachers! In the Sermons of that day, he was the all-absorbing topic of
learning and eloquence. In some of Cotton Mather's, the name, Devil, or
its synonyms, is mentioned ten times as often as that of the benign and
blessed God.

No wonder that alleged witchcrafts were numerous! Drake, in his _History
of Boston_, says there were many cases there, about the year 1688. Only
one of them seems to have attracted the kind of notice requisite to
preserve it from oblivion--that of the four children of John Goodwin,
the eldest, thirteen years of age. The relation of this case, in my
book [_Salem Witchcraft_, i., 454-460] was wholly drawn from the
_Memorable Providences_ and the _Magnalia_.

II.

THE GOODWIN CHILDREN. SOME GENERAL REMARKS UPON THE CRITICISMS OF THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

The Reviewer charges me with having wronged Cotton Mather, by
representing that he "got up" the whole affair of the Goodwin children.
He places the expression within quotation marks, and repeats it, over
and over again. In the passage to which he refers--p. 366 of the second
v