they are omitted, in the London
edition, of the same year, 1693. If it was thought expedient to prevent
misunderstanding, or preserve the appearance of fairness, _here_, the
precaution was not provided for the English reader. He was left to
receive the impression from the opening words, "there were two
testimonies," that they were given at the trial, and to run the luck of
having it removed by the latter part of the paragraph. The whole thing
is so stated as to mystify and obscure. There were "_two_" testimonies;
"_one_" is said not to have been presented; and then, that neither was
presented. The reader, not knowing what to make of it, is liable to
carry off nothing distinctly, except that, somehow, "there were
testimonies" brought to bear against Burroughs; whereas not a syllable
of it came before the Court.

Never going out of my way to criticise Cotton Mather, nor breaking the
thread of my story for that purpose, I did not, in my book, call
attention to this paragraph, as to its bearing upon him, but the strange
use the Reviewer has made of it against me, compels its examination, in
detail.

What right had Mather to insert this paragraph, at all, in his report of
the _trial_ of George Burroughs? It refers to extra-judicial and
gratuitous statements that had nothing to do with the trial, made a
month after Burroughs had passed out of Court and out of the world,
beyond the reach of all tribunals and all Magistrates. It was not true
that "there were two testimonies" to the facts alleged, _at the trial_,
which, and which alone, Mather was professing to report. It is not a
sufficient justification, that he contradicted, in the last clause, what
he said in the first. This was one of Mather's artifices, as a writer,
protecting himself from responsibility, while leaving an impression.

Mather says there were "_two_" witnesses of the facts alleged in the
paragraph. Upon a careful re-examination of the papers on file, there
appears to have been only _one_, in support of it. It stands solely on
the single disposition of Thomas Greenslitt, of the fifteenth of
September, 1692. The deponent mentions two other persons, by name, "and
some others that are dead," who witnessed the exploit. But no evidence
was given by them; and the muzzle story, according to the papers on
file, stands upon the deposition of Greenslitt alone. The paragraph
gives the idea that Greenslitt put himself out of the way, at the time
of the trial of Burrou