we see an idea, which
Mather expressed in several instances. It amounts to this. Suppose the
Devil does "sometimes" make use of the spectre of an innocent person--he
does it for the purpose of destroying our faith in that kind of
evidence, and leading us to throw it all out, thereby "confounding the
discovery" of those cases in which, as ordinarily, he makes use of the
spectres of his guilty confederates, and, in effect, sheltering "all the
rest," that is, the whole body of those who are the willing and
covenanted subjects of his diabolical kingdom, from detection. He says:
"The witches have not only intimated, but some of them acknowledged,
that they have plotted the representations of innocent persons to cover
and shelter themselves in their witchcrafts."

He further suggests--for no other purpose, it would seem, than to
reconcile us to the use of such evidence, even though, it may, in "rare
and extraordinary" instances, bear against innocent persons, scarcely,
however, to be apprehended, "when matters come before civil
judicature"--that it may be the divine will, that, occasionally, an
innocent person _may be cut off_: "Who of us can exactly state how far
our God may, for our chastisement, permit the Devil to proceed in such
an abuse?" He then alludes to the meeting of Ministers, under his
father's auspices, at Cambridge, on the first of August; quotes with
approval, the result of his "Discourse," then held; and immediately
proceeds: "It is rare and extraordinary, for an honest Naboth to have
his life itself sworn away by two children of Belial, and yet no
infringement hereby made on the Rectoral Righteousness of our eternal
Sovereign, whose judgments are a great deep, and who gives none account
of his matters."--_Page 9._

The amount of all this is, that it is so rare and extraordinary for the
Devil to assume the spectral shape of an innocent person, that it is
best, "when," as his expression is, in another place, "the public safety
makes an exigency," to receive and act upon such evidence, even if it
should lead to the conviction of an innocent person--a thing so seldom
liable to occur, and, indeed, barely possible. The procedure would be
but carrying out the divine "permission," and a fulfilment of "the
Rectoral Righteousness" of Him, whose councils are a great deep, not to
be accounted for to, or by, us.

In summing up what the witches had been doing at Salem Village, during
the preceding Summer, Mather says: