uite
acrimonious. The language used by Brattle, applauding the public course
of the person of whom he was speaking, would be utterly inexplicable, if
applied to Mather. The "endeavours, counsels, notions and proposals," to
which he alludes, could not have referred to Mather's plans, which I
have attempted to explain, because described by Brattle as being in "an
ordinary way." "Unkindness, abuse, and reproach" find an explanation in
the fact, that Willard was "cried out upon" and brought into peril of
reputation and life, by the creatures of the prosecution. The
monstrousness of the supposition that Mather was referred to, would
hardly be heightened if it should appear that Brattle supplied Calef
with materials in his controversy with Mather.

The language, throughout, is in conformity with the political relations
between Brattle and Willard. The side the latter had espoused was put
beyond question by the appearing, on the fifteenth of November, at
Elisha Cook's Thanksgiving; and that was the same occupied by Brattle.
But the question is settled by the fact that _three of the Judges_
belonged to Willard's Congregation and Church, whereas only _one_
belonged to the Church of the Mathers. The Reviewer says: "We do not
assert that this inference is not the correct one." But, in spite of
this substantial admission, with that strange propensity to overturn all
the conclusions of history to glorify Cotton Mather, at the expense of
others, and even, in this instance, against his own better judgment, he
labors to make us believe--what he himself does not venture to
"assert"--that the "spiritual relation" in which Mather stood to three
of the Judges, was not, what, in those days and ever since, it has been
understood to mean, that of a Pastor with his flock, but nothing more
than intimate friendship. If this was what Brattle meant, he would have
said at least _four_ of the Judges, for, at that time, Sewall was in
full accord with Mather. They took counsel together. It was at the house
of Sewall that the preparation of the _Wonders of the Invisible World_
was finally arranged with Mather; and he, alone, of all the side Judges,
united with Stoughton, some days after the date of Brattle's letter, in
endorsing and commending that work.

If the expression, "spiritual relations," is divorced from its proper
sense, and made to mean sympathy of opinion or agreement in counsels, it
ill becomes the Reviewer to try to make it out that Math