this
practice as an abomination; have trembled to see the methods of this
nature which others have used; and have declared themselves to think the
practice to be very evil and corrupt; but all avails little with the
abettors of the said practice."

Does not this stern condemnation fall on the head of the "spiritual
teacher," who received constant communications from the spectral world,
fastening the charge of diabolical confederacy upon other persons, in
confidential interviews with confessing witches--not to mention the
Goodwin girls;--whose boast it was, "it may be no man living has had
more people, under preternatural and astonishing circumstances, cast by
the Providence of God into his more particular care than I have had;"
and that he had kept to himself information thus obtained, which, if he
had not suppressed it, would have led to the conviction of "such witches
as ought to die;" who sought to have the exclusive right of receiving
such communications conferred upon him, "by the authority;" who, at that
time, was holding this intercourse with persons pretending to spectral
visions; and, the next year, held such relations with Margaret Rule?

The next evidence in support of the opinion that Cotton Mather was
considered, at the time, as identified with the proceedings at Salem, in
1692, although circumstantial, cannot, I think, but be regarded as quite
conclusive.

Immediately after the prosecutions terminated, measures began to be
developed to remove Mr. Parris from his ministry. The reaction early
took effect where the outrages of the delusion had been most flagrant;
and the injured feelings of the friends of those who had been so cruelly
cut off, and of all who had suffered in their characters and condition,
found expression. A movement was made, directly and personally, upon
Parris, in consequence of his conspicuous lead in the prosecutions;
showing itself, first, in the form of litigation, in the Courts, of
questions of salary and the adjustment of accounts. Soon, it broke out
in the Church; and satisfaction was demanded, by aggrieved brethren, in
the methods appropriate to ecclesiastical action. The charges here made
against him were exclusively in reference to his course, at the
Examinations and Trials, in 1692. The conflict, thus initiated, is one
of the most memorable in our Church History. Parris and his adherents
resisted, for a long time, the rightful and orderly demands of his
opponents for a Mutua