appears to
have been, ought not, unnecessarily, to be connected with the
transaction. It is true that, after the family had become relieved of
its "sad circumstances from the invisible world," Mr. Baily took one of
the children to his house, in Watertown; but that is no indication of
his having given such advice. The only facts known of him, in connection
with Witchcraft prosecutions, look in the opposite direction. When John
Proctor, in his extremity of danger, sought for help, Mr. Baily was one
of the Ministers from whom alone he had any ground to indulge a hope for
sympathy; and his name is among the fourteen who signed the paper
approving of Increase Mather's _Cases of Conscience_. The list comprises
all the Ministers known as having shown any friendly feelings towards
persons charged with Witchcraft or who had suffered from the
prosecutions, such as Hubbard, Allen, Willard, Capen and Wise; but not
one who had taken an active part in hurrying on the proceedings of 1692.

If any surmise is justifiable, or worth while, as to the author of the
advice to Goodwin--and perhaps it is due to the memory of Baily, whose
name has been thus introduced--I should be inclined to suggest that it
was John Hale, of Beverly, who, like Baily, was deceased at the date of
Goodwin's certificate. He was a Charlestown man, originally of the same
religious Society with Goodwin, and had kept up acquaintance with his
former townsmen. His course at Salem Village, a few years afterwards,
shows that he would have been likely to give such advice; and we may
impute it to him without any wrong to his character or reputation. His
noble conduct in daring, in the very hour of the extremest fury of the
storm, when, as just before the break of day, the darkness was deepest,
to denounce the proceedings as wrong; and in doing all that he could to
repair that wrong, by writing a book condemning the very things in which
he had himself been a chief actor, gives to his name a glory that cannot
be dimmed by supposing that, in the period of his former delusion, he
was the unfortunate adviser of Goodwin.

When Calef's book reached this country, in 1700, a Committee of seven
was raised, at a meeting of the members of the Parish of which the
Mathers were Ministers, to protect them against its effects. John
Goodwin was a member of it, and contributed the Certificate from which
extracts have just been made. It was so worded as to give the impression
that Cotton Math