idered, and the pressure of its forcible and bold reasoning,
amounting to expostulation, is examined, it can hardly be questioned
that it was addressed to the persons who most needed to be appealed to.
But no effect appears to have been produced by it.

In introducing his report of the Trials, contained in the _Wonders of
the Invisible World_, Cotton Mather, alluding to the "surviving
relations" of those who had been executed, says: "The Lord comfort
them." It was poor consolation he gave them in that book--holding up
their parents, wives, and husbands, as "Malefactors." Neither he nor his
father ever expressed a sentiment in harmony with those uttered by Hale,
Higginson, or Wigglesworth--on the contrary, Cotton Mather, writing a
year after the Salem Tragedy, almost chuckles over it: "In the
whole--the Devil got just nothing--but God got praises. Christ got
subjects, the Holy Spirit got temples, the church got addition, and the
souls of men got everlasting benefits."--_Calef_, 12.

Stoughton remained nearly the whole time, until his death, in May, 1702,
in control of affairs. By his influence over the Government and that of
the Mathers over the Clergy, nothing was done to remove the dark stigma
from the honor of the Province, and no seasonable or adequate reparation
ever made for the Great Wrong.

I am additionally indebted to the kindness of Dr. Moore for the
following extracts from a Sermon to the General Assembly, delivered by
Cotton Mather, in 1709, intitled "_Theopolis Americana_. Pure Gold in
the market place."

"In two or three too Memorable _Days of Temptation_, that have been upon
us, there have been _Errors_ Committed. You are always ready to Declare
unto all the World, 'That you disapprove those Errors.' You are willing
to inform all mankind with your _Declarations_.

"That no man may be Persecuted, because he is Conscienciously not of the
same Religious Opinions, with those that are uppermost.

"And; That Persons are not to be judged Confederates with Evil Spirits,
merely because the Evil Spirits do make Possessed People cry out upon
them.

"Could any thing be Proposed further, by way of Reparation, [Besides the
General Day of Humiliation, which was appointed and observed thro' the
Province, to bewayl the Errors of our Dark time, some years ago:] You
would be willing to hearken to it."

The suggestion thus made, not, it must be confessed, in very urgent
terms, did not, it is probable, produce much i