of such modes of expression. So,
also, when he sent a present of money and tracts to "poor and bad
people," in Salem, with an anonymous letter to the Minister of the
place, "desiring and empowering him to dispense the charity, _in his own
name_, hoping thereby the _more to ingratiate his ministry with the
people_," he looked only on one side of the proposal, and saw it in no
other light than a benevolent and friendly transaction. It never
occurred to him that he was suggesting a deceptive procedure and drawing
the Minister into a false position and practice.

When, in addition, we consider to what he was exposed by his proclivity
to, and aspirations for, political power, the expedients, schemes,
contrivances, and appliances, in which he thereby became involved in the
then state of things in the Colony, and the connection which leading
Ministers, although not admitted to what are strictly speaking political
offices, had with the course of public affairs--his father, to an extent
never equalled by any other Clergyman, before or since--we begin to
estimate the influences that disastrously swayed the mind of Cotton
Mather.

Vanity, flattery, credulity, want of logical discernment, and the
struggles between political factions, in the unsettled, uncertain,
transition period, between the old and new Charters, are enough to
account for much that was wrong, in one of Mather's temperament and
passions, without questioning his real mental qualities, or, I am
disposed to think, his conscious integrity, or the sincerity of his
religious experiences or professions.

But his chief apology, after all, is to be found in the same sphere in
which his chief offences were committed. Certain topics and notions, in
reference to the invisible, spiritual, and diabolical world, whether of
reality or fancy it matters not, had, all his life long, been the
ordinary diet, the daily bread, of his mind.

It may, perhaps, be said with truth, that the theological imagery and
speculations of that day, particularly as developed in the writings of
the two Mathers, were more adapted to mislead the mind and shroud its
moral sense in darkness, than any system, even of mythology, that ever
existed. It was a mythology. It may be spoken of with freedom, now, as
it has probably passed away, in all enlightened communities in
Christendom. Satan was the great central character, in what was, in
reality, a Pantheon. He was surrounded with hosts of infernal spirits