of History.

The reader will, I trust, excuse me for going into such minute processes
of investigation and reasoning, in such comparatively unimportant
points. But, as the long-received opinions, in reference to this chapter
of our history, have been brought into question in the columns of a
journal, justly commanding the public confidence, it is necessary to
re-examine the grounds on which they rest. This I propose to do, without
regard to labor or space. I shall not rely upon general considerations,
but endeavor, in the course of this discussion, to sift every topic on
which the Reviewer has struck at the truth of history, fairly and
thoroughly. On this particular point, of the relation of these two
instances of alleged Witchcraft, in localities so near as Boston and
Salem, and with so short an interval of time, general considerations
would ordinarily be regarded as sufficient. From the nature of things,
the former must have served to bring about the latter. The
intercommunication between the places was, even then, so constant, that
no important event could happen in one without being known in the other.
By the thousand channels of conversation and rumor, and by Mather's
printed account, endorsed by Baxter, and put into circulation throughout
the country, the details of the alleged sufferings and extraordinary
doings of the Goodwin children, must have become well known, in Salem
Village. Such a conclusion would be formed, if no particular evidence in
support of it could be adduced; but when corroborated by the two
Hutchinsons, Mr. Hale, and, in effect, by Mather himself, it cannot be
shaken.

As has been stated, Cotton Mather, previous to his experience with those
"pests," as the Reviewer happily calls "the Goodwin children," probably
believed in the efficacy of prayer, and in that alone, to combat and
beat down evil spirits and their infernal Prince; and John Goodwin's
declaration, that it was not by his advice that he went to the law, is,
therefore, entirely credible in itself. The protracted trial, however,
patiently persevered in for several long months, when he had every
advantage, in his own house, to pray the devil out of the eldest of the
children, resulting in her becoming more and more "saucy," insolent, and
outrageous, may have undermined his faith to an extent of which he might
not have been wholly conscious. He says, in concluding his story in the
_Magnalia_, [_Book VI., p. 75._] that, after all other m