of these celestial
intelligences, while, on the other hand, the Devil, _teste_ Cotton
Mather, is unversed in certain of the Indian dialects. Yet must he be a
semeiologist the most expert, making himself intelligible to every
people and kindred by signs; no other discourse, indeed, being needful,
than such as the mackerel-fisher holds with his finned quarry, who, if
other bait be wanting, can by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a
string captivate those foolish fishes. Such piscatorial oratory is Satan
cunning in. Before one he trails a hat and feather, or a bare feather
without a hat; before another, a Presidential chair, or a tidewaiter's
stool, or a pulpit in the city, no matter what. To us, dangling there
over our heads, they seem junkets dropped out of the seventh heaven,
sops dipped in nectar, but, once in our mouths, they are all one, bits
of fuzzy cotton.

This, however, by the way. It is time now _revocare gradum_. While so
many miracles of this sort, vouched by eye-witnesses, have encouraged
the arms of Papists, not to speak of those _Dioscuri_ (whom we must
conclude imps of the pit) who sundry times captained the pagan Roman
soldiery, it is strange that our first American crusade was not in some
such wise also signalized. Yet it is said that the Lord hath manifestly
prospered our armies. This opens the question, whether, when our hands
are strengthened to make great slaughter of our enemies, it be
absolutely and demonstratively certain that this might is added to us
from above, or whether some Potentate from an opposite quarter may not
have a finger in it, as there are few pies into which his meddling
digits are not thrust. Would the Sanctifier and Setter-apart of the
seventh day have assisted in a victory gained on the Sabbath, as was one
in the late war? Or has that day become less an object of his especial
care since the year 1697, when so manifest a providence occurred to Mr.
William Trowbridge, in answer to whose prayers, when he and all on
shipboard with him were starving, a dolphin was sent daily, "which was
enough to serve 'em; only on _Saturdays_ they still catched a couple,
and on the _Lord's Days_ they could catch none at all"? Haply they might
have been permitted, by way of mortification, to take some few sculpins
(those banes of the salt-water angler), which unseemly fish would,
moreover, have conveyed to them a symbolical reproof for their breach of
the day, being known in the rude dialect of