to the established usages of New England. This was a great consolation to the venerable Mather, in his last days. "He left the world rejoicing, that the glorious Lord had seen fit to entrust his churches here to such pious, painful, and every way desirable hands. He saw a class of young ministers introduced into the city, whom he esteemed more precious than so many golden wedges of Ophir. When he saw given to the churches a Sewall, a Prince, a Webb, a Cooper, a Foxcroft, a Waldron, all singularly endeared to him, and saw others of a like character coming on after them, it is inexpressible with what joy he regarded them, and with what earnestness he entreated them to walk in the truth, and to plead for it."

CHAPTER X.

Increase Mather vindicated, from the charge of promoting witchcraft. From the charge of injuriously treating the founders of the Brattle Street Church. From the charge of injuring Gov. Dudley. From the charge of being the dupe of his own impressions. From the imputation of selfish and ambitious motives. From the gen. eral, wholesale charges of President Quincy, and others.

FOR the first century after Dr. Mather's death, his character and reputation were unassailed and untarnished. They were suffered to remain, much as he had left them, in the hands of his immediate survivors. But within the last few years, certain writers in and around Boston, who have no sympathy with the religion of the Mathers, have undertaken to revile and defame him. With Cotton Mather I have at present nothing to do, except so far as his acts and character are identified with those of his father. But in a life of Increase Mather, it would be unpardonable not to inquire into the correctness of some of the principal charges which have been urged against him.

He has been charged, in the first place, with

an effective instrumentality in producing and prolonging the excitement in New England respecting witchcraft. "That both the Mathers," says President Quincy, "had an efficient agency in producing and prolonging that excitement, there can be, at this day, no possible question."*

How Increase Mather could have had any agency in producing the excitement here referred to, it is hard to conceive. The strange appearances at Salem village, (now Danvers,) commenced in February, 1692, when Dr. Mather was in England, where he had constantly resided, and where he had been most intensely occupied with the important duties of his agency for nearly four years. How then could he have been instrumental in producing this excitement?

And the charge of prolonging it is even more unfounded than that of producing it. He arrived at home May 14, 1692, when the excitement was at its highest point. Shortly afterwards, as soon as it could possibly be prepared, he published his treatise, entitled "Cases of Conscience respecting Witchcraft," in which, "with incomparable reason and reading," he refuted the received doctrine of spectral evidence, on the ground of which so many innocent per

* History of Harvard University, vol. I, p. 62.

sons had been tried and condemned. Immediately upon this, says Cotton Mather, the governor "pardoned such as had been condemned," and the accused were, I believe, in all cases acquitted. "The confessors, too, came as it were out of a dream, wherein they had been fascinated, and the afflicted, in most instances, grew easy." It would seem from this account, given by an eye witness, that instead of contributing to prolong the excitement, Dr. Mather was a principal instrument in bringing it to a close.

That he was a believer in witchcraft, there can be no doubt; as who in that age, whether learned or unlearned, physicians, ministers, or lawyers, were not? Such was the common faith of Christendom, and had been so for hundreds of years. Persons who have not attended particularly to the subject can have no idea of the extent to which the supposed crime of witchcraft has prevailed in different countries, and the multitude of deaths which it has occasioned. the latter part of the sixteenth century, not only hundreds but thousands were put to death-many of them by the extremest tortures-in different parts of Europe, under the imputation of witchcraft. In the year 1664, Sir Matthew Hale presided at the trial of two females in Suffolk, supposed to be witches, both of whom were

In

condemned and executed. A few years later, many were tried and condemned in England, under the administration of Chief Justice Holt. The last execution for witchcraft in England was at Huntingdon, in the year 1716; and the last in Scotland was at Dornoch, Sutherlandshire, in 1722. The English statute against witchcraft, making it a capital offence, was not repealed, until the year 1736. Sir William Blackstone, the great oracle of British law, who died no longer ago than 1780, declared his belief in witchcraft in the following terms; "To deny the possibility, nay the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testaments; and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath, in its turn, borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which suppose at least the possibility of commerce with evil spirits."

In New England, at the time of Increase Mather, the belief in witchcraft may be said to have been universal. The most experienced physicians who were called to prescribe for the sufferers, and the most eminent ministers who were invited to pray with them, did not hesitate to pronounce them bewitched. Even those per