t his religious belief, not from his father,
but from his mother. That would account for a great deal, for the milk
in a woman's veins sweetens, or at least, dilutes an acrid doctrine, as
the blood of the motherly cow softens the virulence of small-pox, so that
its mark survives only as the seal of immunity. Another would plead
atavism, and say he got his religious instincts from his
great-grandfather, as some do their complexion or their temper. Others
would be compelled to confess that the belief of a wife or a sister had
displaced that which they naturally inherited. No man can be expected to
go thus into the details of his family history, and, therefore, it is an
ill-bred and indecent thing to fling a man's father's creed in his face,
as if he had broken the fifth commandment in thinking for himself in the
light of a new generation. Common delicacy would prevent him from saying
that he did not get his faith from his father, but from somebody else,
perhaps from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, like the young
man whom the Apostle cautioned against total abstinence.

It is always the right, and may sometimes be the duty, of the layman to
call the attention of the clergy to the short-comings and errors, not
only of their own time, but also of the preceding generations, of which
they are the intellectual and moral product. This is especially true
when the authority of great names is fallen back upon as a defence of
opinions not in themselves deserving to be upheld. It may be very
important to show that the champions of this or that set of dogmas, some
of which are extinct or obsolete as beliefs, while others retain their
vitality, held certain general notions which vitiated their conclusions.
And in proportion to the eminence of such champions, and the frequency
with which their names are appealed to as a bulwark of any particular
creed or set of doctrines, is it urgent to show into what obliquities or
extravagances or contradictions of thought they have been betrayed.

In summing up the religious history of New England, it would be just and
proper to show the agency of the Mathers, father and son, in the
witchcraft delusion. It would be quite fair to plead in their behalf the
common beliefs of their time. It would be an extenuation of their acts
that, not many years before, the great and good magistrate, Sir Matthew
Hale, had sanctioned the conviction of prisoners accused of witchcraft.
To fall back o