vils to obtain from the Courts, in
the invisible world, a license to proceed unto most hideous desolations
upon the repute and repose of such as have been kept from the great
transgression."

"Too great a progress" conveys the suggestion that, upon the
introduction of spectral evidence, there should be a delay in the
proceedings of the Court, for some intermediate steps to be taken,
before going on with the trial.

We gather other intimations, to this effect, from other passages, as
follows: "Now, in my visiting of the miserable, I was always of this
opinion, that we were ignorant of what power the Devils might have, to
do their mischiefs in the shapes of some that had never been explicitly
engaged in diabolical confederacies, and that therefore, though many
witchcrafts had been fairly detected on enquiries provoked and begun by
spectral exhibitions, yet we could not easily be too jealous of the
snares laid for us in the device of Satan. The world knows how many
pages I have composed and published, and particular gentlemen in the
Government know how many letters I have written, to prevent the
excessive credit of spectral accusations; wherefore I have still charged
the afflicted that they should cry out of nobody for afflicting them;
but that, if this might be any advantage, they might privately tell
their minds to some one person of discretion enough to make no ill use
of their communications; accordingly there has been this effect of it,
that the name of no one good person in the world ever came under any
blemish by means of an afflicted person that fell under my particular
cognizance; yea, no one man, woman, or child ever came into any trouble,
for the sake of any that were afflicted, after I had once begun to look
after them. How often have I had this thrown into my dish, 'that many
years ago I had an opportunity to have brought forth such people as
have, in the late storm of witchcraft, been complained of, but that I
smothered it all'; and after that storm was raised at Salem, I did
myself offer to provide meat, drink, and lodging for no less than six of
the afflicted, that so an experiment might be made, whether prayer, with
fasting, upon the removal of the distressed, might not put a period to
the trouble then rising, without giving the civil authority the trouble
of prosecuting those things, which nothing but a conscientious regard
unto the cries of miserable families could have overcome the reluctance
of the h