nced, or countenanced, the admission of spectral testimony--for
that is the issue before us--I feel confident that it has been made
apparent, that it was not in reference to the _admission_ of such
testimony, that he objected to the "principles that some of the Judges
had espoused," but to the method in which it should be _handled_ and
_managed_. I deny, utterly, that it can be shown that he opposed its
_admission_. In none of his public writings did he ever pretend to this.
The utmost upon which he ventured, driven to the defensive on this very
point, as he was during all the rest of his days, was to say that he was
opposed to its "excessive use." Once, indeed, in his private Diary,
under that self-delusion which often led him to be blind to the import
of his language, contradicting, in one part, what he had said in another
part of the same sentence, evidently, as I believe, without any
conscious and intentional violation of truth, he makes this statement:
"For my own part, I was always afraid of proceeding to convict and
condemn any person, as a confederate with afflicting Demons, upon so
feeble an evidence as a spectral representation. Accordingly, I ever
protested against it, both publicly and privately; and, in my letter to
the Judges, I particularly besought them that they would, by no means,
admit it; and when a considerable assembly of Ministers gave in their
advice about that matter, I not only concurred with them, but it was I
who drew it up."

This shows how he indulged himself in forms of expression that misled
him. His letter to "the Judges" means, I suppose, that written to
Richards; and he had so accustomed his mind to the attempt to make the
_Advice_ of the Ministers bear this construction, as to deceive
himself. That document does not say a word, much less, protest, against
the "admission" of that evidence: it was not designed, and was not
understood by any, at the time, to have that bearing, but only to urge
suggestions of caution, in its use and management. Charity to him
requires us to receive his declaration in the Diary as subject to the
modifications he himself connects with it, and to mean no more than we
find expressed in the letter to Richards and in the _Advice_. But, if he
really had deluded himself into the idea that he had protested against
the _admission_ of spectral evidence, he has not succeeded, probably, in
deluding any other persons than his son Samuel, who repeated the
language of th