aracter of their spiritual counsellor." "We now see the object of Mr.
Mather's visits to Salem." "Would these persons have asked Mr. Mather to
be their spiritual comforter, if he had been the agent, as has been
alleged, of bringing them into their sad condition?"

In other forms of language and other connections, he speaks of Mr.
Mather's presence, at these executions, as "the performance of a sad
duty to Proctor and Willard," and represents Brattle as calling him "the
spiritual adviser of the persons condemned." All this he asserts as
proved and admitted fact; and the whole rests upon the foregoing
_mutilated_ paragraph of Brattle.

Let the reader thoroughly examine and consider that paragraph, and then
judge of this Reviewer's claim to establish History. The word
"affection," was used much at that time to signify _earnest desire_.
"They"--that is, the persons then about to die, namely, the Rev. George
Burroughs, an humble, laborious, devoted Minister of the Gospel; John
Proctor, the owner of valuable farms and head of a large family; John
Willard, a young married man of most respectable connections; George
Jacobs, an early settler, land-holder, and a grandfather, of great age,
with flowing white locks, sustained, as he walked, by two staffs or
crutches; and Martha Carrier, the wife of a farmer in Andover, with a
family of children, some of them quite young--"entreated Mr. C. M. to
pray with them." Why did they have to "entreat" him, if he had come all
the way from Boston for that purpose? They all had Ministers near at
hand--Carrier had two Ministers, either or both of whom would have been
prompt to come, if persons suffering for the imputed crime of witchcraft
had been allowed to have the attendance of "spiritual comforters," at
their executions. If Mather had prayed with them, Brattle would have
said so. His language is equivalent to a statement, that "Mr. C. M." was
reluctant, if he did not absolutely refuse to do it; and the only
legitimate inferences from the whole passage are, that the sufferers did
their own praying,--from Brattle's account of their dying prayers, they
did it well--and that without "spiritual comforter," "adviser," or
"friend," in the last dread hour, they were left to the "management of
themselves."

When the paragraph is taken in connection with the relations of Brattle
to Mather, not approving of his course in public affairs, but, at the
same time, delicately situated, being associated wit