of. The expression used for the final act is, "turned off." There
is no shadow of evidence to contradict Calef. The probabilities seem to
be against the supposition of a structure, on a scale so large, as to
allow room for eight persons to be turned off at once. The outstretching
branches from large trees, on the borders of the clearing, would have
served the purpose, and a ladder, connected with a simple frame, might
have been passed from tree to tree.

The Regicides, thirty years before, had been executed in England in the
method Calef understood to have been used here. Hugh Peters was carried
to execution with Judge Cook. The latter suffered first; and when Peters
ascended the ladder, turning to the officer of the law, he uttered these
memorable words, exhibiting a state of the faculties, a grandeur of
bearing, and a force and felicity of language and illustration, all the
circumstances considered, not surpassed in the records of Christian
heroism or true eloquence: "Sir, you have slain one of the servants of
God, before mine eyes, and have made me to behold it, on purpose to
terrify and discourage me; but God hath made it an ordinance unto me,
for my strengthening and encouragement."

While the trials were going on, Mather made use of his pulpit to
influence the public mind, already wrought up to frenzy, to greater
heights of fanaticism, by portraying, in his own peculiar style, the
out-breaking battle between the Church and the Devil. On the day before
Burroughs, who was regarded as the head of the Church, and General of
the forces, of Satan, was brought to the Bar, Mather preached a Sermon
from the text, _Rev._, xii., 12. "Wo to the inhabitants of the earth,
and of the Sea! for the Devil is come down unto you, having great wrath,
because he knoweth he hath but a short time." It is thickly interspersed
with such passages as these: "Now, at last, the Devils are, (if I may so
speak), _in Person_ come down upon us, with such a wrath, as is most
justly _much_, and will quickly be _more_, the astonishment of the
world." "There is little room for hope, that the great wrath of the
Devil will not prove the ruin of our poor New England, in particular. I
believe there never was a poor plantation more pursued by the wrath of
the Devil than our poor New England." "We may truly say, _Tis the hour
and power of darkness_. But, though the wrath be so great, the time is
but short: when we are perplexed with the wrath of the Devil,