utchinson, eminent jurist as he was, and also of
Calef. The Reviewer represents this remark as one of my "very grave and
unsupported charges against the honesty of Cotton Mather." I said
nothing about Mather in connection with that point, but expressed strong
disapprobation of the conduct of the official persons who procured the
deposition to be made, and of those having the custody of the papers.
The Reviewer, imagining that my censure was levelled at Mather, and
resolved to defend him, through thick and thin, denies that the document
in question was "surreptitiously foisted in." But there it was, when
Mather had the papers, and there it now is,--its date a month after
Burroughs was in his rocky grave. The Reviewer says that if I had looked
to the end of Mather's notice of the document, or observed the brackets
in which it was enclosed, I would have seen that Mather says that the
paper was not used at the trial. I stated the fact, expressly, and gave
Mather's explanation "that the man was overpersuaded by others to be out
of the way upon George Burroughs's trial." [_ii., 300, 303_] I found no
fault with Mather, in connection with the paper; and am not answerable,
at all, for the snarl in which the Reviewer's mind has become entangled,
in his eagerness to assail my book.

I ask a little further attention to this matter, because it affords an
illustration of Mather's singular, but characteristic, method of putting
things, often deceiving others, and sometimes, perhaps, himself. I quote
the paragraph from his report of the trial of Burroughs, in the _Wonders
of the Invisible World_, p. 64: "There were two testimonies, that G. B.
with only putting the fore-finger of his right hand into the muzzle of
an heavy gun, a fowling-piece of about six or seven foot barrel, did
lift up the gun, and hold it out at arms end; a gun which the deponents,
though strong men, could not, with both hands, lift up, and hold out, at
the butt end, as is usual. Indeed, one of these witnesses was
overpersuaded by some persons to be out of the way, upon G. B.'s trial;
but he came afterwards, with sorrow for his withdraw; and gave in his
testimony; nor were either of these witnesses made use of as evidences
in the trial."

The Reviewer says that Mather included the above paragraph in
"brackets," to apprise the reader that the evidence, to which it
relates, was not given at the trial. It is true that the brackets are
found in the Boston edition: but