ire. Besides, the habitual style in which
they and the Ministers of that day indulged, of saying and unsaying, on
the same page--putting a proposition and then linking to it a
countervailing one--covered their tracks to each other and to
themselves. This is their apology; and none of them needs it more than
Cotton Mather. He was singularly blind to logical sequence. With
wonderful power over language, he often seems not to appreciate the
import of what he is saying; and to this defect, it is agreeable to
think, much, if not all, that has the aspect of a want of fairness and
even truthfulness, in his writings may be attributed.

As associate Ministers of the same congregation, it was desirable for
the Mathers to avoid being drawn into a conflicting attitude, on any
matter of importance. Drake, however, in his _History of Boston_, (_p.
545_) says that there was supposed, at the formation of the New North
Church, in that place, in 1712, to have been a jealousy between them.
There were, indeed, many points of dissimilarity, as well as of
similarity, in their culture, experience, manners, and ways; and men
conversant with them, at the time, may have noticed a difference in
their judgments and expressions, relating to the witchcraft affair, of
which no knowledge has come to us, except the fact, that it was so
understood at the time.

Cotton Mather brought all his ability to bear in preparing the _Wonders
of the Invisible World_. It is marked throughout by his peculiar genius,
and constructed with great ingenuity and elaboration; but it was "water
spilt on the ground." So far as the end, for which it was designed, is
regarded, it died before it saw the light.

XIII.

THE COURT OF OYER AND TERMINER BROUGHT TO A SUDDEN END. SIR WILLIAM
PHIPS.

When Sir William Phips went to the eastward, it was expected that his
absence would be prolonged to the twelfth of October. We cannot tell
exactly when he returned; probably some days before the twelfth. Writing
on the fourteenth, he says, that before any application was made to him
for the purpose, he had put a stop to the proceedings of the Court. He
probably signified, informally, to the Judges, that they must not meet
on the day to which they had adjourned. Brattle, writing on the eighth,
had not heard any thing of the kind. But the Rev. Samuel Torrey of
Weymouth, who was in full sympathy with the prosecutors, had heard of it
on the seventh, as appears by this entry in Se