, and his feelings enlisted, to
decide, courageously and righteously, the question before him. He saw
that no life was safe while the evidence of the "afflicted persons" was
received, "either to the committing or trying" of any persons. He thus
broke through the meshes which had bound Judges and Ministers, the
writers of books and the makers of laws; and swept the whole fabric of
"spectral testimony" away, whether as matter of "enquiry" and
"presumption," or of "conviction." The ship-carpenter of the Kennebec
laid the axe to the root of the tree.

The following extract from a letter of Sir William Phips, just put into
my hands, and for which I am indebted to Mr. Goodell, substantiates the
conclusions to which I have been led.

"_Governor Phips to the Lords of the Committee of Trade and
Plantations, 3 April, 1693._

"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR LORDSHIPS:

"I have intreated M^r Blathwayte to lay before your Lordships
several letters, wherein I have given a particular account of my
stopping a supposed witchcraft, which had proved fatall to many of
their Maj^ties good subjects, had there not been a speedy end putt
thereto; for a stop putt to the proceedings against such as were
accused, hath caused the thing itself to cease."

This shows that, addressing officially his Home Government, he assumed
the responsibility of having "stopped and put a speedy end to the
proceedings;" that he had no great faith in the doctrines then received
touching the reality of witchcraft; and that he was fully convinced
that, if he had allowed the trials to go on, and the inflammation of the
public mind to be kept up by "discourses," the bloody tragedy would have
been prolonged, and "proved fatal to many good" people.

There are two men--neither of them belonging to the class of scholars or
Divines; both of them guided by common sense, good feeling, and a
courageous and resolute spirit--who stand alone, in the scenes of the
witchcraft delusions. NATHANIEL SALTONSTALL, who left the Council and
the Court, the day the Ministers' _Advice_, to go on with the
prosecutions, was received, and never appeared again until that _Advice_
was abandoned and repudiated; and Sir WILLIAM PHIPS, who stamped it out
beneath his feet.

But how with Cotton Mather's Book, the _Wonders of the Invisible World_?
On the eleventh of October, Stoughton and Sewall signed a paper, printed
in the book, [_p. 88_] endorsing its contents, especi