as a final settlement; and declared the ministerial relation,
between him and the people of the Village, dissolved.

With this official statement of the grounds on which his dismission was
demanded and obtained, before his eyes, as printed by Calef (_p. 63_),
this Reviewer says that Parris remained the Minister of Salem Village,
five years "after the witchcraft excitement;" and further says, "the
immediate cause of his leaving, was his quarrel with the Parish,
concerning thirty cords of wood and the fee of the parsonage." He thus
thinks, by a dash of his pen, to strike out the record of the fact that
the main, in truth, the only, ground on which Parris was dismissed, was
the part he bore in the witchcraft prosecutions. The salary question had
been pending in the Courts; but it was wholly left out of view, by the
party demanding his dismission. It had nothing to do with _dismission_;
was a question of _contract_ and _debt_; and was absorbed in the
"excitement," _which had never ceased_, about the witchcraft
prosecutions. The Arbitrators did not decide those questions, about
salary and the balance of accounts, except as incidental to the other
question, of _dismission_.

The feeling among the inhabitants of Salem Village, that Cotton Mather
was in sympathy with Mr. Parris, during the witchcraft prosecutions, is
demonstrated by the facts I have adduced connected with the controversy
between them and the latter, and most emphatically by their choice of
Elisha Cook, as the Arbitrator, on their part. Surely no persons of that
day, understood the matter better than they did. Indeed, they could not
have been mistaken about it. It remained the settled conviction of that
community.

When the healing ministry of the successor of Parris, Joseph Green, was
brought to a close, by the early death of that good man, in 1715, and
the whole Parish, still feeling the dire effects of the great calamity
of 1692, were mourning their bereavement, expressed in their own
language: "the choicest flower, and greenest olive-tree, in the garden
of our God here, cut down in its prime and flourishing estate," they
passed a vote, earnestly soliciting the Rev. William Brattle of
Cambridge, to visit them. He was always a known opponent of Cotton
Mather. To have selected him to come to them, in their distress and
destitution, indicates the views then prevalent in the Village. He went
to them and guided them by his advice, until they obtained a new
Mini