et the
obligation pressing upon his sense of justice and appealing to him with
especial force, by writing his book, from which the following passages
are extracted: "I would come yet nearer to our own times, and bewail
the errors and mistakes that have been, in the year 1692--by following
such traditions of our fathers, maxims of the common law, and precedents
and principles, which now we may see, weighed in the balance of the
sanctuary, are found too light--Such was the darkness of that day, the
tortures and lamentations of the afflicted, and the power of former
precedents, that we walked in the clouds and could not see our way--I
would humbly propose whether it be not expedient that somewhat more
should be publicly done than yet hath, for clearing the good name and
reputation of some that have suffered upon this account."

The Rev. John Higginson, Senior Pastor of the First Church in Salem,
then eighty-two years of age, in a recommendatory _Epistle to the
Reader_, prefixed to Mr. Hale's book, dated the twenty-third of March,
1698, after stating that, "under the infirmities of a decrepit old age,
he stirred little abroad, and was much disenabled (both in body and
mind) from knowing and judging of occurrents and transactions of that
time," proceeds to say that he was "more willing to accompany" Mr. Hale
"to the press," because he thought his "treatise needful and useful upon
divers accounts;" among others specified by him, is the following: "That
whatever errors or mistakes we fell into, in the dark hour of temptation
that was upon us, may be (upon more light) so discovered, acknowledged,
and disowned by us, as that it may be matter of warning and caution to
those that come after us, that they may not fall into the like.--_1
Cor._, x., 11. _Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum._ I would also
propound, and leave it as an object of consideration, to our honored
Magistrates and Reverend Ministers, whether the equity of that law in
_Leviticus_, Chap. iv., for a sin-offering for the Rulers and for the
Congregation, in the case of sins of ignorance, when they come to be
known, be not obliging, and for direction to us in a Gospel way." The
venerable man concludes by saying that "it shall be the prayer of him
who is daily waiting for his change and looking for the mercy of the
Lord Jesus Christ, unto eternal life," that the "blessing of Heaven may
go along with this little treatise to attain the good ends thereof."

Judge