Sewall, too, and the Jury that had given the verdicts at the
Trials, in 1692, publicly and emphatically acknowledged that they had
been led into error.

All these things afford decisive and affecting evidence of a prevalent
conviction that a great wrong had been committed. The vote passed by the
Church at Salem Village, on the fourteenth of February, 1703--"We are,
through God's mercy to us, convinced that we were, at that dark day,
under the power of those errors which then prevailed in the land." "We
desire that this may be entered in our Church-book," "that so God may
forgive our Sin, and may be atoned for the land; and we humbly pray that
God will not leave us any more to such errors and sins"--affords
striking proof that the right feeling had penetrated the whole
community. On the eighth of July, of that same year, nearly the whole
body of the Clergy of Essex-county addressed a Memorial to the General
Court, in which they say, "There is great reason to fear that innocent
persons then suffered, and that God may have a controversy with the land
upon that account."

Nothing of the kind, however, was ever heard from the Ministers of
Boston and the vicinity. Why did they not join their voices in this
prayer, going up elsewhere, from all concerned, for the divine
forgiveness? We know that most of them felt right. Samuel Willard and
James Allen did; and so did William Brattle, of Cambridge. Their silence
cannot, it seems to me, be accounted for, but by considering the degree
to which they were embarrassed by the relation of the Mathers to the
affair. One brave-hearted old man remonstrated against their failure to
meet the duty of the hour, and addressed his remonstrance to the right
quarter. The Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, a Fellow of Harvard College, and
honored in all the Churches, wrote a letter to Increase Mather, dated
July 22, 1704 [_Mather Papers, 647_], couched in strong and bold terms,
beginning thus:

"REV. AND DEAR S^R. I am right well assured that both yourself, your
son, and the rest of our brethren with you in Boston, have a deep sense
upon your spirits of the awful symptoms of the Divine displeasure that
we lie under at this day." After briefly enumerating the public
calamities of the period, he continues: "I doubt not but you are all
endeavouring to find out and discover to the people the causes of God's
controversy, and how they are to be removed; to help forward this
difficult and necessary work, give