hem thus: "The College must be
disposed against the opinion of all the Ministers in New England, except
yourselves, or the Governor torn in pieces. This is the view I have of
your inclination."

Dudley continued to administer the Government for eight years longer,
until the infirmities of age compelled him to retire. Both Hutchinson
and Doctor John Eliot give us to understand that he conducted the
public affairs with great ability and success, with the general approval
of all classes, and particularly of the Clergy. His statement that he
had the support of all the Ministers of New England, except the Mathers,
was undoubtedly correct. It is certainly true of the Ministers of
Boston. In his Diary, under the year 1709, Cotton Mather says: "The
other Ministers of the Town are this day feasting with our wicked
Governor. I have, by my provoking plainness and freedom, in telling this
Ahab of his wickedness, procured myself to be left out of his
invitations. I rejoiced in my liberty from the temptations wherewith
they were encumbered." He set apart that day for fasting and prayer, the
special interest of which, he says, "was to obtain deliverance and
protection" from his "enemies," whose names, he informs us, he
"mentioned unto the Lord, who had promised to be my shield."

The bitterness with which Mather felt exclusion from power is strikingly
illustrated in a letter addressed by him to Stephen Sewall, published by
me in the Appendix to the edition of my _Lectures_, printed in 1831. I
subjoin a few extracts: "A couple of malignant fellows, a while since,
railing at me in the Bookseller's shop, among other things they said,
'and his friend Noyes has cast him off,' at which they set up a
laughter." "No doubt, you understand, how ridiculously things have been
managed in our late General Assembly; voting and unvoting, the same day;
and, at last, the squirrels perpetually running into the mouth open for
them, though they had cried against it wonderfully. And your neighbor,
Sowgelder, after his indefatigable pains at the castration of all common
honesty, rewarded, before the Court broke up, with being made one of
your brother Justices; which the whole House, as well as the apostate
himself, had in view, all along, as the expected wages of his iniquity."
"If things continue in the present administration, there will shortly be
not so much as a shadow of justice left in the country. Bribery, a crime
capital among the Pagans, is alread