y a peccadillo among us. All officers
are learning it. And, if I should say, Judges will find the way to it,
some will say, there needs not the future tense in the case." "Every
thing is betrayed, and that we, on the top of our house, may complete
all, our very religion, with all the Churches, is at last betrayed--the
treachery carried on with lies, and fallacious representations, and
finished by the rash hands of our Clergy."

That Cotton Mather continued all his subsequent life to experience the
dissatisfaction, and give way to the feelings, of a disappointed man,
is evident from his Diary. I have quoted from it a few passages. The
Reviewer says it "is full of penitential confessions," and seems to
liken him, in this respect, to the Apostle of the Gentiles. Speaking of
my having cited the Diary, as historical evidence, he says: "Such a use
of the confessional, we believe, is not common with historical writers."
I do not remember anything like "penitential confessions," in the
passages from the Diary given in my book. The reader is referred to
them, in Volume II., Page 503. They belong to the year 1724, and are
thus prefaced:

"DARK DISPENSATIONS, BUT LIGHT ARISING IN DARKNESS."

"It may be of some use to me, to observe some very dark dispensations,
wherein the recompense of my poor essays at well-doing, in this life,
seem to look a little discouraging; and then to express the triumph of
my faith over such and all discouragements." "Of the things that look
dark, I may touch of twice seven instances."

The writer, in the _Christian Examiner_, November, 1831, from whom I
took them, omitted two, "on account of their too personal or domestic
character."

I cannot find the slightest trace of a penitential tear on those I have
quoted; and cite now but one of them, as pertinent to the point I am
making: "What has a gracious Lord given me to do for the good of the
country? in applications without number for it, in all its interests,
besides publications of things useful to it, and for it. And, yet, there
is no man whom the country so loads with disrespect, and calumnies, and
manifold expressions of aversion."

This is a specimen of the whole of them--one half recounting what he had
done, the other complaining, sometimes almost scolding, at the poor
requital he had received.

President Leverett died on the third of May, 1724. His death was
lamented by the country; and the most eminent men vied with each other
in doing