ed
hands on the horns of the altar, such as had not been equalled in
audacity, since the days of Anne Hutchinson, by any but Quakers. Calef,
however, was determined to compel the attention of the world, if he
could not that of the Ministers of Boston, to the subject; and he
prepared, and sent to England, to be printed, a book, containing all
that had passed, and more to the same purpose. It consists of several
parts.

PART I. is _An account of the afflictions of Margaret Rule_, written by
Cotton Mather, under the title of _Another Brand plucked out of the
Burning, or more Wonders of the Invisible World_. In my book, the case
of Margaret Rule is spoken of as having occurred the next "Summer" after
the witchcraft delusion in Salem. This gives the Reviewer a chance to
strike at me, in his usual style, as follows: "The case did not occur in
the Summer; the date is patent to any one who will look for it." Cotton
Mather says that she "first found herself to be formally besieged by the
spectres," on the tenth of September. From the preceding clauses of the
same paragraph, it might be inferred that she had had fits before. He
speaks of those, on the tenth, as "the first I'll mention." The word
"formally," too, almost implies the same. This, however, must be allowed
to be the smallest kind of criticism, although uttered by the Reviewer
in the style of a petulant pedagogue. If Summer is not allowed to borrow
a little of September, it will sometimes not have much to show, in our
climate. The tenth of September is, after all, fairly within the
astronomical Summer.

The Reviewer says it will be "difficult for me to prove" that Margaret
Rule belonged to Mr. Mather's Congregation, before September, 1693.
Mather vindicates his taking such an interest in her case, on the ground
that she was one of his "poor flock." The Reviewer raises a question on
this point; and his controversy is with Mather, not with me. If Rule did
not belong to the Congregation of North Boston, when Mather first
visited her, his language is deceptive, and his apology, for meddling
with the case, founded in falsehood. I make no such charge, and have no
such belief. The Reviewer seems to have been led to place Cotton Mather
in his own light--in fact, to falsify his language--on this point, by
what is said of another Minister's having visited her, to whose flock
she belonged, and whom she called, "Father." This was Increase Mather.
We know he visited her; and it wa