VIII.
COTTON MATHER AND SPECTRAL EVIDENCE.
I shall continue to draw, at some length, upon Mather's writings, to which I ask the careful attention of the reader. The subject to which they mostly relate, is of much interest, presenting views of a class of topics, holding, for a long period, a mighty sway over the human mind.
In his Life of Phips, written in 1697, and constituting the concluding part of the Second Book of the Magnalia, he gives a general account of what had transpired, in the preliminary examinations at Salem, before the arrival of Sir William, at Boston. In it, he spreads out, with considerable fullness, what had been brought before the Magistrates, consisting mainly of spectral testimony; and narrates the appearances and doings of spectres assaulting the "afflicted children," not as mere matters alleged, but as facts. It is true that he appears as a narrator; yet, in the manner and tenor of his statement, he cannot but be considered as endorsing the spectral evidence. Speaking of the examining Magistrates, and saying that it is "now," that is, in 1697, "generally thought they went out of the way," he expresses himself as follows: "The afflicted people vehemently accused several persons, in several places, that the spectres which afflicted them, did exactly resemble them; until the importunity of the accusations did provoke the Magistrates to examine them. When many of the accused came upon their examination, it was found, that the demons, then a thousand ways abusing of the poor afflicted people, had with a marvellous exactness represented them; yea, it was found that many of the accused, but casting their eye upon the afflicted, the afflicted, though their faces were never so much another way, would fall down and lie in a sort of a swoon, wherein they would continue, whatever hands were laid upon them, until the hands of the accused came to touch them, and then they would revive immediately: and it was found, that various kinds of natural actions, done by many of the accused in or to their own bodies, as leaning, bending, turning awry, or squeezing their hands, or the like, were presently attended with the like things preternaturally done upon the bodies of the afflicted, though they were so far asunder, that the afflicted could not at all observe the accused."—Magnalia, Book II., p. 61.
Indeed, throughout his account of the appearances and occurrences, at the examinations before the committing Magistrates, it must be allowed that he exposed a decided bias, in his own mind, to the belief and reception of the spectral evidence. He commences that account in these words: "Some scores of people, first about Salem, the centre and first-born of all the towns in the Colony, and afterwards in several other places, were arrested with many preternatural vexations upon their bodies, and a variety of cruel torments, which were evidently inflicted from the demons of the invisible world. The people that were infected and infested with such Demons, in a few days time, arrived at such a refining alteration upon their eyes, that they could see their tormentors; they saw a Devil of a little stature and of a tawny color, attended still with spectres that appeared in more human circumstances."—Page 60.
And he concludes it as follows: "Flashy people may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country, where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadduceeism can question them. I have not yet mentioned so much as one thing, that will not be justified, if it be required, by the oaths of more considerate persons, than any that can ridicule these odd phenomena."—Page 61.
When he comes to the conclusion of the affair, and mentions the general pardon of the convicted and accused, he says: "there fell out several strange things that caused the spirit of the country to run as vehemently upon the acquitting of all the accused, as it had, by mistake, ran at first upon the condemning of them." "In fine, the last Courts that sate upon this thorny business, finding that it was impossible to penetrate into the whole meaning of the things that had happened, and that so many unsearchable cheats were interwoven into the conclusion of a mysterious business, which perhaps had not crept thereinto at the beginning of it, they cleared the accused as fast as they tried them." But, even then, Mather could not wholly disengage his mind from the "mistake." "More than twice twenty," he says, in connection with the fact that the confessions had been receded from, "had made such voluntary, and harmonious, and uncontrollable confessions, that if they were all sham, there was therein the greatest violation, made by the efficacy of the invisible world, upon the rules of understanding human affairs, that was ever seen since God made man upon the earth."
In this same work he presents, in condensed shape, the views of the advocates and of the opponents of spectral testimony, without striking the balance between them or avowedly taking sides with either, although it may fairly be observed that the weight he puts into the scale of the former is quite preponderating. From incidental expressions, too, it might be inferred that he was to be classed with the former, as he ascribes to them some "philosophical schemes," in explanation of the phenomena of witchcraft, that look like his notion of the "Plastic spirit of the world." Another incidental remark seems to point to Increase Mather, as to be classed with the latter, as follows: "Though against some of them that were tried, there came in so much other evidence of their diabolical compacts, that some of the most judicious, and yet vehement, opposers of the notions then in vogue, publicly declared, Had they themselves been on the Bench, they could not have acquitted them; nevertheless, divers were condemned, against whom the chief evidence was founded in the spectral exhibitions."
Increase Mather, in the Postscript to his Cases of Conscience, says: "I am glad that there is published to the World (by my Son) a Breviate of the Tryals of some who were lately executed, whereby I hope the thinking part of Mankind will be satisfied, that there was more than that which is called Spectre Evidence for the Conviction of the Persons condemned. I was not my self present at any of the Tryals, excepting one, viz. that of George Burroughs; had I been one of his Judges, I could not have acquitted him: For several Persons did upon Oath testifie, that they saw him do such things as no Man that has not a Devil to be his Familiar could perform."