But, like other ambitious and grasping politicians, he was anxious to have the support of all parties at the same time. After making court to those who were dissatisfied with the prosecutions, he thus commends himself to all who approved of them:—
"And why, after all my unwearied cares and pains to rescue the miserable from the lions and bears of hell which had seized them, and after all my studies to disappoint the devils in their designs to confound my neighborhood, must I be driven to the necessity of an apology? Truly, the hard representations wherewith some ill men have reviled my conduct, and the countenance which other men have given to these representations, oblige me to give mankind some account of my behavior. No Christian can (I say none but evil-workers can) criminate my visiting such of my poor flock as have at any time fallen under the terrible and sensible molestations of evil angels. Let their afflictions have been what they will, I could not have answered it unto my glorious Lord, if I had withheld my just comforts and counsels from them; and, if I have also, with some exactness, observed the methods of the invisible world, when they have thus become observable, I have been but a servant of mankind in doing so: yea, no less a person than the venerable Baxter has more than once or twice, in the most public manner, invited mankind to thank me for that service."
In other passages, he thus continues to stimulate and encourage the advocates of the prosecutions:—
"Wherefore, instead of all apish shouts and jeers at histories which have such undoubted confirmation as that no man that has breeding enough to regard the common laws of human society will offer to doubt of them, it becomes us rather to adore the goodness of God, who does not permit such things every day to befall us all, as he sometimes did permit to befall some few of our miserable neighbors.
"And it is a very glorious thing that I have now to mention: The devils have, with most horrid operations, broke in upon our neighborhood; and God has at such a rate overruled all the fury and malice of those devils, that all the afflicted have not only been delivered, but, I hope, also savingly brought home unto God; and the reputation of no one good person in the world has been damaged, but, instead thereof, the souls of many, especially of the rising generation, have been thereby awakened unto some acquaintance with religion. Our young people, who belonged unto the praying-meetings, of both sexes, apart, would ordinarily spend whole nights, by whole weeks together, in prayers and psalms upon these occasions, in which devotions the devils could get nothing but, like fools, a scourge for their own backs: and some scores of other young people, who were strangers to real piety, were now struck with the lively demonstrations of hell evidently set forth before their eyes, when they saw persons cruelly frighted, wounded and starved by devils, and scalded with burning brimstone, and yet so preserved in this tortured state, as that, at the end of one month's wretchedness, they were as able still to undergo another; so that, of these also, it might now be said, 'Behold, they pray.' In the whole, the Devil got just nothing, but God got praises, Christ got subjects, the Holy Spirit got temples, the church got additions, and the souls of men got everlasting benefits. I am not so vain as to say that any wisdom or virtue of mine did contribute unto this good order of things; but I am so just as to say, I did not hinder this good."
I cannot, indeed, resist the conviction, that, notwithstanding all his attempts to appear dissatisfied, after they had become unpopular, with the occurrences in the Salem trials, he looked upon them with secret pleasure, and would have been glad to have had them repeated in Boston.
[F] The following is a statement of the loss inflicted upon the estate of George Jacobs, Sr. The property of the son was utterly destroyed.
"An Account of what was seized and taken away from my Father's Estate, George Jacobs, Sr., late of Salem, deceased, by Sheriff Corwin and his Assistants in the year 1692.
"When my said father was executed, and I was forced to fly out of the country, to my great damage and distress of my family, my wife and daughter imprisoned,—viz., my wife eleven months, and my daughter seven months in prison,—it cost them twelve pounds money to the officers, besides other charges.
| Five cows, fair large cattle, £3 per cow | £ | 15 | 00 | 0 |
| Eight loads of English hay taken out of the barn, 35s. per load | 14 | 00 | 0 | |
| A parcel of apples that made 24 barrels cider to halves; viz., 12 barrels cider, 8s. per barrel |
4 | 16 | 0 | |
| Sixty bushels of Indian corn, 2s. 6d. per bushel | 7 | 10 | 0 | |
| A mare | 2 | 0 | 0 | |
| Two good feather beds, and furniture, rugs, blankets, sheets, bolsters and pillows | 10 | 0 | 0 | |
| Two brass kettles, cost | 6 | 0 | 0 | |
| Money, 12s.; a large gold thumb ring, 20s. | 1 | 12 | 0 | |
| Five swine | 3 | 15 | 0 | |
| A quantity of pewter which I cannot exactly know the worth, perhaps | 3 | 0 | 0 | |
| — 67 | — 13 | — 0 | ||
| Besides abundance of small things, meat in the house, fowls, chairs, and other things took clear away | above | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| — 79 == | — 13 == | — 0 == |