CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.
'Accursed be the hour that gave me birth! Why was I born for this? Oh, thou insulted, yet forbearing God! if thine avenging justice pursues me to the lowest perdition, it will not outrun my crimes. Why did I hunt the innocent without cause, and heap on my soul such mountains of guilt? Oh, hide me, earth! bury me in thy deepest graves, if they will but shelter me from a raging conscience and a frowning God! How shall I save the innocent blood? how shall my feet, which have run so swiftly in the way of evil, turn back into the path of peace? These hands have built that fatal scaffold, on which innocence and virtue must perish! Oh, might I die in her stead! Oh, that my blood might expiate my guilt! Vain hope! the weight of mountains, the fires of the second death can neither crush nor consume me. Mine is an undying death, mine an unquenchable flame!'
Such were the exclamations of the wretched Trellison, as he stood on that fatal hill with the scaffold which, the day before, had been erected under a tree, directly in his view. He was now fully awake to a consciousness of his crimes: he had betrayed into the hands of the law, one of the most innocent and virtuous of her sex, and was about to witness the awful consummation of his guilt. He had opened the door, but it was beyond his power to shut it. If he avowed the truth, his single testimony could not avail against the host of witnesses which his own arts had procured, and whose evidence, if now confronted by his, would in self-defence be combined to involve himself as well as Miss Lyford in ruin and death. In this condition, he thought of every possible method to avert the impending fate of Miss Lyford; but every avenue seemed to be closed; and after wandering up and down the hill for several hours, in the utmost horror and distraction of mind, he finally determined to follow her to the scaffold, and there avow his guilt, and invoke every power within his reach, to save her from the threatened doom.
It is often a mournful duty to display the workings of an accusing conscience. The picture may warn us to shun the incipient stages of guilt, and turn back into the current of reason and reflection the wild and turbulent elements of excited passion. Too often, alas! we plunge into the very vortex of ruin, ere we are conscious that we have passed the boundaries of virtue. Such is the influence of pride, self-love, and self-esteem, that the first discovery of guilt and danger, often comes too late to save us from the final plunge. This was preëminently the case with Trellison: with hasty and violent feelings, unguarded by reason, and driven by every wave of passion, he had mistaken his own purposes of revenge for zeal in the cause of religion, and had so blended his own selfish designs with an imagined regard for the honor of his Maker, as to conceal from himself his actual guilt, until its fatal effects stared him in the face, and revealed the depths of iniquity in which he was ingulfed.
When the next morning dawned, crowds of people were seen gathering round the spot, where the dreadful sacrifice which public fanaticism demanded, was to be made. Rev. George Burroughs and three other individuals, named Willard, Proctor, and Jacobs, together with one female, were taken from prison and conducted by the sheriff to the place of execution. The scene was one of appalling interest; and as the unhappy victims passed through the streets, loud murmurs of disapprobation were heard from many individuals, who believed they were mainly indebted for these tragical events to Boston interference, and who were indignant that Salem should be the chosen theatre for the display of these bloody scenes. The venerable Higginson, with several of his most influential parishioners, utterly refused all part in these proceedings, while his associate in the ministry, Mr. Noyes, fully coöperated with Parris, Mather, and Stoughton, in all the length and breadth of this fatal delusion. When the hour of execution drew near, the public murmur became more loud and distinct, so much so as to excite alarm lest the purposes of justice might be frustrated. But at this moment Cotton Mather appeared on the ground, on horseback, and by the circulation of new proofs of Satan's promises and covenants with these unhappy persons, effectually silenced the voice of sympathy and the din of opposition. As the dreadful scene proceeded, Burroughs was seen kneeling on the scaffold in prayer, in which he solemnly appealed to his Maker for his uprightness of heart and his entire innocence of the crime for which he was called to die. He prayed fervently for himself and his hapless associates, thus performing in his last hours the kind offices of his sacred profession, and administering consolation to his fellow sufferers. Neither did he forget those bitter enemies who had brought him to this scene of horror; but earnestly supplicated their forgiveness from God, as he himself heartily forgave them.
Thus perished the persecuted Burroughs and his unhappy companions. They died as outcasts from God and man, their very names regarded with scorn and horror, and their persons execrated as the vilest of the vile. Time has lifted the veil; the storm of reproach has passed away; the shadows of the invisible world, in which they were seen to move as dark and mysterious forms enlisted in the service of Satan, and doing his will, have given place to the sunshine of Reason and Truth. The white robes of innocence and virtue now adorn them in the eye of every beholder, and that foul stain stamps with its darkest hues, the memories of Stoughton, Sewall, Gedney, and Cotton Mather.
Let it not be supposed there were no redeeming traits in the characters of these men. It was a superstitious age, and the delusions which were now abroad, had fastened with immense power upon the community at large; but this, though it may be urged in mitigation of their offences, was no valid excuse. They had unerring and sufficient maps in the experience of the past. They had the sure word of God. They had reason and common sense, which, impartial and unperverted, might have shown them the madness and cruelty of their course. These guides were consulted too late; and we have it recorded of Judge Sewall, that he deeply repented of his agency in these painful scenes, and publicly deplored his errors in the presence of the members of the South Church, presenting his own example as a warning to future magistrates to avoid that fatal rock, on which justice and mercy had alike suffered shipwreck.
It is probable Stoughton and Mather carried this delusion in part to their graves; and it is scarcely possible to contemplate these characters with complacency. There is no monument along the track of succeeding years, which redeems their memory from its deserved reproach. Mather was learned and industrious beyond any man of that age in New England; but he was credulous to the last degree; of a bold and fiery temper, deeply tinctured with fanaticism, rash in his judgment, severe in his rebukes, and overbearing in his conduct. A cloud rests upon his memory, through which Charity herself can scarcely discern the faint rays of real piety, which, notwithstanding all his errors, probably existed in his heart. Stoughton was, if possible, still more deeply implicated in these cruel proceedings, and the remark of an eminent historian of Harvard College is undoubtedly just, that 'upon no individual did the responsibility of the sad consummation of that excitement rest more heavily, than upon William Stoughton.'