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The scholarly impulses were so dominant at this early day that when the entire population of New England did not exceed four thousand, the people determined to establish a college, which Cotton Mather says "was the best thing they ever thought of." It is estimated that this meager population contained as many as one hundred men who had received the training of Oxford and Cambridge.
In concluding the examination of the question whether Cotton Mather denounced, or countenanced, the admission of spectral testimony for that is the issue before us I feel confident that it has been made apparent, that it was not in reference to the admission of such testimony, that he objected to the "principles that some of the Judges had espoused," but to the method in which it should be handled and managed.
"Unkindness, abuse, and reproach" find an explanation in the fact, that Willard was "cried out upon" and brought into peril of reputation and life, by the creatures of the prosecution. The monstrousness of the supposition that Mather was referred to, would hardly be heightened if it should appear that Brattle supplied Calef with materials in his controversy with Mather.
It was the succession, at brief intervals, through a long period, of these Examinations, that wrought the great excitement through the country, which met Phips on his arrival; and which is so graphically described by Cotton Mather, as a "dreadful ferment." He says he was not present at any of the Trials. Was he present at any of the Examinations?
If this selection of colonists, through religious and political persecution, sometimes gave us bigots with one idea, it also gave us people who knew that ideas can change. Along with Cotton Mather it gave us Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams and William Penn.
She was busy combatting the idea that the latter really ever had been afflicted and was endeavoring to rouse Squire Hathorne's indignation against him as being a deceiver. As the young man read this last, he wondered what effect would be produced upon the credulous magistrate, when he received word from Master Mather as to what had occurred in the Governor's presence.
Cotton Mather, his son, two clergymen of highest reputation in the neighbourhood, by the solemnity and awe with which they treated the subject, and the earnestness and zeal which they displayed, gave a sanction to the lowest superstition and virulence of the ignorant. All the forms of justice were brought forward on this occasion.
And a year later, in the light of all his personal experience and investigation, Mather solemnly declared: "If in the midst of the many dissatisfactions among us, the publication of these trials may promote such a pious thankfulness unto God for justice being so far executed among us, I shall rejoice that God is glorified."
The physicians of Turkey, too, those long-bearded Eastern sages, had been acquainted with it for many years. The negroes of Africa, ignorant as they were, had likewise practised it, and thus had shown themselves wiser than the white men. "Of a truth," ejaculated Cotton Mather, clasping his hands and looking up to Heaven, "it was a merciful Providence that brought this book under mine eye!
I saw a photograph of the Cotton Mather reproduced in a weekly, and it was as gaunt as a Puritan Sunday. Brimmed with power. Why don't we see him oftener? Write and say I'd like to contradict him again about the Eastlake period." He made no further reference to Pleydon then, and Linda failed to write as Arnaud suggested.
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