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Updated: June 29, 2025
Calef keeps to the point, which was not whether there were, or could be, witches; but whether the methods Mather was attempting, in the case of Margaret Rule, and which had been used in Salem, the year before, were legitimate or defensible. He was determined not to suffer the issue to be shifted.
He had probably long been convinced that it was vain to attempt to shake the general conviction, expressed by Calef, that he had been "the most active and forward of any Minister in the country in those matters," and acquiesced in the general disposition to let that matter rest.
He makes the same reckless assertion in reference to Bancroft, the late William B. O. Peabody, D.D., and every one else, who has written upon the subject, since 1831. The idea that Josiah Quincy "took his cue" from me, is simply preposterous. He does not refer to me, nor give any indication that he had ever seen my Lectures, but cites Calef, as his authority, over and over again. Dr.
Mather himself considered the circulation of his "account," as a publication, for in speaking of his design of ultimately printing it himself, he calls it a "farther publication." PART II. embraces the correspondence between Calef, Mather, and others, which I have particularly described. PART III. is a brief account of the Parish troubles, at Salem Village.
Calef then addressed a series of letters to Mather and the other Boston ministers, in which he denied and ridiculed the reality of any such compacts with the devil as were commonly believed in under the name of witchcraft.
But Mather failed to meet him; and, on the eleventh of January, 1694, Calef addressed him again, recapitulating what had occurred, sending him copies of his previous letters and also of the Minutes he had taken of what occurred on the evenings of the thirteenth and nineteenth of September, with these words: "REVEREND SIR: Finding it necessary, on many accounts, I here present you with the copy of that Paper, which has been so much misrepresented, to the end, that what shall be found defective or not fairly represented, if any such shall appear, they may be set right."
Calef wrote him a letter, on the twenty-ninth of September; and, in reference to the complaints and charges Mather was making, proposed that they should meet, in either of two places he mentioned, each accompanied by a friend, at which time he, Calef, would read to him the minutes he had taken, of what had occurred on the evenings of the thirteenth and nineteenth.
It was the uncultured, but rational, Robert Calef. Cotton Mather wrote and spoke much on the subject of witchcraft, long after the delusion had vanished. The inexorable indignation of the people of Salem Village drove Parris from the place. Noyes confessed his error and guilt, asked forgiveness and devoted the remainder of his life to deeds of charity.
The same, I said, when Robert Calef the Boston merchant's book was burned in the yard of Harvard College, by order of Increase Mather, President of the College and Minister of the Gospel. You remember the old witchcraft revival of '92, and how stout Master Robert Calef, trader of Boston, had the pluck to tell the ministers and judges what a set of fools and worse than fools they were
Robert Calef, in his More Wonders of the Invisible World, Bancroft in his History of the United States, and Charles W. Upham in his Salem Witchcraft, are the chief writers who have placed Mather in the foreground of those dreadful scenes, as the leading minister of the time, an active personal participant in the trials and executions, and a zealot in the maintenance of the ministerial dignity and domination.
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