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Updated: May 29, 2025
I know a man in the world, who has thought he has been able to convict some such witches as ought to die; but his respect unto the public peace has caused him rather to try whether he could not renew them by repentance." Calef, 11. The careful reader will notice that "six of the afflicted," at Salem Village, would have included nearly the whole circle of the accusing girls there.
The layman, who sits silent in his pew, has his rights when out of it, and among them is the right of questioning that which has been addressed to him from the privileged eminence of the pulpit, or in any way sanctioned by his religious teacher. So wrote Robert Calef, the Boston merchant, whose book the Reverend Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, burned publicly in the college yard.
If Calef had omitted it, in a book professing to give a true and full account of his dealings with Mather, in the Margaret Rule case, he would have been charged with having withheld Mather's carefully prepared view of that case.
Calef, alluding to Mather's pretensions to having been actuated by "exceeding tenderness towards persons complained of," expresses the sentiments all would feel, in such a condition of dependence upon the "charity" of one, armed with such fatal power over them: "These are some of the destructive notions of this age; and however the asserters of them seem sometimes to value themselves much upon sheltering their neighbors from spectral accusations, they may deserve as much thanks as that Tyrant, that having industriously obtained an unintelligible charge against his subjects, in matters wherein it was impossible they should be guilty, having thereby their lives in his power, yet suffers them of his mere grace to live, and will be called gracious Lord!"
Mather received intelligence that Calef had sent his book to England, to be printed; and his mind was vehemently exercised in reference to it. He set apart the tenth of June, 1698, for a private Fast on the occasion; and he commenced the exercise of the day, by, "first of all, declaring unto the Lord" that he freely forgave Calef, and praying "the Lord also to forgive him."
"Mr. Hathorn, a magistrate of Salem", says Robert Calef, in More Wonders of the Invisible World, "asked her why she afflicted these children. She said she did not afflict them. He asked her who did then. She said, I do not know; how should I know? She said they were poor, distracted creatures, and no heed ought to be given to what they said. Mr. Hathorn and Mr.
This seemed to settle it and I let it pass, without attempting to explain how "Jonathan Carey" came to appear as the husband of the woman, in the letter signed by that name. I am now quite convinced that, in this case, I was misled, together with Calef and Hutchinson, by paying too much regard to "original sources."
It was, perhaps, to furnish materials for a reply to Calef that a circular from Harvard College, signed by Increase Mather as president, and by all the neighboring ministers as fellows, invited reports of "apparitions, possessions, enchantments, and all extraordinary things, wherein the existence and agency of the invisible world is more sensibly demonstrated," to be used "as some fit assembly of ministers might direct."
Whence, then, comes the uniformity of evidence? The sceptical Calef did not believe in these things, because they are 'miracles, that is, contrary to experience. But here is experience enough to which they are not contrary. There are dozens of such depositions, and here it is that the student of testimony and of belief finds himself at a deadlock.
Mather sent a long letter, not to be delivered, but read to him, in which he agreed to meet him, as proposed, at one of the places; but, in the mean time, on the complaint of the Mathers, for scandalous libels upon Cotton Mather, Calef was brought before "their Majesties Justice, and bound over to answer at Sessions."
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