Note 166 — POSTSCRIPT.
Reading edition
Dr. Mather answers: "After the Storm was raised at Salem, I did myself offer to provide Meat, Drink, and Lodging, for no less than Six of the Afflicted, that so an Experiment might be made, whether Prayer with Fasting, upon the Removal of those Miserables, one from another, might not put a Period unto the Trouble then arising, without giving the Civil Authority the Trouble of Prosecuting the Methods of the Law on that Occasion. You'll say, How came it then to pass that many People took up another Notion of me? Truly, Satan knows. Perhaps 'twas because I thought it my Duty alwayes to speak of the Honourable Judges with as much Honour as I could; (a Crime which I am generally taxed for, and for which I have been finely requited!) This made People, who judge of Things at a Distance, to dream that I approved of all that was done."—Ibid, 39-40. Certainly, if Words mean any thing, what he published fully justifies that Conclusion, notwithstanding his rare Ambidexterity. See Vol. I, Ubique loci.