The Reviewer cites this paragraph, omitting the clauses I have placed within brackets, _without any indication of the omissions_. The first of the omitted clauses is a dying declaration of the innocence of the sufferers, as to the crime alleged. The second proves that they "managed themselves" after, as well as before, reaching the Gallows, and to their dying moment--seeming to preclude the idea that their exercises of prayer and preparation were directed or guided by any spiritual adviser. The last is an emphatic and natural expression of Brattle's feelings and judgment on the occasion.
The Reviewer follows his citation, thus: "Mr. Brattle mentions no other person than Mr. C. M. as the comforter and friend of the sufferers, especially Proctor and Willard." "In the above statement we trace the character of their spiritual counsellor." "We now see the object of Mr. Mather's visits to Salem." "Would these persons have asked Mr. Mather to be their spiritual comforter, if he had been the agent, as has been alleged, of bringing them into their sad condition?"
In other forms of language and other connections, he speaks of Mr. Mather's presence, at these executions, as "the performance of a sad duty to Proctor and Willard," and represents Brattle as calling him "the spiritual adviser of the persons condemned." All this he asserts as proved and admitted fact; and the whole rests upon the foregoing _mutilated_ paragraph of Brattle.
Let the reader thoroughly examine and consider that paragraph, and then judge of this Reviewer's claim to establish History. The word "affection," was used much at that time to signify _earnest desire_. "They"--that is, the persons then about to die, namely, the Rev. George Burroughs, an humble, laborious, devoted Minister of the Gospel; John Proctor, the owner of valuable farms and head of a large family; John Willard, a young married man of most respectable connections; George Jacobs, an early settler, land-holder, and a grandfather, of great age, with flowing white locks, sustained, as he walked, by two staffs or crutches; and Martha Carrier, the wife of a farmer in Andover, with a family of children, some of them quite young--"entreated Mr. C. M. to pray with them." Why did they have to "entreat" him, if he had come all the way from Boston for that purpose? They all had Ministers near at hand--Carrier had two Ministers, either or both of whom would have been prompt to come, if persons suffering for the imputed crime of witchcraft had been allowed to have the attendance of "spiritual comforters," at their executions. If Mather had prayed with them, Brattle would have said so. His language is equivalent to a statement, that "Mr. C. M." was reluctant, if he did not absolutely refuse to do it; and the only legitimate inferences from the whole passage are, that the sufferers did their own praying,--from Brattle's account of their dying prayers, they did it well--and that without "spiritual comforter," "adviser," or "friend," in the last dread hour, they were left to the "management of themselves."