PART I. is _An account of the afflictions of Margaret Rule_, written by

Cotton Mather, under the title of _Another Brand plucked out of the Burning, or more Wonders of the Invisible World_. In my book, the case of Margaret Rule is spoken of as having occurred the next "Summer" after the witchcraft delusion in Salem. This gives the Reviewer a chance to strike at me, in his usual style, as follows: "The case did not occur in the Summer; the date is patent to any one who will look for it." Cotton Mather says that she "first found herself to be formally besieged by the spectres," on the tenth of September. From the preceding clauses of the same paragraph, it might be inferred that she had had fits before. He speaks of those, on the tenth, as "the first I'll mention." The word "formally," too, almost implies the same. This, however, must be allowed to be the smallest kind of criticism, although uttered by the Reviewer in the style of a petulant pedagogue. If Summer is not allowed to borrow a little of September, it will sometimes not have much to show, in our climate. The tenth of September is, after all, fairly within the astronomical Summer. The Reviewer says it will be "difficult for me to prove" that Margaret Rule belonged to Mr. Mather's Congregation, before September, 1693. Mather vindicates his taking such an interest in her case, on the ground that she was one of his "poor flock." The Reviewer raises a question on this point; and his controversy is with Mather, not with me. If Rule did not belong to the Congregation of North Boston, when Mather first visited her, his language is deceptive, and his apology, for meddling with the case, founded in falsehood. I make no such charge, and have no such belief. The Reviewer seems to have been led to place Cotton Mather in his own light--in fact, to falsify his language--on this point, by what is said of another Minister's having visited her, to whose flock she belonged, and whom she called, "Father." This was Increase Mather. We know he visited her; and it was as proper for him to do so, as for Cotton. They were associate Ministers of the same Congregation--that to which the girl belonged--and it was natural that she should have distinguished the elder, by calling him "Father." In contradiction of another of my statements, the Reviewer says: "Mr. Mather did not publish an account of the long-continued fastings, or any other account of the case of Margaret Rule." He seems to think that "published" means "printed." It does not necessarily mean, and is not defined as exclusively meaning, to put to press. To be "published," a document does not need, now, to be printed. Much less then. Mather wrote it, as he says, with a view to its being printed, and put it into open and free circulation. Calef publicly declared that he received it from "a gentleman, who had it of the author, and communicated it to use, with his express consent." Mather says, in a prefatory note: "I now lay before you a very entertaining story," "of one who been prodigiously handled by the evil Angels." "I do not write it with a design of throwing it presently into the press, but only to preserve the memory of such memorable things, the forgetting whereof would neither be pleasing to God, nor useful to men." The unrestricted circulation of a work of this kind, with such a design, was _publishing_ it. It was the form in which almost every thing was published in those days. 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. 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."