We gather other intimations, to this effect, from other passages, as follows: "Now, in my visiting of the miserable, I was always of this opinion, that we were ignorant of what power the Devils might have, to do their mischiefs in the shapes of some that had never been explicitly engaged in diabolical confederacies, and that therefore, though many witchcrafts had been fairly detected on enquiries provoked and begun by spectral exhibitions, yet we could not easily be too jealous of the snares laid for us in the device of Satan. The world knows how many pages I have composed and published, and particular gentlemen in the Government know how many letters I have written, to prevent the excessive credit of spectral accusations; wherefore I have still charged the afflicted that they should cry out of nobody for afflicting them; but that, if this might be any advantage, they might privately tell their minds to some one person of discretion enough to make no ill use of their communications; accordingly there has been this effect of it, that the name of no one good person in the world ever came under any blemish by means of an afflicted person that fell under my particular cognizance; yea, no one man, woman, or child ever came into any trouble, for the sake of any that were afflicted, after I had once begun to look after them. How often have I had this thrown into my dish, 'that many years ago I had an opportunity to have brought forth such people as have, in the late storm of witchcraft, been complained of, but that I smothered it all'; and after that 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 the distressed, might not put a period to the trouble then rising, without giving the civil authority the trouble of prosecuting those things, which nothing but a conscientious regard unto the cries of miserable families could have overcome the reluctance of the honorable Judges to meddle with. In short, I do humbly but freely affirm it, there is not a man living in this world who has been more desirous, than the poor man I, to shelter my neighbors from the inconveniences of spectral outcries; yea, I am very jealous I have done so much that way, as to sin in what I have done; such have been the cowardice and fearfulness where unto my regard to the dissatisfaction of other people has precipitated me. 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.