Judge Sewall, too, and the Jury that had given the verdicts at the Trials, in 1692, publicly and emphatically acknowledged that they had been led into error.
All these things afford decisive and affecting evidence of a prevalent conviction that a great wrong had been committed. The vote passed by the Church at Salem Village, on the fourteenth of February, 1703--"We are, through God's mercy to us, convinced that we were, at that dark day, under the power of those errors which then prevailed in the land." "We desire that this may be entered in our Church-book," "that so God may forgive our Sin, and may be atoned for the land; and we humbly pray that God will not leave us any more to such errors and sins"--affords striking proof that the right feeling had penetrated the whole community. On the eighth of July, of that same year, nearly the whole body of the Clergy of Essex-county addressed a Memorial to the General Court, in which they say, "There is great reason to fear that innocent persons then suffered, and that God may have a controversy with the land upon that account."
Nothing of the kind, however, was ever heard from the Ministers of Boston and the vicinity. Why did they not join their voices in this prayer, going up elsewhere, from all concerned, for the divine forgiveness? We know that most of them felt right. Samuel Willard and James Allen did; and so did William Brattle, of Cambridge. Their silence cannot, it seems to me, be accounted for, but by considering the degree to which they were embarrassed by the relation of the Mathers to the affair. One brave-hearted old man remonstrated against their failure to meet the duty of the hour, and addressed his remonstrance to the right quarter. The Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, a Fellow of Harvard College, and honored in all the Churches, wrote a letter to Increase Mather, dated July 22, 1704 [_Mather Papers, 647_], couched in strong and bold terms, beginning thus:
"REV. AND DEAR S^R. I am right well assured that both yourself, your son, and the rest of our brethren with you in Boston, have a deep sense upon your spirits of the awful symptoms of the Divine displeasure that we lie under at this day." After briefly enumerating the public calamities of the period, he continues: "I doubt not but you are all endeavouring to find out and discover to the people the causes of God's controversy, and how they are to be removed; to help forward this difficult and necessary work, give me leave to impart some of my serious and solemn thoughts. I fear (amongst our many other provocations) that God hath a controversy with us about what was done in the time of the Witchcraft. I fear that innocent blood hath been shed, and that _many have had their hands defiled therewith_." After expressing his belief that the Judges acted conscientiously, and that the persons concerned were deceived, he proceeds: "Be it then that it was done ignorantly. Paul, a Pharisee, persecuted the Church of God, shed the blood of God's Saints, and yet obtained mercy, because he did it in ignorance; but how doth he bewail it, and shame himself for it, before God and men afterwards. [_1 Tim., i., 13, 16._] I think, and am verily persuaded, God expects that we do the like, in order to our obtaining his pardon: I mean by a Public and Solemn acknowledgment of it and humiliation for it; and the more particularly and personally it is done by all that have been actors, the more pleasing it will be to God, and more effectual to turn away his judgments from the Land, and to prevent his wrath from falling upon the persons and families of such as have been most concerned.