.. and some scores of other young people, who were strangers to real
piety, were now struck with the lively demonstrations of hell ... before
their eyes.... In the whole--the devil got just nothing, but God got
praises, Christ got subjects, the Holy Spirit got temples, the church got
addition, and the souls of men got everlasting benefits." [Footnote:
_More Wonders_, p. 12.]
Mather prided himself on what he had done. "I am not so vain as to say
that any wisdom or virtue of mine did contribute unto this good order of
things; but I am so just as to say, I did not hinder this good."
[Footnote: _Idem_, p. 12.] Men with such beliefs, and lured onward by
such temptations, were incapable of letting the tremendous power
superstition gave them slip from their grasp without an effort on their
own behalf; and accordingly it was not long before the Mathers were once
more at work. On the 10th of September, 1693, or about nine months after
the last spasms at Salem, and when the belief in enchantments was fast
falling into disrepute, a girl named Margaret Rule was taken with the
accustomed symptoms in Boston. Forthwith these two godly divines repaired
to her bedside, and this is what took place:--
* * * * *
Then Mr. M---- father and son came up, and others with them, in the whole
were about thirty or forty persons, they being sat, the father on a stool,
and the son upon the bedside by her, the son began to question her:
Margaret Rule, how do you do? Then a pause without any answer.
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