"
"October 2, 1701. I, with Major Walley and Capt. Samuel Checkly, speak
with Mr. Cotton Mather at Mr. Wilkins's.... I told him of his book of the
Law of Kindness for the Tongue, whether this were correspondent with that.
Whether correspondent with Christ's rule:
"He said, having spoken to me before there was no need to speak to me
again; and so justified his reviling me behind my back. Charg'd the
council with lying, hypocrisy, tricks, and I know not what all. I ask'd
him if it were done with that meekness as it should; Answer'd, Yes.
Charg'd the council in general, and then shew'd my share, which was my
speech in council; viz. If Mr. Mather should goe to Cambridge again to
reside there with a resolution not to read the Scriptures, and expound in
the Hall: I fear the example of it will do more hurt than his going
thither will doe good. This speech I owned.... I ask'd him if I should
supose he had done somthing amiss in his church as an officer; whether it
would be well for me to exclaim against him in the street for it."
"Thorsday October 23. Mr. Increase Mather said at Mr. Wilkins's, If I am a
servant of Jesus Christ, some great judgment will fall on Capt. Sewall, or
his family." [Footnote: Sewall's _Diary. Mass. Hist. Coll._ fifth series,
vi. 43-45.]
Had the patriarch been capable of a disinterested action, for the sake of
those principles he professed to love, he would have stopped Willard's
presidency, no matter at what personal cost, for he knew him to be no
better than a liberal in disguise, and he had already quarrelled bitterly
with him in 1697 when he was trying to eject Leverett.
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