The record proceeds to give several other votes, the object of which was to arrange the details of the manner in which the business was to be put into court.  There we leave it for the present, and there it remained for nearly seven years.  Mr. Parris probably got the start of his opponents, in being first to invoke the law.  This is what he meant when he told his church “that their way was plain before them.”  If extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances had not intervened, the case would more speedily have been disposed of, and we cannot doubt what would have been its issue.  Whatever might be the bias or prejudice of the courts, or however they might have attempted to enforce their first decisions, there can be no question, that, in such a contest, the people would have finally prevailed.  The committee were men competent to carry the parish through.  A religious society, with such feelings between them and their minister, after all that had happened, and the just grounds given them of dissatisfaction and resentment, could not always, or long, have been kept under such an infliction.

In the immediately preceding entries, there are some points that illustrate the policy on which Mr. Parris acted, and exhibit the skill and vigilance of his management.  The motive that led him to harp so constantly upon “firewood” is obvious.  It was to create a sympathy in his behalf, and bring opprobrium upon his opponents.  But it cannot stand the test of scrutiny:  for it had been expressly agreed, as I have said, that he should find his own fuel; and it cannot be supposed that his friends, if he then had any real ones, surrounded, as they were, with forests of their own, within sight of the parsonage, would have allowed him to suffer from this cause.  There is indication that the “brethren of the church” were getting lukewarm, as their non-attendance at important meetings led Mr. Parris to fear.  At any rate, he felt it necessary to administer some rather significant rebukes to them.  The meeting for prayer, preparatory to the ensuing communion service, was very adroitly converted into a business consultation to inaugurate a lawsuit.  But the most characteristic thing, in this part of the church-book, is a marginal entry, against the first paragraph of the record of the 2d November, 1691.  It is in these words:—­

     “The town-meeting, about or at 16th October last.  Jos: 
     Porter, Jos:  Hutchinson, Jos:  Putnam, Dan:  Andrew, Francis
     Nurse.”

These were the committee appointed at the meeting.  Their names, thus abbreviated, are given, and not a syllable added.  But the manner, the then state of things, and their relation to the controversy, give a deep import and intense bitterness to this entry.  He knew the men, and in their names read the handwriting on the wall.