It is remarkable that Brattle does not mention Calef.  The understanding has been that they acted in concert, and that Brattle had a hand in getting up some of Calef’s arguments.  The silence of Brattle is not, upon the whole, at all inconsistent with their mutual action and alliance.  As Calef was more perfectly unembarrassed, without personal relations to the clergy and others in high station, and not afraid to stand in the gap, it was thought best to let him take the fire of Cotton Mather.  His name had not been connected with the matter in the public apprehension.  He was a merchant of Boston, and a son of Robert Calef of Roxbury.  His attention was called to the proceedings which originated in Salem Village; and his strong faculties and moral courage enabled him to become the most efficient opponent, in his day, of the system of false reasoning upon which the prosecutions rested.  He prepared several able papers in different forms, in which he discussed the subject with great ability, and treated Cotton Mather and all others whom he regarded as instrumental in precipitating the community into the fatal tragedy, with the greatest severity of language and force of logic, holding up the whole procedure to merited condemnation.  They were first printed, at London, in 1700, in a small quarto volume, under the title of “More Wonders of the Invisible World.”  This publication burst like a bomb-shell upon all who had been concerned in promoting the witchcraft prosecutions.  Cotton Mather was exasperated to the highest pitch.  He says in his diary:  “He sent this vile volume to London to be published, and the book is printed; and the impression is, this day week, arrived here.  The books that I have sent over into England, with a design to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, are not published, but strangely delayed; and the books that are sent over to vilify me, and render me incapable to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ,—­these are published.”  Calef’s writings gave a shock to Mather’s influence, from which it never recovered.

Great difficulty has been experienced in drawing the story out in its true chronological sequence.  The effect produced upon the public mind, when it became convinced that the proceedings had been wrong, and innocent blood shed, was a universal disposition to bury the recollection of the whole transaction in silence, and, if possible, oblivion.  This led to a suppression and destruction of the ordinary materials of history.  Papers were abstracted from the files, documents in private hands were committed to the flames, and a chasm left in the records of churches and public bodies.  The journal of the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer is nowhere to be found.  Hutchinson appears to have had access to it.  It cannot well be supposed to have been lost by fire or other accident, because the records of the regular Court, up to the very time when the Special Court came into operation, and from the time when it expired, are preserved in order.  A portion