they were told that we would immediately choose three other churches to join with the two before nominated and voted, if they saw not good to nominate any more; or else we would choose two other churches to join with the aforesaid two, if they pleased.  They answered, they would be willing to that, if Ipswich might be one of them.  Then it was asked them, if a dismission to some other Orthodox church, where they might better please themselves, would content them.  Brother Tarbell answered, “Ay, if we could find a way to remove our livings too.”  Then it was propounded, whether we could not unite amongst ourselves.  The particular answer hereunto I remember not; but (I think) such hints were given by them as if it were impossible.  Thus much time being gone, it being well towards sunset, and we concluding that it was necessary that we should do something ourselves, if they would not (as the elders had heretofore desired) accept of our joining with them, we dismissed them; and, by a general agreement amongst ourselves, read and voted letters to the churches at North Boston, Weymouth, Maiden, and Rowley, for their help in a council.

[Mr. Parris’s plan of finding refuge in an ex-parte council was utterly frustrated.  On the 1st of March, the “reverend elders in the Bay accounted it advisable,” as he expresses it in his records, that the First Church and the Old South Church in Boston should be added to the council.  They wrote to him to that effect, and he had to comply.  This brought James Allen and Samuel Willard into the council, and determined the character of the result, which, coming from a tribunal called by him to adjudicate the case, and hearing only such evidence as he laid before it, so far as it bore against him, was decisive and fatal.  It was as follows:—­]

The elders and messengers of the churches—­met in council at Salem Village, April 3, 1695, to consider and determine what is to be done for the composure of the present unhappy differences in that place,—­after solemn invocation of God in Christ for his direction, do unanimously declare and advise as followeth:—­

I. We judge that, albeit in the late and the dark time of the confusions, wherein Satan had obtained a more than ordinary liberty to be sifting of this plantation, there were sundry unwarrantable and uncomfortable steps taken by Mr. Samuel Parris, the pastor of the church in Salem Village, then under the hurrying distractions of amazing afflictions; yet the said Mr. Parris, by the good hand of God brought unto a better sense of things, hath so fully expressed it, that a Christian charity may and should receive satisfaction therewith.

II.  Inasmuch as divers Christian brethren in the church of Salem Village have been offended at Mr. Parris for his conduct in the time of the difficulties and calamities which have distressed them, we now advise them charitably to accept the satisfaction which he hath tendered in his Christian acknowledgments of the errors therein committed; yea, to endeavor, as far as ’tis possible, the fullest reconciliation of their minds unto communion with him, in the whole exercise of his ministry, and with the rest of the church (Matt. vi. 12-14; Luke xvii. 3; James v. 16).