Editing Cotton Mather (section)

===Response to the trials===
[[File:Return of Several Ministers, June 15, 1692.jpg|thumb|''The Return of Several Ministers'', written in Cotton Mather's hand]]

On June 10, 1692, [[Bridget Bishop]], the thrice-married owner of an unlicensed tavern, was hanged after being convicted and sentenced by the Court of Oyer and Terminer, based largely on spectral evidence.  A group of twelve Puritan ministers issued a statement, drawn up by Cotton Mather and presented to Governor Phips and his council a few days later, entitled ''The Return of Several Ministers''.  In that document, Mather criticized the court's reliance on spectral evidence and recommended that it adopt a more cautious procedure.{{Sfn|Silverman|2002|p=100}}  However, he ended the document with a statement defending the continued prosecution of witchcraft according to the "Direction given by the Laws of God, and the wholesome Statues of the English Nation".{{Sfn|Silverman|2002|p=100}}  Robert Calef would later criticize Mather's intervention in ''The Return of Several Ministers'' as "perfectly ambidexter, giving a great or greater encouragement to proceed in those dark methods, than cautions against them."{{Sfn|Silverman|2002|pp=100–101}}

On August 4, Cotton Mather preached a sermon before his North Church congregation on the text of Revelation 12:12: "Woe to the Inhabitants of the Earth, and of the Sea; for the Devil is come down unto you, having great Wrath; because he knoweth, that he hath but a short time."{{Sfn|Silverman|2002|p=107}}  In the sermon, Mather claimed that the witches "have associated themselves to do no less a thing than to destroy the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in these parts of the World."{{Sfn|Silverman|2002|p=108}}  Although he did not intervene in any of the trials, there are some testimonies that Mather was present at the executions that were carried out in Salem on August 19.  According to Mather's contemporary critic Robert Calef, the crowd was disturbed by [[George Burroughs]]'s eloquent declarations of innocence from the scaffold and by his recitation of the [[Lord's Prayer]], of which witches were commonly believed to be incapable.  Calef claimed that, after Burroughs had been hanged,

{{blockquote|Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a Horse, addressed himself to the People, partly to declare that [Burroughs] was no ordained Minister, partly to possess the People of his guilt, saying that the devil often had been transformed into the Angel of Light. And this did somewhat appease the People, and the Executions went on.}}

[[File:C. Mather dated signature.png|thumb|Letter from Cotton Mather to Judge [[William Stoughton (judge)|William Stoughton]], September 2, 1692]]

As public discontent with the witch trials grew in the summer of 1692, threatening civil unrest, Cotton Mather felt compelled to defend the responsible authorities.{{Sfn|Silverman|2002|p=111}}  On September 2, 1692, after eleven people had been executed as witches, Cotton Mather wrote a [[September 2, 1692 Letter by Cotton Mather|letter to Judge Stoughton]] congratulating him on "extinguishing of as wonderful a piece of devilism as has been seen in the world".{{Sfn|Silverman|2002|p=111}}  As the opposition to the witch trials was bringing them to a halt, Mather wrote ''Wonders of the Invisible World'', a defense of the trials that carried Stoughton's official approval.{{Sfn|Silverman|2002|p=114}}