Editing Cotton Mather (section)

===Post-trials===

Mather's ''Wonders'' did little to appease the growing clamor against the Salem witch trials.  At around the same time that the book began to circulate in manuscript form, Governor Phips decided to restrict greatly the use of spectral evidence, thus raising a high barrier against further convictions.  The Court of Oyer and Terminer was dismissed on October 29.  A new court convened in January 1693 to hear the remaining cases, almost all of which ended in acquittal.  In May, Governor Phips issued a general pardon, bringing the witch trials to an end.

The last major events in Mather's involvement with witchcraft were his interactions with Mercy Short in December 1692 and Margaret Rule in September 1693.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Lovelace | first = Richard F. |author-link=Richard F. Lovelace | title = The American Pietism of Cotton Mather: Origins of American Evangelicalism | place = Grand Rapids, [[Michigan|MC]]; Washington, DC | publisher = American University Press; Christian College Consortium | year = 1979 | isbn = 0-8028-1750-5 | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/americanpietismo0000love |page=202}}</ref>  Mather appears to have remained convinced that genuine witches had been executed in Salem and he never publicly expressed regrets over his role in those events.  [[Robert Calef]], an otherwise obscure Boston merchant, published ''More Wonders of the Invisible World'' in 1700, bitterly attacking Cotton Mather over his role in the events of 1692.  In the words of 20th-century historian [[Samuel Eliot Morison]], "Robert Calef tied a tin can to Cotton Mather which has rattled and banged through the pages of superficial and popular historians".<ref name="Middlekauff">{{Cite journal |last=Middlekauff |first=Robert |title=Biblia Americana: America's First Bible Commentary: A Synoptic Commentary on the Old and New Testaments: Volume 1, Genesis (review) |journal=Early American Literature |volume=47 |pages=228–233 |number=1 |year=2012 |doi=10.1353/eal.2012.0002 |jstor=41705651 |author-link=Robert Middlekauff}}</ref>  Intellectual historian Reiner Smolinski, an expert on the writings of Cotton Mather, found it "deplorable that Mather's reputation is still overshadowed by the specter of Salem witchcraft."<ref name="Smolinski">{{cite web |url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=etas |title=The Wonders of the Invisible World |last=Mather |first=Cotton |editor-last=Smolinksi |editor-first=Reiner |date=1998 |website=Electronic Texts in American Studies |publisher=University of Nebraska |location=Lincoln |access-date=19 November 2023}}</ref>