Let it not be supposed there were no redeeming traits in the characters of these men. It was a superstitious age, and the delusions which were now abroad, had fastened with immense power upon the community at large; but this, though it may be urged in mitigation of their offences, was no valid excuse. They had unerring and sufficient maps in the experience of the past. They had the sure word of God. They had reason and common sense, which, impartial and unperverted, might have shown them the madness and cruelty of their course. These guides were consulted too late; and we have it recorded of Judge Sewall, that he deeply repented of his agency in these painful scenes, and publicly deplored his errors in the presence of the members of the South Church, presenting his own example as a warning to future magistrates to avoid that fatal rock, on which justice and mercy had alike suffered shipwreck. It is probable Stoughton and Mather carried this delusion in part to their graves; and it is scarcely possible to contemplate these characters with complacency. There is no monument along the track of succeeding years, which redeems their memory from its deserved reproach. Mather was learned and industrious beyond any man of that age in New England; but he was credulous to the last degree; of a bold and fiery temper, deeply tinctured with fanaticism, rash in his judgment, severe in his rebukes, and overbearing in his conduct. A cloud rests upon his memory, through which Charity herself can scarcely discern the faint rays of real piety, which, notwithstanding all his errors, probably existed in his heart. Stoughton was, if possible, still more deeply implicated in these cruel proceedings, and the remark of an eminent historian of Harvard College is undoubtedly just, that 'upon no individual did the responsibility of the sad consummation of that excitement rest more heavily, than upon William Stoughton.'