An extract from his book, A Candle in the Dark: Or, A Treatise Concerning the Nature of Witches & Witchcraft, was used by George Burroughs, formerly the minister in the parish, in his own defense during the Salem witch trials. Cotton Mather comments in hostile fashion in his Wonders of the Invisible World: 'he gave in a paper, to the Jury; wherein, altho' he had many times before, granted, not only that there are Witches, but also that the present sufferings of the Countrey are the Effect of horrible Witchcrafts, yet he now goes to, evince it, That there neither are, nor ever were, Witches that having made a compact with the Divel, Can send a Divel to Torment other people at a distance. This paper was transcribed out of Ady; which the Court presently knew, as soon as they heard it. But he said, he had taken none of it out of any Book; for which his evasion afterwards was, that a Gentleman gave him the discourse, in a manuscript, from whence he Transcribed it. The Jury brought him in guilty; But when he came to die, he utterly deny'd the Fact, whereof he had been thus convicted.' It is remarkable (if it is true) that the Court in Salem were so quick to identify an extract from such a witchcraft-sceptical text.
