COTTON MATHER said: "New England being a country whose interests are remarkably in-wrapped in ecclesiastical circumstances, ministers ought to concern themselves in politics;" and among the fruits of it there was the Salem witchcraft executions. And says Bancroft: "The power of the ministers over the magistrates, having now no effect but to narrow and restrain, reposed no longer on the energy of religion, but on superstitious veneration. It is the beauty of truth that nothing can rest upon it but justice. The ministers, desirous of unjust influence, could build their hope of it only on error; and the struggle for greater freedom of mind—the struggle against superstition, and against the slavish interpretation of the Bible—was one with the struggle against their dominion in the State. . . . And to the ministers, in their self-righteousness, it never occurred that vanity and love of power had blinded their judgment."—History of the United States, chap. 30, par. 14, 15.