[24] Increase Mather’s _Remarkable Providences_ is the work here
alluded to; but the date should have been 1684 and not 1685. The book
was issued in the Spring of 1684. Nathaniel Mather, in a letter to the
author, dated Dec. 31, 1684, acknowledges receiving a copy on which
“was written in your hand 7 ber 16.” (_Mather Papers_, p. 58.) John
Bishop acknowledges the receipt of a copy, in a letter dated June 10,
1684. (_Ibid._ p. 312.) This erroneous date, and a typographical error
in the _Magnalia_, vol. ii. p. 473, have led some writers to suppose
that Cotton Mather wrote his first book on witchcraft in 1685. He was
then twenty-two years of age. Before 1686 he published no works except
_Elegy on Rev. Nath. Collins_, 1685, and _The Boston Ephemeris_, an
Almanac for 1683, neither of which are in the printed list of his
works. His first writing on witchcraft was issued in 1689.