GL Burr, Narratives, see p.414. Most notably, the vociferous Robert Calef seems to take no notice of it despite Calef having published a manuscript that Cotton Mather was passing around to his friends in 1693, the title of which --"Another Brand Pluckt Out of the Burning"-- shares a refrain with the March 24, 1692 sermon. The "another" in the title denotes it having been a sequel to the first "Brand Pluckt" Mather wrote in the winter of 1692-3 (March 16 is the last internal date) in which Mather referred to himself anonymously in the third person.Burr, p. 255.
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The official record runs: "On Wednesday, being Bartholomew Day, we marched forth, some of our souldiers ... went to the Cathedrall about 9 or 10 of the clock, in the midst of their superstitious worship, with their singing men and boyes; they ... went about the work they came for. First they removed the table to its place apointed, and then tooke the seat which it stood upon, ... and brake that all to pieces; ...they pluckt down the rails and left them for the poore to kindle their fires; and so left the organs to be pluckt down when we came back again, but it appeared before we came back they took them downe themselves.""A perfect diurnall of the several passages in our late Journey into Kent, from Aug. 19 to Sept 3, 1642, by appointment of both Houses of Parliament" quoted in .
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It is not fully understood why Mather wrote anonymously at this time or why he was unable or unwilling to get his two "Brand Pluckt" manuscripts into print. A handful of years later, Mather attempted to remain anonymous by printing in London a posthumous biography of William Phips (see photo) until he was identified as the author by Robert Calef. See Mather's memoirs. In 1702, Mather included a reprint of the work in Magnalia.
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In 1696 Crosley edited and published The Old Man's Legacy to his Daughters, by N. T., which he reprinted in 1736, with a few additional pages of his own. In 1720 he published a poem entitled Adam, where art Thou? or the Serious Parley; and in 1743, The Triumph of Sovereign Grace, or a Brand Pluckt out of the Fire (Manchester, pp. 127), the substance of a discourse occasioned by the execution of Laurence Britliffe of Cliviger.
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It is remarkable that Robert Calef, a tradesman, possessed a well-developed writing style and intellect that enabled him to frequently get the better of the highly educated Cotton Mather. An example of Calef's rationalism and biting wit are provided by his response to Another Brand Pluckt Out of the Burning, Cotton Mather's account of the possession of Margaret Rule. The first section of Mather's account is a long narrative about a proselytized Indian who was tempted into witchcraft by the devil and ultimately undone by his steadfast refusal to submit to the devil's temptations. Calef's terse response occurs in a postscript to one of his letters to Mather: > Postscript.
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Willobie his Avisa was licensed for the press by printer John Windet on 3 September 1594. In the printed text, the poem is preceded by two commendatory poems, the second of which, signed "Contraria Contrariis; Vigilantius; Dormitanus," contains a reference to Shakespeare's poem The Rape of Lucrece, published four months previously: :"Yet Tarquyne pluckt his glistering grape, :And Shake-speare paints poore Lucrece rape." This is the earliest known printed allusion to Shakespeare by name (aside from the title pages of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece). The poem itself concerns a female character, Avisa (whose name is explained in Dorrell's "Epistle to the Reader" as an acronym for Amans Uxor Inviolata Semper Amanda).
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