Volume 1 / Part 2 — PART SECOND.

WITCHCRAFT.

DEMONOLOGY, as a general term, may be employed, for convenience, to include a whole class of ideas—which, under different names and a vast variety of conceptions, have come through all ages, and prevailed among all races of mankind—relating to the supposed agency of supernatural, invisible, and spiritual beings in terrestrial affairs. As necessarily applicable to evil spirits, particularly to the arch-enemy and supreme adversary of God and man under the name of Satan or the Devil, the term does not appear to have been used in ancient times. Professed communications with supernatural beings were not originally stamped with a diabolical character, but, like some alleged to be had in our day, were regarded as innocent, and even creditable. Men sought to hold intercourse with spirits belonging to the unseen world, as some persons do now; assuming that they were worthy of confidence, and that responses from them were valuable and desirable. This was the case under the reign of classical mythology, and of heathen superstition in general. Those individuals who were supposed to be conversant with demons were looked upon by the credulous multitude as a highly privileged class; and they arrogated the credit of being raised to a higher sphere of knowledge than the rest of mankind.

It is one of the most remarkable peculiarities of the Hebrew polity, that it denounced such pretended communications as criminal, and subjected the practice to the highest penalties. It was assumed to be dangerous; the welfare of individuals and of society requiring that such pretensions and practices should be abandoned. The observation and experience of mankind have justified this view. In the first ages of Christianity, it was believed that the Divine Being alone was to be sought in prayer for light and guidance by the human soul. Gradually, as the dark ages began to settle upon Christendom, the doctrine of the Devil as the head and ruler of a world of demons, and as able to hold communications with mortals, to interfere in their affairs, and to exercise more or less control over the laws and phenomena of nature, began to become prevalent. It was believed that human beings could enter into alliance with the Prince of the power of the air; become his confederates; join in a league with him and wicked spirits subordinate to him, in undermining the Gospel and overthrowing the Church; and conspire and co-operate in rebellion against God. This, of course, was regarded as the most flagrant of crimes, and constituted the real character of the sin denominated "witchcraft."

As the fullest, most memorable, and, by the notice it has ever since attracted throughout the world, the pre-eminent instance and demonstration of this supposed iniquity was in the crisis that took place in Salem Village in 1692, it justly claims a place in history. The community in which it occurred has been fully described, in its moral, social, and intellectual condition, so far as the materials I have been enabled to obtain have rendered possible. It has, I believe, been made to appear, that, in their training, experience, and traits of character, they were well adapted to give full effect to any excitement, or earnest action of any kind, that could be got up among them,—a people of great energy, courage, and resolution, well prepared to carry out to its natural and legitimate results any movement, and follow established convictions fearlessly to logical conclusions. The experiment of bringing supernaturalism to operate in human affairs, to become a ground of action in society, and to interfere in the relations of life and the dealings of men with each other, was as well tried upon this people as it ever could or can be anywhere.

All that remains to be brought to view, before entering upon the details of the narrative, is to give a just and adequate idea of the form and shape in which the general subject of supernaturalism, in its aspect as demonology, lay in the minds of men here at that time. To do this, I must give a sketch, as condensed and brief as I can make it, of the formation and progress of opinions and notions touching the subject, until they reached their full demonstration and final explosion, in this neighborhood, at Salem Village, near the close of the seventeenth century.

No person who looks around him on the scene in which he is placed, reflects upon the infinite wonders of creation, and meditates upon the equal wonders of his own mind, can be at a loss respecting the sources and causes of superstition. Let him transport himself back to the condition of a primitive and unlettered people, before whom the world appears in all its original and sublime mystery. Science has not lifted to their eyes the curtain behind which the secret operations of nature are carried on. They observe the tides rise and fall, but know not the attractive law that regulates their movements; they contemplate the procession of the seasons, without any conception of the principles and causes that determine and produce their changes; they witness the storm as it rises in its wrath; they listen with awe to the thunder-peal, and gaze with startling terror upon the lightning as it flashes from within the bosom of the black cloud, and are utterly ignorant to what power to attribute the dreadful phenomena; they look upward to the face of the sky, and see the myriad starry hosts that glitter there, and all is to them a mighty maze of dazzling confusion. It is for their fancy to explain, interpret, and fill up the brilliant and magnificent scene.

The imagination was the faculty the exercise of which was chiefly called for in such a state as this. Before science had traced the operations and unfolded the secrets of nature, man was living in a world full of marvel and mystery. His curiosity was attracted to every object within the reach of his senses; and, in the absence of knowledge, it was imagination alone that could make answer to its inquiries. It is natural to suppose that he would be led to attribute all the movements and operations of the external world which did not appear to be occasioned by the exercise of his own power, or the power of any other animal, to the agency of supernatural beings. We may also conclude, that his belief would not be likely to fix upon the notion of a single overruling Being. Although revelation and science have disclosed to us a beautiful and entire unity and harmony in the creation, the phenomena of the external world would probably impress the unenlightened and unphilosophic observer with the belief that there was a diversity in the powers which caused them. He would imagine the agency of a being of an amiable and beneficent spirit in the bright sunshine, the fresh breeze, and the mild moonlight; and his fancy would suggest to his fears, that a dark, severe, and terrible being was in the ascendant during a day overshadowed by frowning clouds, or a night black with the storm and torn by the tempest.

By the aid of such reflections as these, we are easily conducted to a satisfactory and sufficient explanation of the origin of the mythology and fabulous superstitions of all ancient and primitive nations. From this the progress is plain, obvious, and immediate to the pretensions of magicians, diviners, sorcerers, conjurers, oracles, soothsayers, augurs, and the whole catalogue of those persons who professed to hold intercourse with higher and spiritual powers. There are several classes into which they may be divided.

There were those who, to acquire an influence over the people, pretended to possess the confidence, and enjoy the friendship and counsel, of some one or more deities. Such was Numa, the early lawgiver of the Roman State. In order to induce the people to adopt the regulations, institutions, and religious rites he proposed, he made them believe that he had access to a divinity, and received all his plans and ideas as a communication from on high.

Persons who, in consequence of their superior acquirements, were enabled to excel others in any pursuit, or who could foresee and avail themselves of events in the natural world, were liable, without any intention to deceive, to be classed under some of these denominations. For instance, a Roman farmer, Furius Cresinus, surpassed all his neighbors in the skill and success with which he managed his agricultural affairs. He was accordingly accused of using magic arts in the operations of his farm. So far were his neighbors carried by their feelings of envy and jealousy, that they explained the fact of his being able to derive more produce from a small lot of land than they could from large ones, by charging him with attracting and drawing off the productions of their fields into his own by the employment of certain mysterious charms. For his defence, as we are informed by Pliny, he produced his strong and well-constructed ploughs, his light and convenient spades, and his sun-burnt daughters, and pointing to them exclaimed: "Here are my charms; this is my magic; these only are the witchcraft I have used." Zoroaster, the great philosopher and astronomer of the ancient East, was charged with divination and magic, merely, it is probable, because he possessed uncommon acquirements.

There were persons who had acquired an extraordinary amount of natural knowledge, and, for the sake of being regarded with wonder and awe by the people, pretended to obtain their superior endowments from supernatural beings. They affected the name and character of sorcerers, diviners, and soothsayers. It is easy to conceive of the early existence and the great influence of such impostors. Patient observation, and often mere accident, would suggest discoveries of the existence and operation of natural causes in producing phenomena before ascribed to superhuman agency. The knowledge thus acquired would be cautiously concealed, and cunningly used, to create astonishment and win admiration. Its fortunate possessors were enabled to secure the confidence, obedience, and even reverence, of the benighted and deceived people.

Every one, indeed, who could discover a secret of nature, and keep it secret, was able to impose himself on the world as being allied with supernatural powers. Hence arose the whole host of diviners, astrologers, soothsayers, and oracles. After having once acquired possession of the credulous faith of the people, they could impose upon them almost without limit.

Those who pretended to hold this kind of intercourse with divinity became, as a natural consequence, the priests of the nation, constituted a distinct and regular profession, and perpetuated their body by the admission of new members, to whom they explained their arts, and communicated their knowledge. While they were continually discovering and applying the secret principles and laws of nature, and the people were kept in utter ignorance and darkness, it is no wonder that they reached a great and unparalleled degree of power over the mass of the population. In this manner we account for the origin, and trace the history, of the Chaldean priests in Assyria, the Bramins of India, the Magi of Persia, the Oracles of Greece, the Augurs of Italy, the Druids of Britain, and the Pow-wows, Prophets, or "Medicins," as they sometimes called them, among our Indians.

It is probable that the witches mentioned in the Scriptures were of this description. Neither in sacred nor profane ancient history do we find what was understood in the days of our ancestors by witchcraft, which meant a formal and actual compact with the great Prince of evil beings. The sorcery of antiquity consisted in pretending to possess certain mysterious charms, and to do by their means, or by the co-operation of superhuman spirits, without any reference to their character as evil or good beings, what transcends the action of mere natural powers.

The witch of Endor, for instance, was a conjurer and necromancer, rather than a witch. By referring to the 28th chapter of 1 Samuel, where the interview between her and Saul is related, you will find no ground for the opinion that the being from whom she pretended to receive her mysterious power was Satan. Saul, as the ruler of a people who were under the special government, and enjoyed the peculiar protection of the true God, had forbidden, under the sanction of the highest penalties, the exercise of the arts of divination and sorcery within his jurisdiction. Some time after this, the unfortunate monarch was overtaken by trouble and distress. His enemies had risen up, and were gathered in fearful strength around him. His "heart greatly trembled," a dark and gloomy presentiment came over his spirit, and his bosom was convulsed by an agony of solicitude. He turned toward his God for light and strength. He applied for relief to the priests of the altar, and to the prophets of the Most High; but his prayers were unanswered, and his efforts vain. In his sorrow and apprehension, he appealed to a woman who was reputed to have supernatural powers, and to hold communion with spiritual beings; thus violating his own law, and departing from duty and fidelity to his God. He begged her to recall Samuel to life, that he might be comforted and instructed by him. She pretended to comply with his request; but, before she could commence her usual mysterious operations, Samuel arose! and the forlorn, wretched, and heart-broken king listened to his tremendous doom, as it was uttered by the spirit of the departed prophet.

I have alluded particularly to the witch of Endor, because she will serve to illustrate the sorcery or divination of antiquity. She was probably possessed of some secret knowledge of natural properties; was skilful in the use of her arts and pretended charms; had, perhaps, the peculiar powers of a ventriloquist; and, by successful imposture, had acquired an uncommon degree of notoriety, and the entire confidence of the public. She professed to be in alliance with supernatural beings, and, by their assistance, to raise the dead.

This passage has afforded a topic for a great deal of discussion among interpreters. It seems to me, on the face of the narrative, to suggest the following view of the transaction: The woman was an impostor. When she summoned the spirit of Samuel, instead of the results of her magic lantern, or of whatever contrivances she may have had, by the immediate agency of the Almighty the spirit of Samuel really rose, to the consternation and horror of the pretended necromancer. The writer appears to have indicated this as the proper interpretation of the scene, by saying, "that, when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice;" thus giving evidence of alarm and surprise totally different from the deportment of such pretenders on such occasions: they used rather to exhibit joy at the success of their arts, and a proud composure and dignified complacency in the control they were believed to exercise over the spirits that appeared to have obeyed their call. Sir Walter Scott took this view of the transaction. His opinion, it is true, would be considered more important in any other department than that of biblical interpretation: on all questions, however, connected with the spiritual world of fancy and with its history, he must be allowed to speak, if not with the authority, at least with the tone of a master. This wonderful author, in the infinite profusion and variety of his productions, published a volume upon Demonology and Witchcraft: it is, of course, entertaining and instructive to all who are curious to know the capacity and to appreciate the operations of the human imagination.

It will be regarded by intelligent and judicious persons as a circumstance of importance in reference to the view now given of the transaction in which the witch of Endor acts the leading part, that Hugh Farmer, beyond all question the most learned, discreet, and profound writer on such subjects, is inclined to throw the weight of his authority in its favor. His ample and elaborate discussion of the question is to be seen in his work on Miracles, chap. iv. sec. 2.

Among the heathen nations of antiquity, the art of divination consisted, to a great degree, in the magical use of mysterious charms. Many plants were considered as possessed of wonderful virtues, and there was scarcely a limit to the supposed power of those persons who knew how to use and apply them skilfully. Virgil, in his eighth eclogue, thus speaks of this species of sorcery:—

In the fourth Æneid, the lovesick Tyrian queen is thus made to describe the magic which was then believed to be practised:—

Tibullus, in the second elegy of his first book, gives the following account of the powers ascribed to a magician:—

These views continued to hold undisturbed dominion over the people during a long succession of centuries. As the twilight of the dark ages began to settle upon Christendom, superstition, that night-blooming plant, extended itself rapidly, and in all directions, over the surface of the world. While every thing else drooped and withered, it struck deeper its roots, spread wider its branches, and brought forth more abundantly its fruit. The unnumbered fables of Greek and Roman mythology, the arts of augury and divination, the visions of oriental romance, the fanciful and attenuated theories of the later philosophy, the abstract and spiritual doctrines of Platonism, and all the grosser and wilder conceptions of the northern conquerors of the Roman Empire, became mingled together in the faith of the inhabitants of the European kingdoms. From this multifarious combination, the infinitely diversified popular superstitions of the modern nations have sprung.

We first begin to trace the clear outlines of the doctrine of witchcraft not far from the commencement of the Christian era. It presupposes the belief of the Devil. I shall not enter upon the question, whether the Scriptures, properly interpreted, require the belief of the existence of such a being. Directing our attention solely to profane sources of information, we discover the heathen origin of the belief of the existence of the Devil in the ancient systems of oriental philosophy. Early observers of nature in the East were led to the conclusion, that the world was a divided empire, ruled by the alternate or simultaneous energy of two great antagonist principles or beings, one perfectly good, and the other perfectly bad. It was for a long time, and perhaps is at this day, a prevalent faith among Christians, that the Bible teaches a similar doctrine; that it presents, to our adoration and obedience, a being of infinite perfections in the Deity; and to our abhorrence and our fears, a being infinitely wicked, and of great power, in the Devil.

It is obvious, that, when the entire enginery of supernaturalism was organized in adaptation to the idea of the Devil, and demonology became synonymous with diabolism, the credulity and superstition of mankind would give a wide extension to that form of belief. It soon occupied a large space in the theories of religion and the fancies of the people, and got to be a leading element in the life of society. It made its impress on the forms of speech, and many of the phrases to which it gave rise still remain in familiar use. It figured in the rituals of religion, in the paraphernalia of public shows, and in fireside tales. It afforded leading characters to the drama in the miracle plays and the moral plays, as they were called, at successive periods. It offered a ready weapon to satire, and also to defamation. Gerbert, a native of France, who was elevated to the pontificate about the close of the tenth century, under the name of Sylvester II., is eulogized by Mosheim as the first great restorer of science and literature. He was a person of an extensive and sublime genius, of wonderful attainments in learning, particularly mathematics, geometry, and arithmetic. He broke the profound sleep of the dark ages, and awakened the torpid intellect of the European nations. His efforts in this direction roused the apprehensions and resentment of the monks; and they circulated, after Gerbert's death, and made the ignorant masses believe the story, that he had obtained his rapid promotion in the Church by the practice of the black art, which he disguised under the show of learning; that he secured the Archbishopric of Ravenna by bribery and corruption; and that, finally, he made a bargain with Satan, promising him his soul after death, on condition that he (Satan) should put forth his great influence over the cardinals in such a manner as would secure his election to the throne of St. Peter. The arrangement was carried into successful operation. Sylvester, the monks averred, consulted the Devil through the medium of a brazen head during his whole reign, and enjoyed his faithful friendship and unwavering patronage. But, when His Holiness came to die, he endeavored to defraud Satan of his rightful claim to his soul, by repenting, and acknowledging his sin. This illustrates the way in which the popular idea of the Devil was used to awaken ridicule and gratify malignity.

The natural and ultimate effect of the diffusion of Christianity was to overthrow, or rather to revolutionize, the whole system of incantation and sorcery.

In heathen countries, as in the East at present and with those among us who profess to hold communications with spirits, no reproach or sentiment of disapprobation, as has already been observed, was necessarily connected with the arts of divination; for the supernatural beings with whom intercourse was alleged to be had were not, with a few exceptions, regarded as evil beings. The persons who were thought to be skilful in their use were, on the contrary, held in great esteem, and looked upon with reverence. Magicians and philosophers were convertible and synonymous terms. Learned and scientific men were induced to encourage, and turn to their own advantage, the popular credulity that ascribed their extraordinary skill to their connection with spiritual and divine beings. At length, however, they found themselves placed in a very uncomfortable predicament by the prevalence of the new theology. It was exceedingly difficult to dispel the delusion, and correct the error they had previously found it for their interest to perpetuate in the minds of the community. They could not convince them that their knowledge was acquired from natural sources, or their operations conducted solely by the aid of natural causes and laws. The people would not surrender the belief, that the results of scientific experiments, and the accuracy of predictions of physical phenomena, were secured by the assistance of supernatural beings.

As the doctrines of the gospel gradually undermined the popular belief in other spiritual beings inferior to the Deity, and were at the same time supposed to teach the existence and extensively diffused energy of an almost infinite and omnipotent agent of evil, it was exceedingly natural, nay, it necessarily followed, that the credulity and superstition which had led to the supposition of an alliance between philosophers and spiritual beings should settle down into a full conviction that the Devil was the being with whom they were thus confederated. The consequence was that they were charged with witchcraft, and many fell victims to the general prejudice and abhorrence occasioned by the imputation. The influence of this state of things was soon seen: it was one of the most effectual causes of the rapid diffusion of knowledge in modern times. Philosophers and men of science became as anxious to explain and publish their discoveries as they had been in former ages to conceal and cover them with mystery. The following instances will be sufficient to illustrate the correctness of these views.

In the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon was charged with witchcraft on account of his discoveries in optics, chemistry, and astronomy; and, although he did what he could to circulate and explain his own acquirements, he could not escape a papal denunciation, and two long and painful imprisonments. In 1305, Arnold de Villa Nova, a learned physician and philosopher, was burned at Padua, by order of inquisitors, on the charge of witchcraft. He was eighty years of age. Ten years afterwards, Peter Apon, also of Padua, who had made extraordinary progress in knowledge, was accused of the same crime, and condemned to death, but expired previous to the time appointed for his execution.

I will now present a brief sketch of the most noticeable facts relating to the subject in Europe and Great Britain previous to the close of the seventeenth century. Some writers have computed that thirty thousand persons were executed for this supposed crime, within one hundred and fifty years. It will of course be in my power to mention only a few instances.

In 1484, Pope Innocent the Eighth issued a bull encouraging and requiring the arrest and punishment of persons suspected of witchcraft. From this moment, the prosecutions became frequent and the victims numerous in every country. The very next year, forty-one aged females were consigned to the flames in one nation; and, not long after, a hundred were burned by one inquisition in the devoted valleys of Piedmont; forty-eight were burned in Ravensburg in five years; and, in the year 1515, five hundred were burned at Geneva in three months! One writer declares that "almost an infinite number" were burned for witchcraft in France,—a thousand in a single diocese! These sanguinary and horrible transactions were promoted and sanctioned by theological hatred and rancor. It was soon perceived that there was no kind of difficulty in clearing the Church of heretics by hanging or burning them all as witches! The imputation of witchcraft could be fixed upon any one with the greatest facility. In the earlier part of the fifteenth century, the Earl of Bedford, having taken the celebrated Joan of Arc prisoner, put her to death on this charge. She had been almost adored by the people rescued by her romantic valor, and was universally known among them by the venerable title of "Holy Maid of God;" but no difficulty was experienced in procuring evidence enough to lead her to the stake as a servant and confederate of Satan! Luther was just beginning his attack upon the papal power, and he was instantly accused of being in confederacy with the Devil.

In 1534, Elizabeth Barton, "the Maid of Kent," was executed for witchcraft in England, together with seven men who had been confederate with her. In 1541 the Earl of Hungerford was beheaded for inquiring of a witch how long Henry VIII. would live. In 1549 it was made the duty of bishops, by Archbishop Cranmer's articles of visitation, to inquire of their clergy, whether "they know of any that use charms, sorcery, enchantments, witchcraft, soothsaying, or any like craft invented by the Devil." In 1563 the King of Sweden carried four witches with him, as a part of his armament, to aid him in his wars with the Danes. In 1576, seventeen or eighteen were condemned in Essex, in England. A single judge or inquisitor, Remigius, condemned and burned nine hundred within fifteen years, from 1580 to 1595, in the single district of Lorraine; and as many more fled out of the country; whole villages were depopulated, and fifteen persons destroyed themselves rather than submit to the torture which, under the administration of this successor of Draco and rival of Jeffries, was the first step taken in the trial of an accused person. The application of the rack and other instruments of torment, in the examination of prisoners, was recommended by him in a work on witchcraft. He observes that "scarcely any one was known to be brought to repentance and confession but by these means"!

The most eminent persons of the sixteenth century were believers in the popular superstition respecting the existence of compacts between Satan and human beings, and in the notions associated with it. The excellent Melancthon was an interpreter of dreams and caster of nativities. Luther was a strenuous supporter of the doctrine of witchcraft, and seems to have seriously believed that he had had frequent interviews with the arch-enemy himself, and had disputed with him on points of theology, face to face. In his "Table-Talk," he gives the following account of his intimacy with the Devil: speaking of his confinement in the Castle of Wartburg, he says, "Among other things they brought me hazel-nuts, which I put into a box, and sometimes I used to crack and eat of them. In the night-times, my gentleman, the Devil, came and got the nuts out of the box, and cracked them against one of the bedposts, making a very great noise and rumbling about my bed; but I regarded him nothing at all: when afterwards I began to slumber, then he kept such a racket and rumbling upon the chamber stairs, as if many empty barrels and hogsheads had been tumbled down." Kepler, whose name is immortalized by being associated with the laws he discovered that regulate the orbits of the heavenly bodies, was a zealous advocate of astrology; and his great predecessor and master, the Prince of Astronomers, as he is called, Tycho Brahe, kept an idiot in his presence, fed him from his own table, with his own hand, and listened to his incoherent, unmeaning, and fatuous expressions as to a revelation from the spiritual world.

The following is the language addressed to Queen Elizabeth by Bishop Jewell. He was one of the most learned persons of his age, and is to this day regarded as the mighty champion of the Church of England, and of the cause of the Reformation in Great Britain. He was the terrible foe of Roman-Catholic superstition. "It may please Your Grace," says he, "to understand that witches and sorcerers within these four last years are marvellously increased within Your Grace's realm; Your Grace's subjects pine away even unto the death; their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. I pray God," continues the courtly preacher, "they never practise further than upon the subject." The petition of the polite prelate appears to have been answered. The virgin queen resisted inexorably the arts of all charmers, and is thought never to have been bewitched in her life.

It is probable that Spenser, in his "Faërie Queen," has described with accuracy the witch of the sixteenth century in the following beautiful lines:—

So prone were some to indulge in the contemplation of the agency of the Devil and his myrmidons, that they strained, violated, and perverted the language of Scripture to make it speak of them. Thus they insisted that the word "Philistines" meant confederates and subjects of the Devil, and accordingly interpreted the expression, "I will deliver you into the hands of the Philistines," thus, "I will deliver you into the hands of demons."

I cannot describe the extent to which the superstition we are reviewing was carried about the close of the sixteenth century in stronger language than the following, from a candid and learned French Roman-Catholic historian: "So great folly," says he, "did then oppress the miserable world, that Christians believed greater absurdities than could ever be imposed upon the heathens."

We have now arrived at the commencement of the seventeenth century, within which the prosecutions for witchcraft took place in Salem. To show the opinions of the clergy of the English Church at this time, I will quote the following curious canon, made by the convocation in 1603:—

"That no minister or ministers, without license and direction of the bishop, under his hand and seal obtained, attempt, upon any pretence whatsoever, either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast out any devil or devils, under pain of the imputation of imposture or cozenage, and deposition from the ministry." In the same year, licenses were actually granted, as required above, by the Bishop of Chester; and several ministers were duly authorized by him to cast out devils!

During this whole century, there were trials and executions for witchcraft in all civilized countries. More than two hundred were hanged in England, thousands were burned in Scotland, and still larger numbers in various parts of Europe.

Edward Fairfax, the poet, was one of the most accomplished men in England. He is celebrated as the translator of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," in allusion to which work Collins thus speaks of him:—

This same Fairfax prosecuted six of his neighbors for bewitching his children. The trials took place about the time the first pilgrims came to America.

In 1634, Urbain Grandier, a very learned and eminent French minister, rendered himself odious to the bigoted nuns of Loudun, by his moderation towards heretics. Secretly instigated, as has been supposed, by Cardinal Richelieu, against whom he had written a satire, they pretended to be bewitched by him, and procured his prosecution: he was tortured upon the rack until he swooned, and then was burned at the stake. In 1640, Dr. Lamb, of London, was murdered in the streets of that city by the mob, on suspicion of witchcraft. Several were hanged in England, only a few years before the proceedings commenced in Salem. Some were tried by water ordeal, and drowned in the process, in Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Northamptonshire, at the very time the executions were going on here; and a considerable number of capital punishments took place in various parts of Great Britain, some years after the prosecution had ceased in America.

The trials and executions in England and Scotland were attended by circumstances as painful, as barbarous, and in all respects as disgraceful, as those occurring in Salem. Every species of torture seems to have been resorted to: the principles of reason, justice, and humanity were set at defiance, and the whole body of the people kept in a state of the most fierce excitement against the sufferers. Indeed, there is nothing more distressing in the contemplation of these sanguinary proceedings than the spirit of deliberate and unmitigated cruelty with which they were conducted. No symptoms of pity, compassion, or sympathy, appear to have been manifested by the judges or the community. The following account of the expenses attending the execution of two persons convicted of witchcraft in Scotland, shows in what a cool, business-like style the affair was managed:—

"For ten loads of coal, to burn them £3 6 8

For a tar barrel 0 14 0

For towes 0 6 0

For hurden to be jumps for them 3 10 0

For making of them 0 8 0

For one to go to Finmouth for the Laird to sit upon their assize as judge 0 6 0

For the executioner for his pains 8 14 0

For his expenses here 0 16 4"

The brutalizing effects of capital punishments are clearly seen in these, as in all other instances. They gradually impart a feeling of indifference to the value of human life, or to the idea of cutting it off by the hand of violence, to all who become accustomed to the spectacle. In various ways they exercise influences upon the tone and temper of society, which cannot but be regarded with regret by the citizen, the legislator, the moralist, the philanthropist, and the Christian.

Sinclair, in his work called "Satan's Invisible World Discovered," gives the following affecting declaration made by one of the confessing witches, as she was on her way to the stake:—

"Now all you that see me this day know that I am now to die as a witch by my own confession; and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood; I take it wholly upon myself, my blood be upon my own head: and, as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child; but, being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch, disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of my coming out of prison, or ever coming in credit again, through the temptation of the Devil, I made up that confession on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than live."

Sir George Mackenzie says that he went to examine some women who had confessed, and that one of them, who was a silly creature, told him, "under secresie," "that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but, being a poor creature, who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her, and hound dogs at her, and that therefore she desired to be out of the world." Whereupon she wept most bitterly, and, upon her knees, called God to witness to what she said.

A wretch, named Matthew Hopkins, rendered himself infamously conspicuous in the prosecutions for witchcraft that took place in the counties of Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, and Huntingdon, in England, in the years 1645 and 1646. The title he assumed indicates the part he acted: it was "Witch-finder-general." He travelled from place to place; his expenses were paid; and he required, in addition, regular fees for the discovery of a witch. Besides pricking the body to find the witch-mark, he compelled the wretched and decrepit victims of his cruel practices to sit in a painful posture, on an elevated stool, with their limbs crossed; and, if they persevered in refusing to confess, he would prolong their torture, in some cases, to more than twenty-four hours. He would prevent their going to sleep, and drag them about barefoot over the rough ground, thus overcoming them with extreme weariness and pain: but his favorite method was to tie the thumb of the right hand close to the great toe of the left foot, and draw them through a river or pond; if they floated, as they would be likely to do, while their heavier limbs were thus sustained and upborne by the rope, it was considered as conclusive proof of their guilt. This monster was encouraged and sanctioned by the government; and he procured the death, in one year and in one county, of more than three times as many as suffered in Salem during the whole delusion. He and his exploits are referred to in the following lines, from that storehouse of good sense and keen wit, Butler's "Hudibras:"—

The infatuated people looked upon this Hopkins with admiration and astonishment, and could only account for his success by the supposition, which, we are told, was generally entertained, that he had stolen the memorandum-book in which Satan had recorded the names of all the persons in England who were in league with him!

The most melancholy circumstance connected with the history of this creature is, that Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy—names dear and venerable in the estimation of all virtuous and pious men—were deceived and deluded by him: they countenanced his conduct, followed him in his movements, and aided him in his proceedings.

At length, however, some gentlemen, shocked at the cruelty and suspicious of the integrity of Hopkins, seized him, tied his thumbs and toes together, threw him into a pond, and dragged him about to their hearts' content. They were fully satisfied with the result of the experiment. It was found that he did not sink. He stood condemned on his own principles; and thus the country was rescued from the power of the malicious impostor.

Among the persons whose death Hopkins procured, was a venerable, gray-headed clergyman, named Lewis. He was of the Church of England, had been the minister of a congregation for more than half a century, and was over eighty years of age. His infirm frame was subjected to the customary tests, even to the trial by water ordeal: he was compelled to walk almost incessantly for several days and nights, until, in the exhaustion of his nature, he yielded assent to a confession that was adduced against him in Court; which, however, he disowned and denied there and at all times, from the moment of release from the torments, by which it had been extorted, to his last breath. As he was about to die the death of a felon, he knew that the rites of sepulture, according to the forms of his denomination, would be denied to his remains. The aged sufferer, it is related, read his own funeral service while on the scaffold. Solemn, sublime, and affecting as are passages of this portion of the ritual of the Church, surely it was never performed under circumstances so well suited to impress with awe and tenderness as when uttered by the calumniated, oppressed, and dying old man. Baxter had been tried for sedition, on the ground that one of his publications contained a reflection upon Episcopacy, and was imprisoned for two years. It is a striking and melancholy illustration of the moral infirmity of human nature, that the author of the "Saints' Everlasting Rest," and the "Call to the Unconverted," permitted such a vengeful feeling against the Establishment to enter his breast, that he took pleasure, and almost exulted, in relating the fate of this innocent and aged clergyman, whom he denominates, in derision, a "Reading Parson."

Baxter's writings are pervaded by his belief in all sorts of supernatural things. In the "Saints' Everlasting Rest," he declares his conviction of the reality and authenticity of stories of ghosts, apparitions, haunted houses, &c. He placed full faith in a tale, current among the people of his day, of the "dispossession of the Devil out of many persons together in a room in Lancashire, at the prayer of some godly ministers." In his "Dying Thoughts," he says, "I have had many convincing proofs of witches, the contracts they have made with devils, and the power which they have received from them;" and he seems to have credited the most absurd fables ever invented on the subject by ignorance, folly, or fraud.

The case to which he refers, as one of the "dispossession of devils," may be found in a tract published in London in 1697, entitled, "The Surey Demoniac; or, an Account of Satan's strange and dreadful actings, in and about the body of Richard Dugdale, of Surey, near Whalley, in Lancashire. And how he was dispossessed by God's blessing on the Fastings and Prayers of divers Ministers and People. The matter of fact attested by the oaths of several creditable persons, before some of his Majestie's Justices of the Peace in the said county." The "London Monthly Repository" (vol. v., 1810) describes the affair as follows: "These dreadful actings of Satan continued above a year; during which there was a desperate struggle between him and nine ministers of the gospel, who had undertaken to cast him out, and, for that purpose, successively relieved each other in their daily combats with him: while Satan tried all his arts to baffle their attempts, insulting them with scoffs and raillery, puzzling them sometimes with Greek and Latin, and threatening them with the effects of his vengeance, till he was finally vanquished and put to flight by the persevering prayers and fastings of the said ministers."

No name in English history is regarded with more respect and admiration, by wise and virtuous men, than that of Sir Matthew Hale. His character was almost venerated by our ancestors; and it has been thought that it was the influence of his authority, more than any thing else, that prevailed upon them to pursue the course they adopted in the prosecutions at Salem. This great and good man presided, as Lord Chief Baron, at the trial of two females,—Amy Dunny and Rose Cullender,—at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, in the year 1664. They were convicted and executed.

Baxter relates the following circumstance as having occurred at this trial: "A godly minister, yet living, sitting by to see one of the girls (who appeared as a witness against the prisoners) in her fits, suddenly felt a force pull one of the hooks from his breeches; and, while he looked with wonder at what was become of it, the tormented girl vomited it up out of her mouth."

To give an idea of the nature of the testimony upon which the principal stress was laid by the government, I will extract the following passages from the report of the trial: "Robert Sherringham testified that the axle-tree of his cart, happening, in passing, to break some part of Rose Cullender's house, in her anger at it, she vehemently threatened him his horses should suffer for it; and, within a short time, all his four horses died; after which he sustained many other losses, in the sudden dying of his cattle. He was also taken with a lameness in his limbs, and so far vexed with lice of an extraordinary number and bigness, that no art could hinder the swarming of them, till he burned up two suits of apparel."—"Margaret Arnold testified that Amy Dunny afflicted her children: they (the children), she said, would see mice running round the house, and, when they caught them and threw them into the fire, they would screech out like rats."—"A thing like a bee flew at the face of the younger child; the child fell into a fit, and at last vomited up a two-penny nail, with a broad head, affirming that the bee brought this nail, and forced it into her mouth."—"She one day caught an invisible mouse, and, throwing it into the fire, it flashed like to gunpowder. None besides the child saw the mouse, but every one saw the flash!"

In this instance we perceive the influence of prejudice in perverting evidence. The circumstance that the mouse was invisible to all eyes but those of the child ought to have satisfied the Court and jury that she was either under the power of a delusion or practising an imposture. But, as they were predisposed to find something supernatural in the transaction, their minds seized upon the pretended invisibility of the mouse as conclusive proof of diabolical agency.

Many persons who were present expressed the opinion, that the issue of the trial would have been favorable to the prisoners, had it not been for the following circumstance: Sir Thomas Browne, a physician, philosopher, and scholar of unrivalled celebrity at that time, happened to be upon the spot; and it was the universal wish that he should be called to the stand, and his opinion be obtained on the general subject of witchcraft. An enthusiastic contemporary admirer of Sir Thomas Browne thus describes him: "The horizon of his understanding was much larger than the hemisphere of the world: all that was visible in the heavens he comprehended so well, that few that are under them knew so much; and of the earth he had such a minute and exact geographical knowledge as if he had been by Divine Providence ordained surveyor-general of the whole terrestrial globe and its products, minerals, plants, and animals." His memory is stated to have been inferior only to that of Seneca or Scaliger; and he was reputed master of seven languages. Dr. Johnson, who has written his biography, sums up his character in the following terms: "But it is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity, of which he will not easily be deprived, while learning shall have any reverence among men: for there is no science in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success."

Sir Thomas Browne was considered by those of his own generation to have made great advances beyond the wisdom of his age. He claimed the character of a reformer, and gave to his principal publication the title of an "Enquiry into Vulgar Errors." So bold and free were his speculations, that he was looked upon invidiously by many as a daring innovator, and did not escape the denunciatory imputation of heresy. Nothing could be more unjust, however, than this latter charge. He was a most ardent and zealous believer in the doctrines of the Established Church. He declares "that he assumes the honorable style of a Christian," not because "it is the religion of his country," but because, "having in his riper years and confirmed judgment seen and examined all, he finds himself obliged, by the principles of grace and the law of his own reason, to embrace no other name but this." He exults and "blesses himself, that he lived not in the days of miracles, when faith had been thrust upon him, but enjoys that greater blessing pronounced to all that believed, and saw not:" nay, he goes so far as to say, that they only had the advantage "of a bold and noble faith, who lived before the coming of the Saviour, and, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief." The fact that such a man was accused of infidelity is an affecting proof of the injustice that is sometimes done by the judgment of contemporaries.

This prodigy of learning and philosophy went into Court, took the stand, and declared his opinion in favor of the reality of witchcraft, entered into a particular discussion of the subject before the jury, threw the whole weight of his great name into the wavering scales of justice, and the poor women were convicted. The authority of Sir Thomas Browne, added to the other evidence, perplexed Sir Matthew Hale. A reporter of the trial says, "that it made this great and good man doubtful; but he was in such fears, and proceeded with such caution, that he would not so much as sum up the evidence, but left it to the jury with prayers, 'that the great God of heaven would direct their hearts in that weighty matter.'"

The result of this important trial established decisively the interpretation of English law; and the printed report of it was used as an authoritative text-book in the Court at Salem.

The celebrated Robert Boyle flourished in the latter half of the seventeenth century. He is allowed by all to have done much towards the introduction of an improved philosophy, and the promotion of experimental science. But he could not entirely shake off the superstition of his age.

A small city in Burgundy, called Mascon, was famous in the annals of witchcraft. In a work called "The Theatre of God's Judgments," published, in London, by Thomas Beard in 1612, there is the following passage: "It was a very lamentable spectacle that chanced to the Governor of Mascon, a magician, whom the Devil snatched up in dinner-while, and hoisted aloft, carrying him three times about the town of Mascon, in the presence of many beholders, to whom he cried in this manner, 'Help, help, my friends!' so that the whole town stood amazed thereat; yea, and the remembrance of this strange accident sticketh at this day fast in the minds of all the inhabitants of this country." A malicious and bigoted monk, who discharged the office of chief legend-maker to the Benedictine Abbey, in the vicinity of Mascon, fabricated this ridiculous story for the purpose of bringing the Governor into disrepute. An account of another diabolical visitation, suggested, it is probable, by the one just described, was issued from the press, under the title of "The Devil of Mascon," during the lifetime of Boyle, who gave his sanction to the work, promoted its version into English, and, as late as 1678, publicly declared his belief of the supernatural transaction it related.

The subject of demonology, in all its forms and phases, embracing witchcraft, held a more commanding place throughout Europe, in the literature of the centuries immediately preceding the eighteenth, than any other. Works of the highest pretension, elaborate, learned, voluminous, and exhausting, were published, by the authority of governments and universities, to expound it. It was regarded as occupying the most eminent department of jurisprudence, as well as of science and theology.

Raphael De La Torre and Adam Tanner published treatises establishing the right and duty of ecclesiastical tribunals to punish all who practised or dealt with the arts of demonology. In 1484, Sprenger came out with his famous book, "Malleus Maleficarum;" or, the "Hammer of Witches." Paul Layman, in 1629, issued an elaborate work on "Judicial Processes against Sorcerers and Witches." The following is the title of a bulky volume of some seven hundred pages: "Demonology, or Natural Magic or demoniacal, lawful and unlawful, also open or secret, by the intervention and invocation of a Demon," published in 1612. It consists of four books, treating of the crime of witchcraft, and its punishment in the ordinary tribunals and the Inquisitorial office. Its author was Don Francisco Torreblanca Villalpando, of Cordova, Advocate Royal in the courts of Grenada. It was republished in 1623, by command of Philip III. of Spain, on the recommendation of the Fiscal General, and with the sanction of the Royal Council and the Holy Inquisition. This work may be considered as establishing and defining the doctrines, in reference to witchcraft, prevailing in all Catholic countries. It was indorsed by royal, judicial, academical, and ecclesiastical approval; is replete with extraordinary erudition, arranged in the most scientific form, embracing in a methodical classification all the minutest details of the subject, and codifying it into a complete system of law. There was no particular in all the proceedings and all the doctrines brought out at the trials in Salem, which did not find ample justification and support in this work of Catholic, imperial, and European authority.

But perhaps the writer of the greatest influence on this subject in England and America, during the whole of the seventeenth century, was William Perkins, "the learned, pious, and painful preacher of God's Word, at St. Andrew's, in Cambridge," where he died, in 1602, aged forty-four years. He was quite a voluminous author; and many of his works were translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish. Fuller, in "The Holy State," selects him as the impersonation of the qualities requisite to "the Faithful Minister." In his glowing eulogium upon his learning and talents, he says:—

"He would pronounce the word damne with such an emphasis as left a doleful echo in his auditors' ears a good while after. And, when catechist of Christ's College, in expounding the Commandments, applied them so home,—able almost to make his hearers' hearts fall down, and hairs to stand upright. But, in his older age, he altered his voice, and remitted much of his former rigidness, often professing that to preach mercy was that proper office of the ministers of the gospel."—"Our Perkins brought the schools into the pulpit, and, unshelling their controversies out of their hard school-terms, made thereof plain and wholesome meat for his people; for he had a capacious head, with angles winding, and roomy enough to lodge all controversial intricacies."—"He had a rare felicity in speedy reading of books; so that, as it were, riding post through an author, he took strict notice of all passages. Perusing books so speedily, one would think he read nothing; so accurately, one would think he read all."

An octavo volume, written by this great scholar and divine, was published at Cambridge in England, under the title, "Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft." It went through several editions, and had a wide and permanent circulation.

This work, the character of which is sufficiently indicated in its emphatic title, was the great authority on the subject with our fathers; and Mr. Parris had a copy of it in his possession when the proceedings in reference to witchcraft began at Salem Village.

John Gaule published an octavo volume in London, in 1646, entitled, "Select Cases of Conscience concerning Witches and Witchcraft." He is one of the most exact writers on the subject, and arranges witches in the following classes: "1. The diviner, gypsy, or fortune-telling witch; 2. The astrologian, star-gazing, planetary, prognosticating witch; 3. The chanting, canting, or calculating witch, who works by signs and numbers; 4. The venefical, or poisoning witch; 5. The exorcist, or conjuring witch; 6. The gastronomic witch; 7. The magical, speculative, sciential, or arted witch; 8. The necromancer."

Besides innumerable writers of this class, who spread out the scholastic learning on the subject, and presented it in a logical and theological form, there were others who treated it in a more popular style, and invested it with the charms of elegant literature. Henry Hallywell published an octavo in London, in 1681, in which, while the main doctrines of witchcraft as then almost universally received are enforced, an attempt was made to divest it of some of its most repulsive and terrible features. He gives the following account of the means by which a person may place himself beyond the reach of the power of witchcraft:—

"It is possible for the soul to arise to such a height, and become so divine, that no witchcraft or evil demons can have any power upon the body. When the bodily life is too far invigorated and awakened, and draws the intellect, the flower and summity of the soul, into a conspiration with it, then are we subject and obnoxious to magical assaults. For magic or sorcery, being founded only in this lower or mundane spirit, he that makes it his business to be freed and released from all its blandishments and flattering devocations, and endeavors wholly to withdraw himself from the love of corporeity and too near a sympathy with the frail flesh, he, by it, enkindles such a divine principle as lifts him above the fate of this inferior world, and adorns his mind with such an awful majesty that beats back all enchantments, and makes the infernal fiends tremble at his presence, hating those vigorous beams of light which are so contrary and repugnant to their dark natures."

The mind of this beautiful writer found encouragement and security in the midst of the diabolical spirits, with whom he believed the world to be infested, in the following views and speculations:—

"For there is a chain of government that runs down from God, the Supreme Monarch, whose bright and piercing eyes look through all that he has made, to the lowest degree of the creation; and there are presidential angels of empires and kingdoms, and such as under them have the tutelage of private families; and, lastly, every man's particular guardian genius. Nor is the inanimate or material world left to blind chance or fortune; but there are, likewise, mighty and potent spirits, to whom is committed the guidance and care of the fluctuating and uncertain motions of it, and by their ministry, fire and vapor, storms and tempests, snow and hail, heat and cold, are all kept within such bounds and limits as are most serviceable to the ends of Providence. They take care of the variety of seasons, and superintend the tillage and fruits of the earth; upon which account, Origen calls them invisible husbandmen. So that, all affairs and things being under the inspection and government of these incorporeal beings, the power of the dark kingdom and its agents is under a strict confinement and restraint; and they cannot bring a general mischief upon the world without a special permission of a superior Providence."

Spenser has the same imagery and sentiment:—

While there can be no doubt that the superstitious opinions we have been reviewing were diffused generally among the great body of the people of all ranks and conditions, it would be unjust to truth not to mention that there were some persons who looked upon them as empty fables and vain imaginations. Error has never yet made a complete and universal conquest. In the darkest ages and most benighted regions, it has been found impossible utterly to extinguish the light of reason. There always have been some in whose souls the torch of truth has been kept burning with vestal watchfulness: we can discern its glimmer here and there through the deepest night that has yet settled upon the earth. In the midst of the most extravagant superstition, there have been individuals who have disowned the popular belief, and considered it a mark of wisdom and true philosophy to discard the idle fancies and absurd schemes of faith that possessed the minds of the great mass of their contemporaries. This was the case with Horace, as appears from lines thus quite freely but effectively translated:—

The intellect of Seneca also rose above the reach of the popular credulity with respect to the agency of supernatural beings and the efficacy of mysterious charms.

If we could but obtain access to the secret thoughts of the wisest philosophers and of the men of genius of antiquity, we should probably find that many of them were superior to the superstitions of their times. Even in the thick darkness of the dark ages, there were minds too powerful to be kept in chains by error and delusion.

Henry Cornelius Agrippa, who was born in the latter part of the fifteenth century, was, perhaps, the greatest philosopher and scholar of his period. In early life, he was very much devoted to the science of magic, and was a strenuous supporter of demonology and witchcraft. In the course of his studies and meditations, he was led to a change of views on these subjects, and did all that he could to warn others from putting confidence in such vain, frivolous, and absurd superstitions as then possessed the world. The consequence was, that he was denounced and prosecuted as a conjurer, and charged with having written against magic and witchcraft, in order the more securely to shelter himself from the suspicion of practising them. As an instance of the calumnies that were heaped upon him, I would mention that Paulus Jovius asserted that "Cornelius Agrippa went always accompanied with an evil spirit in the similitude of a black dog;" and that, when the time of his death drew near, "he took off the enchanted collar from the dog's neck, and sent him away with these terms, 'Get thee hence, thou cursed beast, which hast utterly destroyed me:' neither was the dog ever seen after." Butler, in his "Hudibras," has not neglected to celebrate this remarkable connection between Satan and the man of learning:—

John Wierus wrote an elaborate, learned, and judicious book, in which he treated at large of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft, and did all that scholarship, talent, and philosophy could do to undermine and subvert the whole system of the prevailing popular superstition. But he fared no better than his predecessor, patron, and master, Agrippa; for, like him, he was accused of having attempted to persuade the world that there was no reality in supernatural charms and diabolical confederacies, in order that he might devote himself to them without suspicion or molestation, and was borne down by the bigotry and fanaticism of his times.

King James merely gave utterance to the general sentiment, and pronounced the verdict of popular opinion, in the following extract from the preface to his "Demonologie:" "Wierus, a German physician, sets out a public apologie for all these crafts-folkes, whereby, procuring for them impunitie, he plainly bewrays himself to have been of that profession."

In 1584, a quarto volume was published in London, the work of Reginald Scott, a learned English gentleman, whose title sufficiently indicates its import, "The Discovery of Witchcraft, wherein the lewde dealing of witches and witchmongers is notably detected; the knavery of conjurers, the impiety of inchanters, the folly of soothsayers, the impudent falsehood of cozeners, the infidelity of atheists, the pestilent practices of pythonists, the curiosities of figure-casters, the vanity of dreamers, the beggarly art of alcumstrie, the abomination of idolatrie, the horrible art of poisoning, the virtue and power of natural magic, and all the conveniencies of legerdemaine and juggling, are discovered, &c."

In 1599, Samuel Harsnett, Archbishop of York, wrote a work, published in London, to expose certain persons who pretended to have the power of casting out devils, and detecting their "deceitful trade." This writer was among the first to bring the power of bold satire and open denunciation to bear against the superstitions of demonology. He thus describes the motives and the methods of such impostors:—

"Out of these," saith he, "is shaped us the true idea of a witch,—an old, weather-beaten crone, having her chin and her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff; hollow-eyed, untoothed, furrowed on her face, having her limbs trembling with the palsy, going mumbling in the streets; one that hath forgotten her Pater-noster, and yet hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab. If she hath learned of an old wife, in a chimney-end, Pax, Max, Fax, for a spell, or can say Sir John Grantham's curse for the miller's eels, 'All ye that have stolen the miller's eels, Laudate dominum de coelis: and all they that have consented thereto, Benedicamus domino:' why then, beware! look about you, my neighbors. If any of you have a sheep sick of the giddies, or a hog of the mumps, or a horse of the staggers, or a knavish boy of the school, or an idle girl of the wheel, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porridge, or butter enough for her bread, and she hath a little help of the epilepsy or cramp, to teach her to roll her eyes, wry her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, hold her arms and hands stiff, &c.; and then, when an old Mother Nobs hath by chance called her an idle young housewife, or bid the Devil scratch her, then no doubt but Mother Nobs is the witch, and the young girl is owl blasted, &c. They that have their brains baited and their fancies distempered with the imaginations and apprehensions of witches, conjurers, and fairies, and all that lymphatic chimera, I find to be marshalled in one of these five ranks: children, fools, women, cowards, sick or black melancholic discomposed wits."

In 1669, a work was published in London with the following title: "The Question of Witchcraft Debated; or, a Discourse against their Opinions that affirm Witches." It is a work of great merit, and would do honor to a scholar and logician of the present day. The author was John Wagstaffe, of Oxford University: he is described as a crooked, shrivelled, little man, of a most despicable appearance. This circumstance, together with his writings against the popular belief in witchcraft, led his academical associates to accuse him, some of them in sport, but others with grave suspicion, of being a wizard. Wood, the historian of Oxford, says that "he died in a manner distracted, occasioned by a deep conceit of his own parts, and by a continual bibbing of strong and high-tasted liquors." But poor Wagstaffe was assailed by something more than private raillery and slander. His heretical sentiments exposed him to the battery of the host of writers who will always be found ready to advocate a prevailing opinion. But Wagstaffe was not left entirely alone to defend the cause of reason and truth. He had one most zealous advocate and ardent admirer in the author of a work on "The Doctrine of Devils," published in 1676. This writer sums up a panegyric upon Wagstaffe's performance, by pronouncing it "a judicious book, that contains more good reason, true religion, and right Christianity, than all those lumps and cartloads of luggage that hath been fardled up by all the faggeters of demonologistical winter-tales, and witchcraftical legendaries, since they first began to foul clean paper."

Dr. Balthasar Bekker, of Amsterdam, who was equally eminent in astronomy, philosophy, and theology, published in 1691 a learned and powerful work, called "The World Bewitched," in which he openly assailed the doctrines of witchcraft and of the Devil, and anticipated many of the views and arguments presented in Farmer's excellent publications. As a reward for his exertions to enlighten his fellow-creatures, he was turned out of the ministry, and assaulted by nearly all the writers of his age.

Dr. Bekker was one of the ablest and boldest writers of his day, and did much to advance the cause of natural science, scriptural interpretation, and the principles of enlightened Christianity. In 1680 he published an "Inquiry concerning Comets," rescuing them from the realm of superstition, placing them within the natural physical laws, and exploding the then-received opinion, that, in any way, they are the presages or forerunners of evil. His "Exposition on the Prophet Daniel" gives proof of his learning and judgment. His great merits were recognized by John Locke and Richard Bentley. In the preface to his "World Bewitched," he says, that it grieved him to see the great honors, powers, and miracles which are ascribed to the Devil. "It has come to that pass," to use his own language, "that men think it piety and godliness to ascribe a great many wonders to the Devil, and impiety and heresy, if a man will not believe that the Devil can do what a thousand persons say he does. It is now reckoned godliness, if a man who fears God fear also the Devil. If he be not afraid of the Devil, he passes for an atheist, who does not believe in God, because he cannot think that there are two gods, the one good, the other bad. But these, I think, with much more reason, may be called ditheists. For my part, if, on account of my opinion, they will give me a new name, let them call me a monotheist, a believer of but one God." The work struck down the whole system of demonology and witchcraft, by proving that there never was really such a thing as sorcery or possession, and that devils have no influence over human affairs or the persons of men. It is not surprising that it raised a great clamor. The wonder is that it did not cost him his life. It is probable that his protection was the confidence the people had in his character and learning. Attempts were made to diminish that confidence, and bring him into odium, by levelling against him every form of abuse. A medal was struck, and extensively circulated, representing the Devil, clothed like a minister or priest, riding on an ass. The device was so arranged as to excite ridicule and abhorrence, in the vulgar mind, against Bekker. But it was found impossible to turn the popular feeling, which had set in his favor; and his persecutors and defamers were completely baffled. He was followed, soon after, by the learned Thomasius, whose writings against demonology produced a decided effect upon the convictions of the age.

While Bekker, and the other writers of his class, endeavored to overthrow the superstitious practices and fancies then prevalent respecting demonology and communications with spiritual beings, they so far acceded to the popular theology as to maintain the doctrine of the personality of the Devil. They believed in the existence of the arch-fiend, but denied his agency in human affairs. They held that he was kept confined "to bottomless perdition, there to dwell—

Sir Robert Filmer, in 1680, published "An Advertisement to the jurymen of England, touching Witches," in which he criticised and condemned many of the opinions and methods then countenanced on the subject.

But Bekker, Thomasius, and Filmer appeared too late to operate upon the prevalent opinions of Europe or America prior to the witchcraft delusion of 1692. The productions of the other writers, in the same direction, to whom I have referred, probably had a very limited circulation, and made at the time but little impression. Error is seldom overthrown by mere reasoning. It yields only to the logic of events. No power of learning or wit could have rooted the witchcraft superstitions out of the minds of men. Nothing short of a demonstration of their deformities, follies, and horrors, such as here was held up to the view of the world, could have given their death-blow. This was the final cause of Salem Witchcraft, and makes it one of the great landmarks in the world's history.

A full and just view of the position and obligations of the persons who took part in the transactions at Salem requires a previous knowledge of the principles and the state of the law, as it was then in force and understood by the courts, and all concerned in judicial proceedings. Although the ancients did not regard pretended intercourse between magicians and enchanters and spiritual beings as necessarily or always criminal, we find that they enacted laws against the abuse of the power supposed to result from the connection. The old Roman code of the Twelve Tables contained the following prohibition: "That they should not bewitch the fruits of the earth, nor use any charms, to draw their neighbor's corn into their own fields." There were several special edicts on the subject during the existence of the Roman State. In the early Christian councils, sorcery was frequently made the object of denunciation. At Laodicea, for instance, in the year 364, it was voted to excommunicate any clergymen who were magicians, enchanters, astrologers, or mathematicians! The Bull of Pope Innocent VIII., near the close of the fifteenth century, has already been mentioned.

Dr. Turner, in his history of the Anglo-Saxons, says that they had laws against sorcerers and witches, but that they did not punish them with death. There was an English statute against witchcraft, in the reign of Henry VIII., and another in that of Elizabeth.

Up to this time, however, the legislation of parliament on the subject was merciful and judicious: for it did not attach to the guilt of witchcraft the punishment of death, unless it had been used to destroy life; that is, unless it had become murder.

On the demise of Elizabeth, James of Scotland ascended the throne. His pedantic and eccentric character is well known. He had an early and decided inclination towards abstruse or mysterious speculations. Before he had reached his twentieth year, he undertook to accomplish what only the most sanguine and profound theologians have ever dared to attempt: he expounded the Book of Revelation. When he was about twenty-five years of age, he published a work on the "Doctrine of Devils and Witchcraft." Not long after, he succeeded to the British crown. It may easily be imagined that the subject of demonology soon became a fashionable and prevailing topic of conversation in the royal saloons and throughout the nation. It served as a medium through which obsequious courtiers could convey their flattery to the ears of their accomplished and learned sovereign. His Majesty's book was reprinted and extensively circulated. It was of course praised and recommended in all quarters.

The parliament, actuated by a base desire to compliment the vain and superstitious king, enacted a new and much more severe statute against witchcraft, in the very first year of his reign. It was under this law that so many persons here and in England were deprived of their lives. The blood of hundreds of innocent persons was thus unrighteously shed. It was a fearful price which these servile lawgivers paid for the favor of their prince.

But this was not the only mischief brought about by courtly deference to the prejudices of King James. It was under his direction that our present translation of the Scriptures was made. To please His Royal Majesty, and to strengthen the arguments in his work on demonology, the word "witch" was used to represent expressions in the original Hebrew, that conveyed an entirely different idea; and it was freely inserted in the headings of the chapters.[B] A person having "a familiar spirit" was a favorite description of a witch in the king's book. The translators, forgetful of their high and solemn function, endeavored to establish this definition by inserting it into their version. Accordingly, they introduced it in several places; in the eleventh verse of the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, for instance, "a consulter with familiar spirits." There is no word in the Hebrew which corresponds with "familiar." And this is the important, the essential word in the definition. It conveys the idea of alliance, stated connection, confederacy, or compact, which is characteristic and distinctive of a witch. The expression in the original signifies "a consulter with spirits,"—especially, as was the case with the "Witch of Endor," a consulter with departed spirits. It was a shocking perversion of the word of God, for the purpose of flattering a frail and mortal sovereign! King James lived to see and acknowledge the error of his early opinions, and he would gladly have counteracted their bad effect; but it is easier to make laws and translations than it is to alter and amend them.

While the law of the land required the capital punishment of witches, no blame ought to be attached to judges and jurors for discharging their respective duties in carrying it into execution. It will not do for us to assert, that they ought to have refused, let the consequences to themselves have been what they would, to sanction and give effect to such inhuman and unreasonable enactments. We cannot consistently take this ground; for there is nothing more certain than that, with their notions, our ancestors had at least as good reasons to advance in favor of punishing witchcraft with death, as we have for punishing any crime whatsoever in the same awful and summary manner. We appeal, in defence of our capital punishments, to the text of Moses, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." The apologist of our fathers, for carrying into effect the law making witchcraft a capital offence, tells us in reply, in the first place, that this passage is not of the nature of a precept, but merely of an admonition; that it does not enjoin any particular method of proceeding, but simply describes the natural consequences of cruel and contentious conduct; and that it amounts only to this: that quarrelsome, violent, and bloodthirsty persons will be apt to meet the same fate they bring upon others; that the duellist will be likely to fall in private combat, the ambitious conqueror to perish, and the warlike nation to be destroyed, on the field of battle. If this is not considered by us a sufficient and satisfactory answer, he advances to our own ground, points to the same text where we place our defence, and puts his finger on the following plain and authoritative precept: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Indeed we must acknowledge, that the capital punishment of witches is as strongly supported and fortified by the Scriptures of the Old Testament—at least, as they appear in our present version—as the capital punishment of any crime whatever.

If we adopt another line of argument, and say that it is necessary to punish some particular crimes with death, in order to maintain the security of society, or hold up an impressive warning to others, here also we find that our opponent has full as much to offer in defence of our fathers as can be offered in our own defence. He describes to us the tremendous and infernal power which was universally believed by them to be possessed by a witch; a power which, as it was not derived from a natural source, could not easily be held in check by natural restraints: neither chains nor dungeons could bind it down or confine it. You might load the witch with irons, you might bury her in the lowest cell of a feudal prison, and still it was believed that she could send forth her imps or her spectre to ravage the fields, and blight the meadows, and throw the elements into confusion, and torture the bodies, and craze the minds, of any who might be the objects of her malice.

Shakspeare, in the description which he puts into the mouth of Macbeth of the supernatural energy of witchcraft, does not surpass, if he does justice to, the prevailing belief on the subject:—

There was indeed an almost infinite power to do mischief associated with a disposition to do it. No human strength could strip the witch of these mighty energies while she lived; nothing but death could destroy them. There was, as our ancestors considered, incontestable evidence, that she had put them forth to the injury, loss, and perhaps death, of others.

Can it be wondered at, that, under such circumstances, the law connecting capital punishment with the guilt of witchcraft was resorted to as the only means to protect society, and warn others from entering into the dark, wicked, and malignant compact?

It is not probable that even King James's Parliament would have been willing to go to the length of Selden in his "Table-Talk," who takes this ground in defence of the capital punishment of witches. "The law against witches does not prove there be any, but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men's lives. If one should profess, that, by turning his hat thrice and crying 'Buzz,' he could take away a man's life (though in truth he could do no such thing), yet this were a just law made by the State, that whoever should turn his hat thrice and cry 'Buzz,' with an intention to take away a man's life, shall be put to death."

There are other considerations that deserve to be weighed before a final judgment should be made up respecting the conduct of our fathers in the witchcraft delusion. Among these is the condition of physical science in their day. But little knowledge of the laws of nature was possessed, and that little was confined to a few. The world was still, to the mass of the people, almost as full of mystery in its physical departments as it was to its first inhabitants. Politics, poetry, rhetoric, ethics, and history had been cultivated to a great extent in previous ages; but the philosophy of the natural and material world was almost unknown. Astronomy, chemistry, optics, pneumatics, and even geography, were involved in the general darkness and error. Some of our most important sciences, such as electricity, date their origin from a later period.

This remarkable tardiness in the progress of physical science for some time after the era of the revival of learning is to be accounted for by referring to the erroneous methods of reasoning and observation then prevalent in the world. A false logic was adopted in the schools of learning and philosophy. The great instrument for the discovery and investigation of truth was the syllogism, the most absurd contrivance of the human mind; an argumentative process whose conclusion is contained in the premises; a method of proof, in the first step of which the matter to be proved is taken for granted.[C] In a word, the whole system of philosophy was made up of hypotheses, and the only foundation of science was laid in conjecture. The imagination, called necessarily into extraordinary action, in the absence of scientific certainty, was still further exercised in vain attempts to discover, unassisted by observation and experiment, the elements and first principles of nature. It had reached a monstrous growth about the time to which we are referring. Indeed it may be said, that all the intellectual productions of modern times, from the seventeenth century back to the dark ages, were works of imagination. The bulkiest and most voluminous writings that proceeded from the cloisters or the universities, even the metaphysical disquisitions of the Nominalists and Realists, and the boundless subtleties of the contending schools of the "Divine Doctors," Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, fall under this description. Dull, dreary, unintelligible, and interminable as they are, they are still in reality works of fancy. They are the offspring, almost exclusively, of the imaginative faculty. It ought not to create surprise, to find that this faculty predominated in the minds and characters of our ancestors, and developed itself to an extent beyond our conception, when we reflect that it was almost the only one called into exercise, and that it was the leading element of every branch of literature and philosophy.

It is true, that, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, Lord Bacon made his sublime discoveries in the department of physical science. By disclosing the true method of investigation and reasoning on such subjects, he may be said to have found, or rather to have invented, the key that unlocked the hitherto unopened halls of nature. He introduced man to the secret chambers of the universe, and placed in his hand the thread by which he has been conducted to the magnificent results of modern science, and will undoubtedly be led on to results still more magnificent in times to come. But it was not for human nature to pass in a moment from darkness to light. The transition was slow and gradual: a long twilight intervened before the sun shed its clear and full radiance upon the world.

The great discoverer himself refused to admit, or was unable to discern, some of the truths his system had revealed. Bacon was numbered among the opponents of the Copernican or true system of astronomy to the day of his death; so also was Sir Thomas Browne, the great philosopher already described, and who flourished during the latter half of the same century. Indeed, it may be said, that, at the time of the witchcraft delusion, the ancient empire of darkness which had oppressed and crushed the world of science had hardly been shaken. The great and triumphant progress of modern discovery had scarcely begun.

I shall now proceed to illustrate these views of the state of science in the world at that time by presenting a few instances. The slightest examination of the accounts which remain of occurrences deemed supernatural by our ancestors will satisfy any one that they were brought about by causes entirely natural, although unknown to them. For instance, the following circumstances are related by the Rev. James Pierpont, pastor of a church in New Haven, in a letter to Cotton Mather, and published by him in his "Magnalia:"[D]—

In the year 1646, a new ship, containing a valuable cargo, and having several distinguished persons on board as passengers, put to sea from New Haven in the month of January, bound to England. The vessels that came over the ensuing spring brought no tidings of her arrival in the mother-country. The pious colonists were earnest and instant in their prayers that intelligence might be received of the missing vessel. In the month of June, 1648, "a great thunder-storm arose out of the north-west; after which (the hemisphere being serene), about an hour before sunset, a ship of like dimensions with the aforesaid, with her canvas and colors abroad (although the wind was northerly), appeared in the air, coming up from the harbor's mouth, which lies southward from the town,—seemingly with her sails filled under a fresh gale, holding her course north, and continuing under observation, sailing against the wind for the space of half an hour." The phantom-ship was borne along, until, to the excited imaginations of the spectators, she seemed to have approached so near that they could throw a stone into her. Her main-topmast then disappeared, then her mizzen-topmast; then her masts were entirely carried away; and, finally, her hull fell off, and vanished from sight,—leaving a dull and smoke-colored cloud, which soon dissolved, and the whole atmosphere became clear. All affirmed that the airy vision was a precise copy and image of the missing vessel, and that it was sent to announce and describe her fate. They considered it the spectre of the lost ship; and the Rev. Mr. Davenport declared in public, "that God had condescended, for the quieting their afflicted spirits, this extraordinary account of his sovereign disposal of those for whom so many fervent prayers were made continually."

The results of modern science enable us to explain the mysterious appearance. It is probable that some Dutch vessel, proceeding slowly, quietly, and unconsciously on her voyage from Amsterdam to the New Netherlands, happened at the time to be passing through the Sound. At the moment the apparition was seen in the sky, she was so near, that her reflected image was painted or delineated, to the eyes of the observers, on the clouds, by laws of optics now generally well known, before her actual outlines could be discerned by them on the horizon. As the sun sunk behind the western hills, and his rays were gradually withdrawn, the visionary ship slowly disappeared; and the approach of night effectually concealed the vessel as she continued her course along the Sound.

The optical illusions that present themselves on the sea-shore, by which distant objects are raised to view, the opposite capes and islands made to loom up, lifted above the line of the apparent circumference of the earth, and thrown into every variety of shape which the imagination can conceive, are among the most beautiful phenomena of nature; and they impress the mind with the idea of enchantment and mystery, more perhaps than any others: but they have received a complete solution from modern discovery.

It should be observed, that the optical principles which explain these phenomena have recently afforded a foundation for the science, or rather art, of nauscopy; and there are persons in some places,—in the Isle of France, as I have been told,—whose calling and profession is to ascertain and predict the approach of vessels, by their reflection in the atmosphere and on the clouds, long before they are visible to the eye, or through the glass.

The following opinion prevailed at the time of our narrative. The discoveries in electricity, itself a recent science, have rendered it impossible for us to contemplate it without ridicule. But it was the sober opinion of the age. "A great man has noted it," says a learned writer, "that thunders break oftener on churches than any other houses, because demons have a peculiar spite at houses that are set apart for the peculiar service of God."

Every thing that was strange or remarkable—every thing at all out of the usual course, every thing that was not clear and plain—was attributed to supernatural interposition. Indeed, our fathers lived, as they thought, continually in the midst of miracles; and felt themselves surrounded, at all times, in all scenes, with innumerable invisible beings. The beautiful verse of Milton describes their faith:—

What was to him, however, a momentary vision of the imagination, was to them like a perpetual perception of the senses: it was a practical belief, an everyday common sentiment, an all-pervading feeling. But these supernatural beings very frequently were believed to have become visible to our superstitious ancestors. The instances, indeed, were not rare, of individuals having seen the Devil himself with their mortal eyes. They may well be brought to notice, as illustrating the ideas which then prevailed, and had an immediate, practical effect on the conduct of men, in reference to the power, presence, and action of the Devil in human affairs. This, in fact, is necessary, that we may understand the narrative we are preparing to contemplate of transactions based wholly on those ideas.

The following passage is extracted from a letter written to Increase Mather by the Rev. John Higginson:—

"The godly Mr. Sharp, who was ruling elder of the church of Salem almost thirty years after, related it of himself, that, being bred up to learning till he was eighteen years old, and then taken off, and put to be an apprentice to a draper in London, he yet notwithstanding continued a strong inclination and eager affection to books, with a curiosity of hearkening after and reading of the strangest and oddest books he could get, spending much of his time that way to the neglect of his business. At one time, there came a man into the shop, and brought a book with him, and said to him, 'Here is a book for you, keep this till I call for it again;' and so went away. Mr. Sharp, after his wonted bookish manner, was eagerly affected to look into that book, and read it, which he did: but, as he read in it, he was seized on by a strange kind of horror, both of body and mind, the hair of his head standing up; and, finding these effects several times, he acquainted his master with it, who, observing the same effects, they concluded it was a conjuring book, and resolved to burn it, which they did. He that brought it in the shape of a man never coming to call for it, they concluded it was the Devil. He, taking this as a solemn warning from God to take heed what books he read, was much taken off from his former bookishness; confining himself to reading the Bible, and other known good books of divinity, which were profitable to his soul."