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It was at staid Boston that Anne Hutchinson marshaled her forces; it was at
peace-loving Salem that the Devil marshaled his witches in a last despairing
onslaught against the saints. To many of its readers there seemed to be little
or no connection between witchcraft and religion; but an investigation of the
facts leading to the death sentence of the various martyrs to superstition at
Salem will convince the skeptical that there was a most intimate relationship
between the Puritan belief and the theory of witchcraft.
Looking back after
the passing of more than two hundred years, it was said to believe the bizarre
explanation, skilled and thoroughly intelligent folk as the Puritans could have
believed in the possession of this evil power. It especially appeared incredibly
when it was remembered that here was a people that came to this country for the
exercise of religious freedom, a citizenship that descended from men trained in
the universities of England, a well-built band that under extreme privation has
created an institution within sixteen years after the settlement of wilderness.
It was borne in the mind that the Massachusetts colonies were not alone in this
belief in witchcraft. It as common throughout the world, and was as aged as
humankind. Deprived of the aid of modern science in explaining odd methods and
activities, man had long been adapted to fall back upon devils, witches, and
evil spirits as premises for his arguments. While the execution of the witch was
not so common an event elsewhere in the world, during the Salem period, yet it
was unknown among 'so-called' open-minded people. In 1712, a woman was burned
near London for witchcraft and several city clergymen were among the
prosecutors.
The religion of Salem and Boston was well fitted for developing
this very theory of hateful power in "possessed" persons. The teachings that
there was a personal devil, that God allowed him to tempt mankind, that there
were myriads of devils under Satan's control at all times, ever watchful to trap
the innocent, that these devils were rulers over certain territory and certain
types of people. These teachings naturally led to the assumption that the
goblins chose certain persons as their very own. The constant reminders of the
danger of straying from the strait and narrow way, and of the tortures of the
afterworld led to self-consciousness, introspection, and morbidness. The idea
that Satan was all times seeking to weaken the Puritan church also made it easy
to believe that anyone living outside of that church was an agent of the devil
or bewitched. As it is only the useful that survives, it was essential that the
army of devils be given a work to do, and this work was evident in the spirit of
those who dares to act and think in non-con-formity to the rule of the church.
The devil's ways were beyond the comprehension of man, sneakiness, smooth, sly;
the godliest might fall a victim, with the terrible consequence that one might
become bewitched and know it not. At this stage it was the bounden duty of the
unfortunate being's church brethren to help him by remind him to confess the
indwelling of an evil spirit and thus free himself from the great impostor. And
if he did not confess then it were better that he be killed, in case the devil
through him contaminate all. Why, says Mather, in his Wonders of the Invisible
World: "If the devils now can strike the minds of men with any poisons of so
fine a composition and operation, that scores of innocent people shall unite in
confessions of a crime which see actually committed, it is a thing prodigious,
beyond the wonders of the former ages, and it threatens no less than a sort of
dissolution upon the world."
We cannot doubt in most instances the sincerity
of these men and women, and in later days, when confessions of rash and swift
charges of action were made, their regret was in fact just as sincere. Judge
Seawall, for instance, read before the assembled congregation his petition to
God for forgiveness. "In a short time all the people recovered from their
madness, [and] admitted their errorIn 1697 the General Court ordered a day of
fasting and prayer for what had been done amiss in the 'late tragedy raised
among us by Satan.' Satan was the scapegoat, nothing was said about the designs
and motives of the ministers." Possibly it was just as well that Satan was
blamed; for the responsibility is thus shifted for one of the most hideous pages
in American History.
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