The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

IV. Witchcraft Trials Mar the Century

The colonists had brought with them from Europe a vivid consciousness of the supernatural. The seventeenth century, in both the Old World and the New, was an age of magic and witch craft. Comets and similar phenomena were often regarded as supernatural manifestations, purported to mark some event of special importance. Thus the “blazing comet” of 1680 was the occasion of Increase Mather’s Heaven’s Alarm to the World. ¹⁰ PFF3 142.1

The seventeenth century marked the height of the witch craft prosecutions, and the Mosaic injunction was invoked, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” ¹¹ In the previous century in Europe hundreds had been burned for witchcraft. ¹² The scenes were far flung, including Italy, Spain, France, Switzer land, Germany, and even England. In Scotland this prosecution of witches reached even greater heights of horror. And it was during the period of seventeenth-century Puritan ascend ancy that the witchcraft inquest reached its zenith in the American colonies. ¹³ 3 PFF3 142.2

While there were some witchcraft charges in Virginia and Maryland, it was in New England that it reached its greatest excesses. ¹⁴ There were two well-defined epidemics of these witch burnings-one from 1647 to 1663, the other from 1688 to 1693. ¹⁵ Trials and executions followed with “monotonous regularity” in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The climax was reached at Salem. This continued until the terrible epidemic wore itself out through its own excesses. ¹⁶ It came at last to be recognized that most of the persons executed had been innocent, and this proved a fatal boomerang against the clergy. PFF3 142.3

The witchcraft debacle had occurred in the stifling atmosphere of a theocracy-glutted generation. Then the stark terror of witchcraft was followed by reactionism. The Salem outbreak was the logical outcome of the long policy of repression that hanged Quakers and destroyed independent thought. The witchcraft madness was the dramatic aftermath. ¹⁷ Thus power finally slipped from the hands of the oligarchy. The old order was breaking. PFF3 143.1