United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
'What we are now to deliver, my brethren, hem hem, I mean, my good friends, was not done in a corner, and may serve as an answer to witch-advocates, atheists, and misbelievers of all kinds.
Whoever disapproved of such proceedings, or intimated any doubt concerning the popular notions about witchcraft, were called "Sadducees and witch-advocates." These terms were used by Mather, on all occasions, as marks of opprobrium, to stigmatize and make odious such persons.
'What we are now to deliver, my brethren, hem hem, I mean, my good friends, was not done in a corner, and may serve as an answer to witch-advocates, atheists, and misbelievers of all kinds.
Indeed, good sir, you err in this, and give men too much pretence to confound your honourable name with witch-advocates, free-thinkers, and atheists, even with such as this man Bletson, who, if the discipline of the church had its hand strengthened, as it was in the beginning of the great conflict, would have been long ere now cast out of the pale, and delivered over to the punishment of the flesh, that his spirit might, if possible, be yet saved."
The whole matter was there talked over. The project Mather had been contemplating was matured; and arrangements made with Stephen Sewall, who had them in his custody, to send to Mather the Records of the trials; and, thus provided, he proceeded, without further delay, in obedience to the commands laid upon him by "his Excellency," to prepare for the press, The Wonders of the Invisible World, which was designed to send to the shades, "Sadduceeism," to extirpate "witch-advocates," and to leave the course clear for the indefinite continuance of the prosecutions, until, as Stoughton expressed it, "the land was cleared" of all witches.
This book was written while the proceedings at Salem were at their height, during the very month in which sixteen persons had been sentenced to death and eight executed, evidently, from its whole tenor, and as the Reviewer admits, for the purpose of silencing objectors and doubters, Sadducees and Witch-advocates, before the meeting of the Court, by adjournment, in the first week of November, to continue as the Ministers, in their Advice, expressed it their "sedulous and assiduous endeavours to defeat the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country."
"What we are now to deliver, my brethren, hem hem, I mean, my good friends, was not done in a corner, and may serve as an answer to witch-advocates, atheists, and misbelievers of all kinds. "Aweel I wot there's something in that," said Mrs. Mac-Candlish; "I've kenn'd him order her twa' glasses o' brandy in this very house." "Aweel, gudewife, then the less I lee.
'What we are now to deliver, my brethren, hem hem, I mean, my good friends, was not done in a corner, and may serve as an answer to witch-advocates, atheists, and misbelievers of all kinds.