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Updated: April 30, 2025
And on this and on other matters he thought he would compromise with his conscience, and that Sadduceeism was a very convenient and good-humoured profession of faith. On a picturesque common in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, Lady Clavering had found a pretty villa, whither she retired after her conjugal disputes at the end of that unlucky London season.
The avowed purpose of Mather, in seeking it, was to put it into circulation to "box it about" thereby to produce an effect, to the putting down of Sadduceeism, or all further opposition to witchcraft prosecutions. He, undoubtedly, contemplated making it a part of his book, the Wonders of the Invisible World, printed, the next year, in London.
The work was written under a sense of the necessity of maintaining the position into which the Government of the Province had been led, by so suddenly and rashly organizing the Special Court and putting it upon its bloody work, at Salem; and this could only be done by renewing and fortifying the popular conviction, that such proceedings were necessary, and ought to be vigorously prosecuted, and all Sadduceeism, or opposition to them, put down.
Worldly and incredulous Sadduceeism might possibly not recoil before such a consequence, and a consummate sage, like Antigonus of Soco, might indeed maintain that we must not practise virtue like a slave in expectation of a recompense, that we must be virtuous without hope. But the mass of the people could not be contented with that.
Such were the reports of those of the trials, which had then taken place, selected by Mather to be put into the Wonders of the Invisible World, and thus to be "boxed about," to adopt the Reviewer's interpretation to strike down the "Spectre of Sadduceeism," that is, to extirpate and bring to an end all doubts about witchcraft and all attempts to stop the prosecutions.
The point, on which the Reviewer raises an objection to the statement in my book, in reference to this letter, is, as to the antecedent of "it," in the expression, "box it about." The opinion I gave was that it referred to the document requested to be sent by Sewall. The Reviewer says it refers to "a Spectre," in the preceding line, or as he expresses it, "the fallen Spectre of Sadduceeism."
Common-sense, and 'drolling Sadduceeism, came to their own, in England, with the king, with Charles II. After May 29, 1660, Webster and Wagstaffe mocked at bogles, if Glanvill and More took them seriously. Before the Restoration it was distinctly dangerous to laugh at witchcraft, ghosts and hauntings.
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