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Updated: April 30, 2025
"They made witch-hunting a branch of their social police, and desire for social solidarity. That this was wrong and mischievous is granted; but it is ordinary human conduct now as then.
One day when our people were in such awful distress because the witch commission were afraid to proceed against the astrologer and Father Peter's household, or against any, indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience and took to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a born lady who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts, such as bathing them, washing them, and nourishing them instead of bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a barber-surgeon in the proper way.
Once a critical judgment was aroused, the mania began to subside Cotton Mather fighting manfully for the belief to the end. The impetus given by Protestantism to witch-hunting in Scotland was most marked. Scotch witchcraft, says Lecky, was the offspring of Scotch Puritanism, and faithfully reflected the character of its parent.
History concedes to Catholic Ireland the cleanest record in respect of religious tolerance to be found anywhere in Europe. We never martyred a saint, and amid all the witch-hunting devilries of Scotland and England we burned only one witch, a namesake of my own. Deny or suppress all this. Imagine into the eyes of every Catholic neighbour the slumbering but unquenched fires of Smithfield.
In the days of witch-hunting the witch-hunters would test the women suspected with a pin, and if they found places where pain was not felt, considered they had proof of witchcraft or diabolic possession, so that many a hysteric was hanged or drowned.
And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.
He hated himself if no more promising victim loomed on the horizon. He early became the foremost Persecutor and Vice-Crusader of the new world. He made witch-hunting one of the sports of New England.
In Salem village and in other witch-hunting towns the crafty "victims" of the witches were frequently visited with their mock pains and sham fits in the meeting-houses, and they called out and interrupted the ministers most vexingly.
This is an argument that can hardly be successfully answered. Yet it is a legitimate question whether the witch-hunting proclivities of the north were not as much the outcome of Scottish laws and manners as of Scottish religion.
She was very tired from the long drive and, almost without thinking, she did not get up to turn out the light. She thought at it. The switch clicked and the light went out. She felt foolish and a little frightened. She had never told Nuwell of this sort of thing. Can a woman ask her witch-hunting lover: "Do you think I'm a witch?"
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