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Set this good hint of Cotton Mather against that letter of his to John Richards, recommending the search after witch-marks, and the application of the water-ordeal, which means throw your grandmother into the water, if she has a mole on her arm; if she swims, she is a witch and must be hanged; if she sinks, the Lord have mercy on her soul!
"Witch-marks" were good evidence that a young woman was one of the Devil's wet-nurses; I should like to have seen you make fun of them in those days!
"Witch-marks" were good evidence that a young woman was one of the Devil's wet-nurses; I should like to have seen you make fun of them in those days!
"Witch-marks" were good evidence that a young woman was one of the Devil's wet-nurses; I should like to have seen you make fun of them in those days!
And I knew well the reason, for not many rods distant was the hut where dwelt one Margery Key, an ancient woman, who had been verily tied crosswise and thrown in a pond for witchcraft and been weighed against the church Bible, and had her body searched for witch-marks and the thatch of her house burned.
Set this good hint of Cotton Mather against that letter of his to John Richards, recommending the search after witch-marks, and the application of the water-ordeal, which means throw your grandmother into the water, if she has a mole on her arm; if she swims, she is a witch and must be hanged; if she sinks, the Lord have mercy on her soul!
At this, as all thought it, horrible charge, a cold thrill ran through the crowd. They all had heard of witch-marks, but never of one like this the very serpent, perhaps, which had deluded Eve. Joseph Putnam smiled disdainfully. "A set of stupid, superstitious fools!" he muttered through his teeth. "Half the De Bellevilles had that mark." "I will have that looked into," said Squire Hathorne.
That shows the impurity of his 'zeal, which flamed only against what it was for his advantage to destroy, and left the more popular and older idolatry undisturbed. Obedience has to be 'all in all, or not at all. We may not 'compound for sins we are inclined to, by' zeal against those 'we have no mind to. Our consciences are apt to have insensitive spots in them, like witch-marks.
Once accused, the culprit was not to be allowed to touch the ground on the way to prison, was not to be left alone there lest she have interviews with the Devil and get from him the means of being insensible under torture, was to be stripped and shaved in order to prevent her concealing some charm, or to facilitate the finding of witch-marks.
He recommends putting the Prisoners upon repeating the "Lord's prayer" or certain "other Systems of Christianity." He endorses the evidence derived from "poppits," "witch-marks," and even the "water ordeal."
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