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Updated: June 14, 2025
But since humanity cannot repose in such a stage of anarchy, we may well believe that there is coming, or has already begun, yet another stage, in which the lack of corporate support for the soul will breed attempted strange religions: witchcrafts and necromancies. It may be so. It may be that the great debate will come up for final settlement before such novel diseases spread far.
"Please also to * some of your observations about the confessors, and the credibility of what they assert; or about things evidently preternatural in the witchcrafts, and whatever else you may account an entertainment, for an inquisitive person, that entirely loves you, and Salem.
He uses them "onely for a colour," that is, puts them forward to cover his own dealings, and then he deludes them and makes them "beleeve things which are nothing so." In consequence they frequently at their executions falsely accuse others of dreadful witchcrafts. It is all the work of the Devil.
"Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws; yet these wicked men, after they have, by a most insatiable covetousness, divided that among themselves with which all the rest might have been well supplied, are far from that happiness that is enjoyed among the Utopians; for the use as well as the desire of money being extinguished, much anxiety and great occasions of mischief is cut off with it, and who does not see that the frauds, thefts, robberies, quarrels, tumults, contentions, seditions, murders, treacheries, and witchcrafts, which are, indeed, rather punished than restrained by the seventies of law, would all fall off, if money were not any more valued by the world?
And to him who held the Chair of Magic at Saragossa it was a precious thing that his windows could be made to show these marvels, while the guest to whom he was about to display these two gems of his learning was thinking of little but what he should see through the windows, and not at all of what spells, what midnight oil, what incantations, what witchcrafts, what lonely hours among bats, had gone to the gratification of his young curiosity.
I was myself once one of those; and if I heard talk of dead folks walking, of prophecies, enchantments, witchcrafts, or any other story I had no mind to believe: "Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala," Horace. I presently pitied the poor people that were abused by these follies.
We judge that, in the prosecution of these and all such witchcrafts there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest by too much credulity for things received only upon the devil's authority, there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us; for we should not be ignorant of his devices.
Displaying a courage that seemed his only redeeming quality, or bereaved of sense, according to the saying, Whom God intends to destroy He first makes mad, Joram instantly throws himself into his chariot, advances to meet the band, and demands of its leader, Is it peace, Jehu? What peace, is the other's answer, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother and her witchcrafts are so many?
When some of the Powaws, or medicine men, were boasting that they could, if they would, destroy all the praying Indians at once, Hiacoomes made reply: "Let all the Powaws in the island come together, I'll venture myself in the midst among them all. Let them use all their witchcrafts. With the help of God, I'll tread upon them all!"
We have noticed in another connection that the "malignants" were inclined to mock at the number of witches in the counties friendly to Parliament, but there is nothing to show that the mockers disbelieved the reality of the witchcrafts. It is easy enough to turn some of Hutchinson's reasoning against him, as well as to weaken the force of other arguments that may be presented on his side.
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