Witchcraft in America. Charles Wentworth Upham

can learn things done a Thousand Leagues off; If a Swedeland should afford a Village, where some scores of Haggs, may not only have their Meetings with Familiar Spirits, but also by their Enchantments drag many scores of poor children out of their Bed-chambers, to be spoiled at those Meetings; This, were not altogether a matter of so much wonder! But that New-England should this way be harassed! They are not Chaldeans, that Bitter and Hasty Nation, but they are, Bitter and Burning Devils; They are not Swarthy Indians, but they are Sooty Devils; that are let loose upon us. Ah, Poor New-England! Must the plague of Old Ægypt come upon thee? Whereof we read in Psal. 78.49. He cast upon them the fierceness of his Anger, Wrath, and Indignation, and Trouble, by sending Evil Angels among them. What, O what must next be looked for? Must that which is there next mentioned, be next encountered? He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the Pestilence. For my part, when I consider what Melancthon says, in one of his Epistles, That these Diabolical Spectacles are often Prodigies; and when I consider, how often people have been by Spectres called upon, just before their Deaths; I am verily afraid, lest some wasting Mortality be among the things, which this Plague is the Forerunner of. I pray God prevent it!

      But now, What shall we do?

      I. Let the Devils coming down in great wrath upon us, cause us to come down in great grief before the Lord. We may truly and sadly say, We are brought very low! Low indeed, when the Serpents of the dust, are crawling and coyling about us, and Insulting over us. May we not say, We are in the very belly of Hell, when Hell it self is feeding upon us? But how Low is that! O let us then most penitently lay our selves very Low before the God of Heaven, who has thus Abased us. When a Truculent Nero, a Devil of a Man, was turned in upon the World, it was said, in 1 Pet. 5.6. Humble your selves under the mighty hand of God. How much more now ought we to humble our selves under that Mighty Hand of that God who indeed has the Devil in a Chain, but has horribly lengthened out the Chain! When the old people of God heard any Blasphemies, tearing of his Ever-Blessed Name to pieces, they were to Rend their Cloaths at what they heard. I am sure that we have cause to Rend our Hearts this Day, when we see what an High Treason has been committed against the most high God, by the Witchcrafts in our Neighbourhood. We may say; and shall we not be humbled when we say it? We have seen an horrible thing done in our Land! O 'tis a most humbling thing, to think, that ever there should be such an abomination among us, as for a crue of humane race, to renounce their Maker, and to unite with the Devil, for the troubling of mankind, and for People to be, (as is by some confess'd) Baptized by a Fiend using this form upon them, Thou art mine, and I have a full power over thee! afterwards communicating in an Hellish Bread and Wine, by that Fiend administred unto them. It was said in Deut. 18.10, 11, 12. There shall not be found among you an Inchanter, or a Witch, or a Charmer, or a Consulter with Familiar Spirits, or a Wizzard, or a Necromancer; For all that do these things are an Abomination to the Lord, and because of these Abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out before thee. That New-England now should have these Abominations in it, yea, that some of no mean Profession, should be found guilty of them: Alas, what Humiliations are we all hereby oblig'd unto? O 'tis a Defiled Land, wherein we live; Let us be humbled for these Defiling Abominations, lest we be driven out of our Land. It's a very humbling thing to think, what reproaches will be cast upon us, for this matter, among The Daughters of the Philistines. Indeed, enough might easily be said for the vindication of this Country from the Singularity of this matter, by ripping up, what has been discovered in others. Great Brittain alone, and this also in our days of Greatest Light, has had that in it, which may divert the Calumnies of an ill-natured World, from centring here. They are words of the Devout Bishop Hall, Satans prevalency in this Age, is most clear in the marvellous Number of Witches, abounding in all places. Now Hundreds are discovered in one Shire; and, if Fame Deceives us not, in a Village of Fourteen Houses in the North, are found so many of this Damned Brood. Yea, and those of both Sexes, who have Professed much Knowledge, Holiness, and Devotion, are drawn into this Damnable Practice. I suppose the Doctor in the first of those Passages, may refer to what happened in the Year 1645. When so many Vassals of the Devil were Detected, that there were Thirty try'd at one time, whereas about fourteen were Hang'd, and an Hundred more detained in the Prisons of Suffolk and Essex. Among other things which many of these Acknowledged, one was, That they were to undergo certain Punishments, if they did not such and such Hurts, as were appointed them. And, among the rest that were then Executed, there was an Old Parson, called Lowis, who confessed, That he had a couple of Imps, whereof one was always putting him upon the doing of Mischief; Once particularly, that Imp calling for his Consent so to do, went immediately and Sunk a Ship, then under Sail. I pray, let not New-England become of an Unsavoury and a Sulphurous Resentment in the Opinion of the World abroad, for the Doleful things which are now fallen out among us, while there are such Histories of other places abroad in the World. Nevertheless, I am sure that we, the People of New-England, have cause enough to Humble our selves under our most Humbling Circumstances. We must no more be Haughty, because of the Lords Holy Mountain among us; No it becomes us rather to be, Humble, because we have been such an Habitation of Unholy Devils!

      II. Since the Devil is come down in great wrath upon us, let not us in our great wrath against one another provide a Lodging for him. It was a most wholesome caution, in Eph. 4.26, 27. Let not the Sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the Devil. The Devil is come down to see what Quarter he shall find among us: And if his coming down, do now fill us with wrath against one another, and if between the cause of the Sufferers on one hand, and the cause of the Suspected on t'other, we carry things to such extreams of Passion as are now gaining upon us, the Devil will Bless himself, to find such a convenient Lodging as we shall therein afford unto him. And it may be that the wrath which we have had against one another has had more than a little influence upon the coming down of the Devil in that wrath which now amazes us. Have not many of us been Devils one unto another for Slanderings, for Backbitings, for Animosities? For this, among other causes, perhaps, God has permitted the Devils to be worrying, as they now are, among us. But it is high time to leave off all Devilism, when the Devil himself is falling upon us: And it is no time for us to be Censuring and Reviling one another, with a Devilish wrath, when the wrath of the Devil is annoying of us. The way for us to out-wit the Devil, in the Wiles with which he now Vexes us, would be for us to joyn as one man in our cries to God, for the Directing, and Issuing of this Thorny Business; but if we do not Lift up our Hands to Heaven, without Wrath, we cannot then do it without Doubt, of speeding in it. I am ashamed when I read French Authors giving this Character of Englishmen (Ils se haissent Les uns les autres, & sont en Division Continuelle.) They hate one another, and are always Quarrelling one with another. And I shall be much more ashamed, if it become the Character of New-Englanders; which is indeed what the Devil would have. Satan would make us bruise one another, by breaking of the Peace among us; but O let us disappoint him. We read of a thing that sometimes happens to the Devil, when he is foaming with his Wrath, in Mar. 12.43. The unclean Spirit seeks rest, and finds none. But we give rest unto the Devil, by wrath one against another. If we would lay aside all fierceness, and keenness, in the disputes which the Devil has raised among us; and if we would use to one another none but the soft Answers, which turn away wrath: I should hope that we might light upon such Counsels, as would quickly Extricate us out of our Labyrinths. But the old Incendiary of the world, is come from Hell, with Sparks of Hell-Fire flashing on every side of him; and we make our selves Tynder to the Sparks. When the Emperour Henry III. kept the Feast of Pentecost, at the City Mentz, there arose a dissension among some of the people there, which came from words to blows, and at last it passed on to the shedding of Blood. After the Tumult was over, when they came to that clause in their Devotions, Thou hast made this day Glorious; the