That there is a Devil, is a thing Doubted by none
but such as are under the Influences of the Devil.
(Cotton Mather: Wonders of the Invisible World)
The witch trials were not the end of innocence and meekness – innocence had been decapitated violently decades and decades before when the Puritan settlers had taken possession of the colonial site with all due and undue brutality, thereby nearly extinguishing the Pequod. Innocence had in fact been lost, but now, at the end of the 17th century even the idea of innocence was at danger – the notion of a simple, unburdened Puritan community life was no longer an option. It still was very alive in Michael Wigglesworth – his doomsday verses are all dedicated to a return to innocence (whether or not he thought that return was possible is another question, but at least he plants it into his poem as a motive: people would repent and things would be fine once again).
Cotton Mather, like Wigglesworth, is painfully aware of the steep fall the Puritans had taken – in “Enchantments Encounter’d”, the first main part of the work (not on your handout), he finds that –
All this notwithstanding, we must humbly confess to out God, that we are miserably degenerated from the first Love of our Predecessors.
He goes on at great length in this introductory chapter to stress the opposition of the first generation Puritan martyrs – the predecessors – and the present-day Puritan population. The predecessors had accomplished the impossible – they had subdued the territory of the devil (that is, a country inhabited not by Protestant Europeans, but by indigenous people) and made it a Puritan land. What did their descendants have to compare with that?
A bunch of apocalyptic witches at their door, to begin with.
Still in the introduction, he finds that –
Wherefore the Devil is now making one attempt more upon us; an attempt more difficult, more surprising, more snarl’d with unintelligible circumstances than any that we have hitherto encountered; an attempt so critical that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon Days with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under our feet.
He’s claiming that a “Horrible PLOT” is at work, executed by witchcrafty evildoers against the Puritan population. On these first few pages, he’s mentioning so many, many devils, demons, and witches – you really start to know he’s serious the way he is beating it into you. There is no way, he argues, to take witchcraft as a local phenomenon – no, it is everywhere in the country, practically the whole American site is infested with it. From here on, the battle was everyone vs. everyone. There was no longer an presumption of innocence: everybody could be guilty of witchcraft, everybody could be a potential bearer of Satan who may work his evil even while his bearer may seem innocent. Since everyone was a potential witch, methods had to be devised to reveal the true witches out of the potential mass.
One of these was badmouthing your neighbors. In a highly revealing passage Mather states that
If any Man or Woman be notoriously defamed for a Witch, this yields a strong suspicion. Yet the judge ought carefully to look that the Report be made by a man of honesty and credit.
If needs be, even a woman would do to raise the accusation, of course. The passage is contradictory in its own way - over the whole length of the Wonders he makes an effort to make witchcraft comprehensible as also an intellectual phenomenon that you had to invest brainpower on to get behind its tricky disguises and ruses - but then he says that, basically, anyone can recognize it, at least to such an extent that made it possible to raise a finger against neighbors, townsfolk, anyone.
Next, after the introduction, he’s giving us a chapter called “A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World” – basically a sermon on a passage from the book of Revelation, a very famous passage. The sermon, or parts of it, was held in early August 1692, while the Salem trials were still unrolling.
In it he is talking about the following quote from Revelation, as he gives it:
Wo to the Inhabitants of the Earth, and of the Sea; for the Devil is come down unto you, having great Wrath; because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. (Rev. 12.12 - in the manuscript it's given with that chapter reference, but chapter 12.12 is, actually, a very different verse in any version of Scriptures I'm looking it up in. Hmmm.)
Without going into too much detail – it’s a long sermon, explaining in all ways possible why and how the devil is at work in the world and why his threats need to be taken seriously – there is one passage that stands out, rigorously:
There is little room for hope, that the great wrath of the Devil will not prove the present ruine of our poor New England in particular. I believe, there never was a poor Plantation, more pursued by the wrath of the Devil, than our poor New England; and that which makes our condition very much the more deplorable is, that the wrath of the Great God Himself, at the same time also presses hard upon us. It was a rousing alarm to the Devil, when a great Company of English Protestants and Puritans, came to erect Evangelical Churches, in a corner of the World, where he had reign’d without any controul for many Ages; and it is a vexing Eye-sore to the Devil, that our Lord Christ should be known, and own’d, and preached in this howling Wilderness. Wherefor he has left no Stone unturned, that so he might undermine his Plantation, and force out of our Country.
It is our country, The Puritans' country, not the country of Satan’s supposed agents – and as such he lists the usual suspects: the heathen Indians and the Catholic French, against who the British were fighting at in the First French and Indian War at the time Mather was preaching the sermon. Both were not too available as sparring partners: the Indians, as far as they were pertinent to Massachusetts at the time, had already been fought and killed, and the French were, of course, a major world power that the British mother country had to bring up all its forces to fight. In cooperation with their Indian allies, they also directed raids at British settlements - one of these became notoriously known as the Schenectady massacre (February 8, 1690). Still, they were more a vague danger than a palpable threat to the community - and the community needed someone to put to trial, publicly.
Hence, in come the witches: these were easily available. Hell, anybody could be a witch, even your best neighbor!
An Intellectual's Reservations
The following passages are taken from The Third Curiositie and the table of contents on the first page of our handout.
III. If a Drop of Innocent Blood should be shed, in the Prosecution of the Witchcrafts among us, how unhappy are we! For which cause, I cannot express my self in better terms, than those of a most Worthy Person, who lives near the present Center of these things."The Mind of God in these matters, is to be carefully look'd into, with due Circumspection, that Satan deceive us not with his Devices, who transforms himself into an Angel of Light, and may pretend Justice and yet intend Mischief." But on the other side, if the Storm of Justice do now fall only on the Heads of those Guilty Witches and Wretches which have defiled our Land, How Happy!
&
II. Some Counsils, Directing a due Improvement of the terrible things, lately done, by the Unusual and Amazing Range of Evil Spirits, in Our Neighbourhood: and the methods to prevent the Wrongs which those Evil Angels may intend against all sorts of people among us; especially in Accusations of the Innocent.
What is his problem here? He needs to reconcile two irreconcilable claims: first, that everybody may be guilty of witchcraft, even while appearing innocent, second, that no innocent person may be penalized. He needs to unite a theological belief in the universal guilt of the Puritan colonies and a juridical belief in the presumption of innocence.
What is his self-understanding, as it is expressed in the text?
He's making much of being a historian, as we have seen - as a scholar, so his story is supposed to go, he approaches his topic impartially and emotionally uninvolved. Of course, he also had to sell his work - and there was actual editorial (maybe even: artistic?) work going on here. The book did not go from the pulpit straight into the heart.
There might have been more of these, if my book would not thereby have been swollen too big; and if some other worthy hands did not intend something further in these Collections for which cause I have singled out Four or Five, which may serve to Illustrate the way of dealing, wherein Witchcrafts use to be concerned; and I Report matters not as Advocate but as an Historian.
He also stresses that he “was not Present at any of them” (same paragraph) and that he didn’t hold personal grudges and prejudices against the people accused – that is, he is putting a distance between himself and the subject of inquiry, or appears to do so.
Strangely however, he begins his first case narration with a very personal note –
Glad should I have been, if I had never known this man, or never had this occasion to mention as much as the first Letters of his name. But the Government requiring some Account of his Trial to be Inserted in this Book, it becomes me with all Obedience to submit unto the Order.
G.B. stands for George Burroughs, a Puritan minister who seemed to have some brutality issues with his wives (who, obviously, he didn’t treat too well). This allegations of violence blended over into a trial in Salem (to where he was deported), where several indicted women named him as Satan’s chief messenger: a super-witch or – wizard, if you will.
When standing at the gallows he reputedly claimed, once again, his innocence and then said the Lord’s prayer, which witches and wizards were supposedly not able to do. People demanded he be exonerated from the gallows, when they heard him praying, but to no avail: he died.
The charges against him were pretty generic, as Mather presents them - your regular witchcraft compendium deported from Europe to America: supernatural strength plays a role, the invisible devil man that, Mather tells us, only GB is capable of seeing, and his leading and seducing a circle of female witches.
Obviously, Burroughs was not able to tell his story, so Mather had to do it for him (see the bottom of page 4 of out handout) – how is GB portrayed as speechless? Why does Mather do that? What are his interests in doing it? Would it even matter at all if Burroughs had been very conversant about defending himself?
Yes!
Mather wants to be authentic: his Wonders of the Invisible World was to be an authentically Puritan account of the witch trials, and as such it had to be dominated by a Puritan voice – his, Mather’s, voice. There was no way to portray Burroughs as anything else than a tacit and silent man who lies the moment he opens his mouth. Mather also doesn’t mention Burrough’s prayer at the gallows – guilt had to be absolute to make sure no innocent person was harmed, hence Mather makes sure not to take note of any mitigating circumstances.
Note how Mather tries to attach a strict dogmatical line on the Puritan experience - we read The First Curiositie, where he is spending some time on the Indian settlement of Mexico as a sort of hoax on the Old Testamental story of the 40 year pilgrimage through the desert, which the Puritans might take as very similar to their own situation in the new world. Also, he makes clear in that chapter that miracles were fine only as long as they happened under Christian auspices, not, however, under the hands of witches.
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