The Penguin Book of Witches (21 page)

Samuel Sewall was the only judge involved in the Salem trials to apologize afterward for his involvement, although Nathaniel Saltonstall absented himself from the trials after the execution of Bridget Bishop in early June 1692.
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Interestingly, Sewall came to his apology not because he stopped believing in witches and witchcraft. On the contrary, he felt only that Satan had misled him and the other judges as part of his ongoing attempts to derail the Christian community in which they all lived. Sewall started to reconsider his involvement after experiencing a series of wonders and marvels, which caused him to speculate what blemish on his soul might have made God unhappy with him. Sewall in this instance represents a fascinating turning point in North American intellectual history, a Harvard-trained Puritan whose very faith acts to underscore his eventual skepticism.
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He delivered his apology in public, on a day of public fasting and prayer declared by the Massachusetts legislature.

Sewall’s Apology
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Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family, and being sensible that as to the guilt contracted upon the opening of the late commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem (to which the order of this day relates) he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of, desires to take the blame and shame of it, asking pardon of men. And especially desiring prayers that God, who has an unlimited authority, would pardon that sin and all other his sins, personal and relative. And according to his infinite benignity and sovereignty, not visit the sin of him or of any other upon himself or any of his, nor upon the land. But that he would powerfully defend him against all temptations to sin, for the future and vouchsafe him the efficacious, saving conduct of his word and spirit.

Following Samuel Sewall’s public apology for his involvement in the Salem trials, a number of jurors who had been instrumental in the condemnations of witches also jumped to make their own public apology. They reaffirmed their intent to act rightly, but such rapid public distancing helped to push belief in witchcraft out of the courtroom and into the more private, and less measured, court of public opinion.

The Jury’s Apology
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Some that had been of several juries have given forth a paper, signed with our own hands in these words. We whose names are underwritten, being in the year 1692 called to serve as jurors in court in Salem, on trial of many who were by some suspected guilty of doing acts of witchcraft upon the bodies of sundry persons.

We confess that we ourselves were not capable to understand, nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the powers of darkness and prince of the air,
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but were for want of knowledge in ourselves and better information from others, prevailed with to take up with such evidence against the accused as on further consideration and better information, we justly fear was insufficient for the touching the lives of any, Deuteronomy 17.6,
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whereby we fear we have been instrumental with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon ourselves and this people of the Lord, the guilt of innocent blood, which sin the Lord saith in Scripture, he would not pardon, 2 Kings 24.4,
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that is we suppose in regard of His temporal judgments. We do, therefore, hereby signify to all in general (and to the surviving sufferers in especial) our deep sense of and sorrow for our errors in acting on such evidence to the condemning of any person.

And do hereby declare that we justly fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken, for which we are much disquieted and distressed in our minds, and do therefore humbly beg forgiveness, first of God for Christ’s sake for this our error. And pray that God would not impute the guilt of it to ourselves nor others. And we also pray that we may be considered candidly and aright by the living sufferers as being then under the power of a strong and general delusion,
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utterly unacquainted with and not experienced in matters of that nature.

We do heartily ask forgiveness of you all, whom we have justly offended and do declare, according to our present minds, we would none of us do such things again on such grounds for the whole world, praying you to accept of this in way of satisfaction for our offense, and that you would bless the inheritance of the Lord that He may be entreated for the land.

Robert Calef was a Boston merchant who finally published his account of the Salem episode a few short years after the trials concluded, after the tide of public opinion had already begun to turn. However, while he was writing it over the 1690s, he was unable to find a North American publisher for his account, which heavily criticized Cotton Mather on several theological points and called all the Salem trials into question. Calef’s book first appeared in London in 1700, but was widely circulated in Massachusetts, and caused enough consternation among the Puritan elite that Increase Mather oversaw the burning of copies of the Calef book in Harvard Square.

More Wonders of the Invisible World
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In a time when not only England in particular, but almost all Europe had been laboring against the usurpations of tyranny and slavery, the English America has not been behind in a share in the common calamitie. More especially, New England has met not only with such calamities as are common to the rest but with several aggravations enhancing such afflictions, by the devastations and cruelties of the barbarous Indians in their eastern borders, et cetera.
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But this is not all. They have been harassed (on many accounts) by a more dreadful enemy, as will herein appear to the considerate.

Were it as we are told in
Wonders of the Invisible World
,
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that the devils were walking about our streets with lengthened chains making a dreadful noise in our ears, and brimstone, even without a metaphor, was making a horrid and a hellish stench in our nostrils, and that the Devil exhibiting himself ordinarily as a black man had decoyed a fearful knot of proud, forward, ignorant, envious and malicious creatures to list themselves in his horrid service by entering their names in a book tendered unto them, and that they have had their meetings and sacraments and associated themselves to destroy the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in these parts of the world, having each of them their specters, or devils, commissioned by them, and representing of them, to be the engines of their malice, by these wicked specters seizing poor people about the country with various and bloody torments. And of those evidently preternatural torments some too have died. And that they have bewitched some even so far as to make them self-destroyers, and others in many towns here and there languished under their evil hands. The people thus afflicted miserably scratched and bitten, and that the same invisible furies did stick pins in them, and scald them, distort and disjoint them, with a thousand other plagues and sometimes drag them out of their chambers and carry them over trees and hills miles together, many of them being tempted to sign the Devil’s laws.

These furies whereof several have killed more people perhaps than would serve to make a village.

If this be the true state of the afflictions of this country, it is very deplorable, and beyond all other outward calamities miserable. But if on the other side, the matter be as others do understand it, that the Devil has been too hard for us by his temptations, signs, and lying wonders, with the help of pernicious notions formerly imbibed and professed; together with the accusations of a parcel of possessed, distracted, or lying wenches, accusing their innocent neighbors, pretending they see their specters, that is, devils in their likeness afflicting of them, and that God in righteous judgment (after men had ascribed his power to witches, of commissioning devils to do these things) may have given them over to strong delusions to believe lies, et cetera. And to let loose the devils of envy, hatred, pride, cruelty, and malice against each other; yet still disguised under the mask of zeal for God, and left them to the branding one another with the odious name of witch; and upon the accusation of those above mentioned, brother to accuse and prosecute brother, children their parents, pastors and teachers their immediate flock unto death. Shepherds becoming wolves, wise men infatuated, people hauled to prisons, with a bloody noise pursuing to, and insulting over, the (true) sufferers at execution, while some are fleeing from that called justice, justice itself fleeing before such accusations, when once it did but begin to refrain further proceedings, and to question such practices, some making their escape out of prisons, rather than by an obstinate defense of their innocency, to run so apparent hazard of their lives. Estates seized, families of children and others left to the mercy of the wilderness (not to mention here the numbers prescribed dead in prisons or executed, et cetera).

All which tragedies, though begun in one town, or rather by one parish, has plaguelike spread more than through that country. And by its echo giving a brand of infamy to this whole country throughout the world. If this were the miserable case of this country in the time thereof, and that the Devil had so far prevailed upon us in our sentiments and actions, as to draw us from so much as looking into the scriptures for our guidance in these pretended intricacies, leading us to a trusting in blind guides, such as the corrupt practices of some other countries, or the bloody experiments of Bodin,
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and such other authors. Then though our case be most miserable, yet it must be said of New England, thou has destroyed thyself, and brought this greatest of miseries upon thee.

And now whether the witches (such as have made a compact by explicit covenant with the Devil, having thereby obtained a power to commission him) have been the cause of our miseries, or whether a zeal governed by blindness and passion, and led by precedent, has not herein precipitated us into far greater wickedness (if not witchcrafts) than any have been yet proved against those that suffered, to be able to distinguish aright in this matter, to which of these two to refer our miseries is the present work. As to the former, I know of no sober man, much less reverend Christian, that being asked dares affirm and abide by it, that witches have that power; namely, to commission devils to kill and destroy. And as to the latter, it were well if there were not too much of truth in it, which remains to be demonstrated.

But here it will be said, what need of raking in the coals that lay buried in oblivion. We cannot recall those to life again that have suffered, supposing it were unjustly; it tends but to the exposing the actors, as if they had proceeded irregularly.

Truly, I take this to be just as the Devil would have it, so much to fear disobliging men, as not to endeavor to detect his wiles, that so he may the sooner, and with the greater advantages set the same on foot again (either here or elsewhere) so dragging us through the pond twice by the same cat. And if reports do not (herein) deceive us, much the same has been acting this present year in Scotland. And what kingdom or country is it that has not had their bloody fits and turns at it. And if this is such a catching disease, and so universal, I presume I need make no apology for my endeavors to prevent, as far as in my power, any more such bloody victims or sacrifices. Though indeed I had rather any other would have undertaken so offensive, though necessary, a task. Yet all things weighed, I had rather thus expose myself to censure, than that it should be wholly omitted. Were the notions in question innocent and harmless, respecting the glory of God, and well-being of men, I should not have engaged in them, but finding them in my esteem so intolerably destructive of both, this, together with my being by warrant called before the justices, in my own just vindication, I took it to be a call from God to my power, to vindicate his truths, against the pagan and popish assertions
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which are so prevalent. For though Christians in general do own the scriptures to be their only rule of Faith and doctrine, yet these notions will tell us that the scriptures have not sufficiently, nor at all, described the crime of witchcraft, whereby the culpable might be detected, though it be positive in the command to punish it by death. Hence the world has been from time to time perplexed in the prosecution of the several diabolical mediums of heathenish and popish invention, to detect an imaginary crime (not but that there are witches, such as the law of God describes) which has produced a deluge of blood; hereby rendering the commands of God not only void but dangerous.

So also they own God’s providence and government of the world, and that tempests and storms, afflictions and diseases are of his sending. Yet these notions tell us that the Devil has the power of all these and can perform them when commissioned by a witch thereto, and that he has a power at the witch’s call to act and do, without and against the course of nature, and all natural causes, in afflicting and killing of innocents; and this is that so many have died for.

Also it is generally believed that if any man has strength, it is from God the almighty being. But these notions will tell us that the Devil can make one man as strong as many, which was one of the best proofs, as it was counted, against Mr. Burroughs the minister. Though his contemporaries in the schools during his minority could have testified that his strength was then as much superior to theirs as ever (setting aside incredible romances) it was discovered to be since. Thus rendering the power of God, and his providence of none effect.
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These are some of the destructive notions of this age, and however the asserters of them seem sometimes to value themselves much upon sheltering their neighbors from spectral accusations, they may deserve as much thanks as that tyrant that having industriously obtained an unintelligible charge against his subjects in matters wherein it was impossible they should be guilty, having thereby their lives in his power, yet suffers them of his mere grace to live, and will be called gracious Lord.

It were too Icarian
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a task for one unfurnished with necessary learning and library to give any just account from whence so great delusions have sprung and so long continued. Yet as an essay from those scraps of reading that I have had opportunity of, it will be no great venture to say that signs and lying wonders have been one principal cause.

It is written of Justin Martyr, who lived in the second century, that he was before his conversion a great philosopher; first in the way of the Stoics and after of the Peripatetics, after that of the Pythagorean, and after that of the Platonists sects. And after, all proved of eminent use in the church of Christ. Yet a certain author speaking of one Apollonius Tyaneus has these words, “That the most Orthodox themselves began to deem him vested with power sufficient for a Deity; which occasioned that so strange a doubt from Justin Martyr, as cited by the learned Gregory, Fol. 37., etc. If God be the Creator and Lord of the World, how comes it to pass that Apollonius his Telisms, have so much over-ruled the course of things! For we see that they also have stilled the Waves of the Sea, and the raging of the Winds, and prevailed against the Noisome Flies, and Incursions of wild Beasts,” et cetera. If so eminent and early a Christian were by these false shows in such doubt, it is the less wonder in our depraved times to meet with what is equivalent thereto. Besides this, a certain author informs me, that “Julian (afterward called the Apostate) being instructed in the philosophy and disciplines of the heathen by Libarius, his tutor, by this means he came to love philosophy better than the Gospel, and so by degrees turned from Christianity to heathenism.”

This same Julian did, when apostate, forbid that Christians should be instructed in the discipline of the Gentiles, which (it seems) Socrates, a writer of the ecclesiastical history, does acknowledge to be by the singular providence of God, Christians having then begun to degenerate from the Gospel and to betake themselves to heathenish learning. And in the
Mercury
for the month of February 1695, there is this account, “That the Christian Doctors conversing much with the writings of the Heathen, for the gaining of Eloquence, A Counsel was held at Carthage, which forbad the reading of the Books of the Gentiles.”

From all which it may be easily perceived, that in the primitive times of Christianity, when not only many heathens of the vulgar, but also many learned men and philosophers had embraced the Christian faith, they still retained a love to their heathen learning, which as one observes being transplanted into a Christian soil, soon proved productive of pernicious weeds, which overran the face of the church, hence it was so deformed as the Reformation found it.

Among other pernicious weeds arising from this root, the doctrine of the power of devils and witchcraft as it is now, and long has been understood, is not the least. The fables of Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, et cetera, being for the elegancy of their language retained then (and so are to this day) in the schools, have not only introduced, but established, such doctrines to the poisoning of the Christian world. A certain author expresses it thus, “that as the Christian schools at first brought men from heathenism to the Gospel, so these schools carry men from the Gospel to heathenism, as to their great perfection.” And Mr. I. M.,
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in his
Remarkable Providences
, gives an account that (as he calls it) an old counsel did anathematize all those that believed such power of the devils, accounting it a damnable doctrine. But as other evils did afterward increase in the church (partly by such education), so this insensibly grew up with them, though not to that degree, as that any counsel I have ever heard or read of has to this day taken of those anathemas. Yet after this the church so far declined that witchcraft became a principal ecclesiastical engine (as also that of heresy was) to root up all that stood in their way. And besides the ways of trial that we have still in practice, they invented some, which were peculiar to themselves, which, whenever they were minded to improve against any orthodox believer, they could easily make effectual: that deluge of blood which that scarlet whore has to answer for, shed under this notion, how amazing is it.

The first in England that I have read of, of any note since the Reformation, that asserts this doctrine, is the famous Mr. Perkins,
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he, as also Mr. Gaul and Mr. Bernard, et cetera, seem all of them to have undertaken one task. They, taking notice of the multiplicity of irregular ways to try them by, invented by heathens and papists, made it their business and main work herein to oppose such as they saw to be pernicious. And if they did not look more narrowly into it, but followed the first, namely, Mr. Perkins, whose education (as theirs also) had forestalled him into such belief, whom they readily followed, it cannot be wondered at. And that they were men liable to err and so not to be trusted to as perfect guides will manifestly appear to him that shall see their several receipts laid down to detect them by their presumptive and positive ones. And consider how few of either have any foundation in scripture or reason, and how vastly they differ from each other in both, each having his art by himself, which forty or a hundred more may as well imitate, and give theirs, ad infinitum, being without all manner of proof.