The Salem witchcraft ; The planchette mystery ; and Modern spiritualism / with Dr. Doddridge's dream.

Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Salem witchcraft ; The planchette mystery ; and Modern spiritualism / with Dr. Doddridge's dream. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Brandeis University Libraries, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University.

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    humiliation, in consideration of the extent to which Satan prevails amongst us in respect of witchcraft. Among the prosecutions which followed on such observances there was one here and there which turned out, too late, to have been a mistake. This kind of discovery- might be made an occasion for more fasting and humiliation; but it Beems to have had no effect in inducing caution or suggesting self-dis- trust. Mr. Parris and his partisans must l>ave been aware that on occa- sion of the last great spread of witchcraft, the magis-trates and the Gen- eral Court had set aside the verdict of the jury in one case of wrongful accusation, and that there were other instances in wdiich the general heart and conscience were cruelly wounded and oppressed, under the conviction that the wisest and saintliest woman in the commu- nity had been made away with by malice, at least as much as mistaken zeal. The wife of one of the most honored and prominent citizens of Boston, and the sister of the Deputy Governor of Massachusetts, Mrs. Hibbins, might have been supposed safe from the gallows, while she walked in uprightness, and all holiness and gentleness of living. But her husband died; and the pack of fanatics sprang upon her, and tore her to pieces—name and fame, fortune, life, and eveiything. She w^as hanged in 1656, and the farmers of Salem Village and their pastor were old enough to know, in Mr. Parris' time, how the famous Mr. Nor- ton, an eminent pastor, once said at his own table .—before clergy- men and elders— that one of their magistrates' wives was hanged for a witch, onlj^ for having more wit than her neighbors; and to be aware that in Boston a deep feeling of resentment against her per- secutors rankled in the minds of some of her citizens; and that they afterw\ard observed solemn marks of Providence set upon those w^lio were very forward to condemn her, The story of Mrs. Hibbins, as told in the book before us, with the brief and simple comment of her owm pleading in court, and the codicil to her Avill, is so piteous and so fearful, that it is difficult to imagine how any clergyman could counte- nance a similar procedure before the memory of the execution had died out, and could be supported in his course by officers of his church, and at length by the leading clergy of the district, the magistrates, the phy- sicians, and devout women not a few. [Here are evidences of large Cautiousness, fear, and timidity, with the vivid imagination of untrained childhood.]
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