nderful
Providence of God, been so strengthened with other evidences that some
of the witch-gang have been fairly executed."

And a year later, in the light of all his personal experience and
investigation, Mather solemnly declared:

"If in the midst of the many dissatisfactions among us, the publication
of these trials may promote such a pious thankfulness unto God for
justice being so far executed among us, I shall rejoice that God is
glorified."

Wherever the responsibility at Salem may have rested, the truth is that
in the general fear and panic there was potent in the minds, both of the
clergy and the laity, the spirit of fanaticism and malevolence in some
instances, such as misled the pastor of the First Church to point to the
corpses of Giles Corey's devoted and saintly wife and others swinging to
and fro, and say "What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of hell
hanging there."

This conspectus of witchcraft, old and new, of its development from the
sorcery and magic of the ancients into the mediaeval theological dogma
of the power of Satan, of its gradual ripening into an epidemic
demonopathy, of its slow growth in the American colonies, of its
volcanic outburst in the close of the seventeenth century, is relevant
and appropriate to this account of the delusion in Connecticut, its rise
and suppression, its firm hold on the minds and consciences of the
colonial leaders for threescore years after the settlement of the towns,
a chapter in Connecticut history written in the presence of the actual
facts now made known and available, and with a purpose of historic
accuracy.

CHAPTER V

"It was not to be expected of the colonists of New England that they
should be the first to see through a delusion which befooled the whole
civilized world, and the gravest and most knowing persons in it. The
colonists in Connecticut and New Haven, as well as in Massachusetts,
like all other Christian people at that time--at least with extremely
rare individual exceptions--believed in the reality of a hideous crime
called witchcraft." PALFREY'S _New England_ (Vol. IV, pp. 96-127).

"The truth is that it [witchcraft] pervaded the whole Christian Church.
The law makers and the ministers of New England were under its
influences as--and no more than--were the law makers and ministers of
Old England." _Blue Laws--True and False_ (p. 23), TRUMBULL.

"One ---- of Windsor Arraigned and Executed at Hartford for a Witch."