p. 25 et seq.

This fear of witchcraft received a powerful stimulus from the treatises
of learned men. Such works, coming from Europe, which was at that
time filled with the superstition, acted powerfully upon conscientious
preachers, and were brought by them to bear upon the people at large.
Naturally, then, throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century
we find scattered cases of diabolic possession. At Boston, Springfield,
Hartford, Groton, and other towns, cases occurred, and here and there we
hear of death-sentences.

In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the fruit of these ideas
began to ripen. In the year 1684 Increase Mather published his book,
Remarkable Providences, laying stress upon diabolic possession and
witchcraft. This book, having been sent over to England, exercised an
influence there, and came back with the approval of no less a man than
Richard Baxter: by this its power at home was increased.

In 1688 a poor family in Boston was afflicted by demons: four children,
the eldest thirteen years of age, began leaping and barking like dogs or
purring like cats, and complaining of being pricked, pinched, and cut;
and, to help the matter, an old Irishwoman was tried and executed.

All this belief might have passed away like a troubled dream had it not
become incarnate in a strong man. This man was Cotton Mather, the son of
Increase Mather. Deeply religious, possessed of excellent abilities, a
great scholar, anxious to promote the welfare of his flock in this world
and in the next, he was far in advance of ecclesiastics generally on
nearly all the main questions between science and theology. He came out
of his earlier superstition regarding the divine origin of the Hebrew
punctuation; he opposed the old theologic idea regarding the taking of
interest for money; he favoured inoculation as a preventive of smallpox
when a multitude of clergymen and laymen opposed it; he accepted
the Newtonian astronomy despite the outcries against its "atheistic
tendency"; he took ground against the time-honoured dogma that comets
are "signs and wonders." He had, indeed, some of the defects of his
qualities, and among them pedantic vanity, pride of opinion, and love
of power; but he was for his time remarkably liberal and undoubtedly
sincere. He had thrown off a large part of his father's theology, but
one part of it he could not throw off: he was one of the best biblical
scholars of his time, and he could no