legally murdered for alleged intercourse
and leaguing with the Evil One. The superstition seems to have gained
force rather than lost it by the spread of early Christianity. As a
rule, the victims of the craze were women, and the percentage of aged
and infirm women was always very large. One of the greatest jurists of
England, during the Seventeenth Century, condemned two young girls to
the gallows for no other offense than the alleged crime of having
exerted a baneful influence over certain victims, and having, what would
be called in certain districts, "hoodooed" them.

In Scotland the craze was carried to still further lengths. To be
accused of witchcraft was to be condemned as a matter of course, and the
terrible death of burning at the stake was the invariable sentence. Most
of the victims made imaginary confessions, preferring to die at once
than to be tortured indefinitely. In the year 1716, a wealthy lady and
her nine-year-old daughter were hanged for witchcraft, and even thirty
or forty years later the records of Great Britain are sullied by another
similar case of persecution.

These unsavory records are given in order to correct a misapprehension
as to the part the old Puritans took in the persecutions. Many people
seriously believed that the idea of witchcraft, as a capital offense,
originated in Salem, and attribute to the original witch-house the
reputation of having really given birth to a new superstition and a new
persecution. As we have seen, this is entirely erroneous. The fact that
the Puritans copied a bad example, instead of setting a new one, should,
at least, be remembered in palliation of the unfortunate blot upon their
otherwise clean escutcheon.

In the year 1704, one Deodat Lawson, minister at Salem during the last
sixteen or seventeen years of the Seventeenth Century, published a
remarkable work, entitled "Christ's Fidelity, the only Shield against
Satan's Malignity." In this work appears a record of the so-called
calamity at Salem, which the author tells us was afflicted, about the
year 1692, "with a very sore and grievous infliction, in which they had
reason to believe that the Sovereign and Holy God was pleased to permit
Satan and his instruments to affright and afflict those poor mortals in
such an astonishing and unusual manner."

The record of Parson Lawson is so realistic and emblematic of the times
in which he lived, that we reproduce some of his own expressions. Thus,
he says, "