A subsequent charge against “G. B.” (George Burroughs) was, that “when they” (the accusing girls) “cried out of G. B. biting them, the print of his teeth would be seen on the flesh of the complainers; and just such a set of teeth as G. B.’s would then appear upon them.” As in the case of little Dorcas Good, here we have it charged that indentations on the flesh of complainants corresponded to the size and shape of the teeth belonging to the person who was accused of biting. If G. B.’s spirit-form or apparition was made to approach and bite the accusers,—and it probably was,—his spirit-teeth would naturally, and, as we apprehend, necessarily have the exact size and form of his external ones.
Another charge is embraced in the following quotation:—
“His wives” (he had buried two) “had privately complained unto the neighbors about frightly apparitions of evil spirits with which their house was sometimes infested; and many such things had been whispered among the neighborhood.”
We have previously quoted but did not comment upon the above which relates to the appearance of apparitions. That statement may as well indicate that the wives themselves, or any other persons resident in his house, were the attracting or helping instrumentalities for producing the “frightly” sights, as that Burroughs himself was, provided only that some one or more of them were mediumistic. But the probabilities are, that the elements emanated from him which rendered such presentations practicable.
His telling the purport of talks held in the house during his absence indicates that his inner ears were opened to catch either the spirit of mundane sounds, or sounds made by spirits, as could those of Margaret Jones, Ann Hibbins, Joan of Arc, and many others. The same power in him is indicated in the following extract:—
“One Mr. Ruck, brother-in-law to this G. B., testified that G. B., and he himself, and his sister, G. B.’s wife, going out for two or three miles to gather strawberries, Ruck, with his sister, the wife of G. B., rode home very softly” (slowly) “with G. B. on foot in their company. G. B. stepped aside a little into the bushes. Whereupon they halted and hollowed for him. He not answering, they went homewards with a quickened pace without any expectation of seeing him in a considerable while. And yet, when they were got near home, to their astonishment they found him on foot with them, having a basket of strawberries. (Philip was found at Azotus.) G. B. immediately then fell to chiding his wife on account of what she had been speaking to her brother of him on the road. Which when they wondered at, he said he knew their thoughts. Ruck, being startled at that, made some reply, intimating that the devil himself did not know so far; but G. B. answered, My God makes known your thoughts unto me.”
True and luminous fact! The humble, pious, intelligent, illumined Burroughs, far-looker into the realm of causes—an observer of things behind the vail which bounds the reach of mortal senses and pure reason—stated that God—not the devil—made known to him the thoughts of other and absent people. In other words, his intended meaning probably was, that God’s worlds and laws provide for legitimate inflowings, to some minds, of knowledge of the thoughts and purposes of other minds, even though far distant in space. The character, or rather the actual qualities of this man, if we read him correctly, were truthfulness, humility, and piety. When such a one deliberately said to a brother-in-law, under such circumstances as stated above, “My God makes known your thoughts unto me,” he indicated his consciousness of possessing self-experienced knowledge of the existence of an instructive and momentous fact pertaining to human capabilities. Only few persons, relatively, have had proof by personal experience of the extent to which the inner perceptives of embodied mortals may reach forth and imbibe knowledge by processes common to freed spirits, and in the realms of their abode. What the unfoldings of Burroughs permitted him to do and know is possible with many others while resident in mortal forms. If he could, some others may, come into that condition in which thought itself shall be heard speaking itself out to them, in which they shall be listeners to “cogitatio loquens”—self-speaking thought—which Swedenborg says abounds in spirit spheres; in which thought from supernal fonts shall make itself known to the consciousness of an embodied man, and become matter of knowledge with him. Others, and more in number, may have the inner ear opened and hear the words of spirits.
With ears competently attuned, the meek and truth-loving Burroughs was occasionally able to receive not only knowledge of the thoughts of mortals in ways unusual, but also, as we judge, to receive spiritual truths copiously from purer fountains than his cotemporaries generally could get access to; and he thence obtained such truths as relaxed in him many credal bonds which firmly held most of his cotemporary preachers to the creeds, forms, ordinances, and customs common in the churches then. Many questions put to him at his trial were, obviously, designed to draw forth evidence of his lax regard for and inattention to the accepted ordinances of religion. He admitted both that it was long since he had sat at the communion table, and that some of his own children had not been baptized. We presume that he was inwardly, wisely, and beneficently prompted to walk somewhat astray from the narrow and soul-cramping paths then trod by most New England clergymen. The spirit of the Lord was giving him more liberty than most of his cotemporaries felt privileged to exercise. Using his greater facilities than theirs for instruction in heavenly things, he probably advanced far beyond his brethren generally in sinking the letter, that is, sinking the forms, and ceremonies, and ordinances of religion beneath its divine spirit, and his less illumined brethren suspected him of an abandonment of religion itself, and of alliance with the great enemy of all goodness. Some among them apparently looked upon him as a combined heretic and wizard, withheld all sympathy from, and exulted over the doom of, this double culprit.
But this victim may have been, and probably was, as high above most of his crucifiers as freedom is above bondage, as the spirit above the letter, as light above darkness, as sincerity above hypocrisy. The blood of such as Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, George Burroughs, and probably many others who in company with these took their exit from life shrouded in witchcraft’s blackening mists, may go far toward making Gallows Hill a Mount Calvary—a spot on which zeal urged on the worse to crucify their betters in true godliness—betters in all that fits immortal souls for gladdening welcome into realms above.