Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather: A Reply

by Charles Wentworth Upham

"IV. As in complaints upon witchcrafts there may be matters of enquiry which do not amount unto matters of presumption, and there may be matters of presumption which yet may not be reckoned matters of conviction, so it is necessary, that all proceedings thereabout be managed with an exceeding tenderness towards those that may be complained of, especially if they have been persons formerly of an unblemished reputation.

"V. When the first inquiry is made into the circumstances of such as may lie under any just suspicion of witchcrafts, we could wish that there may be admitted as little as possible of such noise, company, and openness, as may too hastily expose them that are examined; and that there may nothing be used as a test for the trial of the suspected, the lawfulness whereof may be doubted among the people of God; but that the directions given by such judicious writers as Perkins and Bernard may be consulted in such a case.

"VI. Presumptions whereupon persons may be committed, and, much more, convictions whereupon persons may be condemned as guilty of witchcrafts, ought certainly to be more considerable than barely the accused persons being represented by a spectre unto the afflicted; [inasmuch as it is an undoubted and a notorious thing, that a Demon may, by God's permission, appear, even to ill purposes, in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man.] Nor can we esteem alterations made in the sufferers, by a look or touch of the accused, to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently liable to be abused by the Devil's legerdemain.

"VII. We know not whether some remarkable affront, given the Devil, by our disbelieving of those testimonies, whose whole force and strength is from him alone, may not put a period unto the progress of the dreadful calamity begun upon us, in the accusation of so many persons, whereof some, we hope, are yet clear from the great transgression laid to their charge.

["VIII. Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend unto the Government, the speedy and vigorous prosecutions of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the directions given in the laws of God, and the wholesome Statutes of the English nation, for the detection of Witchcrafts.">[

I have enclosed the first, second and eighth Sections, and a part of the sixth, in brackets, for purposes that will appear, in a subsequent part of this discussion. The Advice of the Ministers was written by Cotton Mather. As in his letter to Richards, he does not caution against the use, but in the use, of spectral evidence. Not a word is said denouncing its introduction or advising its entire rejection. We look in vain for a line or a syllable disapproving the trial and execution just had, resting as they did, entirely upon spectral evidence: on the contrary, the second Section applauds what had been done; and prays that the work entered upon may be perfected. The first clauses in the fourth Section sanction its admission, as affording ground of "presumption," although "it may not be matter of conviction." The sixth Section, while it appears to convey the idea that spectral evidence alone ought not to be regarded as sufficient, contains, at the same time, a form of expression, that not only requires its reception, but places its claims on the highest possible grounds. "A Demon may, by God's permission, appear, even to ill purposes, in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man." It is sufficiently shocking to think that anything, to ill purposes, can be done by Divine permission; but horrible, indeed, to intimate that the Devil can have that permission to malign and murder an innocent person. If the spectre appears by God's permission, the effect produced has his sanction. The blasphemous supposition that God permits the Devil thus to bear false witness, to the destruction of the righteous, overturns all the sentiments and instincts of our moral and religious nature. In using this language, the Ministers did not have a rational apprehension of what they were saying, which is the only apology for much of the theological phraseology of that day. This phrase, "God's permission," had quite a currency at the time; and if it did not reconcile the mind, subdued it to wondering and reverent silence. It will be seen that Mather, on other occasions, repeated this idea, in various and sometimes stronger terms. The third, fifth, seventh, and last clauses of the fourth Sections, contain phrases which will become intelligible, as we advance in the examination of Mather's writings, relating to the subject of witchcraft.

Here it may, again, be safely said, that if Increase and Cotton Mather had really, as the Reviewer affirms, been opposed to the admission of spectral testimony, this was the time for them to have said so. If, at this crisis, they had "denounced it, as illegal, uncharitable and cruel," no more blood would have been shed. If the Advice had even recommended, in the most moderate terms, its absolute exclusion from every stage of the proceedings, they would have come to an end. But it assumes its introduction, and only suggests "disbelief" of it, in avoiding to act upon it, in "some" instances.

Hutchinson states the conclusion of the matter, after quoting the whole document. "The Judges seem to have paid more regard to the last article of this Return, than to several which precede it; for the prosecutions were carried on with all possible vigor, and without that exquisite caution which is proposed."—History, ii., 54.

The Advice was skilfully—it is not uncharitable to say—artfully drawn up. It has deceived the Reviewer into his statement that it was "very specific in excluding spectral testimony." A careless reader, or one whose eyes are blinded by a partisan purpose, may not see its real import. The paper is so worded as to mislead persons not conversant with the ideas and phraseology of that period. But it was considered by all the Judges, and the people in general, fully to endorse the proceedings in the trial of Bridget Bishop, and to advise their speedy and vigorous continuance. It was spectral testimony that overwhelmed her. It was the fatal element that wrought the conviction of every person put on trial, from first to last; as was fully proved, five months afterwards, when Sir William Phips, under circumstances I shall describe, bravely and peremptorily forbid, as the Ministers failed to do, the "trying," or even "committing," of any one, on the evidence of "the afflicted persons," which was wholly spectral. When thus, by his orders, it was utterly thrown out, the life of the prosecutions became, at once, extinct; and, as Mather says, the accused were cleared as fast as they were tried.—Magnalia, Book II., page 64.

The suggestion that caution was to be used in handling this species of evidence, and that it was to be received as affording grounds of "presumption," to be corroborated or reinforced by other evidence, practically was of no avail. If received, at all, in any stage, or under any name, it necessarily controlled every case. No amount of evidence, of other kinds, could counterbalance or stand against it: nothing was needed to give it full and fatal effect. It struck Court, Jury, and people, nay, even the Prisoners themselves, in many instances, with awe. It dispensed, as has been mentioned, with the presence of the accused, on the spot, where and when the crime was alleged to have been committed, or within miles or hundreds of miles of it. No reputation for virtue or piety could be pleaded against it. The doctrine which Cotton Mather proclaimed, on another occasion, that the Devil might appear as Angel of Light, completed the demolition of the securities of innocence. There was no difficulty in getting "other testimony" to give it effect. In the then state of the public mind, indiscriminately crediting every tale of slander and credulity, looking at every thing through the refracting and magnifying atmosphere of the blindest and wildest passions, it was easy to collect materials to add to the spectral evidence, thereby, according to the doctrine of the Ministers, to raise the "presumption," to the "conviction" of guilt. Even our Reviewer finds evidence to "substantiate" that, given against George Burroughs, resting on spectres, in his feats of strength, in some malignant neighborhood scandals, and in exaggerated forms of parish or personal animosities.