The Witchcraft Delusion in New England: Its Rise, Progress, and Termination, (Vol. 1 of 3)Mather, Cotton
History
The Witchcraft Delusion in New England: Its Rise, Progress, and Termination, (Vol. 1 of 3)
Mather, Cotton
Witchcraft -- New England
_II._ Since the Devil is _come down in great wrath_ upon us, let not us
in our _great wrath_ against one another provide a _Lodging_ for him.
It was a most wholesome caution, in _Eph._ 4. 26, 27. _Let not the Sun
go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the Devil._ The Devil is
come down to see what _Quarter_ he shall find among us:[128] And if his
coming down, do now fill us with _wrath_ against one another, and if
between the cause of the _Sufferers_ on one hand, and the cause of the
_Suspected_ on t'other, we carry things to such extreams of _Passion_
as are now gaining upon us, the Devil will Bless himself, to find such
a convenient _Lodging_ as we shall therein afford unto him.[129] And
it may be that the _wrath_ which we have had against one another has
had more than a little influence upon the coming down of the Devil in
that _wrath_ which now amazes us. Have not many of us been _Devils_ one
unto another for Slanderings, for Backbitings, for Animosities? For
_this_, among other causes, perhaps, God has permitted the Devils to
be worrying, as they now are, among us. But it is high time to leave
off all _Devilism_, when the _Devil_ himself is falling upon us: And
it is _no time_ for us to be Censuring and Reviling one another, with
a _Devilish wrath_, when the _wrath_ of the _Devil_ is annoying of us.
The way for us to out-wit the Devil, in the _Wiles_ with which he now
_Vexes_ [46] us, would be for us to joyn as one man in our cries to
God, for the Directing, and Issuing of this Thorny Business; but if
we do not _Lift up_ our Hands to Heaven, _without Wrath_, we cannot
then do it _without Doubt_, of speeding in it. I am ashamed when I
read French Authors giving this Character of Englishmen [_Ils se
haissent Les uns les autres, et sont en Division Continuelle._] _They
hate one another, and are always Quarelling one with another._[130]
And I shall be much more ashamed, if it become the Character of
_New-Englanders;_ which is indeed what the Devil would have. _Satan_
would make us _bruise_ one another, by breaking of the _Peace_ among
us; but O let us disappoint him. We read of a thing that sometimes
happens to the _Devil_, when he is foaming with his _Wrath_, in Mat.
12. 43. _The unclean Spirit seeks rest, and finds none._ But we give
_rest_ unto the Devil, by _wrath_ one against another. If we would lay
aside all fierceness, and keenness, in the disputes which the Devil has
raised among us; and if we would use to one another none but the _soft
Answers, which turn away wrath:_ I should hope that we might light upon
such Counsels, as would quickly Extricate us out of our _Labyrinths_.
But the old _Incendiary_ of the world, is come from Hell, with _Sparks_
of Hell-Fire flashing on every side of him; and we make ourselves
_Tynder_ to the Sparks. When the Emperour _Henry_ III.[131] kept the
Feast of _Pentecost_, at the City _Mentz_, there arose a dissension
among some of the people there, which came from words to blows, and
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