The Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches Lately Executed in New-England, to which is added A Farther Account of the Tryals of the New-England WitchesMather, Cotton
History
The Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches Lately Executed in New-England, to which is added A Farther Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches
Mather, Cotton
Witchcraft -- New England -- Early works to 1800
_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: 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. 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_ 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, & sont en
Division Continuelle._] _They hate one another, and are always
Quarrelling one with another._ 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 _Mar. 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
our selves _Tynder_ to the Sparks. When the Emperour _Henry_ III. 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 at
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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