Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern SpiritualismPutnam, Allen
Religion
Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism
Putnam, Allen
Spiritualism; Witchcraft -- New England
Tituba's general, if not uniform frankness, and the extreme simplicity of
her answers, tend strongly to beget confidence in the intentional and
substantial truthfulness of her statements. We deem it unjust to doubt her
truthfulness. And the general accuracy of her testimony is now rendered
credible by its harmony with a mass of facts pertaining to Spiritualism.
If the truth and accuracy of her words be conceded,--and they ought to
be,--we learn distinctly that during the "several weeks" through which Mr.
Parris's afflicted daughter and niece were treated by their physician and
cared for by the family and friends without suspicion of witchcraft,
Tituba was positively _knowing_ that something like a man, invisible to
outward sense, visited herself, and sought and sometimes forced her
co-operation in pinching the two little girls and in producing their
seeming sicknesses. Her experience proved to her that the sufferings of
the children were purposely inflicted by an intelligent being something
like a man. Her statements prove the same to us.
Such testimony as hers, by such a lowly person as she was, when given
before a tribunal whose members were firm believers in such a devil and in
such a creed as have been described in our Appendix, even if fairly
comprehended by them, would cause her judges to believe that she was
virtually confessing that she had made a covenant with the Evil One. From
their premises they could not logically draw any other conclusion.
Perhaps, unfortunately for her, but not for us at this day, her intellect
was too feeble to perceive the inferences which would be drawn from her
words. Fearing not consequences, she could frankly tell her experiences
and observations; she let out the exact facts of the case, and furnished
for us a sound historic basis for the assertion that the strange maladies
which came upon the little girls in Mr. Parris's house were designedly and
deliberately imposed by a disembodied spirit or a band of spirits.
The mouths of not only babes and sucklings, but of adults of feeble
intellect, present facts, sometimes, better than those whose intellects
are swayed by fears of dreaded consequences which might ensue from frank
and full avowal of their knowledge. From Tituba came statements of facts
to which we must give prolonged attention. A perusal of the fullest
minutes of her testimony may be wearisome, but her account of what she
saw, heard, and was made to do, is so instructive that we shall present it
without abridgment, because it was first printed in full only a few years
ago, was probably never seen or known to exist by Hutchinson, was not
availed of by Upham, and not very carefully analyzed by Drake. Only a very
limited portion of the reading public has ever had opportunity to learn
more than a small fraction of the disclosures made by this important
witness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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