This is Thomas Sullivan, your narrator. I wanted to mention before starting this book, From the Works of Christ in America by Cotton Mather, that because of the age of this book, as I read it, I will also translate it into more modern English. That way, as much as it is possible, it'll be a little easier for you to follow along if you're not familiar with the Elizabethan English. The following is chapter 7 from the second book of Cotton Mather's works of Christ in America, relating the wonders of the invisible world in preternatural occurrences. When two goats were offered to the Lord, and only to the Lord, on the day of expiation among the ancient Israelites, we read that one of them was to fall by lot to Azazel. Azazel cannot without some hardship on the sense be taken for the name of the scapegoat itself, but it is no other than the name of the devil himself as might easily be proved, from the monuments of the greatest both Jewish and Christian antiquities. In the signification of the word Azazel, there is indeed a notable declaration of those two properties that have signalized the devil. He is being first a powerful and then an apostate spirit. The scapegoat, presented as a sacrifice to the Holy God, was ordered by him to be delivered up unto Azazel on these two intentions. One design of this might be to intimate to the people what would be the miserable condition of them who did not, by faith in the Messiah, get the guilt of their sins removed. They that have their sins lying on them, and are led forth with the workers of iniquity, must become a prey to Azazel, even to Satan, to whose temptations they did in their sinning yield obedience. And indeed our Lord has expressly told us, perhaps not without some allusion to this Levitical goat, that He will send the ghosts which have their sins on them to be with the devil and his angels. But another and a greater design of it might be to represent a main article in the dreadful sufferings which were to befall our Lord Messiah when He should come to suffer for our sins. When our Lord Jesus Christ underwent His humiliation for us, this point was very considerable in it. He was carried into the wilderness, and there He was exposed to the buffetines and outrages of Azazel. The assaults that Satan then and afterwards made on our Lord Jesus Christ, producing a most horrible anguish in his mind, made such a figure in his conflicts for us that they were well worthy of a most particular prefiguration. And one thing in the prefiguration must be that the goat for Azazel must be sent into the desert. In the days of Moses it seems deserts were counted very much in habitation of devils. Yea, they really were what they were counted, and for that cause the names of Shedim and Zidim were put upon them. And when the Scriptures foretell desolations to such and such places, they still make the devils to be their inhabitants. Who can tell whether the envy of the devils at the favor of God to men may not provoke them to effect retirement from the sight of populous and prosperous regions? except so far as they reckon their work of tempting mankind necessary to be carried on. Or perhaps it is not every country before which the devils prefer the deserts. Regions in which the devils are much served by those usages, either in worship or manners which are pleasing to them, or by those doleful creatures enough resorted to. Yea, you send much abound anywhere, some devils entreat that they may not be sent from thence into the wilderness. But regions like the land of Israel, where the true God is continually prayed to, and where the word of God is continually sounding, are filled with such things as are very uneasy to the devils. The devils often recede much from thence into the wilderness, as the devil of Mascon would say to Mr. Perod, the minister that lived in the haunted house, Will you go to prayer? I'll take a turn in the street." Thus to omit what Alexander Hale's reports of one retiring in uninhabitable places, where spirits taught him the things which he wrote in his book, we know that in Lucian, the famous magician, Mithrobarzenes with his companions betook themselves into a desert, woody, shady region for a conversation with spirits. Whatever becomes of the observation which we have till now been making, there has been too much cause to observe that the Christians who were driven into the American desert, which is now called New England, have to their sorrow seen as a zeal dwelling and raging there in very tragical instances. The devils have doubtless felt a more than ordinary vexation from the arrival of those Christians with their sacred exercises of Christianity in this wilderness. But the sovereignty of heaven has permitted them still to remain in the wilderness for our vexation, as well as their own. Molestations from evil spirits and more sensible and surprising operations than those finer methods, in which they commonly work on the minds of all men, but especially of ill men, have so abounded in this country, that I question whether any one town has been free from sad examples of them. The neighbors have not been careful enough to record and attest the prodigious occurrences of this importance which have been among us. Many true and strange occurrences from the invisible world, and these parts of the world, are faultily buried in oblivion. But some of these very stupendous things have had their memory preserved in the written memorials of honest, prudent, and faithful men, whose veracity in the relations cannot without great injury be questioned. These I will now offer to the public some remarkable histories, for every one of which we have had such a sufficient evidence, that no reasonable man in this whole country ever did question them, and it will be unreasonable to do it in any other. For my own part, I would be as exceedingly afraid of writing a false thing as of doing an ill thing, but have my pen always more in the fear of God. THE FIRST EXAMPLE Anne Cole, a person of serious piety, living in the house of her godly father at Hertford in the year 1662, was taken with very strange fits, in which her tongue was improved by a demon to express things unknown to herself. The general purpose of the discourse, which held sometimes for a considerable while, was that such and such persons named in the discourse were consulting how they might carry on mischievous designs against her and several others by afflicting their bodies or destroying their good names. Upon all which the general answer heard among these invisible speakers was, Ah, she runs to the rock! After such an entertainment had held for some hours, the demons were heard saying, Let us confound her language, that she may tell no more tales. And then the conference became unintelligible to the standers by, and then it passed in a Dutch tone, giving an account of mischiefs that had befallen diverse persons, and among the rest what had befallen to a woman that lived next door to a Dutch family, then in a town, which woman had been prematurely indisposed. Several imminent ministers wrote the speeches of the spirits, then heard in the mouth of this Anne Cole, and one of the persons mentioned is active in the matter, then spoken of, whose name was Greensmith, being then in prison on suspicion of witchcraft, was brought before the magistrates. The ministers, now reading to her what they had written, she with astonishment confessed that the things were so, and that she, with other persons named in the papers, had familiarity with a devil. She said that she had not yet made a formal covenant with her devil, but only promised that she would go with him when he called her, which she had at different times done accordingly, and that he told her that at Christmas they would have a merry meeting. and then the agreement between them should be subscribed. She acknowledged the day following that when the ministers began to read what they did, she was in such a rage that she could have torn them to pieces, and she was resolved on the denial of her guilt. But after they had read a while, she was as if her flesh were pulled from her bones, and she could no longer deny what they charged on her. She declared that her devil appeared to her first in the shape of a deer, skipping about her, and at last proceeded so far as in that shape to talk with her, and that the devil had frequently carnal knowledge of her. Upon this confession, with other concurrent evidence, the woman was executed, and other persons accused made their escape. at which time Anne Cole was happily delivered from the extraordinary troubles in which she had been exercised. The second example. In the town of Groton one Elizabeth Knapp, October 1671, was taken after a very strange manner. sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing, sometimes roaring with violent agitations, crying out, Money! Money! Her tongue would be for many hours together drawn like a semi-circle up to the roof of her mouth, so that no fingers applied to it could remove it. Six men were scarce able to hold her in some of her fits, she would skip about the house yelling and howling and looking hideously. On December 17th, her tongue being drawn out of her mouth to an extraordinary length, a demon began manifestly to speak in her, for many words were distinctly uttered, in which are the labial letters without any motion of her lips at all. words also were uttered from her throat sometimes when her mouth was wholly shut, and sometimes words were uttered when her mouth was wide open, but no organs of speech used in it. The key things that the demon spoke were horrid railings against the godly ministers of the town, but sometimes he likewise belched out most nefandous blasphemies against the God of Heaven. And one thing about this young woman was yet more particularly remarkable. She cried out in her fits that a certain woman in the neighborhood appeared to her and was the only cause of her affliction. The woman, thus cried out on, was doubtless an holy, devout, virtuous person, and she by the advice of her friends visited the afflicted. The possessed creature, though she was in one of her fits, and had her eyes wholly shut, yet when this innocent woman was coming she discovered herself wonderfully sensible of it, and was in grievous agonies at her approaches. But this innocent woman, thus accused and abused by a malicious devil, prayed earnestly with as well as for this possessed creature, whereupon coming to herself she confessed that she had been deluded by Satan, and compelled by him unreasonably to think and speak evil of a good neighbor without a cause. After this there was no further complaint of such in one's apparition. But she said some devil in the shape of different devils did very differently and cruelly torment her, and then told her it was not he but they that were her tormentors. The third example. In the year 1679, the house of William Morris at Newbury was infested with demons after a most horrid manner, not altogether unlike the demons of Tedworth. It would feel many pages to relate all the infestations, but the chief of them were such as these. Bricks and sticks and stones were often by some invisible hand thrown at the house, and so were many pieces of wood. A cat was thrown at the woman of the house, and a longstaff danced up and down in the chimney. And afterwards the same longstaff was hanged by a line and swung to and fro. And when two persons laid it on the fire to burn it, it was as much as they were able to do with their joint strength to hold it there. An iron crook was violently, by an invisible hand, hurled about. And it sure flew about the room until at last it lit upon the table, where the meat stood ready to be eaten, and had spoiled all if the people had not with much ado saved a little. A chest was by an invisible hand carried from one place to another, and the doors barricaded, and the keys of the family taken, some of them from the bunch where they were tied, and the rest flying about with the loud noise of their knocking against one another. And while the folks of the house could not sup quietly, but that ashes would be thrown into their suppers and on their heads and their clothes, In the shoes of the man being left below, one of them was filled with ashes and coals and thrown up after him. When they were in bed, a stone weighing about three pounds was at different times thrown on them. A box and a board was likewise thrown on them, and bag of hops being taken out of a chest, they were by the invisible hand beaten by it, till some of the hops were scattered on the floor, where the bag was then laid and left. The man was often struck by that hand with several instruments, and the same hand cast her good things into the fire. Yea, while the man was at prayer with his household, a beesom gave him a blow on his head behind, and fell down before his face. When they were winnowing their barley, dirt was thrown at them, and as they in the field their half-bushel with corn, The foul corn would be thrown in with acclaim, so irresistibly that they were forced by this to give over what they were doing. While the man was writing, his ink-worn was by the invisible hand snatched from him, and being able nowhere to find it, he saw it at length drop out of the air down by the fire. A shoe was laid on his shoulder, but when he would have cashed it, it was wrapped from him. It was then clapped upon his head, and there he held it so fast that the unseen fury pulled him with it backward on the floor. He had his cap torn off his head, and in the night he was pulled by the hair and pinched and scratched, and the invisible hand pricked him with some of his awls and with needles and bodkins and blows that fetched blood were sometimes given him. Frozen clods of cow dung were often thrown at a man, and his wife going to milk the cows, they could by no means preserve the vessels of milk from the like annoyances, which made it fit only for the hogs. She going down into the cellar, the trap-door was immediately, by an invisible hand, shut upon her. and a table brought and laid on the door, which kept her there till the man removed it. When he was writing another time, a dish went and leaped into a pail, and cast water on the man, and in all the concerns before him, so as to defeat what he is attempting to do. His cap jumped off his head, and on again, and the pot lid went off the pot into the kettle, then over the fire together. A little boy belonging to the family was a principal sufferer in these molestations, for he was flung about at such a rate that they feared his brains would have been beaten out, nor did they find it possible to hold him. His bedclothes would be pulled from him, his bed shaken, and his bed-staff leaped forward and backward. The man took him to keep him in a chair, but the chair fell a-dancing, and both of them were very near being thrown into the fire. These and a thousand such vexations befalling the boy at home, they carried him to live abroad at a doctor's. There he was quiet, but returning home he suddenly cried out, he was pricked, on the back, where they found strangely sticking a three-tin fork, which belonged to the doctor. and had been seen at his house after the boy's departure. Afterwards his troubles found him out. The doctors also were crying out again. He was pricked on the back. They found an iron spindle stuck into him, and on the like out cry again. They found pins and a paper stuck into him, and once more a long iron, a bowl of a spoon, and a piece of pan-tread and like sort stuck upon him. He was taken out of his bed and thrown under it, and all the knives belonging to the house were one after another stuck into his back, which the spectators pulled out. Only one of them seemed to the spectators to come out of his mouth. The poor boy was at different times thrown into the fire and preserved from scorching therewith much ado. For a long while he barked like a dog, and then he clocked like a hen, and could not speak rationally. His tongue would be pulled out of his mouth, but when he could recover it so far as to speak, he complained that a man called Paul appeared to him as a cause of all. Once in the daytime he was transported where none could find him, till at last they found him creeping on one side, and sadly dumb and lame. When he was able to express himself, he said that Paul had carried him over the top of the house and hurled him against a cartwheel in the barn, and accordingly they found some remainders of the threshed barley which was on the barn floor hanging about his garments. The spectre would make all his meat when he was going to eat fly out of his mouth, and instead of it make him fall to eating of ashes and sticks and yarn. The man and his wife taken the boy to bed with them, a chamber pot with its contents was thrown on them. They were severely pinched and pulled out of the bed, and many other fruits of devilish spite were they dogged with, until it pleased God mercifully to shorten the chain of the devil. But before the devil was chained up, the invisible hand which did all these things began to put on an astonishing visibility. They often thought they felt the hand that scratched them, while yet they saw it not, but when they thought they had hold of it, it would give them the slip. Once a fist beating the man was discernible, but they could not catch hold of it. At length an apparition of a blackamore child showed itself plainly to them. And another time a drumming on the boards was heard, which was followed with a voice saying, Revenge, revenge, sweet as revenge. All this people being terrified called on God, at which time there followed a mournful note, several times uttering these expressions, Alas, alas, we knock no more, we knock no more. And there was an end of all. The Fourth Example In the year 1683 the house of Nicholas de Sboro of Hartford was very strangely molested by stones, by pieces of earth, by cobs of Indian corn, and other such things, from an invisible hand thrown at him, sometimes through the door, sometimes through the window, sometimes down the chimney, and sometimes from the floor of the room, though very close, over his head, and sometimes he met with them in the shop, the yard, the barn, and in the field. There was no violence in the motion of the things thus thrown by the Invisible Hand, and though others besides the man happened sometimes to be hit, they were never hurt with them. Only the man himself once had pain given to his arm, and once blood fetched from his leg, by these annoyances, and a fire in an unknown way kindled, consumed no little part of his estate. This trouble began on a controversy between Desvaraux and another person about a chest of clothes, which the man apprehended to be unrighteously detained by Desvaraux, and it endured for different months, but upon the restoring of the clothes thus detained, the trouble ceased. At Breitling and Sussex in England, there happened a tragedy not unlike to this in the year 1659. Tis recorded by Clark in the second volume of his Examples. THE FIFTH EXAMPLE On June 11, 1682, showers of stones were thrown by an invisible hand upon the house of George Walton at Portsmouth, whereupon the people going out found the gate wrung off the hinges, and stones flying and falling thick about them, and striking at them seemingly with a great force, but really affecting them no more than if a soft touch were given them. The glass windows were broken to pieces by stones that came not from without, but from and other instruments were in like manner hurled about. Nine of the stones they took up, in which some were as hot as if they came out of the fire, and marking them, they laid them on the table, but in a little while they found some of them again flying about. The spit was carried up the chimney, and coming down with the point forward, stuck in the back log, from whence one of the company removing it, it was by an invisible hand thrown out the window. This disturbance continued from day to day, and sometimes a dismal, hollow whistling would be heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a horse, but nothing to be seen. The man went up the great bay in a boat to a farm he had there, but there the stones found him out and carrying from the house to the boat a stirrup iron. The iron came jingling after him through the woods as far as his house. and at last went away and was heard of no more. The anchor leaped overboard several times and stopped the boat. A cheese was taken out of the press and crumbled all over the floor, a piece of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung on it. Several cocks of hay mowed near the house were taken up and hung upon trees, and others made into small wisps and scattered about the house. The man was much hurt by some of the stones. He was a Quaker, and suspected that a woman who charged him with injustice in detaining some land from her did by witchcraft occasion these supernatural occurrences. However, at last they came to an end. The Sixth Example Antonio Hortado, dwelling near the Salmon Falls, heard a voice at the door of her house, calling, "'What do you hear?' and about half an hour had a blow on her eye that almost spoiled her. Two or three days after, a great stone was thrown along the house, which the people going to take up was unaccountably gone. A frying-pan then in the chimney rang so loud that the people at an hundred rods' distance heard it. and the said Mary with her husband going over the river in a canoe, they saw the head of a man, and about three foot off the tail of a cat swimming before the canoe, but nobody to join them, and the same apparition again followed the canoe when they returned, but their landing at first disappeared. A stone thrown by an invisible hand after this caused a swelling and a soreness in her head, and she was bitten on both arms, black and blue, and her breast scratched, the impression of the teeth, which were like a man's teeth, being seen by many. They deserted their house on these occasions, and though at a neighbor's house they were at first haunted with apparitions, the satanical molestations quickly ceased. When Antonio returned unto his own house, At his entrance there he heard one walking in his chamber, and saw the boards buckle under the feet of the walker, and yet there was no body there. For this cause he went back to dwell on the other side of the river, but thinking he might plant his ground, though he left his house, he had five rods of good log-fence thrown down at once, and the footing of neat cattle plainly to be seen, almost between every row of corn in the field. yet no cattle seen there, nor any damage done to his corn, or so much as a leaf of it cropped. THE SEVENTH EXAMPLE Mr. Philip Smith aged about fifty years, a son of eminently virtuous parents, a deacon of a church in Hadley, a member of the general court, a justice in the country court, a select man for the affairs of the town, a lieutenant of the troop, and, which crowns all, a man for devotion, sanctity, gravity, and all that was honest, exceeding exemplary. Such a man was, in the winter of the year 1684, murdered with an hideous witchcraft that filled all those parts of New England with astonishment. He was, by his office, concerned about relieving the indigences of a wretched woman in the town, who, being dissatisfied at some of his just cares about her, expressed herself to him in such a manner that he declared himself from that time apprehensive of receiving mischief at her hands. About the beginning of January he began to be very valetudinarious, laboring under pains that seemed ischiatic. The stander's eye could now see in him one ripening apace for another world, and filled with grace and joy to an high degree. He shows such weanedness from and worriness of the world, that he knew not, he said, whether he might pray for his continuance here, and such assurance he had of the divine love to him, that in raptures he would cry out, Lord, stay thy hand, it is enough, it is more than thy frail servant can bear." But in the midst of these things he still uttered in hard suspicion that the ill woman who had threatened him had made impressions with enchantments on him. While he remained yet of a sound mind, he very sedately, but very solemnly, charged his brother to look well after him. Though he said he now understood himself, yet he knew not how he might be. But be sure, said he, to have a care of me, for you shall see strange things. There shall be a wonder in Hadley. I shall not be dead when Tith thought I am. He pressed his charge over and over, and afterwards became delirious, upon which he had a speech incessant and voluble, and, as was judged, in various languages. He cried out not only of pains, but also of pens, tormenting him in several parts of his body, and the attendants found one of them. In his distresses he exclaimed much on the woman aforesaid and others, as being seen by him in the room, and there were different times both in that room and over the whole house a strong smell of something like musk. which once particularly so scented an apple roasting at the fire that it forced him to throw it away. Some of the young men in the town, being out of their wits at the strange calamities, thus on one of their most beloved neighbors, went three or four times to give disturbance to the woman thus complained of. And all the while they were disturbed of her, he was at ease and slept as a weary man. Yea, these were the only times that they perceived him to take any sleep in all his illness. Galley-pots of medicines provided for the sick man were unaccountably emptied. Audible scratchings were made about the bed when his hands and feet lay wholly still and were held by others. They beheld fire sometimes on the bed, and when the beholders began to discourse of it, it vanished away. Different people actually felt something often stir in the bed at a considerable distance from the man. It seemed as big as a cat, but they could never grasp it. Several, trying to lean on the bed's head, though the sick man lay wholly still, the bed would shake so as to knock their heads uncomfortably. A very strong man could not lift the sick man to make him lie more easily, though he applied his utmost strength to it, and yet he could go presently and lift a bedstead and a bed and a man lying on it without any strain to himself at all. Mr. Smith dies. The jury that viewed his courts found the swelling on one breast. his privates wounded or burned, his back full of bruises and several holes that seem made with awls. After the opinion of all had pronounced him dead, his countenance continued as lively as if he had been alive, his eyes closed as in a slumber, and his nethered jaw not falling down. Thus he remained from Saturday morning about sunrise till Sabbath day in the afternoon, when those who took him out of the bed found him still warm, though the season was as cold as had almost been known in any age. and a New English winter does not lack for cold. On the night following, his countenance was yet fresh as before, but on Monday morning they found the face extremely tomified and discolored. It was black and blue, and fresh blood seemed running down his cheek upon the hairs. Different noises were also heard in the room where the corpse lay, as a clattering of chairs and stools in which no account could be given. This is the end of so good a man. And I could with unquestionable evidence relate the tragical deaths of several good men in this land attended with such supernatural circumstances which have loudly called on us all to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Eighth Example There was one Mary Johnson tried at Hartford in this country upon an indictment of familiarity with the devil, and was found guilty of it chiefly upon her own confession. Her confession was attended to with such convicting circumstances that it could not be slighted. Very many material passages relating to this matter are now lost, but so much as is well known and can still be proved shall be inserted. She said her first familiarity with the devil came through discontent, and wishing the devil to take this and that, and the devil to do that and the other thing, which caused a devil to appear to her, tendering her what services might best content her. A devil accordingly did for her many services. Her master blamed her for not carrying out the ashes, and a devil afterwards would clear the hearth of ashes for her. her master sending her to drive out the hogs that sometimes broke into their field, a devil would scour the hogs away and make her laugh to see how he sees them. She confessed that she had murdered a child and committed uncleanness both with men and with devils. In the time of her imprisonment, the famous Mr. Stone was at great pains to promote her conversion from the devil to God, and she was by the best observers judged very penitent, both before her execution and at it, and she went out of the world with comfortable hopes of mercy from God through the merit of her Savior. But as to what she built her hopes on, she answered, upon these words, Come unto me, all ye that labour in her heavy laden, and I will give you rest. In these, there is a fountain set open for sin and uncleanness. And she died in a frame extremely to the satisfaction of them that were spectators of it. The Ninth Example four children of John Goodwin in Boston, which had enjoyed a religious education, and answered it with a towardly ingenuity. Children, indeed, of an exemplary temper and courage, and an example to all about them for piety, honesty, and industry, these were, in the year 1688, arrested by a very stupendous witchcraft. The eldest of the children, a daughter of about thirteen years old, saw cause to examine their laundress, the daughter of a scandalous Irish woman in the neighborhood, about some linen that was missing. And the woman, bestowing very bad language on the child, in her daughter's defense, the child was immediately taken with odd fits that carried in them something diabolical. It was not long before one of her sisters, with two of her brothers, were horribly taken with the like fits, which the most experienced physicians pronounce extraordinary and supernatural. And one thing that the more confirmed them in this opinion was, that all the children were tormented still just the same part of their bodies. At the same time, though their pains flew like swift lightning from one part to another, and they were kept so far apart that they neither saw nor heard one another's complaints. At nine or ten o'clock at night, they still had a release from their miseries, and slept all night pretty comfortably. But when the day came, they were most miserably handled. Sometimes they were deaf, sometimes dumb, sometimes blind, and often all this at once. Their tongues would be drawn down their throats and then pulled out on their chins to a prodigious length. Their mouths were forced open to such a wideness that their jaws went out of joint. and then clapped together again with a force like that of a spring-lock, and the like would happen to their shoulder-blades, and their elbows, and hand-wrists, and several of their joints. They would lie in a benumb condition, and be drawn together like those that are tied neck and heels, and presently be stretched out, yea drawn back, enormously. They made piteous outcries, that they were cut with knives and struck with blows, and the plain prints of the wounds were seen on them. Their necks would be broken, so that their neck bone would seem dissolved to them that felt after it. And yet on the sudden it would become again so stiff that there was no stirring of their heads, yea, their heads would be twisted almost round. And if the main force of their friends at any time obstructed a dangerous motion which seemed on, they would roar exceedingly. And when devotions were performed with them, their hearing was utterly taken from them. The ministers of Boston and Charleston, keeping a day of prayer with fasting on this occasion at the troubled house, the youngest of the four children was immediately, happily, finally delivered from all its trouble. But the magistrates, being awakened by the noise of these grievous and horrid occurrences, examined the person who was under the suspicion of having employed these troublesome demons, and she gave such a wretched account of herself that she was committed to the jailer's custody. It was not long before this woman, whose name was Glover, was brought upon her trial, and when the court could have no answers from her but in the Irish, which was her native language, Although she understood English very well, and had accustomed her whole family to none but English in her former conversation, when she pleaded to her indictment, it was with owning and bragging rather than denial of her guilt. And the interpreters by whom the communication between the bench and the bar was managed, were made sensible that a spell had been laid by another witch on this, to prevent her telling tales by confining her to a language which was hoped nobody would understand. The woman's house being searched, several images or puppets or babies made of rags and stuffed with goat's hair were then produced, and the vile woman confessed that her way to torment the objects of her malice was by wetting of her finger with her spittle and stroking of those little images. The abused children were then present in the court. The woman kept still stooping and drinking as one that was almost pressed to death with a mighty weight on her. But one of the images being brought to her, she oddly and swiftly started up and smashed it into her hand. But she had no sooner smashed it than one of the children fell into sad fits before the whole assembly. The judges had their just apprehension at this. and carefully causing a repetition of the experiment, they still found the same event of it, though the children saw not when the hand of the witch was laid on the images. They asked her whether she had any to stand by her. She replied she had, and looking very pertly into the air, she added, No, he's gone. And she then acknowledged that she had one who was her prince, with whom she mentioned I know not what communion, for which cause the night after she was heard expostulating with a devil for his thus deserting her, telling him that because he has served her so basely and falsely, she had confessed all. However, to make all clear, the court appointed five or six physicians to examine her very strictly, whether she was in no way crazed in her intellectuals. Different hours did they spend with her, and in all that while no discourse came from her but what was agreeable. Particularly when they asked her what she thought would become of her soul, she replied, you ask me a very solemn question, and I cannot tell what to say to it. She professed herself a Roman Catholic. and would recite her Pater Noster in Latin very readily, but there was one clause or two always too hard for her in which she said she could not repeat it, if she might have all the world. In the upshot, the doctors returned her mentally capable, and sentence of death was passed on her. A number of days passed between her being arraigned and condemned, and in this time one Hughes testified that her neighbor, called Hohen, who was cruelly bewitched to death about six years before, laid her death to the charge of this woman, and bid her, the said Hughes, to remember this, for within six years there would be occasion to mention it. One of Hugh's children was presently taken ill in the same woeful manner that Goodwin's was, and particularly the boy in the night cried out that a black person with a blue cap in the room tortured him, and that they tried with their hand in the bed for to pull out his bowels. The mother of the boy went to Glover the day following and asked her why she tortured her poor lad at such a rate. Glover answered, because of the wrong she had received from her, and boasted that she had come at him as a black person with a blue cap, and with her hand in the bed, would have pulled his balls out, but could not. Hughes denied that she had wronged her, and Glover, then desiring to see the boy, wished him well, upon which he had no more of his indispositions. After the condemnation of the woman, I did myself give a number of visits to her, in which she told me that she did used to be at meetings where her prints with four more were present. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes and videos at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email by phone at 780-450-3730 by fax at 780-468-1096 or by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton, that's E-D-M-O-N-T-O-N Alberta, abbreviated capital A, capital B, Canada, T6L3T5. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since He condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying His word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind, as though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.