een zest, as a
contest with the powers of darkness working for the destruction of the
peace and health of humanity in an open and flagrant manner. The
same spirit of espionage which was one of the baleful effects of
the outbreaks of persecution during the Middle Ages attended the
persecution of witchcraft in England during the seventeenth century.
To save themselves from suspicion, persons informed against others,
and even members of a household would give evidence leading to the
trial of those of their own kin. When an unfortunate fell under
suspicion,--which too frequently meant the animosity of an
evil-disposed person,--the minister would denounce her by name from
the pulpit, prohibit his parishioners from harboring her or in any way
giving her succor, and exhort them to give evidence against her. The
Puritans had conned well the story of the Witch of Endor, and, with
their tendency to reproduce the Old Testament spirit, felt that the
existence of witches was an abomination in the sight of the Lord,
which would bring divine wrath upon the community that sheltered them
unless the sin were purged from it by their death. In this they were
but the inheritors of the faith of the Church from the early ages, and
are liable to no more serious censure for their persecution of witches
than that which they merit for the vindictive and splenetic spirit
and the satisfaction in barbarities and cruelty which too often they
evinced.

The persecutions attendant upon witchcraft are chargeable to no one
division of the Church more than to another, for Protestant as well as
Catholic, Puritan as well as Prelatist, felt that in this work he was
fulfilling the will of God and safeguarding society. King James I., in
his _Demonology_, asks: "What can be the cause that there are twentie
women given to that craft where there is only one man?" He gives as
his reason for the disparity in numbers the greater frailty of women,
which he easily and satisfactorily proves by reference to the fall of
Eve, as marking the beginning of Satan's dominance of the sex.

In entering upon a crusade of persecution of witches, the Puritans
were in harmony with the enactments of the sovereigns before the
Commonwealth, and were in conformity with the temper of the times and
the universally prevailing belief of the country. The austerity they
assumed toward the sex in general made it easy for them to believe
that particular characters, given over to vagabondage, w