in other devious ways
and in a more attractive guise?

They were the victims of delusion, not of dishonor, of a perverted
theology fed by moral aberrations, of a fanaticism which never stopped
to reason, and halted at no sacrifice to do God's service; and they were
all done to death, or harried into exile, disgrace, or social
ostracism, through a mistaken sense of religious duty: but they stand
innocent of deep offense and only guilty in the eye of the law written
in the Word of God, as interpreted and enforced by the forefathers who
wrought their condemnation, and whose religion made witchcraft a heinous
sin, and whose law made it a heinous crime.

Is the contrast in human experience, between the servitude to credulity
and superstition in 1647-97 and the deliverance from it of this day, any
wider than between the ironclad theology of that and of later times, and
the challenge to it, and its diabolical logic, of yesterday, which marks
a new era in denominational creeds, in religious beliefs, and their
expression?

Jonathan Edwards, in his famous sermon at Enfield in 1741, on "Sinners
in the hands of an Angry God," was inspired to say to the impenitent:
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider
or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully
provoked; His wrath toward you burns like fire; He looks upon you as
worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; He is of purer eyes
than to bear to have you in His sight; you are 10,000 times so
abominable in His eyes as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in
ours.... Instead of one how many is it likely will remember this
discourse in hell! And it would be a wonder if some that are now present
should not be in hell in a very short time--before this year is out. And
it would be no wonder if some persons, that now sit here in some seats
of this meeting-house, in health and quiet, and secure, should be there
before to-morrow morning." One hundred and sixty-three years later,
Rev. Dr. Samuel T. Carter, a godly minister of the same faith, "a
heretic who is no heretic," stood before the presbytery of Nassau, was
invited to remain in the Presbyterian communion, and yet said this of
the doctrine of Edwards, as written in the _Westminster Confession_: "In
God's name and Christ's name it is not true. There is no such God as the
God of the confession. There is no such world as the world of the
confession. There is no such e