in the commonwealth,
was convicted of "profaning the Sabbath," fined ten shillings, and
condemned to pay costs and fees, which were eight shillings more. He
paid his fine, and was probably more careful during the rest of his life
to mount on Sunday evenings by the almanac.

The special glory of this man's life was his steadfast and brave
opposition to the witchcraft mania of 1692. This deplorable madness was
in New England a mere transitory panic, from which the people quickly
recovered; but while it lasted it almost silenced opposition, and it
required genuine heroism to lift a voice against it. No country of
Europe was free from the delusion during that century, and some of its
wisest men were carried away by it. The eminent judge, Sir William
Blackstone, in his "Commentaries," published in 1765, used this
language:--

"To deny the existence of witchcraft is to flatly contradict the
revealed word of God, and the thing itself is a truth to which every
nation has in its turn borne testimony."

This was the conviction of that age, and hundreds of persons were
executed for practicing witchcraft. In Massachusetts, while the mania
lasted, fear blanched every face and haunted every house.

It was the more perilous to oppose the trials because there was a
mingling of personal malevolence in the fell business, and an individual
who objected was in danger of being himself accused. No station, no age,
no merit, was a sufficient protection. Mary Bradbury, seventy-five years
of age, the wife of one of the leading men of Salisbury, a woman of
singular excellence and dignity of character, was among the convicted.
She was a neighbor of Major Pike's, and a life-long friend.

In the height of the panic he addressed to one of the judges an argument
against the trials for witchcraft which is one of the most ingenious
pieces of writing to be found among the documents of that age. The
peculiarity of it is that the author argues on purely Biblical grounds;
for he accepted the whole Bible as authoritative, and all its parts as
equally authoritative, from Genesis to Revelation. His main point was
that witchcraft, whatever it may be, cannot be certainly proved against
any one. The eye, he said, may be deceived; the ear may be; and all the
senses. The devil himself may take the shape and likeness of a person or
thing, when it is not that person or thing. The truth on the subject, he
held, lay out of the range of mortal ken.

"And therefo