vil that was in ye girl
flewe at and tore" his grand sermon against witches. How edifying is his
account of the young bewitched maiden whom he kept in his house for the
purpose of making experiments which should satisfy all "obstinate
Sadducees"! How satisfactory to orthodoxy and confounding to heresy is
the nice discrimination of "ye divil in ye girl," who was choked in
attempting to read the Catechism, yet found no trouble with a pestilent
Quaker pamphlet; who was quiet and good-humored when the worthy Doctor
was idle, but went into paroxysms of rage when he sat down to indite his
diatribes against witches and familiar spirits!

(The Quakers appear to have, at a comparatively early period,
emancipated themselves in a great degree from the grosser
superstitions of their times. William Penn, indeed, had a law in
his colony against witchcraft; but the first trial of a person
suspected of this offence seems to have opened his eyes to its
absurdity. George Fox, judging from one or two passages in his
journal, appears to have held the common opinions of the day on the
subject; yet when confined in Doomsdale dungeon, on being told that
the place was haunted and that the spirits of those who had died
there still walked at night in his room, he replied, "that if all
the spirits and devils in hell were there, he was over them in the
power of God, and feared no such thing."

The enemies of the Quakers, in order to account for the power and
influence of their first preachers, accused them of magic and
sorcery. "The Priest of Wakefield," says George Fox (one trusts he
does not allude to our old friend the Vicar), "raised many wicked
slanders upon me, as that I carried bottles with me and made people
drink, and that made them follow me; that I rode upon a great black
horse, and was seen in one county upon my black horse in one hour,
and in the same hour in another county fourscore miles off." In his
account of the mob which beset him at Walney Island, he says: "When
I came to myself I saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my
face, and her husband lying over me to keep off the blows and
stones; for the people had persuaded her that I had bewitched her
husband."

Cotton Mather attributes the plague of witchcraft in New England in
about an equal degree to the Quakers and Indians. The f