Romans after Caesar's murder. Some of Dr. Mather's
words have been preserved to us, as he afterwards wrote them down in
one of his works. Speaking of those 'unbelieving Sadducees' who doubted
the existence of such a crime, he said: 'Instead of their apish shouts
and jeers at blessed Scripture, and histories which have such undoubted
confirmation as that no man that has breeding enough to regard the
common laws of human society will offer to doubt of them, it becomes us
rather to adore the goodness of God, who from the mouths of babes and
sucklings has ordained truth, and by the means of the sore-afflicted
children of your godly pastor, has revealed the fact that the devils
have with most horrid operations broken in upon your neighbourhood. Let
us beseech Him that their power may be restrained, and that they go not
so far in their evil machinations as they did but four years ago in the
city of Boston, where I was the humble means, under God, of loosing
from the power of Satan the four children of that religious and blessed
man, Mr. Goodwin. These four babes of grace were bewitched by an Irish
witch; there is no end to the narration of the torments they had to
submit to. At one time they would bark like dogs, at another purr like
cats; yea, they would fly like geese, and be carried with an incredible
swiftness, having but just their toes now and then upon the ground,
sometimes not once in twenty feet, and their arms waved like those of a
bird. Yet at other times, by the hellish devices of the woman who had
bewitched them, they could not stir without limping, for, by means of
an invisible chain, she hampered their limbs, or, sometimes, by means
of a noose, almost choked them. One in especial was subjected by this
woman of Satan to such heat as of an oven, that I myself have seen the
sweat drop from off her, while all around were moderately cold and well
at ease. But not to trouble you with more of my stories, I will go on
to prove that it was Satan himself that held power over her. For a very
remarkable thing it was, that she was not permitted by that evil spirit
to read any godly or religious book, speaking the truth as it is in
Jesus. She could read Popish books well enough, while both sight and
speech seemed to fail her when I gave her the Assembly's Catechism.
Again, she was fond of that prelatical Book of Common Prayer, which is
but the Roman mass-book in an English and ungodly shape. In the midst
of her sufferings, if