The governor of the
province is not my enemy, but one whom I baptized; namely, Sir William
Phips, one of my own flock, and one of my dearest friends." [Footnote:
Cotton Mather's _Diary_; Quincy's _History of Harvard_, i. 60.]
Such was the government the theocracy left the country as its legacy when
its own power had passed away, and dearly did Massachusetts rue that fatal
gift in her paroxysms of agony and blood.
At the close of the seventeenth century the belief in witchcraft was
widespread, and among the more ignorant well-nigh universal. The
superstition was, moreover, fostered by the clergy, who, in adopting this
policy, were undoubtedly actuated by mixed motives. Their credulity
probably made them for the most part sincere in the unbounded confidence
they professed in the possibility of compacts between the devil and
mankind; but, nevertheless, there is abundant evidence in their writings
of their having been keenly alive to the fact that men horror-stricken at
the sight of the destruction of their wives and children by magic would
grovel in the submission of abject terror at the feet of the priest who
promised to deliver them.
The elders began the agitation by sending out a paper of proposals for
collecting stories of apparitions and witchcrafts, and in obedience to
their wish Increase Mather published his "Illustrious Providences" in
1683-4.
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