Although at a
moment when the panic had got beyond control, even the most ultra of the
clergy had been forced by their own danger to counsel moderation, the
conservatives were by no means ready to abandon their potent allies from
the lower world; the power they gave was too alluring. "'Tis a strange
passage recorded by Mr. Clark, in the life of his father, That the people
of his parish refusing to be reclaimed from their Sabbath breaking, by all
the zealous testimonies which that good man bore against it; at last [one
night] ... there was heard a great noise, with rattling of chains, up and
down the town, and an horrid scent of brimstone.... Upon which the guilty
consciences of the wretches, told them, the devil was come to fetch them
away; and it so terrify'd them, that an eminent reformation follow'd the
sermons which that man of God preached thereupon." [Footnote: _Wonders
of the Invisible World_, p. 65.] They therefore saw the constant
acquittals, the abandonment of prosecutions, and the growth of incredulity
with regret. The next year Cotton Mather laid bare the workings of their
minds with cynical frankness. "The devils have with most horrendous
operations broke in upon our neighbourhood, and God has at such a rate
overruled all the fury and malice of those devils, that ... the souls of
many, especially of the rising generation, have been thereby waken'd unto
some acquaintance with religion; our young people who belonged unto the
praying meetings, of both sexes, apart would ordinarily spend whole nights
by the whole weeks together in prayers and psalms upon these occasions;
.
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