 | 28.
Ibid
. 40-41.
|
| 29. Murdock,
Increase Mather
284-86, tells of his return home. There is no evidence that Mather had heard in England of the beginnings of witchcraft in Salem.
|
| 30. Early ministerial reaction followed the same lines. See Deodat Lawson,
Christ's Fidelity The Only Shield Against Satan's Malignity
(Boston, 1693), a sermon preached in Salem, March 24, 1692.
|
| 31. Starkey,
Devil in Massachusetts
, 153-56.
|
| 32. "The Return," dated June 15, 1692, was printed in Increase Mather,
Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits
(London, 1693). A part of the "Postscript;" its pages are unnumbered.
|
| 33. There is no doubt that spectral evidence was used. Virtually everyone connected to the affair admitted it. Other doubtful testsdoubtful by seventeenth-century standardssuch as the ordeal by sight and touch were used in pre-trial hearings and in the trials. See Deodat Lawson,
A Brief and True Narrative Of Some Remarkable Passages Relating to . . . Witchcraft
(Boston, 1692), and
A Further Account of the Tryals of the New England Witches
(London, 1693).
|
| 34. "The Return of Several Ministers."
|
| 35. Starkey,
Devil In Massachusetts
, 204-7.
|
| 36.
Ibid
. 219
|
| 37. (London, 1693). Fourteen ministers, including John Wise, signed it.
|
| 38.
Ibid
.
|
| 39. Phips to Earl of Nottingham, Feb. 21, 1693, in Burr,
Narratives
, 201, for the quotations. See 198-202 for Phips version of the end of the affair. See, too, his letter to William Blathwayt, Oct. 12, 1692, in
Ibid
. 196-98.
|
|