Satan's Especial Grudge against Our Puritan Fathers.
"Tituba!" And who else? Why need there have been anybody else? Why could
not the whole thing have stopped just there? No doubt Tituba was guilty,
if any one was. But Tituba escaped, by shrewdly also becoming an
accuser.
"Who else?" This set the children's imagination roving. Their first
charges were not so unreasonable. Why, the vagrant Sarah Good, a social
outcast, wandering about without any settled habitation; and Sarah
Osburn, a bed-ridden woman, half distracted by family troubles who had
seen better days. There the truth was out. Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah
Osburn were the agents of the devil in this foul attempt against the
peace of the godly inhabitants of Salem village.
For it was a common belief even amongst the wisest and best of our
Puritan fathers, that the devil had a special spite against the New
England colonies. They looked at it in this way. He had conquered in
the fight against the Lord in the old world. He was the supreme and
undoubted lord of the "heathen salvages" in the new. Now that the
Puritan forces had commenced an onslaught upon him in the western
hemisphere, to which he had an immemorial right as it were, could it be
wondered at that he was incensed beyond all calculation? Was he, after
having Europe, Asia and Africa, to be driven out of North America by a
small body of steeple-hatted, psalm-singing, and conceited Puritans? No
wonder his satanic ire was aroused; and that he was up to all manner of
devices to harass, disorganize and afflict the camp of his enemies.
I am afraid this seems a little ridiculous to readers nowadays; but to
the men and women of two hundred years ago it was grim and sober
earnest, honestly and earnestly believed in.
Who, in the face of such wonderful changes in our religious views, can
venture to predict what will be the belief of our descendants two
hundred years hence?