In compliance with your request, I now send you a manuscript which
contains all the material circumstances of a remarkable legend,
founded on the singular events of 1692. The original chronicle
is lost, but its general features were strongly impressed on
my memory, and I committed them to writing, some years since,
and very soon after the discovery that the first manuscript
was missing. I hope you will be able to make such use of these
materials, as shall expose the danger of popular delusions, and
guard the public mind against their recurrence. It is too late to
revive the folly of witchcraft, but other follies are pressing on
the community,--fanaticism in various ways is moulding the public
feeling into unnatural shapes, and shadowing forth a train of
undefined evils, whose forms of mischief are yet to be developed.
In this state of things, our true wisdom is to take counsel of
the past, and not suffer ourselves to be led astray by bold and
startling theories, which can only waste the mental energies,
and make shipwreck of the mind itself on some fatal rock of
superstition or infidelity.
It is an age of boasted liberty and light, but it may well be
doubted whether these high pretensions are any powerful defence
against popular mistakes. It often happens that the moral plague
spot is first seen in the walks of science. It was so in the days
which this manuscript commemorates: men renowned for talents and
learning gave countenance to a delusion which swept over the land,
and will be known in all coming ages by its track of blood and
death.
I am not opposed to innovations upon any vicious principle or
habit whatsoever. I have no respect for any venerable theory,
unless its claims are supported by the Bible and common sense; but
how often is that noble edifice of Truth, which the Bible reveals
to our eye, deformed by the additions and inventions of men! The
Catholic church has for ages thrown up its battlements and towers
on the heavenly structure; but these imagined ornaments have only
marred its beauty, and hidden its real grandeur from the eye.
Other sects have attempted to improve upon the divine Architect;
and thus it has happened that the cumbrous scaffolding has fallen,
and buried multitudes in its ruins. But if this Temple had been
permitted to stand in its own native simplicity, its perfect
symmetry, its unrivalled strength and glory, not one of the
countless millions who have sought its mysteries would have thus
miserably perished.
The elements of delusion always exist in the human mind. Sometimes
they slumber for years, and then break forth with volcanic energy,
spreading ruin and desolation in their path. Even now the distant
roar of these terrible agents comes with confused and ominous
sound on the ear. What form of mischief they will assume is among
the mysteries of the future;--that desolation will follow in
their train, no one can doubt; that they will purify the moral
atmosphere, and throw up mighty land-marks as guides to future
ages, is equally certain; the evil or good which shall be the
final result, depends, under Providence, on the measure of wisdom
we may gather from the lessons of the past.
With sincere regard,
Yours truly,