A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World

Ecclesiastical History has reported it to us, that a renowned martyr at the stake, seeing the Book of THE REVELATION thrown by his no less profane than bloody persecutors, to be burned in the same fire with himself, he cried out, O Beata Apocalypsis; quam bene mecum agitur, qui tecum Comburar! BLESSED REVELATION! said he; How blessed am I in this fire, while I have you to bear me company. As for ourselves this day, 'tis a fire of sore affliction and confusion, wherein we are embroiled; but it is no inconsiderable advantage to us, that we have the company of this glorious and sacred Book, THE REVELATION, to assist us in our exercises. From that Book, there is one text, which I would single out, at this time, to lay before you; 'tis that in *(Revelation 12:12)* Wo to the inhabiters of the earth, and of the sea; for the Devil is come down to you, having great wrath; because he knows, that he has but a short time.

THE text is like the cloudy and fiery pillar, vouchsafed to Israel, in the wilderness of old; there is a very dark side of it, in the intimation, that, The Devil is come down having great wrath; but it has also a bright side, when it assures us, that, He has but a short time [illegible]. To the contemplation of both, I do this day invite you.

We have in our hands a letter from our ascended Lord in Heaven, to advise us of his being still alive, and of his purpose ere long, to give us a visit, wherein we shall see our living Redeemer, stand at the latter day upon the earth. 'Tis the last advice that we have had from Heaven, for now sixteen hundred years; and the scope of it, is, to represent how the Lord Jesus Christ, having begun to set up his kingdom in the world, by the preaching of the Gospel, he would from time to time utterly break to pieces all powers that should make head against it, until; The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever. 'Tis a commentary on what had been written by Daniel, about, The Fourth Monarchy; with some touches upon, The Fifth; wherein, The greatness of the kingdom under the whole Heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High: and although it have, as 'tis expressed by one of the Ancients, Tot Sacramenta, quot verba, a mystery in every syllable, yet it is not altogether to be neglected with such a despair, as that, I cannot read, for the book is sealed: it is a REVELATION, and a singular, and notable blessing is pronounced upon them that humbly study it.

The Divine Oracles, have with a most admirable artifice and carefulness, drawn, as the very pious Beverley, has laboriously evinced, an exact line of time, from the first Sabbath at the creation of the world, to the great Sabbatism at the restitution of all things. In that famous line of time, from the decree for the restoring of Jerusalem, after the Babylonish captivity, there seem to remain a matter of two thousand and three hundred years, to that New Jerusalem, whereto the Church is to be advanced, when the Mystical Babylon shall be fallen. At the resurrection of our Lord, there were seventeen or eighteen hundred of those years, yet upon the line, to run to, The rest which remains for the people of God; and this remnant in the line of time, is here in our Apocalypse, variously embossed, adorned, and signalized with such distinguished events, if we mind them, will help us escape that censure, Can you not discern the signs of the times?

The Apostle John, for the view of these things, had laid before him, as I conceive, a book, with leaves, or folds; which v[illegible]lumn was written both on the backside, and on the inside, and rolled up in a cylindrical form, under seven labels, fastened with so many seals. The first seal being opened, and the first label removed, under the first label the Apostle saw what he saw, of a first rider portrayed, and so on, till the last seal was broken up; each of the sculptures being enlarged with agreeable visions and voices, to illustrate it. The book being now unrolled, there were trumpets, with wonderful concomitants, exhibited successively on the expanding backside of it. Whereupon the book was eaten, as it were to be hidden, from interpretations; till afterwards, in the inside of it, the kingdom of Antichrist came to be exposed. Thus, the judgments of God on the Roman Empire, first to the downfall of paganism, and then, to the downfall of popery, which is but revived paganism, are in these displays with lively colours and features made sensible to us.

Accordingly, in the twelfth chapter of this book, we have an august preface, to the description of that horrid kingdom, which our Lord Christ refused, but Antichrist accepted, from the Devil's hands; a kingdom, which for twelve hundred and sixty years together, was to be a continual oppression upon the people of God, and opposition to his interests; until the arrival of that illustrious day, wherein, The kingdom shall be the Lord's, and he shall be governor among the nations. The chapter is (as an excellent person calls it) an extravasated account, of the circumstances, which befell the Primitive Church, during the first four or five hundred years of Christianity: it shows us the face of the Church, first in Rome heathenish, and then in Rome converted, before the Man of Sin was yet come to man's estate. Our text contains the acclamations made upon the most glorious revolution that ever yet happened upon the Roman Empire; namely, that wherein the travailing Church brought forth a Christian emperor. This was a most eminent victory over the Devil, and resemblance of the state, wherein the world, ere long shall see, The kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ. It is here noted.

First, As a matter of triumph. 'Tis said, Rejoice, you Heavens, and you that dwell in them. The saints in both worlds, took the comfort of this revolution; the devout ones that had outlived the late persecutions, were filled with transporting joys, when they saw the Christian become the imperial religion, and when they saw good men come to give law to the rest of mankind; the deceased ones also, whose blood had been sacrificed in the ten persecutions, doubtless made the light regions to ring with hallelujahs to God, when there were brought to them, the tidings of the advances now given to the Christian religion, for which they had suffered martyrdom.

Secondly, as a matter of horror. 'Tis said, Wo to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea. The earth still means the false church, the sea means the wide world, in prophetical phraseology. There was yet left a vast party of men that were enemies to the Christian religion, in the power of it; a vast party left for the Devil to work upon: to these is, a wo denounced; and why so? 'Tis added, For the Devil is come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows, that he has but a short time. These were it seems to have some desperate and peculiar attempts of the Devil, made upon them. In the mean time, we may entertain this for our

DOCTRINE. Great wo proceeds from the great wrath, with which the Devil, towards the end of his time, will make a descent upon a miserable world.

I have now published a most awful and solemn warning for our selves at this day; which has four propositions, comprehended in it.

FINIS.

Proposition 1.

That there is a Devil, is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influence of the Devil. For any to deny the being of a Devil must be from an ignorance or profaneness, worse than diabolical. A Devil! What is that? We have a definition of the monster, in (Ephesians 6:12): A spiritual wickedness, that is, a wicked spirit. A Devil is a fallen angel, an angel fallen from the fear and love of God, and from all celestial glories; but fallen to all manner of wretchedness and cursedness. He was once in that order of heavenly creatures, which God in the beginning made ministering spirits, for his own peculiar service and honor, in the management of the universe; but we may now write that epitaph upon him, How are you fallen from Heaven! You have said in your heart, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; but you are brought down to Hell! A Devil is a spiritual and a rational substance, by his apostasy from God, inclined to all that is vicious, and for that apostasy confined to the atmosphere of this earth; in chains under darkness, to the judgment of the great day. This is a Devil; and the experience of mankind as well as the testimony of Scripture, does abundantly prove the existence of such a Devil.

About this Devil, there are many things, whereof we may reasonably and profitably be inqusitive; such things, I mean, as are in our Bibles revealed to us; according to which if we do not speak, on so dark a subject, but according to our own uncertain, and perhaps humoursome conjectures, there is no light in us. I will carry you with me, but to one paragraph of the Bible, to be informed of three things, relating to the Devil; 'tis the story of the Gadaren Energumen, in the fifth chapter of Mark.

First, then; 'tis to be granted; the Devils are so many, that some thousands, can sometimes at once apply themselves to vex one child of man. It is said, in (Mark 5:15): He that was possessed with the Devil, had the Legion. Dreadful to be spoken! A Legion consisted of twelve thousand five hundred people: and we see that in one man or two, so many Devils can be spared for a garrison. As the prophet cried out, Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! so I say, There are multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of destruction, where the Devils are! When we speak of, The Devil, 'tis, a name of multitude; it means not one individual Devil, so potent and scient, as perhaps a man chee would imagine; but it means a kind, which a multitude belongs to. Alas, the Devils, they swarm about us, like the frogs of Egypt, in the most retired of our chambers. Are we at our boards? There will be Devils to tempt us to sensuality. Are we in our beds? There will be Devils to tempt us to carnality. Are we in our shops? There will be Devils to tempt us to dishonesty. Yes, though we get into the church of God, there will be Devils to haunt us in the very temple itself, and there tempt us to manifold misbehaviours. I am verily persuaded, that there are very few humane affairs, whereinto some Devils are not insinuated; there is not so much as a journey intended, but Satan will have a hand in hindering or furthering of it.

Secondly, 'tis to be supposed, that there is a sort of arbitrary, even military government, among the Devils. This is intimated, when in (Mark 5:9): The unclean spirit said, My Name is Legion: they are under such a discipline as Legions use to be. Hence we read about, The Prince of the Power of the Air: our air has a power! or an army, of Devils in the high places of it; and these Devils have a prince over them, who is, King over the children of pride. 'Tis probable, that the Devil, who was the ring-leader of that mutinous and rebellious crew, which first shook off the authority of God, is now the General of those hellish armies; our Lord, that conquered him, has told us the name of him; 'tis Belzebub; 'tis he that is, the Devil, and the rest are, his angels, or his souldiers. Think on, vast regiments, of cruel, and bloody French dragoons, with an intendant over them, over-running a pillaged neighbourhood, and you will think a little, what the constitution among the Devils is.

Thirdly, it is to be supposed, that some devils are more peculiarly commissioned, and perhaps qualified, for some countries, while others are for others. This is intimated, when in (Mark 5:10) the devils besought Our Lord, much, that he would not send them away out of the country. Why was that? But in all probability, because these devils were more able to do the works of the devil, in such a country, than in another. It is not likely that every devil knows every language; or that every devil can do every mischief. It is possible that the experience, or, if I may call it so, the education, of all devils, is not alike, and that there may be some difference in their abilities. If one might make an inference from what the devils do, to what they are, one cannot forbear dreaming, that there are degrees of devils. Who can allow that such trifling daemons, as that of Mascon, or those that once infested our Newberry, are of so much grandeur, as those daemons, whose games are mighty kingdoms? Yes, it is certain, that all devils do not make a like figure, in the invisible world. Nor does it look agreeably, that the daemons, which were the familiars of such a man as the old Apollonius, differ not from those baser goblins that choose to nest in the filthy and loathsome rags, of a beastly sorceress. Accordingly, why may not some devils, be more accomplished for what is to be done in such and such places: when others must be detached for other territories? Each devil as he sees his advantage, cries out, Let me be in this country, rather than another. But enough, if not too much, of these things.

Proposition 2.

There is a devilish wrath against mankind, with which the devil is, for God's sake inspired. The devil is himself broiling under the intolerable and interminable wrath of God; and a fiery wrath at God, is that with which the devil is for that cause enflamed. Methinks I see the posture of the devils in (Isaiah 8:21). They fret themselves, and curse their God, and look upward. The first and chief wrath of the devil, is at the Almighty God Himself; he knows, the God that made him, will not have mercy on him, and the God that formed him, will show him no favor; and so he can have no kindness for that God, who has no mercy, nor favor for him. Hence it is, that he cannot bear the name of God should be acknowledged in the world; every acknowledgment paid to God, is a fresh drop of burning brimstone falling upon the devil. He does make his insolent, though impotent batteries, even upon the throne of God Himself: and foolishly affects to have himself exalted to that glorious high throne, by all people, as he sometimes is, by execrable witches. This horrible dragon does not only wish, with his tail, to strike at the stars of God, but at the God who made the stars, being desirous to [illegible] them all. God and the devil are sworn enemies to each other; the terms between them, are those, in (Zechariah 11:8). My soul [illegible] them, and their soul also abhorred me. And from this furious wrath, or displeasure and prejudice at God, proceeds the devil's wrath at us, the poor children of men. Our doing the service of God, is one thing that exposes us to the wrath of the devil. We are the high-priests of the world; when all creatures are called upon, Praise you the Lord, they bring to us those demanded praises of God, saying, Do you offer them for us. Hence it is, that the devil has a quarrel with us, as he had with the high-priest in the vision of old. Our bearing the image of God, is another thing that brings the wrath of the devil upon us. As a tiger, through his hatred at a man, will tear the very picture of him, if it come in his way; such a tiger the devil is; because God said of old, Let us make man in our image, the devil is ever saying, Let us pull this man to pieces. But the envious pride of the devil, is one thing more that gives an edge to his furious wrath against us. The Apostle has given us a hint, as if pride had been the condemnation of the devil. It is not unlikely, that the devil's affectation to be above that condition which he might learn that mankind was to be preferred to, might be the occasion of his taking up arms against the Immortal King. However, the devil now sees man lying in the bosom of God, but himself damned in the bottom of hell; and this enrages him exceedingly; O, says he, I cannot bear it, that man should not be as miserable as myself.

Proposition 3.

The Devil, in the prosecution, & for the execution, of his wrath upon them, often gets a liberty to make a descent upon the children of men. When the Devil does hurt to us, he comes down to us; for the rendezvous of the infernal troops, is indeed in the supernal parts of our air. But as it is said, a sparrow of the air does not fall down without the will of God; so I may say, not a Devil in the air, can come down without the leave of God. Of this we have a famous instance in that Arabian Prince, of whom the Devil was unable so much as to touch any thing, till the most high God gave him a permission, to go down. The Devil stands with all the instruments of death, aiming at us, and begging of the Lord, as that King asked for the hood-winked Syrians of old, Shall I smite 'em, shall I smite 'em? He cannot strike a blow, till the Lord say, Go down and smite, but sometimes he does obtain from the high Possessor of Heaven and Earth, a license for the doing of it. The Devil sometimes does make most rueful havoc among us; but still we may say to him, as our Lord said to a great servant of his, You could have no power against me, except it were given you from above. The Devil is called in (1 Peter 5:8) your adversary. It is a law-term; and it notes, an adversary at law. The Devil cannot come at us, except in some sense according to law; but sometimes he does procure sad things to be inflicted, according to that law of the eternal King, upon us. The Devil first goes up as an accuser against us: he is therefore styled the Accuser; and it is on this account, that his proper name, does belong to him. There is a court somewhere kept; a court of spirits, where the Devil enters all sorts of complaints against us all; he charges us with manifold sins against the Lord our God: there he loads us with heavy imputations, of hypocrisy, iniquity, disobedience; whereupon he urges, Lord, let 'em now have the death, which is their wages, paid to 'em! If our Advocate in the heavens does not now take off his libels, the Devil then with a concession of God, comes down, as a destroyer upon us. Having first been an attorney, to bespeak that the judgments of Heaven may be ordered for us, he then also pleads that he may be the executioner of those judgments; and the God of Heaven sometimes after a sort signs a warrant, for this destroying angel, to do what has been desired to be done for the destroying of men. But such a permission from God, for the Devil to come down, and break in upon mankind, oftentimes must be accompanied with a commission from some wretches of mankind [illegible]. Every man is, as it is hinted in (Genesis 4:9), his brother's keeper. We are to keep one another from the [illegible] of the Devil, by mutual and cordial wishes of prosperity to one another. When ungodly people, give their consents in witchcrafts diabolically performed, for the Devil to annoy their neighbors, he finds a breach made in the hedge about us, whereat he rushes in upon us, with grievous molestations. Yes, when impious people, that never saw the Devil, do but utter their curses against their neighbors, those are so many watchwords whereby the malives of Hell are animated presently to fall upon us. It is thus, that the Devil gets leave to worry us.

Proposition 4.

Most horrible woes come to be inflicted upon mankind, when the Devil does in great wrath, make a descent upon them. The Devil, is a Do-Evil, and wholly set upon mischief. When our Lord once was going to muzzle him, that he might not mischief others, he cried out, Are you come to [illegible] me? He is, it seems, himself tormented, if he be but restrained from the tormenting of men. If upon the sounding of the three last apocalyptical angels, it was an outcry made in Heaven, Wo, Wo, Wo, to the inhabitants of the Earth by reason of the voice of the Trumpet, I am sure, a descent made by the angel of death, would give cause for the like exclamation: Wo to the world, by reason of the wrath of the Devil! What a woeful plight, mankind would by the descent of the Devil, be brought into, may be gathered from the woeful pains, and wounds, and hideous desolations, which the Devil brings upon them, of whom he has with a bodily possession made a seizure. You may both in sacred and profane history, read many a direful account of the woes, which they, that are possessed by the Devil, do undergo: and from there conclude, What must the children of men, hope from such a Devil! Moreover the tyrannical ceremonies, whereto the Devil uses to subjugate such woeful nations or orders of men, as are more entirely under his dominion, do declare what woeful work, the Devil would make where he comes. The very devotions of those forlorn pagans, to whom the Devil is a leader, are most bloody penances: and what woes indeed must we expect from such a Devil of a Moloch, as relishes no sacrifices like those of human heart-blood, and to whom there is no music like the bitter, dying, doleful groans, ejulated by the roasting children of men.

Furthermore, the servile, abject, needy circumstances wherein the Devil keeps the slaves, that are under his more sensible vassalage, do suggest to us, how woeful the Devil would render all of our lives. We that live in a province, which affords to us, all that may be necessary or comfortable for us, found the province filled with vast herds of savages, that never saw so much as a knife, or a nail, or a board, or a grain of salt, in all their days. No better would the Devil have the world provided for! Nor should we, or any else, have one convenient thing about us; but be as indigent as usually our most ragged witches are; if the Devil's malice were not over-ruled by a compassionate God, who preserves man and beast. Hence it is, that the Devil, even like a dragon, keeping a guard upon such fruits as would refresh a languishing world, has hindered mankind for many ages, from hitting upon those useful inventions, which yet were so obvious and easy, that it is everybody's wonder, they were no sooner hit upon. The bemisted world, must jog on for thousands of years, without the knowledge of the lodestone, till a Neapolitan stumbled upon it, about three hundred years ago. Nor must the world be blest with such a matchless engine of learning and virtue, as that of printing, till about the middle of the fifteenth century. Nor could one old man all over the face of the whole earth, have the benefit of such a little, though most needful, thing, as a pair of spectacles, till a Dutchman, a little while ago accommodated us.

Indeed, as the Devil does begrudge us all manner of good, so he does annoy us with all manner of woe, as often as he finds himself capable of doing it. But shall we mention some of the special woes with which the Devil does usually infest the world? Briefly then; plagues are some of those woes, with which the Devil troubles us. It is said of the Israelites (1 Corinthians 10:10), they were destroyed of the destroyer. That is, they had the plague among them. It is the destroyer, or the Devil, that scatters plagues about the world. Pestilential and contagious diseases, it is the Devil, who does oftentimes invade us with them. It is no uneasy thing, for the Devil, to impregnate the air about us, with such malignant salts, as meeting with the salt of our microcosm, shall immediately cast us into that fermentation and putrefaction, which will utterly dissolve all the vital ties within us. Even as an aqua fortis, made with a conjunction of nitre and vitriol, corrodes what it seizes upon. And when the Devil has raised those arsenical fumes, which become venomous quivers full of terrible arrows, how easily can he shoot the [reconstructed: deleterious miasms] into those juices or bowels of men's bodies, which will soon inflame them with a mortal fire! Hence come such plagues, as that besom of destruction which within our memory swept away such a throng of people from one English city in one visitation. And hence those infectious fevers, which are but so many disguised plagues among us, causing epidemical desolations. Again, wars are also some of those woes, with which the Devil causes our trouble. It is said in (Revelation 12:17), the dragon was wroth, and went to make war. And there is in truth, scarce any war, but what is of the dragon's kindling. The Devil is that [reconstructed: Vulcan], out of whose forge come the instruments of our wars, and it is he that finds us employments for those instruments. We read concerning demoniacs, or people in whom the Devil was, that they would cut and wound themselves. And so, when the Devil is in men, he puts them upon dealing in that barbarous fashion with one another. Wars do often furnish him with some thousands of souls in one morning from one acre of ground. And for the sake of such Thyestaean banquets, he will push us upon as many wars as he can.

Once more, why may not storms be reckoned among those woes, with which the Devil does disturb us? It is not improbable, that natural storms on the world, are often of the Devil's raising. We are told in (Job 1:11-12, 19), that the Devil made a storm, which devastated the house of Job, upon the heads of them that were feasting in it. Paracelsus could have informed the Devil, if he had not been informed, as be sure he was before, that if much aluminous matter, with saltpeter not thoroughly prepared, be mixed, they will send up a cloud of smoke, which will come down in rain. But undoubtedly the Devil understands as well the way to make a tempest, as to turn the winds at the solicitation of a Laplander. From where perhaps it is, that thunders are observed oftener to break upon churches, than upon any other buildings. And besides, many a man, indeed many a ship, indeed many a town has miscarried, when the Devil has been permitted from above to make a horrible tempest. However, that the Devil has raised many metaphorical storms upon the church, is a thing, than which there is nothing more notorious. It was said to believers, in (Revelation 2:10), the Devil shall cast some [reconstructed: of] you into prison. The Devil was he that at first [reconstructed: set] Cain upon Abel, to butcher him, as the [reconstructed: Apostle] seems to suggest, for his faith in God, as a rewarder. And, in how many persecutions, as well as heresies, has the Devil been ever since engaging all the children of Cain! That serpent the Devil has acted his cursed seed, in unwearied endeavors to have them, of whom the world is not worthy, treated as those who are, not worthy to live in the world. By the impulse of the Devil, it is that first the old heathens, and then the mad Arians, were pricking briars, to the true servants of God. And that the Papists that came after them, have outdone [reconstructed: them] all, for slaughters, upon those that have been accounted as the sheep for the slaughter. The late French persecution, is perhaps the most horrible that ever was in the world. And as the Devil of Mascon seems before to have meant it, in his outcries, upon the miseries preparing for the poor Huguenots! — thus it has been all acted, by a singular fury of the old Dragon inspiring of his emissaries.

But in reality, spiritual woes are the principal woes, among all those that the Devil would have us undone withal. Sins are the worst of woes; and the Devil seeks nothing so much, as to plunge us into sins. When men do commit a crime for which they are to be indicted, they are usually moved by the instigation of the Devil. The Devil will put ill men upon being worse. Was it not he, that laid in (1 Kings 22:22), I will go forth, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all the prophets? Even so the Devil becomes an unclean spirit, a drinking spirit, a swearing spirit, a worldly spirit, a passionate spirit, a revengeful spirit, and the like, in the hearts of those that are already too much of such a spirit; and thus, they become improved in sinfulness. Yes, the Devil will put good men upon doing ill. Thus we read, in (1 Chronicles 21:1), Satan provoked David to number Israel. And so, the Devil provokes men that are eminent in holiness, to such things as may become eminently pernicious; he provokes them especially to pride, and to many unsuitable emulations. There are likewise most lamentable impressions, which the Devil makes upon the souls of men, by way of punishment upon them for their sins. 'Tis thus, when an offended God, puts the souls of men over into the hands of that officer, who has the power of death, that is, the Devil. It is the woful misery of unbelievers, in (2 Corinthians 4:4), The God of this world has blinded their minds. And thus it may be said of those woful wretches, whom the Devil is a god to, The Devil so muffles them, that they cannot see the things of their peace. And, The Devil so hardens them, that nothing will awaken their cares about their souls: how come so many to be seared in their sins? 'Tis the Devil, that with a red hot iron fetched from his hell, does cauterize them. Thus 'tis, till perhaps at last they come to have a wounded conscience in them, and the Devil has often a share in their torturing and confounding anguishes. The Devil who terrified Cain, and Saul, and Judas, into desperation, still becomes a king of terrors, to many sinners, and frights them from laying hold on the mercy of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. In these regards, wo to us, when the Devil comes down upon us.

Proposition 5.

Toward the end of his time the descent of the Devil in wrath upon the world, will produce more woful effects, than what have been in former ages. The dying dragon, will bite more cruelly, and sting more bloodily than ever he did before: the death-pangs of the Devil will make him to be more of a Devil than ever he was; and the furnace of this Nebuchadnezzar will be heated seven times hotter, just before its putting out.

We are in the first place, to apprehend, that there is a time fixed and stated by God, for the Devil to enjoy a dominion over our sinful and therefore woful world. The Devil once exclaimed, in (Matthew 8:29), Jesus, you Son of God, are you come here to torment us before our time? It is plain, that until the Second Coming of our Lord, the Devil must have a time of plaguing the world, which he was afraid, would have expired at his first. The Devil is, by the wrath of God, the prince of this world; and the time of his reign, is to continue until the time, when our Lord himself, shall, take to himself, his great power and reign. Then 'tis that the Devil shall hear the Son of God, swearing with loud thunders against him, Your time shall now be no more! Then shall the Devil with his angels, receive their doom, which will be, Depart into the everlasting fire prepared for you.

We are also to apprehend, that in the mean time, the Devil can give a shrewd guess, when he draws near to the end of his time. When he saw Christianity enthroned among the Romans, it is here said, in (Revelation 12:12), He knows he has but a short time. And how does he know it? Why, reason will make the Devil to know that God won't suffer him to have, the everlasting dominion; and that when God has once begun to rescue the world out of his hands he'll go through with it, until the captives of the mighty shall be taken away and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered. But the Devil will have Scripture also, to make him know that when his Antichristian vicar the seven-headed beast on the seven-hilled city, shall have spent his determined years, he with his vicar must unavoidably go down into the bottomless pit. It is not improbable, that the Devil often hears the Scripture expounded in our congregations; yes, that we never assemble without a Satan among us. As there are some divines, who do with more uncertainty conjecture, from a certain place in the Epistle to the Ephesians, that the angels do sometimes come into our churches, to gain some advantage from our ministry. But be sure our demonstrable interpretations, may give repeated notices to the Devil, that his time is almost out: and what the preacher says to the young man, Know you, that God will bring you into judgment! — that may our sermons tell to that old wretch, Know you, that the time of your judgment is at hand.

But we must now, likewise, apprehend, that in such a time, the woes of the world, will be heightened, beyond what they were at any time yet from the foundation of the world. Hence it is, that the Apostle has forewarned us, in (2 Timothy 3:1), this know, that in the last days, perilous times shall come. Truly, when the Devil knows, that he is got into his last days, he will make perilous times for us; the times will grow more full of Devils, and therefore more full of perils, than ever they were before. Of this if we would know, what cause is to be assigned; it is not only, because the Devil grows more able and more eager to vex the world; but also, and chiefly, because the world is more worthy to be vexed by the Devil, than ever heretofore. The sins of men in this generation, will be more mighty sins, than those of the former ages; men will be more accurate and exquisite, and refined in the arts of sinning, than they use to be. And besides, their own sins, the sins of all the former ages will also lie upon the sinners of this generation. Do we ask why the mischievous powers of darkness are to prevail more in our days, than they did in those that are past and gone? It is because that men by sinning over again the sins of the former days, have a fellowship with all those unfruitful works of darkness. As it was said in (Matthew 23:36), all these things shall come upon this generation; so, the men of the last generation, will find themselves involved in the guilt of all that went before them. Of sinners it is said, they heap up wrath; and the sinners of the last generations do not only add to the heap of sin that has been piling up, ever since the fall of man, but they interest themselves in every sin of that enormous heap. There has been a cry of sin in all former ages going up to God, that the Devil may come down! and the sinners of the last generations, do sharpen and louden that cry, till the thing do come to pass, as destructively as irremediably. From where it follows, that the three times Holy God, with his holy angels, will now after a sort more abandon the world, than in the former ages. The roaring impieties of the old world, at last gave mankind such a distaste in the heart of the just God; that he came to say, it repents me, that I have made such a creature! And however, it may be but a witty fancy, in a late learned writer, that the earth before the flood was nearer to the sun, than it is at this day; and that God's hurling down the earth to a further distance from the sun, were the cause of that flood; yet we may fitly enough say, that men perished by a rejection from the God of Heaven. Thus, the enhanced impieties of this our world, will exasperate the displeasure of God, at such a rate, as that he will more cast us off, than heretofore; until at last, he do with a more than ordinary indignation say, Go, Devils; do you take them, and make them beyond all former measures miserable!

If lastly, we are inquisitive after instances of those aggravated woes, with which the Devil will towards the end of his time assault us; let it be remembered, that all the extremities which were foretold by the Trumpets and the Vials in the Apocalyptic schemes of these things, to come upon the world, were the woes to come from the wrath of the Devil, upon the shortening of his time. The horrendous desolations that have come upon mankind, by the irruptions of the old Barbarians upon the Roman world, and then of the Saracens, and since, of the Turks, were such woes, as men had never seen before. The infamous blindness and [illegible] which then came upon mankind, and the monstrous [illegible] which thereupon carried the Roman world by the millions together to the shambles, were also such woes as had never yet had a parallel. And yet these were some of the things here intended, when it was said, woe! for the Devil is come down in great wrath, having but a short time.

But besides all these things, and besides the increase of plagues and wars, and storms, and internal maladies now in our days, there are especially two most extraordinary woes, one would fear, will in these days become very ordinary. One woe that may be looked for is, a frequent repetition of earthquakes, and this perhaps by the energy of the Devil in the earth. The Devil will be clapped up, as a prisoner in or near the bowels of the earth, when once that conflagration shall be dispatched, which will make, the new earth wherein shall dwell righteousness; and that conflagration will doubtless be much promoted, by the subterraneous fires, which are a cause of the earthquakes in our days. Accordingly, we read, great earthquakes in divers places, enumerated among the tokens of the time approaching, when the Devil shall have no longer time. I suspect, that we shall now be visited with more usual, and yet more fatal earthquakes, than were our ancestors; inasmuch as the fires that are shortly to, burn to the lowest hell, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains, will now get more head than they use to do; and it is not impossible, that the Devil, who is ere long to be punished in those fires, may aforehand augment his desert of it, by having a hand in using some of those fires, for our detriment. Learned men have made no scruple to charge the Devil with it; Deo permittente, Terraemotus causat. The Devil surely, was a party in the earthquake, whereby the vengeance of God, in one black night sunk twelve considerable cities of Asia, in the reign of Tiberius. But there will be more such catastrophes in our days! Italy has lately been shaking, till its earthquakes have brought ruins at once upon more than thirty towns; but it will within a little while, shake again, and shake till the fire of God have made an entire Etna of it. And behold, this very morning, when I was intending to utter among you such things as these, we are cast into a heartquake by tidings of an earthquake that has lately happened at Jamaica: an horrible earthquake, whereby the Tyrus of the English America, was at once pulled into the jaws of the gaping and groaning earth, and many hundreds of the inhabitants buried alive. The Lord sanctify so dismal a dispensation of his providence, to all the American plantations! But be assured, my neighbors, the earthquakes are not over yet! We have not yet seen the last. And then, another woe that may be looked for is, the Devil's being now let loose in preternatural operations more than formerly; and perhaps in possessions and obsessions that shall be very marvellous. You are not ignorant, that just before our Lord's first coming, there were most observable outrages committed by the Devil upon the children of men: and I am suspicious, that there will again be an unusual range of the Devil among us, a little before the second coming of our Lord, which will be, to give the last stroke in, destroying the works of the Devil. The evening wolves will be much abroad, when we are near the evening of the world. The Devil is going to be dislodged of the air, where his present quarters are; God will with flashes of hot lightning upon him, cause him to fall as lightning from these ancient habitations: and the raised saints will there have a new heaven, which, we expect according to the promise of God. Now, a little before this thing, you'll be like to see the Devil, more sensibly and visibly busy upon earth perhaps, than ever he was before: you shall oftener hear about apparitions of the Devil, and about poor people strangely bewitched, possessed and obsessed, by infernal fiends. When our Lord is going to set up his kingdom, in the most sensible and visible manner that ever was, and in a manner answering the transfiguration in the mount, it is a thousand to one, but the Devil will in sundry parts of the world, assay the like for himself, with a most apish imitation: and men, at least in some corners of the world, and perhaps in such as God may have some special designs upon, will to their cost, be more familiarized with the world of spirits than they had been formerly.

So that, in fine, if just before the end when the times of the Jews were to be finished, a man then [illegible] about every where, crying, Wo to the nation! Wo to the city! Wo to the temple! Wo! Wo! Wo! Much more may the descent of the Devil, just before his end, when also the times of the Gentiles will be finished, cause us to cry out, Wo! Wo! Wo! because of the black things that threaten us!

But it is now time to make our improvement of what has been said. And, first, we shall entertain ourselves with a few corollaries: deduced from what has been thus asserted.

Corollary 1.

What cause have we to bless God, for our preservation from the Devil's wrath, in this which may too reasonably be called the Devil's world! While we are in this present evil world, we are continually surrounded with swarms of those Devils, who make this present world become so evil. What a wonder of mercy is it, that no Devil could ever yet make a prey of us! We can set our foot no where but we shall tread in the midst of most hellish Rattle-Snakes; and one of those Rattle-Snakes once through the mouth of a Man on whom he had seized, hissed out such a truth as this, If God would let me loose upon you, I should find enough in the Best of you all, to make you all mine. What shall I say? The wilderness through which we are passing to the Promised Land, is all over filled with fiery, flying serpents. But blessed be God; none of them have hitherto so fastened upon us, as to confound us utterly. All our way to Heaven, lies by the [illegible] of Lions, and the Mounts of Leopards; there are incredible droves of Devils in our way. But have we safely got on our way thus far? O let us be thankful to our eternal preserver for it. It is said in (Psalms 76:10), Surely the wrath of Man shall praise you, and the Remainder of wrath shall you restrain. But surely it becomes us to praise God, in that we have yet sustained no more damage by the wrath of the Devil, and in that he has restrained that overwhelming wrath. We are poor travellers in a world, which is as well the Devil's Field, as the Devil's Gaol; a world, in every Nook whereof, the Devil is encamped, with bands of Robbers, to pester all that have their face looking Zion-ward: and are we all this while preserved from the undoing snares of the Devil! It is, you, O keeper of Israel, that has hitherto been our Keeper! And therefore, Bless the Lord, O my soul, Bless his holy Name, who has redeemed your life from the Destroyer!

Corollary. II.

We may see the rise of those multiplied, magnified, and singularly stinged afflictions, with which aged or dying Saints frequently have their death prefaced, and their age embittered. When the Saints of God are going to leave the world, it is usually a more stormy world with them, than ever it was; and they find more vanity, and more vexation in the world than ever they did before. It is true, that many are the afflictions of the Righteous but a little before they bid adieu to all those many afflictions, they often have greater, harder, sorer, loads thereof laid upon them, than they had yet endured. It is true, that through much tribulation we must enter in the Kingdom of God; but a little before our entrance thereinto, our tribulation may have some sharper accents of sorrow, than ever were yet upon it. And what is the cause of this! It is indeed the faithfulness of our God to us, that we should find the earth more full of thorns and briars than ever, just before he fetches us from Earth to Heaven; that so we may go away the more willingly, the more easily, and with less convulsion, at his calling for us. O there are ugly ties, by which we are fastened to this world; but God will by thorns and briars tear those ties asunder. But, is not the Hand of Joab here? Sure, there is the wrath of the Devil also in it. A little before we step into Heaven, the Devil thinks with himself, My time to abuse that Saint is now but short; what mischief I am to do that Saint, must be done quickly, if at all; he'll shortly be out of my reach for ever. And for this cause he will now fly upon us with the fiercest efforts and furies of his wrath. It was allowed to the Serpent, in (Genesis 2:15), to bruise the Heel. Why, at the Heel, or at the close, of our lives, the Serpent will be nibbling, more than ever in our lives before: and it is, because now he has but a short time. He knows, that we shall very shortly be, Where the Wicked cease from Troubling, and where the Weary are at Rest; therefore that wicked one will now trouble us, more than ever he did, and we shall have so much disrest, as will make us more weary than ever we were, of things here below.

Corollary. III.

What a reasonable thing then is it, that they whose time is but short, should make as great use of their time, as ever they can! I pray, let us learn some good, even from the Wicked One himself. It has been advised, Be wise as serpents: why, there is a piece of wisdom, whereto that old serpent, the devil himself, may be our monitor. When the devil perceives his time is but short, it puts him upon great wrath. But how should it be with us, when we perceive that our time is but short? Why, it should put us upon great work. The motive which makes the devil to be more full of wrath, should make us more full of warmth, more full of watch, and more full of all diligence to make our vocation, and election sure. Our pace in our journey heaven-ward must be quickened, if our space for that journey be shortened: even as Israel went further the two last years of their journey Canaan-ward, than they did in thirty-eight years before. The Apostle brings this, as a spur to the devotions of Christians, in (1 Corinthians 7:29), "This I say, brethren, the time is short." Even so, I say this day; some things I lay before you, which I do only think, or guess, but here is a thing which I venture to say with all the freedom imaginable. You have now a time to get good; even a time to make sure of grace and glory, and every good thing, by true repentance; but, this I say, the time is but short. You have now time to do good; even to serve out your generation, as by the will, so for the praise of God; but, this I say the time is but short. And what I say thus to all people, I say to old people, with a peculiar vehemency: sirs, it cannot be long, before your time is out; there are but a few sands left in the glass of your time: and it is of all things the saddest, for a man to say, My time is done but my work undone! O then, to work as fast as you can; and of soul-work, and church-work, dispatch as much as ever you can. Say to all hindrances, as the gracious Jeremiah Burrows would sometimes to visitants: You'll excuse me if I ask you [illegible] to be short with me, for my work is great, and my time is but short. Methinks every time we hear a clock, or see a watch, we have an admonition given us, that our time is upon the wing, and it will all be gone within a little while. I remember I have read of a famous man, who having a clock-watch long lying by him, out of use in his trunk, it unaccountably struck eleven just before he died. Why, there are many of you, for whom I am to do that office this day: I am to tell you, you are come to your eleventh hour; there is no more than a twelfth part at most, of your life yet behind. But if we neglect our business, till our short time shall be reduced into none, then, [illegible] to us, for the great wrath of God will send us down from where there is no redemption.

Corollary 4.

How welcome should a death in the Lord be to them that belong not to the Devil, but to the Lord! While we are sojourning in this world, we are in what may upon too many accounts be called the Devil's country: we are where the Devil may come down upon us in great wrath continually. The day when God shall take us out of this world, will be the day when the Lord will deliver us from the hand of all our enemies, and from the hand of Satan. In such a day, why should not our song be that of the Psalmist, Blessed be my Rock, and let the God of my salvation be exalted! While we are here, we are in the valley of the shadow of Death; and what is it that makes it so! 'Tis because the wild beasts of Hell are lurking on every side of us, and every minute ready to sally forth upon us. But our death will fetch us out of that valley, and carry us where we shall be, for ever with the Lord. We are now under the daily buffetings of the Devil, and he does molest us with such fiery darts, as cause us even to cry out, I am weary of my life. Yes, but are we as willing to die, as weary of life? Our death will then soon set us where we cannot be reached by the fist of wickedness: and where the perfect cannot be shot at. It is said, in (Revelation 14:13), Blessed are the Dead, which die in the Lord, they rest from their labors. But we may say, Blessed are the dead in the Lord, inasmuch as they rest from the devils! Our dying will be but our taking wing: when, attended with a convoy of winged angels, we shall be conveyed into that Heaven, from where the Devil having been thrown, he shall never more come there after us. What if God should now say to us, as to Moses, Go up and die! As long as we go up when we die, let us receive the message with a joyful soul; we shall soon be there, where the Devil can't come down upon us. If the God of our life should now send that order to us, which he gave to Hezekiah, Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live; we need not be cast into such deadly agonies thereupon, as Hezekiah was: we are but going to that house, the golden doors whereof cannot be entered by the Devil that here did use to persecute us. Methinks, I see the departed spirit of a believer, triumphantly carried through the Devil's territories, in such a stately and fiery chariot, as the spiritualizing body of Elias had; methinks, I see the Devil, with whole flocks of harpies, grinning at this child of God, but unable to fasten any of their griping talons upon him. And then, upon the utmost edge of our atmosphere, methinks I overhear the holy soul, with a most heavenly gallantry deriding the defeated fiend, and saying, Ah! Satan! Return to your dungeons again; I am going where you cannot come for ever! O 'tis a brave thing so to die! And especially so to die, in our time. For, though when we call to mind that the Devil's time is now but short, it may almost make us wish to live to the end of it; and to say with the Psalmist, Because the Lord will shortly appear in his glory, to build up Zion. O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days! Yet when we bear in mind that the Devil's wrath is now most great, it would make one willing to be out of the way. Inasmuch as now is the time for the doing of those things in the prospect whereof Balaam long ago cried out, Who shall live when such things are done! We should not be inordinately loath to die at such a time. In a word, the times are so bad, that we may well count it as good a time to die in as ever we saw.

Corollary 5.

Good news for the Israel of God, and particularly for his New-English Israel! If the Devil's time were above a thousand years ago pronounced short, what may we suppose it now in our time? Surely we are not a thousand years distant from those happy thousand years of rest and peace, and (which is better) holiness, reserved for the people of God in the latter days; and if we are not a thousand years, yet short of that golden age, there is cause to think that we are not a hundred. That the blessed thousand years are not yet begun, is abundantly clear from this, we do not see the Devil bound; no, the Devil was never more let loose than in our days; and it is very much that any should imagine otherwise. But the same thing that proves the thousand years of prosperity for the Church of God, UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVEN, to be not yet begun, does also prove that it is not very far off; and that is the prodigious wrath with which the Devil does in our days prosecute, yes, desolate the world. Let us cast our eyes almost where we will, and we shall see the Devil's domineering at such a rate as may justly fill us with astonishment; it is questionable whether iniquity ever were so rampant, or whether calamity were ever so pungent, as in this lamentable time; we may truly say, 'Tis the hour and the power of darkness. But, though the wrath be so great, the time is but short: when we are perplexed with the wrath of the Devil, the word of our God at the same time to us, is that, in (Romans 16:20), The God of Peace shall bruise Satan under your feet SHORTLY. SHORTLY, did you say, Dearest Lord! O! Gladsome word! Amen, even so, come, Lord! Lord Jesus, come quickly! We shall never be rid of this troublesome Devil, till you do come to chain him up!

But because the people of God would willingly be told whereabouts we are with reference to the wrath and the time of the Devil, you shall give me leave humbly to set before you a few conjectures.

The first conjecture.

The Devils Eldest Son seems to be towards the End of his last Half-time; and if it be so, the Devils Whole-time, cannot but be very near its End. It is a very scandalous thing that any Protestant, should be at a loss where to find, The Anti-Christ. But, we have sufficient Assurance, that the Duration of Antichrist, is to be but for a Time, and for Times, and for Half a time; that is for Twelve-hundred and Sixty Years. And indeed, those Twelve Hundred and Sixty years, were the very Spott of Time left for the Devil, and meant when 'tis here said, He has but a short time. Now, I should have an Easy Time of it, if I were never put upon an Harder Task, than to produce what might render it extreamly probable, That Antichrist entred his last Half-time, or the Last Hundred and Fourscore years of his Reign, at or soon after the Celebrated Reformation which began at the year 1517 in the former Century. Indeed, it is very agreeable to see how Antichrist then Lost Half of his Empire; and how that Half which then became Reformed, have been upon many accounts little more than Half-Reformed. But by this Computaion, we must needs bee within a very few years of such a Mortification to befall the See of Rome, as that Antichrist who ha's lately been planting (what proves no more lasting than) a Tabernacle in the Glorious Holy Mountain between the Seas, must quickly, Come to his End and none shall help him. So then, within a very little while, we shall see the Devil stript of the Grand, yes, the Last, Vehicle, wherein he will be capable to abuse our World. The Fires, with which, That Beast, is to be consumed, will so singe the Wings of the Devil too, that he shall no more set the Affairs of this world on Fire. Yes, they shall both go into the same Fire, to be tormented for ever and ever.

The Second Conjecture.

That which is, perhaps, the greatest Effect of the Divels Wrath, seems to be in a manner at an end: and this would make one hope that the Divels Time cannot be far from its end. It is in PERSECUTION, that the wrath of the Divel uses to break forth, with its greatest Fury. Now there want not Probabilities, that the Last Persecution intended for the Church of God, before the Advent of Our Lord, has been upon it. When we see the, Second We Passing away, we have a fair signal given to us, That the Last Slaughter of our Lords Witnesses is over: and then what QUICKLY followes? (The Next thing is, The Kingdomes of this World, are become the Kingdomes of Our Lord) and of His Christ: and then Down goes the Kingdome of the Divel, so that he cannot any more come down upon us. Now, the Irrecoverable & Irretrievable Humiliations that have Lately befallen the Turkish Power, are but so many Declarations of the, Second Wo Passing away. And the dealings of God with the European parts of the world, at this day, do further strengthen this our Expectation. We do see, At this Hour a great Earth-Quake all Europe over: and we shall see, that this Great Earth-quake, and these great Commotions, will but Contribute to the Advancement of Our Lords Hitherto Depressed Interests. Tis also to be Remark'd that, A Disposition to Recognize the Empire of God over the Conscience of man, does now prevail more in the world than formerly; & God from on High more touches the Hearts of Princes & Rulers with an Averseness to Persecution. Tis Particularly the unspeakable Happiness of the English Nation, to be under the Influences of that Excellent Queen, who could say, Inasmuch as a man cannot make himself Believe what he will, why should we Persecute men for not Believing as we do! I wish I could see all good men of one mind; but in the mean time I pray, let them [illegible] Love one another. Words Worthy to be written in Letters of Gold! and by us the more to be considered, because to one of Ours did that Royal Person Express Her Self so Excellently, so Obligingly. When the late King Iames published his Declaration for, Liberty of Conscience, a Worthy Divine in the Church of England, then st[illegible]dying the Revelation, saw cause upon Revelational Grounds, to Declare himself in such words as these, Whatever others may intend or design by this Liberty of Conscience, I cannot believe, that it will [illegible] be recalled in England, as long as the World stands. And you know how Miraculously the Earth Quake which then immediately came upon the Kingdom, [illegible]a's established that Liberty! But that which exceeds all the tendencies this way, is, The Dispensation of God at this Day, towards the blessed Vaud[illegible]. Those Renowned Waldenses, which [illegible] sort of [illegible] all the Protestant Churches, were never dissipated, by all the Persecutions of many Ages, till within these few years, the French King and the Duke of Savoy Leagued for their Disspation. But just Three years and half after the scattering of that Holy people, to the Surprise of all the world, a Spirit of life from God is come into them; and having with a Thousand Miracles Repossessed themselves of their antient Seats, their Hot Persecutor is become their great Protector. Whereupon the Reflection of the Worthy person, that writes the story is, The Churches of Piemont, being the Root of the Protestant Churches, They have been the first Established; the Churches of other places, being but the Branches, shall be Established in due time, God will deliver them speedily, He has already delivered the Mother, and He will not long leave the Daughter behind: He will Finish what he has Gloriously begun!

The Third Conjecture.

There is a Little Room for Hope, that the Great Wrath of the Devil, will not prove the Present Ruine of our poor New-England in particular. I believe, there never was a poor Plantation, more Pursued by the Wrath of the Devil, than our poor New-England; and that which makes our Condition very much the more deplorable is, That the Wrath of the Great God Himself, at the same Time also presses hard upon us. It was a Rowsing Alarm to the Devil, when a great Company of English Protestants, and Puritans, came to Erect Evangelical Churches, in a corner of the World, where he had Reign'd without any Controll for many Ages; and it is a vexing Eye-sore, to the Devil, that our Lord Christ should be known, and own'd, and preached in this Howling Wilderness. Therefore he has left no Stone Unturned, that so he might undermine his Plantation, and force us out of our Country.

First, the Indian Powawes used all their sorceries to molest the first planters here; but God said to them, Touch them not! Then, seducing spirits came to root in this vineyard, but God so rated them off, that they have not prevailed much further than the edges of our land. After this, we have had a continual blast upon some of our principal grain, annually diminishing a vast part of our ordinary food. Herewithal, wasting sicknesses, especially burning, and mortal agues, have shot the arrows of death in at our windows. Next, we have had many adversaries of our own language, who have been perpetually assaying to deprive us of those English liberties, in the encouragement whereof these territories have been settled. As if this had not been enough; the Tawnies among whom we came, have watered our soil, with the blood of many hundreds of our inhabitants. Desolating fires also have many times laid the chief treasure of the whole province in ashes. As for losses by sea, they have been multiplied upon us: and particularly in the present French War, the whole English nation have observed, that no part of the nation has proportionably had so many vessels taken, as our poor New-England. Besides all which, now at last the devils are (if I may so speak) in person come down upon us, with such a wrath, as is justly much, and will quickly be more, the astonishment of the world. Alas, I may sigh over this wilderness, as Moses did over his, in (Psalm 90:7, 9). We are consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we are troubled: all our days are passed away in your wrath. And I may add this to it, the wrath of the devil [illegible] has been troubling and spending of us, all our days.

But what will become of this poor New-England after all? Shall we sink, expire, perish, before the short time of the devil shall be finished? I must confess, that when I consider the lamentable unfruitfulness of men, among us, under as powerful and perspicuous dispensations of the gospel, as are in the world; and when I consider the declining state of the power of godliness in our churches, with the most horrible indisposition that perhaps ever was, to recover out of this declension; I cannot but fear lest it comes to this, and lest an Asiatic removal of candlesticks come upon us. But upon some other accounts, I would fain hope otherwise; and I will give you therefore the opportunity to try what inferences may be drawn from these probable prognostications.

I say, first, that surely, America's fate must at the long run include New-England's in it. What was the design of our God, in bringing over so many Europeans here of later years? Of what use or state will America be, when the kingdom of God shall come? If it must all be the devil's propriety, while the saved nations of the other hemisphere shall be walking in the light of the New Jerusalem, our New-England has then, 'tis likely, done all that it was erected for. But if God have a purpose to make here a seat for any of those glorious things which are spoken of you, O you city of God; then even you, O New-England, are within a very little while of better days than ever yet have dawned upon you.

I say, secondly, that though there be very threatening symptoms on America, yet there are some hopeful ones. I confess, when one thinks upon the crying barbarities with which the most of those Europeans that have peopled this new world became the masters of it, it looks but ominously. When one also thinks, how much the way of living in many parts of America is utterly inconsistent with the very essentials of Christianity; yes, how much injury and violence is therein done to humanity itself; it is enough to damp the hopes of the most sanguine complexion. And the frown of heaven which has hitherto been upon attempts of better gospellizing the plantations, considered, will but increase the damp. Nevertheless, on the other side, what shall be said of all the promises, that our Lord Jesus Christ shall have the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession? And of all the prophecies, that all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord? Or does it look agreeably, that such a rich quarter of the world, equal in some regards to all the rest, should never be out of the devil's hands, from the first inhabitation to the last dissolution of it? No sure; why may not the last be the first? And the Sun of Righteousness come to shine brightest, in climates which it rose latest upon!

I say, thirdly, that as it fares with Old England, so it will be most likely to fare with New-England. For which cause, by the way, there may be more of the divine favor in the present circumstances of our dependence on England, than we are well aware of. This is very sure, if matters go ill with our mother, her poor American daughter here must feel it; nor could our former happy settlement have hindered our sympathy in that unhappiness. But if matters go well in the three kingdoms; as long as God shall bless the English nation with rulers that shall encourage piety, honesty, industry in their subjects, and that shall cast a benign aspect upon the interests of our glorious gospel, abroad as well as at home; so long, New-England will at least keep its head above water: and so much the more, for our comfortable settlement in such a form as we are now cast into. Unless, there should be any singular, destroying, topical plagues, whereby an offended God should at last make us rise; but, alas, O Lord, what other hive have you provided for us!

I say, Fourthly, That the Elder England will certainly & speedily be visited with the ancient loving kindness of God. When one sees, how strangely the curse of our Joshua, has fallen upon the persons & houses of them, that have attempted the rebuilding of the old Romish Jericho, which has there been so far demolished, they cannot but say, That the Reformation there, shall not only be maintained, but also pursued, proceeded, perfected; and that God will shortly there have a New Jerusalem. Or, let a man in his thoughts run over; but the series of amazing providences towards the English Nation for the last thirty years: let him reflect, how many plots for the ruin of the nation, have been strangely discovered? Yes, how very unaccountably, those very persons, yes; I may also say, and those very methods which were intended for the tools of that ruin, have become the instruments, or occasions of deliverances? A man cannot but say upon these reflections, as the wife of Manoah once prudently expressed herself, If the Lord were pleased to have destroyed us, He would not have showed us, all these things. Indeed, it is not unlikely, that the enemies of the English Nation, may yet provoke such a shake to it, as may perhaps exceed any that has hitherto been undergone: the Lord prevent the machinations of his adversaries! But, that shake will usher in the most glorious times, that ever arose upon the English horizon: as for the French cloud which hangs over England, though it be like to rain showers of blood upon a nation, where the blood of the blessed Jesus, has been too much treated, as an unholy thing; yet I believe, God will shortly scatter it: and my belief is grounded upon a bottom, that will bear it. If that overgrown French Leviathan, should accomplish any thing like a conquest of England, what could there be to hinder him from the universal empire of the West? But the visions of the Western World, in the views both of Daniel and of John, do assure us, that whatever monarch, shall while the Papacy continues, go to swallow up the ten kings which received their power upon the fall of the Western Empire, he must miscarry in the attempt. The French Phaeton's epitaph seems written in that, sure word of prophecy!

[Since the making of this conjecture, there are arrived to us, the news of a victory obtained by the English over the French, which further confirms our conjecture; and causes us to sing, Pharaoh's chariots, and his host, has the Lord cast down into the sea; your right-hand has dashed in pieces the enemy!]

Now, in the salvation of England, the Plantations cannot but rejoice, and New-England also will be glad.

But so much for our Corollaries, I hasten to the main Thing designed for your Entertainment. And that is, An Hortatory and Necessary Address to a Country now Extraordinarily alarmed by the Wrath of the Devil. It is this: Let us now make a Good and a Right use of the Prodigious Descent, which the Devil, in Great Wrath, is at this day making upon our Land. Upon the Death of a Great Man once, an Orator called the Town together, crying out, [reconstructed: "Run, citizens, your walls have fallen!"] — that is, Come together, Neighbors, your Town-Walls are fallen down! But such is the Descent of the Devil at this day upon ourselves, that I may truly tell you, The Walls of the whole World are broken down! The usual Walls of Defense about mankind have such a Gap made in them, that the very Devils are broke in upon us, to Seduce the Souls, Torment the Bodies, Sully the Credits, and consume the Estates of our Neighbors, with Impressions both as Real and as Furious, as if the Invisible World were becoming Incarnate, on purpose for the vexing of us. And what use ought now to be made of so Tremendous a dispensation? We are engaged in a Fast this day; but shall we try to fetch meat out of the Eater, and make the Lion to afford some Honey for our Souls? That the Devil is come down to us with great Wrath, we find, we feel, we now deplore. In many ways, for many years, has the Devil been assaying to extirpate the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus here. New-England may complain of the Devil, as in Psalm 129:1-2. Many a time have they afflicted me, from my youth, may New-England now say; many a time have they afflicted me from my youth; yet they have not prevailed against me. But now there is a more than ordinary Affliction, with which the Devil is galling us: and such an one as is indeed unparalleled. The Things confessed by Witches and the Things endured by others, laid together, amount to this account of our Affliction. The Devil, exhibiting himself ordinarily as a small Black man, has decoy'd a fearful Knot of Proud, Perverse, Ignorant, Envious, and Malicious Creatures, to list themselves in his Horrid Service, by entering their Names in a Book by him tendered to them. These Witches, of whom above a score have now confessed and shown their Deeds, and some are now tormented by the Devils for confessing, have met in Hellish Rendezvous, wherein the confessors do say, they have had their Diabolical Sacraments, imitating the Baptism and the Supper of our Lord. In these Hellish Meetings, these Monsters have associated themselves to do no less a Thing than to Destroy the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in these parts of the World. In order to this, first, they each of them have their Spectres, or Devils, commissioned by them, and representing them, to be the Engines of their Malice. By these wicked Spectres, they seize poor people about the Country, with various and bloody Torments; and of those evidently preternatural Torments there are some who have died. They have bewitched some, even so far as to make them Self-Destroyers: and others are in many Towns here and there languishing under their Evil Hands. The People thus afflicted are miserably Scratched and Bitten, so that the Marks are most visible to all the World, but the causes utterly invisible; and the same Invisible Furies do most visibly stick Pins into the Bodies of the Afflicted, and scald them, and hideously distort and disjoint all their members, besides a thousand other sorts of Plagues beyond these of any Natural Diseases which they give to them. Yes, they sometimes drag the poor People out of their Chambers, and carry them over Trees and Hills, for diverse miles together. A large part of the Persons tortured by these Diabolical Spectres are horribly tempted by them, sometimes with fair Promises, and sometimes with hard Threatenings, but always with felt Miseries, to sign the Devil's Laws in a Spectral Book laid before them. Two or three of these poor Sufferers, being by their tiresome Sufferings overcome to do so, they have immediately been released from all their Miseries, and they appeared in Spectre then to torture those that were before their fellow-Sufferers. The Witches which, by their Covenant with the Devil, are become Owners of Spectres, are often times by their own Spectres required and compelled to give their Consent for the Molestation of some, which they had no mind otherwise to fall upon; and cruel Depredations are then made upon the neighborhood. In the Prosecution of these Witchcrafts, among a thousand other unaccountable Things, the Spectres have an odd Faculty of clothing the most Substantial and Corporeal Instruments of Torture with Invisibility, while the Wounds thereby given have been the most palpable Things in the World. So that the Sufferers assaulted with Instruments of Iron wholly unseen to the bystanders, though to their cost seen by themselves, have upon snatching, wrested the Instruments out of the Spectres' Hands, and every one has then immediately not only beheld but handled an Iron Instrument taken by a Devil from a Neighbor. These wicked Spectres have proceeded so far as to steal several quantities of money from diverse people, part of which money has before sufficient Spectators been dropped out of the Air into the Hands of the Sufferers, while the Spectres have been urging them to subscribe their Covenant with Death. In such extravagant ways have these Wretches proposed the dragooning of as many as they can into their own Combination, and the Destroying of others with lingering, Spreading, Deadly Diseases; till our Country should at last become too hot for us. Among the Ghastly Instances of the Success which those Bloody Witches have had, we have seen even some of their own Children so dedicated to the Devil, that in their infancy it is found the Imps have sucked them, and rendered them venomous to a Prodigy. We have also seen the Devil's first Batteries upon the Town where the First Church of our Lord in this Colony was gathered, producing those Distractions which have almost ruined the Town. We have seen likewise the Plague reaching afterwards into other Towns far and near, where the Houses of Good Men have the Devils filling of them with terrible Vexations! This is the Descent which, as it seems, the Devil has now made upon us. But that which makes this Descent the more formidable is the Multitude and Quality of Persons accused of an Interest in this Witchcraft, by the Efficacy of the Spectres which take their Name and Shape upon them; causing very many Good and Wise Men to fear that many Innocent, yes, and some Virtuous Persons, are by the Devils in this matter imposed upon. That the Devils have obtained the power to take on them the likeness of Harmless People, and in that likeness to afflict other People, and be so abused by deceptive Demons, that upon their Look or Touch, the Afflicted shall be oddly affected. Arguments from the Providence of God, on the one side, and from our Charity toward Man, on the other side, have made this now become a most Agitated Controversy among us. There is an Agony produced in the minds of men, lest the Devil should sham us with Devices of perhaps a finer Thread than was ever yet practiced upon the World. The whole Business has become so snarled, and the Determination of the Question one way or another so dismal, that our Honorable Judges have room for Jehoshaphat's Exclamation, We know not what to do! They have used, as Judges have before done, the Spectral Evidences to introduce their further Inquiries into the Lives of the Persons Accused; and they have upon that, by the wonderful Providence of God, been so strengthened with Other Evidences, that some of the Witch Gang have been fairly Executed. But what shall be done as to those against whom the Evidence is chiefly founded in the Dark World? Here they do solemnly demand our Addresses to the Father of Lights on their Behalf. But in the mean time, the Devil improves the Darkness of this Affair to push us into a Blind Man's Buffet, and we are even ready to be sinfully, yes, hotly and madly, mauling one another in the Dark. The Consequence of these things every considerate man trembles at; and the more, because the frequent Cheats of Passion and Rumor do precipitate so many, that I wish I could say the most were considerate. But that which carries on the formidableness of our Trials to that which may be called a wrath to the uttermost is this: It is not without the wrath of the Almighty God Himself that the Devil is permitted thus to come down upon us in wrath. It was said in Isaiah 9:19, Through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, the Land is darkened. Our Land is darkened indeed; since the Powers of Darkness are turned in upon us; it is a Dark Time, yes, a Black Night indeed, now the watch-dogs of the Pit are abroad among us: but it is through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts! Inasmuch as the Fire-brands of Hell itself are used for the scorching of us, with cause enough may we cry out, What means the Heat of this Anger? Blessed Lord! Are all the other Instruments of your Vengeance too good for the chastisement of such transgressors as we are? Must the very Devils be sent out of their own place to be our Troublers? Must we be lashed with Scorpions fetched from the Place of Torment? Must this Wilderness be made a Receptacle for the Dragons of the Wilderness? If a Lapland should nourish in it vast numbers the successors of the old Biarmi, who can with looks or words bewitch other people, or sell Winds to Mariners, and have their Familiar Spirits which they bequeath to their Children when they die, and by their Enchanted Kettle-Drums can learn things done a thousand leagues off; if a Sweden should afford a Village where some scores of Hags may not only have their Meetings with Familiar Spirits, but also by their Enchantments drag many scores of poor Children out of their Bedchambers, to be spoiled at those meetings — this were not altogether a matter of so much wonder! But that New-England should this way be harassed! They are not Chaldeans, that Bitter and Hasty Nation, but they are Bitter and Burning Devils; they are not swarthy Indians, but they are sooty Devils that are let loose upon us. Ah, Poor New-England! Must the plague of Old Egypt come upon you? As we read in Psalm 78:49: He cast upon them the fierceness of his Anger, Wrath, and Indignation, and Trouble, by sending Evil Angels among them. What? O what must next be looked for? Must that which is there next mentioned be next encountered? He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the Pestilence. For my part, when I consider what Melanchthon says in one of his Epistles, that these Diabolical Spectacles are often Prodigies; and when I consider how often people have been by Spectres called upon just before their Deaths, I am verily afraid lest some wasting Mortality be among the things which this plague is the Forerunner of. I pray God prevent it! But now, What shall we do? 1. Let the Devil's coming down in great wrath upon us cause us to come down in great grief before the Lord. We may truly and sadly say, We are brought very low! Low indeed, when the Serpents of the dust are crawling and coiling about us, and insulting over us. May we not say, We are in the very belly of Hell when Hell itself is feeding upon us? But how low is that! O let us then most penitently lay ourselves very Low before the God of Heaven, who has thus abased us. When a truculent Nero, a Devil of a man, was turned in upon the World, it was said in 1 Peter 5:6, Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. How much more now ought we to humble ourselves under that Mighty Hand of that God who indeed has the Devil in a Chain, but has horribly lengthened out the Chain! When the Old People of God heard any Blasphemies tearing his ever-Blessed Name to pieces, they were to rend their Clothes at what they heard. I am sure that we have cause to rend our Hearts this Day, when we see what a High Treason has been committed against the most High God, by the Witchcrafts in our Neighborhood. We may say — and shall we not be humbled when we say it? — We have seen a horrible thing done in our Land! O it is a most humbling thing to think that ever there should be such an abomination among us, as for a crew of Human Race to renounce their Maker, and to unite with the Devil for the Troubling of Mankind, and for people to be (as is by some confessed) baptized by a Fiend using this form upon them, You are mine, and I have a full power over you! — afterwards communicating in an Hellish Bread and Wine, by that Fiend administered to them. It was said in Deuteronomy 18:10-12, There shall not be found among you an enchanter, or a Witch, or a Charmer, or a Consulter with Familiar Spirits, or a Wizard, or a Necromancer; for all that do these things are an Abomination to the Lord, and because of these Abominations, the Lord your God does drive them out before you. That New-England now should have these Abominations in it, yes, that some of no mean Profession should be found guilty of them — Alas, what Humiliations are we all hereby obliged to? O it is a Defiled Land wherein we live; let us be humbled for these Defiling Abominations, lest we be driven out of our Land. It is a very humbling thing to think what Reproaches will be cast upon us for this Matter among the Daughters of the Philistines. Indeed, enough might easily be said for the Vindication of this Country from the Singularity of this Matter, by ripping up what has been discovered in others. Great Britain alone, and this also in our Days of Greatest Light, has had that in it which may divert the Calumnies of an ill-natured World from centering here. They are the words of the Devout Bishop Hall: Satan's Prevalency in this Age is most clear in the marvelous Number of Witches abounding in all places. Now Hundreds are discovered in one Shire; and, if Fame deceive us not, in a Village of Fourteen Houses in the North, are found so many of this Damned Brood. Yes, and those of both Sexes, who have professed much Knowledge, Holiness, and Devotion, are drawn into this Damnable Practice. I suppose the Doctor in the first of those Passages may refer to what happened in the Year 1645, when so many vassals of the Devil were detected, that there were thirty tried at one time, of whom about fourteen were hanged, and a hundred more detained in the Prisons of Suffolk and Essex. Among other things which many of these acknowledged, one was that they were to undergo certain Punishments if they did not such and such Hurts as were appointed them. And among the rest that were then executed, there was an old Parson called Lowis, who confessed that he had a Couple of Imps, of whom one was always putting him upon the doing of Mischief; once particularly, that Imp calling for his Consent to do so, went immediately and sunk a Ship then under Sail. I pray, let not New-England become of an unsavory and a sulfurous resentment in the Opinion of the World abroad, for the doleful Things which are now fallen out among us, while there are such Histories of other places abroad in the World. Nevertheless, I am sure that we, the People of New-England, have cause enough to humble ourselves under our most humbling Circumstances. We must no more be haughty because of the Lord's Holy Mountain among us; no, it becomes us rather to be humble, because we have been such a Habitation of Unholy Devils! 2. Since the Devil is come down in great wrath upon us, let not us in our great wrath against one another provide a Lodging for him. It was a most wholesome caution in Ephesians 4:26-27: Let not the Sun go down upon your wrath; neither give place to the Devil. The Devil is come down to see what Quarter he shall find among us: and if his coming down does now fill us with wrath against one another, and if between the cause of the Sufferers on one hand, and the cause of the Suspected on the other, we carry things to such extremes of Passion as are now gaining upon us, the Devil will bless himself to find such a convenient Lodging as we shall therein afford to him. And it may be that the wrath which we have had against one another has had more than a little Influence upon the coming down of the Devil in that wrath which now amazes us. Have not many of us been Devils one to another for Slanderings, for Backbitings, for Animosities? For this, among other causes, perhaps, God has permitted the Devils to be worrying, as they now are, among us. But it is high time to leave off all Devilism when the Devil himself is falling upon us: and it is no time for us to be censuring and reviling one another with a Devilish Wrath when the Wrath of the Devil is annoying us. The way for us to outwit the Devil in the Wiles with which he now vexes us would be for us to join as one man in our cries to God, for the directing and issuing of this Thorny Business. But if we do not lift up our Hands to Heaven without Wrath, we cannot then do it without Doubt of succeeding in it. I am ashamed when I read French Authors giving this Character of Englishmen: "They hate one another, and are always quarreling one with another." And I shall be much more ashamed if it become the Character of New-Englanders; which is indeed what the Devil would have. Satan would make us bruise one another by breaking of the Peace among us; but O let us disappoint him. We read of a thing that sometimes happens to the Devil when he is foaming with his Wrath, in Matthew 12:43: The unclean Spirit seeks rest, and finds none. But we give Rest to the Devil by Wrath one against another. If we would lay aside all fierceness and keenness in the disputes which the Devil has raised among us; and if we would use to one another none but the Soft Answers which turn away Wrath, I should hope that we might light upon such Counsels as would quickly extricate us out of our Labyrinths. But the Old Incendiary of the world is come from Hell with Sparks of Hell-Fire flashing on every side of him; and we make ourselves tinder to the Sparks. When the Emperor Henry 3rd kept the Feast of Pentecost at the City of Mainz, there arose a Dissension among some of the People there, which came from words to Blows, and at last it passed on to the shedding of Blood. After the Tumult was over, when they came to that clause in their Devotions, You have made this day Glorious, the Devil, to the unspeakable Terror of that vast Assembly, made the Temple ring with that Outcry, But I have made this Day Quarrelsome! We are truly come into a day which, by being well managed, might be very Glorious for the exterminating of those Accursed Things which have hitherto been the Clogs of our Prosperity; but if we make this day Quarrelsome through any Raging Confidences, Alas, O Lord, my Flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your Judgments. Erasmus, among other Historians, tells us that at a Town in Germany, a Witch or Devil appeared on the Top of a Chimney, threatening to set the Town on Fire: and at length, scattering a Pot of Ashes abroad, the Town was presently and horribly burned to the Ground. Methinks I see the Spectres from the Tops of the Chimneys to the Northward, threatening to scatter Fire about the Country; but let us quench that Fire by the most amicable correspondences, lest, as the Spectres have — they say — already most literally burned some of our Dwellings, there come forth a further Fire from the Brambles of Hell which may more terribly devour us. Let us not be like a Troubled House, although we are so much haunted by the Devils. Let our Long Suffering be a well-placed piece of Armor about us against the Fiery Darts of the wicked ones. History informs us that so long ago as the year 858, a certain Pestilent and Malignant sort of Demon molested Caumont in Germany with all sorts of methods to stir up Strife among the Citizens. He uttered Prophecies, he detected Villanies, he branded people with all kind of Infamies. He incensed the Neighborhood against one Man particularly, as the cause of all the mischiefs — who yet proved himself innocent. He threw stones at the Inhabitants, and at length burned their Habitations, till the Commission of the Demon could go no further. I say, let us be well aware lest such Demons do come here also! 3. Inasmuch as the Devil is come down in Great Wrath, we had need labor with all the Care and Speed we can to divert the Great Wrath of Heaven from coming at the same time upon us. The God of Heaven has with long and loud Admonitions been calling us to a Reformation of our Provoking Evils, as the only way to avoid that Wrath of His which does not only threaten but consume us. It is because we have been deaf to those Calls that we are now, by a provoked God, laid open to the Wrath of the Devil himself. It is said in Proverbs 16:7, When a man's ways please the Lord, He makes even his Enemies to be at peace with him. The Devil is our Grand Enemy: and though we would not be at peace with him, yet we would be at peace from him; that is, we would have him unable to disquiet our Peace. But inasmuch as the Wrath which we endure from this Enemy will allow us no Peace, we may be sure our Ways have not pleased the Lord. It is because we have broken the Hedge of God's Precepts that the Hedge of God's Providence is not so entire as it used to be about us; but Serpents are biting us. O let us then set ourselves to make our Peace with our God, whom we have displeased by our Iniquities: and let us not imagine that we can encounter the Wrath of the Devil while there is the Wrath of God Almighty to set that Mastiff upon us. Reformation! Reformation! has been the repeated Cry of all the Judgments that have hitherto been upon us: because we have been as deaf Adders to it, the Adders of the Infernal Pit are now hissing about us. At length, as it was of old said in Luke 16:30, If one went to them from the Dead, they will repent — even so, there are some come to us from the Damned. The Great God has loosed the Bars of the Pit, so that many Damned Spirits are come in among us, to make us repent of our Misdemeanors. The means which the Lord had formerly employed for our Awakening were such that He might well have said, What could I have done more? And yet after all, He has done more, in some regards, than was ever done for the Awakening of any People in the World. The Things now done to awaken our Inquiries after our Provoking Evils, and our Endeavors to Reform those Evils, are most Extraordinary Things. For which cause I would freely speak it: If we now do not some Extraordinary Things in returning to God, we are the most Incurable, and I wish it be not quickly said, the most Miserable, People under the Sun. Believe me, it is a Time for all people to do something Extraordinary in searching and in trying of their Ways, and in turning to the Lord. It is at an Extraordinary rate of Circumspection and Spiritual Mindedness that we should all now maintain a Walk with God. At such a Time as this, ought Magistrates to do something Extraordinary in promoting what is Laudable, and in restraining and chastising of Evil Doers. At such a Time as this, ought Ministers to do something Extraordinary in pulling the Souls of men out of the Snares of the Devil, not only by public Preaching, but by personal Visits and Counsels from House to House. At such a Time as this, ought Churches to do something Extraordinary in renewing their Covenants, and in remembering and reviving the Obligations of what they have Renewed. Some Admirable Designs about the Reformation of Manners have lately been on foot in the English Nation, in pursuance of the most Excellent Admonitions which have been given for it by the Letters of Their Majesties. Besides the vigorous Agreements of the Justices here and there in the Kingdom, assisted by Godly Gentlemen and Informers to execute the Laws upon Profane Offenders, there has been started a Proposal for the well-affected people in every Parish to enter into orderly Societies, of which every Member shall bind himself, not only to avoid Profaneness in himself, but also according to their Place, to do their utmost in first reproving, and, if it must be so, then exposing and so punishing as the Law directs, those others that shall be guilty. It has been observed that the English Nation has had some of its greatest Successes upon some special and signal Actions this way; and a Discouragement given to Legal Proceedings of this Kind must needs be very exercising to the Wise that observe these Things. But O why should not New-England be the most forward part of the English Nation in such Reformations? Methinks I hear the Lord from Heaven saying over us, O that my People had listened to me; then I should soon have subdued the Devils, as well as their other Enemies! There have been some feeble essays toward Reformation of late in our Churches; but I pray, what comes of them? Do we stay till the Storm of his Wrath be over? In fact, let us be doing what we can as fast as we can to divert the Storm. The Devils having broke in upon our World, there is great Asking, Who is it that have brought them in? And many do by Spectral Exhibitions come to be cried out upon. I hope in God's Time it will be found that among those that are thus cried out upon, there are persons yet clear from the Great Transgression; but indeed, all the unreformed among us may justly be cried out upon, as having too much of a Hand in letting of the Devils in to our Borders. It is our Worldliness, our Formality, our Sensuality, and our Iniquity that has helped this letting of the Devils in. O let us then at last consider our Ways. It is 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, on a night after the people had retired home from a reveling profanation of the Lord's Day, there was heard a Great Noise with rattling of Chains up and down the Town, and an horrid scent of Brimstone filled the Neighborhood. Upon which the Guilty Consciences of the Wretches told them the Devil was come to fetch them away: and it so terrified them that an eminent Reformation followed the Sermons which that man of God preached upon it. Behold, Sinners, behold and wonder, lest you Perish; the very Devils are walking about our Streets with lengthened Chains, making a dreadful Noise in our Ears, and Brimstone, even without a Metaphor, is making an Hellish and Horrid stench in our Nostrils. I pray, leave off all those things of which your guilty Consciences may now accuse you, lest these Devils do yet more direfully fall upon you. Reformation is at this Time our only Preservation. 4. When the Devil is come down in Great Wrath, let every Great Vice which may have a more Particular Tendency to make us a Prey to that Wrath come into a due Discredit with us. It is the General Concession of all men, who are not become too Unreasonable for Common Conversation, that the Invitation of Witchcrafts is the Thing that has now Introduced the Devil into the midst of us. I say then, let not only all Witchcrafts be duly abominated with us, but also let us be duly watchful against all the Steps Leading thereto. There are lesser sorceries which, they say, are too frequent in our Land. As it was said in 2 Kings 17:9, The Children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God. So it is to be feared, the Children of New-England have secretly done many things that have been pleasing to the Devil. They say that in some Towns it has been a common Thing for People to cure Hurts with Spells, or to use detestable Conjurations with Sieves and Keys and Peas and Nails and Horseshoes, and I know not what other Implements, to learn the Things for which they have a Forbidden and an Impious Curiosity. It is in the Devil's Name that such Things are done; and in God's Name I do this Day charge them as vile Impieties. By these Courses it is that people play upon the Hole of the Asp, till that cruelly venomous Asp has pulled many of them into the Deep Hole of Witchcraft itself. It has been acknowledged by some who have sunk the deepest into this Horrible Pit, that they began at these little Witchcrafts; on which it is a pity but the Laws of the English Nation, whereby the incorrigible Repetition of those Tricks is made Felony, were severely executed. From the like Sinful Curiosity it is that the Prognostications of Judicial Astrology are so injudiciously regarded by multitudes among us; and although the juggling Astrologers do scarce ever hit Right, except it be in such weighty Judgments — forsooth — as that many Old Men will die such a year, and that there will be many Losses felt by some that venture to Sea, and that there will be much Lying and Cheating in the World; yet their foolish Admirers will not be persuaded but that the Innocent Stars have been concerned in these Events. It is a Disgrace to the English Nation that the Pamphlets of such Idle, Futile, Trifling Star-gazers are so much considered; and the Countenance hereby given to a Study wherein at last all is done by Impulse, if anything be done to any purpose at all, is not a little perilous to the Souls of men. It is a juggle — I dare not call it a science — of which the learned Hall well says, It is presumptuous and unwarrantable, and ever cried down by Councils and Fathers, as unlawful, as that which lies in the mid-way between Magic and Imposture, and partakes not a little of both. Men consult the Aspects of Planets, whose Northern or Southern Motions receive Denominations from a Celestial Dragon, till the Infernal Dragon at length insinuates into them with a Poison of Witchcraft that cannot be cured. Has there not also been a world of Discontent in our Borders? It is no wonder that the Fiery Serpents are so stinging us; we have been a most Murmuring Generation. It is not irrational to ascribe the late stupendous Growth of Witches among us partly to the bitter Discontents which Affliction and Poverty has filled us with: it is inconceivable what Advantage the Devil gains over men by Discontent. Moreover, the Sin of Unbelief may be reckoned as perhaps the chief Crime of our Land. We are told, God swears in Wrath against them that believe not; and what follows then but this, that the Devil comes to them in wrath? Never were the Offers of the Gospel more freely tendered, or more basely despised, among any people under the whole scope of Heaven, than in this New-England. Does it seem at all marvelous to us that the Devil should get such Footing in our Country? Why, it is because the Savior has been slighted here, perhaps more than anywhere. The Blessed Lord Jesus Christ has been proffering to us Grace, and Glory, and every good thing, and been alluring us to accept of Him, with such Terms as these: Undone Sinner, I am All; are you willing that I should be your All? But as a proof of that Contempt which this Unbelief has cast upon these offers, I would seriously ask of the so many hundreds — above a thousand People within these Walls — which of you all, O how few of you, can indeed say, Christ is mine, and I am his, and He is the Beloved of my Soul? I would only say thus much: When the precious and glorious Jesus is entreating us to receive Him in all His Offices with all His Benefits; the Devil minds what Respect we pay to that Heavenly Lord; if we refuse Him that speaks from Heaven, then he that comes from Hell does with a sort of claim set in, and cry out, Lord, since this Wretch is not willing that you should have him, I pray, let me have him. And thus, by the just vengeance of Heaven, the Devil becomes a Master, a Prince, a God to the miserable Unbelievers — but O what are many of them then hurried to! All of these Evil Things do I now set before you, as branded with the Mark of the Devil upon them. 5. With Great Regard, with Great Pity, should we lay to Heart the Condition of those who are cast into Affliction by the Great Wrath of the Devil. There is a Number of our Good Neighbors, and some of them very particularly noted for Goodness and Virtue, of whom we may say, Lord, they are vexed with Devils. Their Tortures being primarily inflicted on their Spirits, may indeed cause the Impressions thereof upon their Bodies to be the less durable, though rather the more sensible: but they endure horrible Things, and many have been actually murdered. Hard Censures now bestowed upon these poor Sufferers cannot but be very displeasing to our Lord, who, as He said about some that had been butchered by a Pilate in Luke 13:2-3: Think you that these were Sinners above others, because they suffered such Things? I tell you no, but except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. Even so, He now says, Think you that they who now suffer by the Devil have been greater Sinners than their Neighbors? No, do you repent of your own Sins, lest the Devil come to fall foul of you as he has done to them. And if this be so, how rash a thing would it be if such of the poor Sufferers as carry it with a becoming Piety, Seriousness, and Humiliation under their present Suffering should be unjustly censured; or have their very Calamity imputed to them as a Crime? It is an easy thing for us to fall into the Fault of adding Affliction to the Afflicted, and of talking to the Grief of those that are already wounded; nor can it be Wisdom to slight the Dangers of such a Fault. In the mean time, we have no Bowels in us if we do not compassionate the distressed County of Essex, now crying to all these Colonies, Have pity on me, O you my Friends, have pity on me, for the Hand of the Lord has touched me, and the Wrath of the Devil has been therewith turned upon me. But indeed, if a hearty pity be due to any, I am sure the Difficulties which attend our Honorable Judges do demand no inconsiderable share in that Pity. What a Difficult, what an Arduous Task have those Worthy Personages now upon their Hands? To carry the Knife so exactly that on the one side there may be no Innocent Blood shed by too unseeing a Zeal for the Children of Israel; and that on the other side there may be no Shelter given to those Diabolical Works of Darkness, without the Removal of which we shall never have Peace; or for those Furies of whom several have killed more people perhaps than would serve to make a Village — this is the Labor, this is the Work! O what need have we to be concerned that the Sins of our Israel may not provoke the God of Heaven to leave his Davids to a wrong Step in a matter of such Consequence as is now before them! Our disingenuous, uncharitable, unchristian reproaching of such Faithful Men, after all the Prayers and Supplications with strong Crying and Tears with which we are daily plying the Throne of Grace, that they may be kept from what they Fear, is none of the way for our preventing of what we Fear. Nor all this while ought our Pity to forget such Accused ones as call for indeed our most Compassionate Pity, till there be fuller Evidences that they are less worthy of it. If Satan has anywhere maliciously brought upon the Stage those that have hitherto had a just and good stock of Reputation for their just and good Living among us; if the Evil One has obtained permission to appear in the Figure of such as we have cause to think have hitherto abstained even from the Appearance of Evil — it is in Truth such an Invasion upon Mankind as may well raise a Horror in us all. But O what Compassions are due to such as may come under such Misrepresentations of the Great Accuser! Who of us can say what may be shown in the Glasses of the Great Lying Spirit? Although the usual Providence of God — we praise Him! — keeps us from such a Mishap; yet where have we an Absolute Promise that we shall every one always be kept from it? As long as Charity is bound to think no Evil, it will not hurt us that are Private Persons to forbear the Judgment which belongs not to us. Let it rather be our Wish: May the Lord help them to learn the Lessons for which they are now put to so hard a School. 6. With a Great Zeal, we should lay hold on the Covenant of God, that we may secure ourselves and ours from the Great Wrath with which the Devil rages. Let us come into the Covenant of Grace, and then we shall not be hooked into a Covenant with the Devil, nor be altogether unfurnished with armor against the Wretches that are in that Covenant. The way to come under the Saving Influences of the New Covenant is to close with the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the All-sufficient Mediator of it: let us therefore do that by resigning up ourselves to the Saving, Teaching, and Ruling Hands of this Blessed Mediator. Then we shall be, as we read in Jude 1, Preserved in Christ Jesus: that is, as the Destroying Angel could not meddle with such as had been distinguished by the Blood of the Passover on their Houses, thus the Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, sprinkled on our Souls, will Preserve us from the Devil. The Birds of prey — and indeed the Devils most literally in the shape of great Birds! — are flying about: would we find a Covert from these Vultures? Let us then hear our Lord Jesus from Heaven calling to us, O that you would be gathered under my Wings. When this is done, then let us own the Covenant which we are now come into, by joining ourselves to a Particular Church walking in the Order of the Gospel; at the doing whereof, according to that Covenant of God, we give up ourselves to the Lord, and in Him to One Another. While others have had their Names entered in the Devil's Book, let our Names be found in the Church Book, and let us be written among the Living in Jerusalem. By no means let Church-Work sink and fail in the midst of us; but let the Tragical Accidents which now happen exceedingly quicken that Work. So many of the Rising Generation, utterly forgetting the Errand of our Fathers to build Churches in this Wilderness, and so many of our Cottages being allowed to live where they do not, and perhaps cannot, wait upon God with the Churches of His People — it is as likely as any one thing to procure the swarmings of Witchcrafts among us. But it becomes us, with a like Ardor, to bring our poor Children with us, as we shall do, when we come ourselves into the Covenant of God. It would break a heart of Stone to have seen what I have lately seen — even poor Children of several Ages, even from seven to twenty more or less, confessing their Familiarity with Devils; but at the same time, in doleful bitter Lamentations that made a little portraiture of Hell itself, expostulating with their execrable Parents for devoting them to the Devil in their infancy, and so entailing of Devilism upon them! Now, as the Psalmist could say, My Zeal has consumed me, because my Enemies have forgotten your Words — even so, let the nefarious wickedness of those that have explicitly dedicated their Children to the Devil, even with Devilish Symbols of such a Dedication, provoke our Zeal to have our Children sincerely, signally, and openly consecrated to God; with an Education afterwards assuring and confirming that Consecration. 7. Let our Prayer go up with Great Faith against the Devil that comes down in Great Wrath. Such is the Antipathy of the Devil to our Prayer, that he cannot bear to stay long where much of it is: indeed it is the Devil's Scourge, as well as the Remedy for Misery; the Devil will soon be scourged out of the Lord's Temple by a Whip made and used with the Effectual Fervent Prayer of Righteous Men. When the Devil, by afflicting us, drives us to our Prayers, he is the Fool making a Whip for his own Back. Our Lord said of the Devil in Matthew 17:21, This Kind goes not out, but by Prayer and Fasting. But Prayer and Fasting will soon make the Devil be gone. Here are Charms indeed — Sacred and Blessed Charms which the Devil cannot stand before. A Promise of God, being well managed in the Hands of them that are much upon their Knees, will so resist the Devil that he will flee from us. At every other Weapon the Devils will be too hard for us; the Spiritual Wickednesses in High Places have manifestly the Upper Hand of us; that Old Serpent will be too old for us, too cunning, too subtle; they will soon outwit us if we think to encounter them with any Wit of our own. But when we come to Prayers — incessant and Vehement Prayers before the Lord — there we shall be too hard for them. When well-directed Prayers, that great Artillery of Heaven, are brought into the Field — there, methinks I see, there are these Workers of Iniquity fallen, all of them! And who can tell how much the most Obscure Christian among you all may do toward the Deliverance of our Land from the Molestations which the Devil is now giving to us. I have read that on a Day of Prayer kept by some Good People for and with a Possessed Person, the Devil at last flew out of the Window, and referring to a devout, plain, humble Woman then in the Room, he cried out, O the Woman behind the Door! It is that Woman that forces me away! Thus the Devil that now troubles us may be forced within a while to forsake us: and it shall be said, He was driven away by the prayers of some Obscure and Retired Souls which the world has taken but little notice of! The Great God is about a Great Work at this Day among us; now there is extreme Hazard lest the Devil who by Compulsion must submit to that Great Work, may also by Permission come to confound that Work. Both in the Detections of some, and in the Confessions of others, whose Ungodly Deeds may be brought forth by a Great Work of God, there is Hazard lest the Devil intertwist some of his Delusions. It is Prayer, I say, it is Prayer that must carry us well through the Strange Things that are now upon us. Only that Prayer must then be the Prayer of Faith: O where is our Faith in Him who has spoiled these Principalities and Powers on His Cross, triumphing over them! 8. Lastly, shake off — every Soul — shake off the Hard Yoke of the Devil, if you would not perish under the Great Wrath of the Devil. Where it is said, The whole World lies in Wickedness, it is by some of the Ancients rendered, The whole world lies in the Devil. The Devil is a Prince, yes, the Devil is a God to all the Unregenerate; and alas, there is a whole world of them. Desolate Sinners, consider what a Horrid Lord it is that you are enslaved to; and O shake off your Slavery to such a Lord. Instead of him, now make your Choice of the Eternal God in Jesus Christ; choose Him with a most unalterable Resolution; and to Him say with Thomas, My Lord, and my God! Say with the Church, Lord, other Lords have had the Dominion over us, but now you alone shall be our Lord for ever. Then instead of your perishing under the wrath of the Devils, God will fetch you to a place among those that fill up the Room of the Devils, left by their Fall from the Ethereal Regions. It was a most awful Speech made by the Devil possessing a young Woman at a Village in Germany: By the Command of God, I am come to Torment the Body of this young Woman, though I cannot hurt her Soul; and it is that I may warn men to take heed of sinning against God. Indeed, said he, it is very sore against my will that I do it; but the command of God forces me to declare what I do; however, I know that at the Last Day, I shall have more Souls than God Himself. So spoke that horrible Devil! But O that none of our Souls may be found among the Prizes of the Devil in the Day of God! O that what the Devil has been forced to declare of his Kingdom among us may prejudice our Hearts against him for ever! My Text says, The Devil is come down in Great Wrath, for he has but a short Time. Yes, but if you do not by a speedy and thorough Conversion to God escape the Wrath of the Devil, you will yourselves go down where the Devil is to be, and you will there be sweltering under the Devil's Wrath, not for a Short Time, but world without end; not for a Short Time, but for infinite millions of ages. The smoke of your Torment under that Wrath will ascend for ever and ever! Indeed the Devil's Time for his Wrath upon you in this World can be but short, but his Time for you to do his Work — or which is all one, to delay your turning to God — that is a Long Time. When the Devil was going to be dispossessed of a Man, he roared out, Am I to be Tormented before my Time? You will torment the Devil if you rescue your Souls out of his hands by true Repentance: if once you begin to look that way, he will cry out, O This is before my Time, I must have more Time yet in the service of such a guilty Soul. But I beseech you, let us join thus to torment the Devil, in a Holy Revenge upon him for all the Injuries which he has done to us; let us tell him, Satan, your Time with me is but short — or rather, your Time with me shall be no more; I am unutterably sorry that it has been so much; Depart from me you Evil-Doer that would have me to be an Evil-Doer like yourself; I will now for ever keep the Commandments of that God in whom I live, and move, and have my being! The Devil has played a fine Game for himself indeed, if by his Troubling of our Land the souls of many People should come to think upon their Ways, till at last they turn their Feet into the Testimonies of the Lord. Now that the Devil may be thus outshot in his own Bow is the Desire of all that love the Salvation of God among us, as well as of him who has thus addressed you. Amen.

Having thus discoursed on the wonders of the invisible world, I shall now, with God's help, go on to relate some remarkable and memorable instances of wonders which that world has given to ourselves. And although the chief entertainment which my readers do expect, and shall receive, will be, a true history of what has occurred, respecting the witchcrafts wherewith we are at this day persecuted, yet I shall choose to usher in the mention of those things, with

A Narrative of an Apparition which a Gentleman in Boston, had of his Brother, just then Murdered in London. It was, on the Second of May in the Year 1687 that a most ingenious, accomplished and well-disposed young gentleman, Mr. Joseph Beacon, by name, about five a clock in the morning, as he lay, whether sleeping or waking he could not say, (but judged the latter of them,) had a view of his brother then at London, although he was now himself at our Boston, distanced from him a thousand leagues. This his brother appeared to him, in the morning, about five a clock at Boston, having on him a Bengale gown, which he usually wore, with a napkin tied about his head; his countenance was very pale, ghastly, deadly, and he had a bloody wound on one side of his forehead! Brother! says the affrighted Joseph. Brother! Answered the apparition. Said Joseph, What's the matter, Brother! How came you here! The apparition replied, Brother, I have been most barbarously and injuriously butchered, by a debauched, drunken fellow, to whom I never did any wrong in my life. Whereupon he gave a particular description of the murderer; adding, Brother, this fellow, changing his name, is attempting to come over to New-England, in Foy or Wild; I would pray you, on the first arrival of either of these, to get an order from the Governor, to seize the person, whom I have now described; and then do you indict him for the murder of me your brother: I'll stand by you, and prove the indictment. And so he vanished. Mr. Beacon was extremely astonished at what he had seen and heard; and the people of the family not only observed an extraordinary alteration upon him, for the week following, but have also given me under their hands a full testimony, that he then gave them an account of this apparition. All this while, Mr. Beacon had no advice of any thing amiss attending his brother then in England; but about the latter end of June following, he understood by the common ways of communication, that the April before, his brother going in haste by night to call a coach for a lady, met a fellow then in drink, with his doxy in his hand. Some way or other the fellow thought himself affronted in the hasty passage of this Beacon, and immediately ran in to the [illegible] side of a neighbouring tavern, from where he fetched out a fire-fork, wherewith he grievously wounded Beacon in the skull; even in that very part, where the apparition showed his wound. Of this wound he languished until he died, on the second of May, about five of the clock in the morning at London. The murderer it seems, was endeavouring an escape, as the apparition affirmed, but the friends of the deceased Beacon seized him: and prosecuting him at law, he found the help of such friends, as brought him off without the loss of his life; since which, there has no more been heard of the business.

This history I received of Mr. Joseph Beacon himself; who, a little before his own pious and hopeful death, which followed not long after, gave me the story written and signed with his own hand, and attested with the circumstances I have already mentioned.

But I shall no longer detain my reader, from his expected entertainment; in a brief account of the trials, which have passed upon some of the malefactors, lately executed at Salem, for the witchcrafts, whereof they stood convicted. For my own part, I was not present at any of them; nor ever had I any personal prejudice at the persons thus brought upon the stage; much less, at the surviving relations of those persons, with and for whom I would be as hearty a mourner as any man living in the world: the Lord comfort them! But having received a [illegible] command, so to do, I can do no other than shortly relate the chief matters of fact which occurred in the trials of some that were executed; in an abridgment collected out of the court-papers, on this occasion put into my hands. You are to take the truth, just as it was; and the truth will hurt no good man. There might have been more of these, if my book would not thereby have been swollen too big; and if some other worthy hands did not perhaps intend something further in these collections; for which cause I have only singled out four or five which may serve to illustrate the way of dealing, wherein witchcrafts use to be concerned; and I report matters not as an advocate but as an historian.

They were some of the gracious words, inserted in the advice, which many of the neighbouring ministers, did this summer humbly lay before our honorable judges, We cannot but with all thankfulness, acknowledge the success which the merciful God has given to the sedulous and assiduous endeavours of our honorable rulers, to detect the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country; humbly praying that the discovery of those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses, may be perfected. If in the midst of the many dissatisfactions among us, the publication of these trials, may promote such a pious thankfulness to God, for justice being so far, executed among us, I shall rejoice that God is glorified; and pray that no wrong steps of ours may ever fully any of His glorious works.

But we will begin with,

A Modern Instance of Witches Discovered and Condemned, in a Trial, before that Celebrated Judge, Sir Matthew Hale. It may cast some light upon the dark things now in America, if we just give a glance upon the like things lately happening in Europe. We may see the witchcrafts here, most exactly resemble the witchcrafts there; and we may learn what sort of devils do trouble the world. The Venerable Baxter very truly says, Judge Hale was a person, than whom no man, was more backward, to condemn a witch, without full evidence. Now, one of the latest printed accounts, about a trial of witches, is of what was before him; and it ran on this wise. [Printed in the Year 1682] And it is here the rather mentioned, because it was a trial, much considered by the Judges of New-England. 1. Rose Cullender, and Amy Duny, were severally indicted, for bewitching Elizabeth Durent, Ann Durent, Jane Bocking, Susan Chandler, William Durent, Elizabeth and Deborah Pacy. And the evidence, whereon they were convicted, stood upon diverse particular circumstances. 2. Ann Durent, Susan Chandler, and Elizabeth Pacy, when they came into the Hall, to give instructions for the drawing the bills of indictments, they fell into strange and violent fits, so that they were unable to give in their depositions, not only then but also during the whole Assizes. William Durent being an infant, his mother swore, that Amy Duny looking after her child one day in her absence, did at her return confess, that she had given suck to the child: (though she were an old woman:) whereat, when Durent expressed her displeasure, Duny went away with discontents and menaces. The night after, the child fell into strange and sad fits, wherein it continued for diverse weeks. One Doctor Jacob advised her to hang up the child's blanket, in the chimney corner all day, and at night, when she went to put the child into it, if she found any thing in it then to throw it without fear into the fire. Accordingly, at night, there fell a great toad out of the blanket, which ran up and down the hearth. A boy caught it, and held it in the fire with the tongs: where it made a horrible noise, and flashed like to gunpowder, with a report like that of a pistol: whereupon the toad was no more to be seen. The next day a kinswoman of Duny's, told the deponent, that her aunt was all grievously scorched with the fire, and the deponent going to her house, found her in such a condition. Duny told her, she might thank her for it; but she should live to see some of her children dead, and herself upon crutches. But after the burning of the toad, this child recovered. This deponent further testified, that her daughter Elizabeth, being about the age of ten years, was taken in like manner, as her first child was, and in her fits complained much of Amy Duny, and said, that she did appear to her, and afflict her in such manner as the former. One day she found Amy Duny in her house, and thrusting her out of doors, Duny said, you need not be so angry, your child won't live long. And within three days the child died. The deponent added, that she was herself, not long after taken with such a lameness, in both her legs, that she was forced to go upon crutches; and she was now in court upon them. [It was remarkable, that immediately upon the jury's bringing in Duny guilty, Durent was restored to the use of her limbs, and went home without her crutches.] 3. As for Elizabeth and Deborah Pacy, one aged eleven years, the other nine; the elder, being in court, was made utterly senseless, during all the time of the trial: or at least speechless. By the direction of the Judge, Duny was privately brought to Elizabeth Pacy, and she touched her hand: whereupon the child, without so much as seeing her, suddenly leapt up and flew upon the prisoner; the younger was too ill, to be brought to the Assizes. But Samuel Pacy, their father, testified, that his daughter Deborah, was taken with a sudden lameness; and upon the grumbling of Amy Duny, for being denied something, where this child was then sitting, the child was taken with an extreme pain in her stomach, like the pricking of pins; and shrieking at a dreadful manner, like a whelp, rather than a rational creature. The physicians could not conjecture the cause of the distemper; but Amy Duny being a woman of ill fame, and the child in fits crying out of Amy Duny, as affrighting her with the apparition of her person, the deponent suspected her, and procured her to be set in the stocks. While she was there, she said in the hearing of two witnesses, Mr. Pacy keeps a great stir about his child, but let him stay till he has done as much by his children, as I have done by mine: and being asked, what she had done to her children, she answered, she had been fain to open her child's mouth with a tap to give it victuals. The deponent added, that within two days, the fits of his daughters were such, that they could not preserve either life or breath, without the help of a tap. And that the children cried out of Amy Duny, and of Rose Cullender, as afflicting them, with their apparitions. 4. The fits of the children, were various. They would sometimes be lame on one side; sometimes on the other. Sometimes very sore; sometimes restored to their limbs, and then deaf, or blind, or dumb, for a long while together. Upon the recovery of their speech, they would cough extremely; and with much phlegm, they would bring up crooked pins; and one time, a two-penny nail, with a very broad head. Commonly at the end of every fit, they would cast up a pin. When the children read, they could not pronounce the name of Lord, or Jesus, or Christ, but would fall into fits; and say, Amy Duny says, I must not use that name. When they came to the name of Satan, or Devil, they would clap their fingers on the book, crying out, This bites, but it makes me speak right well! The children in their fits, would often cry out, There stands Amy Duny, or, Rose Cullender; and they would afterwards relate, that these witches appearing before them, threatened them, that if they told what they saw or heard, they would torment them ten times more than ever they did before. 5. Margaret Arnold, the sister of Mr. Pacy, testified to the like sufferings being upon the children, at her house, whither her brother had removed them. And that sometimes, the children (only) would see things like mice, run about the house; and one of them suddenly snapped one with the tongs, and threw it into the fire, where it screeched out like a rat. At another time, a thing like a bee, flew at the face of the younger child; the child fell into a fit; and at last vomited up a two-penny nail, with a broad head; affirming, that the bee brought this nail, and forced it into her mouth. The child would in like manner be assaulted with flies, which brought crooked pins, to her, and made her first swallow them, and then vomit them. She one day caught an invisible mouse, and throwing it into the fire, it flashed like to gunpowder. None besides the child saw the mouse, but every one saw the flash. She also declared, out of her fits, that in them, Amy Duny, much tempted her to destroy herself. 6. As for Ann Durent, her father testified that upon a discontent of Rose Cullender, his daughter was taken with much illness in her stomach and great and sore pains, like the pricking of pins: and then swooning fits, from which recovering she declared, she had seen the apparition of Rose Cullender, threatening to torment her. She likewise vomited up diverse pins. The maid was present at court, but when Cullender looked upon her, she fell into such fits, as made her utterly unable to declare any thing. Ann Baldwin deposed the same. 7. Jane Bocking, was too weak, to be at the Assizes. But her mother testified, that her daughter having formerly been afflicted with swooning fits, and recovered of them; was now taken with a great pain in her stomach; and new swooning fits. That she took little food, but every day vomited crooked pins. In her first fits, she would extend her arms, and use postures; as if she catched at something, and when her clutched hands were forced open, they would find several pins diversely crooked, unaccountably lodged there. She would also maintain a discourse with some that were invisibly present, when casting abroad her arms, she would often say, I will not have it! but at last say; Then I will have it — and closing her hand, which when they presently after opened, a lath-nail was found in it. But her great complaints were of being visited by the shapes of Amy Duny, and Rose Cullender. 8. As for Susan Chandler, her mother testified, that being at the search of Rose Cullender, they found on her belly a thing like a teat, of an inch long; which the said Rose ascribed to a strain. But near her privy parts, they found three more, that were smaller than the former. At the end of the long teat, there was a little hole, which appeared, as if newly sucked; and upon straining it, a white milky matter issued out. The deponent further said, that her daughter being one day concerned at Rose Cullender's: taking her by the hand, she fell very sick, and at night cried out, that Rose Cullender would come to bed to her. Her fits grew violent, and in the intervals of them, she declared, that she saw Rose Cullender in them, and once having of a great dog with her. She also vomited up crooked pins; and when she was brought into court, she fell into her fits. She recovered herself in some time, and was asked by the court, whether she was in a condition to take an oath, and give evidence. She said, she could; but having been sworn, she fell into her fits again, and, Burn her! Burn her! were all the words that she could obtain power to speak. Her father likewise gave the same testimony with her mother; as to all but the search. 9. Here was the sum of the evidence: which Mr. Serjeant Keeling thought not sufficient to convict the prisoners. For admitting the children were bewitched, yet, said he, it can never be applied to the prisoners, upon the imagination only of the parties afflicted; inasmuch as no person whatever could then be in safety. Doctor Brown, a very learned person then present, gave his opinion, that these persons were bewitched. He added, that in Denmark, there had been lately a great discovery of witches; who used the very same way of afflicting people, by conveying pins and nails into them. His opinion was, that the Devil in witchcrafts, did work upon the bodies of men and women, upon a natural foundation; and that he did extraordinarily afflict them, with such distempers as their bodies were most subject to. 10. The experiment about the usefulness, yes, or lawfulness whereof good men have sometimes disputed, was divers times made, that though the afflicted were utterly deprived of all sense in their fits, yet upon the touch of the accused, they would so screech out, and fly up, as not upon any other persons. And yet it was also found that once upon the touch of an innocent person, the like effect followed, which put the whole court to a stand — although a small reason was at length attempted to be given for it. 11. However, to strengthen the credit of what had been already produced against the prisoners. One John Soam testified, that bringing home his hay in three carts, one of the carts wrenched the window of Rose Cullender's house, whereupon she flew out, with violent threatenings against the deponent. The other two carts, passed by twice, loaded, that day afterwards; but the cart which touched Cullender's house, was twice or three times that day overturned. Having again loaded it, as they brought it through the gate which leads out of the field, the cart stuck so fast in the gate's head, that they could not possibly get it through, but were forced to cut down the post of the gate, to make the cart pass through, although they could not perceive that the cart did of either side touch the gate-post. They afterwards, did with much difficulty get it home to the yard; but could not for their lives get the cart near the place, where they should unload. They were fain to unload at a great distance; and when they were tired, the noses of them that came to assist them, would burst forth a bleeding; so they were fain to give over till next morning: and then they unloaded without any difficulty. 12. Robert Sherringham also testified, that the axle-tree of his cart, happening in passing, to break some part of Rose Cullender's house, in her anger at it, she vehemently threatened him, his horses should suffer for it. And within a short time, all his four horses died; after which he sustained many other losses in the sudden dying of his cattle. He was also taken with a lameness in his limbs; and so vexed with lice of an extraordinary number and bigness, that no art could hinder the swarming of them, till he burnt up two suits of apparel. 13. As for Amy Duny, it was testified by one Richard Spencer, that he heard her say, the Devil would not let her rest; until she were revenged on the wife of Cornelius Sandswel. And that Sandswel testified, that her poultry died suddenly, upon Amy Duny's threatening of them; and that her husband's chimney fell, quickly after Duny had spoken of such a disaster. And a firkin of fish could not be kept from falling into the water, upon suspicious words of Duny's. 14. The Judge told the jury, they were to inquire first, whether these children were bewitched; and secondly, whether the prisoners at the bar were guilty of it. He made no doubt, there were such creatures as witches; for the Scriptures affirmed it; and the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such persons. He prayed the God of Heaven, to direct their hearts in the weighty thing they had in hand; for, to condemn the innocent, and let the guilty go free, were both an abomination to the Lord. The jury in half an hour, brought them in guilty, upon their several indictments, which were nineteen in number. The next morning, the children with their parents, came to the lodgings of the Lord Chief Justice, and were in as good health, as ever in their lives; being restored within half an hour after the witches were convicted. The witches were executed; and confessed nothing; which indeed will not be wondered by them, who consider and entertain the judgment of a judicious writer, that the unpardonable sin, is most usually committed by professors of the Christian religion falling into witchcraft.

We will now proceed to several of the like trials among our selves.

1. THE TRYAL of G. B. At a Court of Dyer and Terminer, Held in Salem. 1692.

Glad should I have been, if I had never known the name of this man; or never had this occasion to mention so much as the first letters of his name. But the government requiring some account, of his trial, to be inserted in this book, it becomes me with all obedience, to submit to the order.

1. This G. B. was indicted for witchcrafts; and in the prosecution of the charge against him, he was accused by five or six of the bewitched, as the author of their miseries; he was accused by eight of the confessing witches, as being a head actor at some of their hellish randezvouzes, and one who had the promise of being a king in Satan's kingdom, now going to be erected; he was accused by nine persons, for extraordinary lifting, and such feats of strength, as could not be done without a diabolical assistance. And for other such things he was accused, until about thirty testimonies were brought in against him; nor were these, judged the half of what might have been considered, for his conviction: however they were enough to fix the character of a witch upon him, according to the rules of reasoning, by the judicious Gaule, in that case directed.

2. The court being sensible, that the testimonies of the parties bewitched, use to have a room among the suspicions, or presumptions, brought in against one indicted for witchcraft, there were now heard the testimonies of several persons, who were most notoriously bewitched, and every day tortured by invisible hands, and these now all charged the spectres of G. B. to have a share in their torments. At the examination of this G. B. the bewitched people were grievously harassed, with preternatural mischiefs, which could not possibly be dissembled; and they still ascribed it to the endeavours of G. B. to kill them. And now upon his trial, one of the bewitched persons testified, that in her agonies, a little black-haired man came to her, saying his name was Band bidding her set her hand to a book which he showed to her; and bragging that he was a conjurer above the ordinary rank of witches; that he often persecuted her, with the offer of that book, saying, she should be well, and need fear no body, if she would but sign it: but he inflicted cruel pains and hures upon her, because of her denying so to do. The testimonies of the other sufferers concurred with these; and it was remarkable, that whereas biting, was one of the ways which the witches used, for the vexing of the sufferers, when they cried out of G. B. biting them, the print of the teeth, would be seen on the flesh of the complainers; and just such a set of teeth, as G. B's would then appear upon them, which could be distinguished from those of some other men's. Others of them testified, that in their torments, G. B. tempted them, to go to a sacrament, to which they perceived him with a sound of trumpet summoning of other witches; who quickly after the sound would come from all quarters to the rendezvous. One of them falling into a kind of trance, afterwards affirmed, that G. B. had carried her into a very high mountain, where he showed her mighty and glorious kingdoms, and said, he would give them all to her, if she would write in his book; but she told him, they were none of his to give; and refused the motions; enduring of much misery for that refusal.

It cost the court a wonderful deal of trouble, to hear the testimonies of the sufferers; for when they were going to give in their depositions, they would for a long while be taken with fitts, that made them uncapable of saying any thing. The chief judge asked the prisoner, who he thought hindered these witnesses from giving their testimonies? and he answered, he supposed, it was the Devil? That honourable person, then replied, How comes the Devil so loathe to have any testimony born against you? Which cast him into very great confusion.

3. It has been a frequent thing for the bewitched people, to be entertained with apparitions of ghosts of murdered people, at the same time, that the spectres of the witches trouble them. These ghosts do always affright the beholders, more than all the other spectral representations; and when they exhibit themselves, they cry out, of being murdered by the witchcrafts or other violences of the persons who are then in spectre present. It is further considerable, that once or twice, these apparitions have been seen by others at the very same time that they have shown themselves to the bewitched; and seldom have there been these apparitions but when something unusual and suspected had attended the death of the party thus appearing. Some that have been accused by these apparitions, accosting of the bewitched people, who had never heard a word of any such persons, ever being in the world, have upon a fair examination freely, and fully, confessed the murders of those very persons, although these also did not know how the apparitions had complained of them. Accordingly several of the bewitched, had given in their testimony, that they had been troubled with the apparitions of two women, who said, that they were G. B's two wives; and that he had been the death of them; and that the magistrates must be told of it, before whom if B. upon his trial denied it, they did not know but that they should appear again in the court. Now, G. B. had been infamous for the barbarous usage of his two successive wives, all the country over. Moreover, it was testified, the spectre of G. B. threatening of the sufferers told them, he had killed (besides others) Mrs. Lawson and her daughter Ann. And it was noted, that these were the virtuous wife and daughter, of one at whom this G. B. might have a prejudice for his being serviceable at Salem-village, from where himself had in ill terms removed some years before: and that when they died, which was long since, there were some odd circumstances about them, which made some of the attendants there suspect something of witchcraft, though none imagined from what quarter it should come.

Well, G. B. being now upon his trial, one of the bewitched persons was cast into horror at the ghosts of B's two deceased wives, then appearing before him, and crying for, vengeance, against him. Hereupon several of the bewitched persons were successively called in, who all not knowing what the former had seen and said, concurred in their horror, of the apparition, which they affirmed, that he had before him. But he, though much appalled, utterly denied that he discerned anything of it; nor was it any part of his conviction.

Judicious writers have assigned it a great place, in the conviction of witches, when persons are impeached by other notorious witches, to be as ill as themselves; especially, if the persons have been much noted for neglecting the worship of God. Now, as there might have been testimonies enough of G. B.'s antipathy to prayer and the other ordinances of God, though by his profession singularly obliged thereunto; so, there now came in against the prisoner, the testimonies of several persons, who confessed their own having been horrible witches, and ever since their confessions had been themselves terribly tortured by the devils and other witches, even like the other sufferers; and therein undergone the pains of many deaths for their confessions.

These now testified, that G. B. had been at witch-meetings with them; and that he was the person who had seduced, and compelled them into the snares of witchcraft: That he promised them fine clothes, for doing it; that he brought poppets to them, and thorns to stick into those poppets, for the afflicting of other people: And that he exhorted them, with the rest of the crew, to bewitch all Salem-Village, but be sure to do it gradually, if they would prevail in what they did.

When the Lancashire witches were condemned, I don't remember that there was any considerable further evidence, than that of the bewitched, and then that of some that confessed. We see so much already against G. B. But this being indeed not enough, there were other things to render what had been already produced credible.

A famous divine recites this among the convictions of a witch: The testimony of the party bewitched, whether pining or dying; together with the joint oaths of sufficient persons, that have seen certain prodigious pranks or feats, wrought by the party accused. Now God had been pleased so to leave this G. B. that he had ensnared himself, by several instances which he had formerly given of a preternatural strength, and which were now produced against him. He was a very puny man; yet he had often done things beyond the strength of a giant. A gun of about seven foot barrel, and so heavy that strong men could not steadily hold it out, with both hands; there were several testimonies, given in by persons of credit and honor, that he made nothing of taking up such a gun behind the lock, with but one hand, and holding it out like a pistol, at arms-end. G. B. in his vindication was so foolish as to say, that an Indian was there, and held it out at the same time: Whereas, none of the spectators ever saw any such Indian; but they supposed the black man (as the witches call the Devil; and they generally say he resembles an Indian) might give him that assistance. There was evidence, likewise, brought in, that he made nothing of taking up whole barrels filled with molasses, or cider, in very disadvantageous postures, and carrying of them through the difficultest places, out of a canoe to the shore.

[Yes, there were two testimonies, that G. B. with only putting the fore-finger of his right hand, into the muzzle of a heavy gun, a fowling-piece, of about six or seven foot barrel, did lift up the gun, and hold it out at arms-end; a gun which the deponents, though strong men, could not with both hands lift up, and hold out, at the butt end, as is usual. Indeed one of these witnesses, was over-persuaded by some persons, to be out of the way, upon G. B.'s trial; but he came afterwards, with sorrow for his withdraw, and gave in his testimony: Nor were either of these witnesses made use of as evidences in the trial.]

There came in several testimonies, relating to the domestic affairs of G. B. which had a very hard aspect upon him; and not only proved him a very ill man; but also confirmed the belief of the character, which had been already fastened on him. For example,

It was testified, that keeping his two successive wives in a strange kind of slavery, he would when he came home from abroad, pretend to tell the talk which any had with them. That he has brought them to the point of death, by his harsh dealings with his wives, and then made the people about him to promise that in case death should happen, they would say nothing of it. That he used all means to make his wives write, sign, seal, and swear a covenant, never to reveal any of his secrets. That his wives had privately complained to the neighbours about frightful apparitions of evil spirits, with which their house was sometimes infested; and that many such things have been whispered among the neighbourhood. There were also some other testimonies, relating to the death of people, whereby the consciences of an impartial jury, were convinced, that G. B. had bewitched the persons mentioned in the complaints. But I am forced to omit several such passages, in this, as well as in all the succeeding trials, because the scribes who took notice of them, have not supplied me.

VII. One Mr. Ruck, Brother in Law to this G. [illegible] Testified, that G. B. and he himself, and his Sister who was G. B's Wife, going out for two or three miles, to gather strawberries, Ruck, with his Sister the Wife of G. B. rode home very softly, with G. B. on foot in their company, G. B. stepped aside a little into the bushes; whereupon they halted and hallooed for [illegible]. He not answering, they went away homewards, with a quickened pace; without any expectation of seeing him in a considerable while: and yet when they were got [illegible] home, to their astonishment they found him on foot, with them, having a basket of strawberries. [illegible] immediately, then fell to chiding his Wife [illegible] account of what she had been speaking to [illegible] Brother, of him, on the road: which when they wondered at, he said, He knew their thoughts. Ruck being startled at that, made some reply, intimating that the Devil himself did not know so far; but G. B. answered, My God, makes known your thoughts to me. The prisoner now at the bar had nothing to answer, to what was thus witnessed against him, that was worth considering. Only he said, Ruck, and his Wife left a man with him, when they left him. Which Ruck now affirmed to be false; and when the Court asked G. B. what the man's name was, his countenance was much altered; nor could he say, who 'twas. But the Court began to think, that he then stepped aside, only that by the assistance of the Black Man, he might put on his invisibility, and in that fascinating mist, gratify his own jealous humor, to hear what they said of him. Which trick of rendering themselves invisible, our witches do in their confessions pretend that they sometimes are masters of; and it is the more credible, because there is demonstration that they often render many other things utterly invisible.

VIII. Faltering, faulty, inconstant, and contrary answers upon judicial and deliberate examination, are counted some unlucky symptoms of guilt in all crimes; especially in witchcrafts. Now there never was a prisoner more eminent for them, than G. B. both at his examination and on his trial. His tergiversations, contradictions, and falsehoods, were very sensible; he had little to say, but that he heard some things that he could not prove, reflecting upon the reputation of some of the witnesses. Only he gave in a paper, to the jury; wherein, although he had many times before, granted, not only that there are witches, but also that the present sufferings of the country are the effect of horrible witchcrafts, yet he now goes to evince it, that there neither are, nor ever were, witches that having made a compact with the Devil, can send a Devil to torment other people at a distance. This paper was transcribed out of Ady; which the Court presently knew, as soon as they heard it. But he said, he had taken none of it out of any book; for which his evasion afterwards was, that a gentleman gave him the discourse, in a manuscript, from where he transcribed it.

IX. The jury brought him in guilty; but when he came to die, he utterly denied the fact, whereof he had been thus convicted.