CHAP. VII.] CAUSES OF THE PERSECUTION. 103 



were as late as 1716 ; but still later, in 1766, the Seceders in 

 Scotland published an act of their associate Presbytery, denounc 

 ing that memorable act of the English parliament which repealed 

 all the penal statutes against witchcraft. 



The equal reverence paid by the Puritans and Scotch Seceders 

 to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures (if, indeed, they did not 

 hold the Old Testament in greater veneration than the New), 

 was the chief cause of the superstition which led to these judicial 

 murders. They had, indeed, in common with other Protestant 

 sects, rejected the miracles ascribed to the Christian saints of the 

 middle ages, because they were not supported by sufficient his 

 torical testimony. They had stood forward in the face of cruel 

 persecutions courageously to vindicate the right of private judg 

 ment ; arid they held it to be not only the privilege, but the duty, 

 of every Christian, layman or ecclesiastic, to exercise his reason, 

 and not yield himself up blindly to the authority of an earthly 

 teacher. Yet if any one dared, in 1692, to call in question the 

 existence of the witchcraft, he was stigmatized as an infidel, and 

 refuted by the story of the Witch of Endor evoking the ghost of 

 the dead Samuel. Against the recurrence of such dreadful 

 crimes as those perpetrated in the years 160293, society is now 

 secured, not by judges and juries of a more conscientious charac 

 ter or deeper sense of religious responsibility, but by the general 

 spread of knowledge, or that more enlightened public opinion, 

 which can never exist in the same perfection in the minds of the 

 initiated few, so long as the multitude with whom they must be 

 in contact are kept in darkness. 



On our return from Salem to Boston, we found the seats im 

 mediately before us in the railway car occupied by two colored 

 men, who were laughing and talking familiarly with two negro 

 women, apparently servant maids. The women left us at th^ 

 first station, and we then entered into conversation with the 

 men who, perceiving by our accent, that we were foreign 

 ers, were curious to know what we thought of their country. 

 Hearing that it was our intention to winter in the south, the 

 elder traveler &quot; hoped we should not be tainted there.&quot; My 

 wife, supposing he alluded to the yellow fever, said, We shall 



