NICHOLAS DISBOROUGH 1683
MARY STAPLIES 1692
MERCY DISBOROUGH 1692
ELIZABETH CLAWSON 1692
MARY HARVEY 1692
HANNAH HARVEY 1692
GOODY MILLER 1692
HUGH CROTIA 1693
WINIFRED BENHAM, SENR. 1697
WINIFRED BENHAM, JUNR. 1697
SARAH SPENCER 1724
——­ NORTON 1768

What of those men and women to whom justice in their time was meted out, in this age of reason, of religious enlightenment, liberty, and catholicity, when witchcraft has lost its mystery and power, when intelligence reigns, and the Devil works his will in other devious ways and in a more attractive guise?

They were the victims of delusion, not of dishonor, of a perverted theology fed by moral aberrations, of a fanaticism which never stopped to reason, and halted at no sacrifice to do God’s service; and they were all done to death, or harried into exile, disgrace, or social ostracism, through a mistaken sense of religious duty:  but they stand innocent of deep offense and only guilty in the eye of the law written in the Word of God, as interpreted and enforced by the forefathers who wrought their condemnation, and whose religion made witchcraft a heinous sin, and whose law made it a heinous crime.

Is the contrast in human experience, between the servitude to credulity and superstition in 1647-97 and the deliverance from it of this day, any wider than between the ironclad theology of that and of later times, and the challenge to it, and its diabolical logic, of yesterday, which marks a new era in denominational creeds, in religious beliefs, and their expression?

Jonathan Edwards, in his famous sermon at Enfield in 1741, on “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God,” was inspired to say to the impenitent:  “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked; His wrath toward you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight; you are 10,000 times so abominable in His eyes as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours....  Instead of one how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell!  And it would be a wonder if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time—­before this year is out.  And it would be no wonder if some persons, that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house, in health and quiet, and secure, should be there before to-morrow morning.”  One hundred and sixty-three years later, Rev. Dr. Samuel T. Carter, a godly minister of the same faith, “a heretic who is no heretic,” stood before the presbytery of Nassau, was invited to remain in the Presbyterian communion, and yet said this of the doctrine of Edwards, as written in the Westminster Confession: