In such an era, of course, the attempt was too often made to explain events, not in the light of common reason but as visitations of God to try the faith of the folk, or as devices of Satan to tempt them from the narrow Path.  Such an affliction as “nerves” was not readily acknowledged, and anyone subject to fits or nervous disorders, or any child irritable or tempestuous might easily be the victim of witchcraft.  Note what Increase Mather has to say on the matter when explaining the case of the children of John Goodwin of Boston:  “...In the day time they were handled with so many sorts of Ails, that it would require of us almost as much time to Relate them all, as it did of them to Endure them.  Sometimes they would be Deaf, sometimes Dumb, and sometimes Blind, and often, all this at once....  Their necks would be broken, so that their Neck-bone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it; and yet on the sudden, it would become again so stiff that there was no stirring of their Heads...."[21]

As we have noted in previous pages, the morbidness and super-sensitive spiritual condition of the colonists brought on by the peculiar social environment had for many years prepared the way for just such a tragic attitude toward physical and mental ailments.  The usual safety vents of modern society, the common functions we may class as general “good times,” were denied the soul, and it turned back to feed upon itself.  The following hint by Sewall, written a few years before the witchcraft craze, is significant:  “Thorsday, Novr. 12.  After the Ministers of this Town Come to the Court and complain against a Dancing Master, who seeks to set up here, and hath mixt Dances, and his time of Meeting is Lecture-Day; and ’tis reported he should say that by one Play he could teach more Divinity than Mr. Willard or the Old Testament.  Mr. Moodey said ’twas not a time for N.E. to dance.  Mr. Mather struck at the Root, speaking against mixt Dances."[22] And again in the records by another colonist, Prince, we note:  “1631.  March 22.  First Court at Boston.  Ordered That all who have cards, dice, or ‘tables’ in their houses shall make way with them before the next court."[23]

But the lack of social safety valves seemingly did not suggest itself to the Puritan fathers; not the causes, but the religious effect of the matter was what those stern churchmen sought to destroy.  Says Cotton Mather:  “So horrid and hellish is the Crime of Witchcraft, that were Gods Thoughts as our thoughts, or Gods Wayes as our wayes, it could be no other, but Unpardonable.  But that Grace of God may be admired, and that the worst of Sinners may be encouraged, Behold, Witchcraft also has found a Pardon....  From the Hell of Witchcraft our merciful Jesus can fetch a guilty Creature to the Glory of Heaven.  Our Lord hath sometimes Recovered those who have in the most horrid manner given themselves away to the Destroyer of their souls."[24]