[Footnote C:  The syllogism was originally designed to serve as a method of determining the arrangement and classification of truth already shown; and, when employed for this purpose, was of great value and excellence.  It was its perverted application to the discovery of truth which rendered utterly worthless so large a part of the learning and philosophy of the middle ages.  The reader will perceive, that it is to the syllogism, as thus misapplied and misunderstood by the schoolmen, not as designed and used by Aristotle, that the remarks in the text are intended to apply.]

It is true, that, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, Lord Bacon made his sublime discoveries in the department of physical science.  By disclosing the true method of investigation and reasoning on such subjects, he may be said to have found, or rather to have invented, the key that unlocked the hitherto unopened halls of nature.  He introduced man to the secret chambers of the universe, and placed in his hand the thread by which he has been conducted to the magnificent results of modern science, and will undoubtedly be led on to results still more magnificent in times to come.  But it was not for human nature to pass in a moment from darkness to light.  The transition was slow and gradual:  a long twilight intervened before the sun shed its clear and full radiance upon the world.

The great discoverer himself refused to admit, or was unable to discern, some of the truths his system had revealed.  Bacon was numbered among the opponents of the Copernican or true system of astronomy to the day of his death; so also was Sir Thomas Browne, the great philosopher already described, and who flourished during the latter half of the same century.  Indeed, it may be said, that, at the time of the witchcraft delusion, the ancient empire of darkness which had oppressed and crushed the world of science had hardly been shaken.  The great and triumphant progress of modern discovery had scarcely begun.

I shall now proceed to illustrate these views of the state of science in the world at that time by presenting a few instances.  The slightest examination of the accounts which remain of occurrences deemed supernatural by our ancestors will satisfy any one that they were brought about by causes entirely natural, although unknown to them.  For instance, the following circumstances are related by the Rev. James Pierpont, pastor of a church in New Haven, in a letter to Cotton Mather, and published by him in his “Magnalia:"[D]—­

In the year 1646, a new ship, containing a valuable cargo, and having several distinguished persons on board as passengers, put to sea from New Haven in the month of January, bound to England.  The vessels that came over the ensuing spring brought no tidings of her arrival in the mother-country.  The pious colonists were earnest and instant in their prayers that intelligence might be received of the missing