Chapter 7

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 rousing _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 controul 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_. Wherefor 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 unto them, _Touch them not!_ Then, _Seducing Spirits_ came to _root_ in this Vineyard, but God so rated them off, that they have not prevail'd much farther 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 multiply'd upon us: and particularly in the present _French War_, the whole English Nation have observ'd 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 _Psal. 90.7, 9._ _We are consumed by thine Anger, and by thy Wrath we are troubled: All our days are passed away in thy Wrath._ And I may add this unto it, _The Wrath of the Devil too 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-Englands_ in it. What was the design of our God, in bringing over so many _Europaeans_ hither of later years? Of what use or state will _America_ be, when the _Kingdom of God_ shall come? If it must all be the Devils propriety, while the _saved Nations_ of the other Haemisphere 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 thee, O thou City of God_; then even thou, _O New-England_, art within a very little while of better days than ever yet have dawn'd upon thee.

I say, _Secondly_, That tho' there be very _Threatning_ Symptoms on _America_, yet there are some _hopeful_ ones. I confess, when one thinks upon the crying Barbarities with which the most of those _Europaeans_ 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_; yea, how much Injury and Violence is therein done to _Humanity_ it self; 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 unto 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 _Devils_ hands, from the first Inhabitation unto 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 Favour 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 hindred 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 hast thou provided for us!_

I say, _Fourthly_, That the _Elder England_ will certainly and 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 and 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 ruine of the Nation, have been strangely discovered? yea, how very unaccountably those very _Persons_, yea, I may also say, and those very _Methods_ which were intended for the tools of that ruine, have become the instruments or occasions of Deliverances? A man cannot but say upon these Reflections, as the Wife of _Manoah_ once prudently expressed her self, _If the Lord were pleased to have Destroyed us, He would not have shew'd us all these things._ Indeed, It is not unlikely, that the Enemies of the English Nation, may yet provoke such a _Shake_ unto 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_, tho' 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 Phaetons_ Epitaph seems written in that, _Sure Word of Prophecy_.

[Since the making of this Conjecture, there are arriv'd unto us, the News of a Victory obtain'd by the _English_ over the _French_, which further confirms our Conjecture; and causes us to sing, _Pharaohs Chariots, and his Hosts, has the Lord cast down into the Sea; Thy right-hand has dashed in pieces the Enemy!_]

Now, _In the Salvation of_ England, the Plantations cannot but _Rejoyce_, 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 ALARUM'D

BY THE WRATH OF THE DEVIL.

TIS 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 call'd the Town together, crying out, _Concurrite Cives, Dilapsa sunt vestra Moenia!_ that is, _Come together, Neighbours, your Town-Walls are fallen down!_ But such is the descent of the Devil at this day upon our selves, that I may truly tell you, _The Walls of the whole World are broken down!_ The usual _Walls_ of defence 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 Neighbours, 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 _Hony_ for our _Souls_?

That the Devil is _come down unto us with great Wrath_, we find, we feel, we now deplore. In many ways, for many years hath the Devil been assaying to Extirpate the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus here. _New-England_ may complain of the Devil, as in _Psal. 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 of us: and such an one as is indeed Unparallelable. The things confessed by _Witches_, and the things endured by _Others_, laid together, amount unto this account of our _Affliction_. The _Devil_, Exhibiting himself ordinarily as a small _Black man_, has decoy'd a fearful knot of proud, froward, ignorant, envious and malicious creatures, to lift themselves in his horrid Service, by entring their Names in a _Book_ by him tendred unto them. These _Witches_, whereof above a Score have now _Confessed, and shown their Deeds_, and some are now tormented by the Devils, for _Confessing_, have met in Hellish _Randezvouzes_, 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;_ and in order hereunto, First they each of them have their _Spectres_, or Devils, commission'd by them, & representing of them, to be the Engines of their Malice. By these wicked _Spectres_, they seize poor people about the Country, with various & bloudy _Torments_; and of those evidently Preternatural torments there are some have dy'd. They have bewitched some, even so far as to make _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 _scale_ 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 unto them. Yea, they sometimes drag the poor people out of their chambers, and carry them over Trees and Hills, for divers 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 threatnings, but always with felt miseries, to sign the _Devils Laws_ in a Spectral Book laid before them; which two or three of these poor Sufferers, being by their tiresome sufferings overcome to do, they have immediately been released from all their miseries and they appear'd 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 oftentimes 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 Vicinage. In the Prosecution of these Witchcrafts, among a thousand other unaccountable things, the _Spectres_ have an odd faculty of cloathing 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 standers by, 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 Neighbour. These wicked _Spectres_ have proceeded so far, as to steal several quantities of Mony from divers people, part of which Money, has, before sufficient Spectators, been dropt 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 propounded, the _Dragooning_ of as many as they can, in their own Combination, and the _Destroying_ of others, with lingring, spreading, deadly diseases; till our Countrey 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 unto the Devil, that in their Infancy, it is found, the _Imps_ have sucked them, and rendred them Venemous to a Prodigy. We have also seen the Devils first batteries upon the Town, where the first Church of our Lord in this Colony was gathered, producing those distractions, which have almost ruin'd 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, 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_, yea, and some _vertuous_ persons, are by the Devils in this matter, imposed upon; That the Devils have obtain'd the power, to take on them the likeness of harmless people, and in that likeness to afflict other people, and be so abused by Praestigious _Daemons_, that upon their look or touch, the afflicted shall be odly affected. Arguments from the _Providence of God_, on the one side, and from our _Charity_ towards _Man_ on the other side, have made this now to become a most agitated Controversie among us. There is an _Agony_ produced in the Minds of Men, lest the Devil should sham us with _Devices_, of perhaps a finer Thred, than was ever yet practised upon the World. The whole business is become hereupon so _Snarled_, and the determination of the Question one way or another, so _dismal_, that our Honourable Judges have a Room for _Jehoshaphat's_ Exclamation, _We know not what to do!_ They have used, as Judges have heretofore done, the _Spectral Evidences_, to introduce their further Enquiries into the _Lives_ of the persons accused; and they have thereupon, 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 Mans Buffet_, and we are even ready to be _sinfully_, yea, 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 Rumour, do precipitate so many, that I wish I could say, The most were _considerate_.

But that which carries on the formidableness of our Trials, unto that which may be called, _A wrath unto 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 _Isa. 9.19._ _Through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, the Land is darkned._ Our Land is _darkned_ indeed; since the _Powers of Darkness_ are turned in upon us: 'tis a _dark time_, yea a black night indeed, now the _Ty-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_ it self 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 thy 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 lash'd with _Scorpions_, fetch'd 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 Marriners, 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 _Swedeland_ should afford a Village, where some scores of Haggs, may not only have their Meetings with _Familiar Spirits_, but also by their Enchantments drag many scores of poor children out of their Bed-chambers, 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 Aegypt_ come upon thee? Whereof we read in _Psal. 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 _Melancthon_ 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?_