The persecution at Salem did not come from
such deep degeneration as has been assumed for its source, and it was
not at the time at all a result of uncommon bigotry. In the persecution
in England in 1645-46, Matthew Hopkins, the "witch-finder-general,"
procured the death, "in one year and in one county, of more than three
times as many as suffered in Salem during the whole delusion"; several
persons were tried by water ordeal, and drowned, in Suffolk, Essex, and
Cambridgeshire, at the same time with the Salem executions; and capital
punishments took place there some years after the end of the trouble
here. It is well known, also, that persons were put to death for
witchcraft in two other American colonies. The excess in Salem was
heightened by a well-planned imposture, but found quick sustenance
because "the imagination, called necessarily into extraordinary action
in the absence of scientific certainty, was ... exercised in vain
attempts to discover, unassisted by observation and experiment, the
elements and first principles of nature," [Footnote: Upham, I. 382] and
"had reached a monstrous growth," nourished by a copious literature of
magic and demonology, and by the opinions of the most eminent and humane
preachers and poets.
The imagination which makes beauty out of evil, and that which
accumulates from it the utmost intensity of terror, are well exemplified
in Milton and Bunyan. Doubtless Milton's richly cultured faith, clothed
in lustrous language as in princely silks that overhang his chain-mail
of ample learning and argument, was as intense as the unlettered belief
of Bunyan; and perhaps he shared the prevalent opinions about
witchcraft; yet when he touches upon the superstitious element, the
material used is so transfused with the pictorial and poetic quality
which Milton has distilled from the common belief, and then poured into
this _image_ of the common belief, that I am not sure he cared for
any other quality in it.
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