In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton Read Free Book Online Page B

to discerne, and to make a cleere difference betweene the one and the other.” Nathaniel Crouch, a popular writer whose work was also reviewed by the magistrates in 1692, helpfully listed signs that would not appear in the case of “natural diseases.” If the afflicted could reveal “secret things past or to come,” that would occur only with “supernatural assistance.” Or if the afflicted could “speake with strange Languages” or perform feats “far beyond human strength,” those too constituted important evidence, along with an ability to talk without moving the lips. Other possible indications came from such physical signs as their bodies becoming “inflexible, neither to be bended backward nor forward with the greatest force,” or “the Belly to be suddenly puft up, & to fall instantly flat again.” 46
    From the late sixteenth century on, portrayals of young people’s behavior “in their fits” both accorded with such signs of diabolical activity and bore a striking resemblance to descriptions of the Essex County afflicted in 1692. For example, in the mid-1590s several youths living in the household of Nicholas Starkie howled, “fell a tumbling, and after that became speachlesse sencelesse and as deade.” Thirty years later, also in England, the daughters of Edward Fairfax “had many strange convulsions and risings in their bodies, and stiffness in their arms and hands, and whole bodies sometimes.” In Hartford, Connecticut, in 1662 a young woman named Ann Cole experienced “extremely violent bodily motions . . . , even to the hazard of her life in the apprehensions of those that saw them.” And Elizabeth Kelly, a child afflicted during the same outbreak, complained of a reputed witch that “she chokes me, she kneels on my belly, she will break my bowels, she pinches me,” and on another occasion that she “torments me she pricks me with pins.” 47
    A diagnosis of diabolic activity rather than disease—as occurred in the Starkie, Fairfax, and Hartford cases—did not answer every relevant question about such afflictions. Seventeenth-century authors emphasized that in all these cases the devil acted only with God’s permission. “Devils doe much mischiefe, but even by these also doth God worke his will, and these doe nothing without the hand of his providence,” observed the Reverend Mr. Bernard. “Neither Divels, nor Witches, nor wicked men, can doe any thing without the Lords leave.” Thus the occurrence of such phenomena in a household should lead its members to examine their consciences and their behavior, to bear the afflictions patiently, and to engage in fasting and prayer to discern God’s holy purpose behind their troubles. How had they offended God? Why was he testing their faith? What aspects of their lives needed reformation? Presumably the Reverend Samuel Parris and his clerical colleagues addressed those very issues during their meetings at the Salem Village parsonage in mid-February. 48
    A definitive verdict also required ascertaining the precise way in which Satan was creating the torments. Had the devil entered the body and soul of his target, thereby causing possession? Was the devil torturing his victim’s body but leaving the soul untouched, resulting in a different condition known as obsession? Or had the devil used one or more witches as intermediaries to effect the agonies? The Reverend Mr. Bernard sought the means to distinguish among the various diabolic manifestations. When, he declared, there was “not any suspicion at all of a Witch,” or perhaps only “an idle, vaine, and foolish suspicion, without any good ground,” then the devil probably acted directly. “Children . . . Young folkes . . . Women” were especially liable to obsession or possession by the devil, and in such cases only “the finger of God,” summoned through prayer and fasting, could cast the devil out of the victim. Bernard warned his readers against assuming that witchcraft always