cotton mather
...is major beliefs was of witches and the witchcraft practice. This could have been the worst thing that he did in his lifetime. Some of the great things that he did would to write and publish around 400 works. One of the works in which he published was The Wonders of The Invisible World. In this writing it was expressed that witches were living amongst us and that this could have been an attack on the human population through the work of Satin. It was also expressed that this could be the end of the world or the final days. ‘He (the devil) has wanted incarnate legions to persecute s, as the people of God have in the other hemisphere been persecuted; He (the devil) has therefore drawn upon his more spiritual ones is meant to represent the accused witches of the time.” Mather was an extremely religious man and in his writings he did use many quotes from the Bible. Now this is the part in history that I believe is wrong. I do not think that the court system should have thrown in religious beliefs to decide if someone was guilty or not. This after all was the New World in which people could live and believe in what ever they wanted as long as they were not breaking the law. Many people died for what others believed in, and as we find out later in history that what these people were accused of is not present in modern day. These people did not break any laws; even the ones that did practice witchcraft. Seeing how they were living in a time when the church was the high power of the society it does explain why such events as the Salem witch trials did occur. This society that the people lived in was extremely religious though. This is why the bible and religion did become the law. As I said earlier that Mather believed that this was the end of days and that the world was coming to its end. All of this was through the work of the devil himself. If you do read Mather's works and writings one will see that he was trying to do the work of God and what he believed in. This I do believe should not have been the deciding factor of the human life. He did however try to change the process in which people were being prosecuted. For this process he decided to add what he called spectral evidence to the courtroom. This would turn out to be more concrete evidence needed to convict someone of his or her wrong doings. Was this enough to put someone to death one might ask? What it came down to was that the person being accused simply was able to speak out in the courtroom to say weather or not they were a witch or not. Also the person accusing the other was allowed to state what had happened to them and why they had believed this person to be a witch. If one does read a lot of Cotton Mather’s works they would see that he would do anything to carry out the will of God. Even if this meant to put someone to death. He did however try to save himself from looking extremely bad in the eye of the community by using spectral evidence. I do not believe that spectral evidence should have been enough to execute someone or burn him or her at the stake. I believe that there should have been a lot more concrete evidence in the determination of death. The court system that we have today is good because it goes on concrete evidence, which should have been used in the case of the Salem witch trials. Through out Cotton Mather’s works he does try to express...