Posted on 11/12/2013 3:47:47 PM PST by NYer
Actually, it was the the more devout Puritan, Increase Mather, who insisted the Biblical standard in rules of evidence requiring 2 or 3 witnesses to be applied, which led to the trials’ ceasing.
Then again, the sinking of the Spanish Armada might of had a Divine hand involved.
That’s true. But his son Cotton was also a Puritan minister and Cotton is generally considered one of the leading culprits in getting the witch trials going. And the children of another Puritan minister, Samuel Parris, appear to be the source of the first witchcraft accusations
My point is that the witch hysteria took root in Puritan New England. It didn’t take off in New York, Virginia, or anywhere else outside the baleful Puritan influence.
The Puritans were an odd and extreme bunch. They refused to celebrate Christmas and Easter, they didn’t permit music other than hymns, they wouldn’t allow their children to have toys. Maybe if the Parris girls had had dolls to play with they wouldn’t have entertained themselves with vivid accusations against their neighbors.
As far as the practice of Christianity went in colonial America the Puritans were nutcases. Learned maybe, but legalistic and joyless nutcases.
The Durch Rebels had a hand in it, too. They are the ones who kept the Spanish fleet from transporting the Spanish Infantry from Flanders to England. If they had got ashore in England, it would have been Katy bar the door.
The Salem trials pretty much marked the end of the Witch-hunting period, which lasted several hundred years. Interesting is the fact the the Spanish Inquisition prosecuted few witches, because they recognized it for what it was.
The witch craze took off with the publication of a book in the late 1400s, authored by a couple renegade Catholic priests if I recall correctly. The “Malleus Maleficarum”, the “Hammer of the Witches”.
In the preceding centuries the Church regarded witchcraft as nothing more than empty superstition but the authors of Malleus Maleficarum managed to make belief in witches as popular as zombies are in 21st Century America.
Well, the English had some of those also . Remember Lord Fairfax, with whose family Washington had many dealings? One reason for the Revolution was to keep the English aristocracy from taking the western lands that Americans wanted.
“Today’s Catholicism is a wholly owned subsidiary of man. Got your ticket out of purgatory?”
I was really hoping for a rational response.
Oh, well, hope in one hand...
Later changes in Puritan eschatology led to a more legalistic interpretations in their living, but for about 200 years, Puritan theology simply focused upon removing all Roman Ritual from their worship of Christ (hence the descriptor, Purity...from all Roman Ritual). Their earlier writings from 1558-1630 were much more fundamental than later backsliding.
They also weren’t as dour as many make them out to be. They didn’t forbid drinking or sex, but forbid wasting wine and extramarital sex. They also didn’t insist everybody become Church members, but recognized predestination and many were greatly influenced regarding Covenants.
They founded the school that became Harvard and made laws requiring literacy in all children.
The witch trials probably had some original basis in fact, but due to liberal allowance in their rules of evidence, quickly spun out of control into hearsay and random accusations. It wasn’t until the more conservative Puritans intervened, insisting upon eyewitness testimony to be vetted by 2 or more, before accepted as evidence, that the trials were brought back into control.
Puritanism really began with Mary Queen of Scots, going out and putting her Protestant leaning clergy to being burnt at the stake and returning to Roman ritual in the Church of England. When Elizabeth brought back toleration of Protestantism, those in the Church who didn’t feel they went far enough to limit the Romanist traditions became “Puritans”.
Most bad reputations associated with Puritanism are advocated by pagan advocates of witchcraft, because their pagan views are adversaries to Christ first.
Actually, the witch trials began when they were playing with dolls during a time when they were closed in their house over a very extreme winter weather, perhaps a form of cabin fever. Also watching the girls was a Carribean, slave who told the girls stories from the Catholic written Malleus Malificarum about demonic sexual attacks. The types of dolls described in the witch trials were closer to voodoo dolls than a forerunner of Barbie.
bttt
I will stick with “uniquely Catholic” for the ideas Jefferson used. Cardinal Bellarmine was writing with the approval of the Pope to defend the independence of the Church from Henry VIII’s take over of the Church in England and forcing it into submission under the crown.
both sides at times. yes.
The Revolution was a grass roots uprising. Nobody commonly knew what was in the western lands. The colonial powers had difficulty finding any immigrants to settle in the their behalf in the colonies alone, hence the relaxation of all controls and promotion of any encouragement to find people who would inter into agreements to settle the New World.
Many didn't survive the natural world or the native attacks.
One obnoxious part of the Quebec Act was that it forbade settlement beyond the” Proclamation Line.” and set up the region as a kind of Indian Reserve. Washington was one of those who had staked claims in “:Ohio Country.”But many Americans moved west into the region indeed leading to conflict with the Indians.
No, it's more like permanent malcontents and sticks in the mud don't figure into my consensus. Attacks on Christianity will always fall on the Catholic Church first, with evangelicals smiling and sitting by the sidelines shooting spitballs, until it spreads to them of course. Only then it becomes a "problem". The heavy lifting will usually be done by Catholics. In fact, my wish is that Catholics would return to the social activism of the early 1900's, when they had the ability to keep trash out of "entertainment", had a social community, and had a bit more concern for the society their children were growing up in. I really think we lost something with Vatican II, when the Catholic Church decided to be more of a church of people than a church of God. My hope is that the mistakes made there will someday be corrected. We had a Pope who tried. God willing there will be more. Personally I think there are much bigger problems than who has the better Jesus. What are called debates on the religion forum remind me of trying to have a civil discussion with a Libertarian Party member. Guilty of it myself I am sure.
The best thing I can say to you (or anyone) is take care of your family first and raise your children well and not to be ashamed of Jesus. Not saying "you" personally. That is where it starts. You would not believe the amount of people I have met who ask "are you a Christian" in hushed tones one would normally use as if they were trying to find a coke dealer.
Enough of a rant, it's Friday. Time to watch a hockey DVR.
There's a LOT of truth in that statement, Hacksaw.
Ironic, isn't it, in light of the gay community that wears its sexual preferences on their sleeve?
If they aren't ashamed of who they have sex with, I'm not going to be ashamed of who my God is.
If I have to hear about their sex life. They're going to hear about my Jesus.
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