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 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.
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.