The witches were condemned on precisely the same grounds that
in our day led to the condemnation of "Essays and Reviews."
But Puritanism was already in the decline when such things were possible.
What had been a wondrous and intimate experience of the soul, a flash
into the very crypt and basis of man's nature from the fire of trial, had
become ritual and tradition. In prosperous times the faith of one
generation becomes the formality of the next. "The necessity of a
reformation," set forth by order of the Synod which met at Cambridge in
1679, though no doubt overstating the case, shows how much even at that
time the ancient strictness had been loosened. The country had grown
rich, its commerce was large, and wealth did its natural work in making
life softer and more worldly, commerce in deprovincializing the minds of
those engaged in it. But Puritanism had already done its duty. As there
are certain creatures whose whole being seems occupied with an egg-laying
errand they are sent upon, incarnate ovipositors, their bodies but bags
to hold this precious deposit, their legs of use only to carry them where
they may safeliest be rid of it, so sometimes a generation seems to have
no other end than the conception and ripening of certain germs.
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