& # 8211 ; Natural Enemies Essay, Research Paper

When the Puritans moved to the New World they created a new society based upon perfect attachment to the rigorous and intolerant Puritan doctrine. However, the moral centre of their existence could non keep because the people themselves although usually English, were blends of their European lineages and the folk civilization of coevalss before them. Puritan doctrine was rooted in the hunt for religious flawlessness. Witchcraft was viewed by Puritans as grounds of the adult male & # 8217 ; s religious failing. Therefore, Puritan doctrine, as subsequently reflected in The Crucible, was the natural enemy of witchcraft.A Puritan & # 8217 ; s first duty was to function God. The Bible was a Puritan & # 8217 ; s route map toward that responsibility. While Puritans respected authorization, they did non idolize tradition or ritual. Their churches were obviously and undecorated. Prayer and listening to discourses were changeless comrades to the righteous Puritan. The household was a court to God. A adult male & # 8217 ; s gift to God was a happy, prayerful household centered within the church. A Puritan considered it a kindness to his neighbour to maintain an oculus on the neighbour & # 8217 ; s behaviour and to steer him when counsel was deemed necessary. Corruptness in the community could easy distribute into the church, and the good Puritan was ever-vigilant against dirt in either topographic point. A personal dirt was a community affair, and a church concern every bit good. Sin was a heavy load to the Puritans. No method existed in their religion for fring oneself of wickedness. And because they believed that God could tweak them off from life and project them into snake pit at any given clip, wickedness and expiation were foremost in a Puritan & # 8217 ; s head. Because of the autumn of Adam and Eve, expiation was a existent mystifier for the Puritans. There was no hope for adult male other than perfect obeisance to God & # 8217 ; s Torahs. Yet any clearheaded Puritan knew in his bosom that he was non a perfect individual. So, so, how to expiate? Good workss were looked upon with intuition by the clergy and other citizens. Quiet, despairing supplication seemed the lone hope for one & # 8217 ; s psyche. A wroth God and adult male & # 8217 ; s rickety clasp on redemption were most frequently the subjects of discourses in Puritan worship services. Indeed, the Devil was on the head of the Puritans every bit much as was God. Life in the New World was a rough challenge with overpowering obstructions lifting up against them every twenty-four hours. Long, bitterly cold winters, rock-filled farming area, disease, and political agitation made it look that the Puritans were engaged in a conflict of heroic proportions. No admiration they felt close to the Day of Reckoning ; the twenty-four hours when wickedness & # 8217 ; s monetary value and piousness & # 8217 ; s honor would be paid. The Puritan legal system was Bible-based in theory, but it was unjust and biased toward the prosecution in pattern. Wealthier and extremely regarded citizens were sometimes given particular considerations when they were accused of wrongdoing. They were sometimes placed on house apprehension, which gave them clip to get away to the settlement of New York. Poorer Puritans would pass long periods of clip in gaol, waiting for test. Their belongings would be seized, go forthing their households destitute. Puritan prosecuting officers were about without limitation as to what they could state to an accused individual. Their pattern allowed them to disrupt informants, redirect inquiries, Wisconsinite, and even hit a informant. Spectral grounds was considered just pattern in Puritan tribunals. The Crucible makes usage of this fact to construct dramatic tenseness in the courtroom. When Abigail says that she saw the accused speaking to the Devil, her statement was accepted as fact. Curates were adviser

s to the courts, and were often !called upon to interpret respons es to accisations of witchcraft.Witchcraft evolved in many parts of the world at different times and in different ways. But essentially, witchcraft served its developers as a system of explanation for the ways of nature and as a scheme by which man could gain control over his life. The Northern European belief in witches was a holdover from a pre-Christian time when cause-and-effect reasoning was not at its best. Two events which occurred in the same timeframe were often misconstrued to have a cause-and-effect relationship. For example, if a farmer cut wheat on the full moon, and the wheat went bad, the farmer might blame the moon phase for the molding of the wheat; or he might blame his neighbor’s jealous spirit for cursing the wheat. Superstition is the basis of witchcraft. The freedom of witches is best summed up in their saying, ” An’ it harm none, do what thou wilt.” (Army, 232) That freedom afforded a witch the opportunity to live life without binding rules about sin. Witchcraft bases much of its belief system on the oneness of man with the world. Many of its rituals place great emphasis on the place man holds on the planet. This, according to the pagan tradition, would mean that man was just another species in Nature’s spectrum. And witches would view man not necessarily as the most important species. This is definitely at odds with Puritan philosophy which would place man just below God, but clearly as master over the world God made. As much as Puritans would wish to distance themselves from the pre-Christian European beliefs, their own abhorrence of witchcraft is proof that they themselves were strong believers in witchcraft. Much of the information the Puritans had about witchcraft came from a book published in 1490. Malleus Maleficarum (translated to “The Hammer of Witches”), by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, and it was used by members of the court in the prosecution of witches during the 17th century. These authors described witches who could fly on broomsticks, change into animals, and kill or wither a person at a glance. These witches were Satan-worshipers, said the book. And thus, the Christian church in all its various denominations felt justified in ferreting out and murdering those suspected of being witches. The Puritans brought these fears and superstitions with them from the Old World. As Arthur Miller writes in the early explanation of The Crucible, the Puritans felt that they were the! only light for God in the New W orld. If they let down their guard for one moment, the Devil would rush in and crush them out of existence. The existence of witches in the New World made perfect sense to the Puritans. They were natural enemies and were naturally pitted against each other.The Puritans looked everywhere for the source of their problems. Witchcraft made a likely opponent. But the Puritan authorities might have looked closer to home for real culprits. The Puritans were the greatest antagonists of Witchcraft in the New World. The Old Testament says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” (Exodus 22:18) And armed with this authority alone, 19 witches were hanged by the Puritans in Salem in 1692.BibliographyArmy, U.S.. US Army Chaplain’s Handbook. Alabama: USAF Chaplain’s Institute, 1990 231-236 Kittredge, George Lyman. “Witchcraft and the Puritans.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of the Crucible. The president and fellows of Harvard College.Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press, 1929. 20-23Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: The Viking Press, 1952