Womans Life in Colonial Days | Page 9

attending his solemn worship: yea, there is nothing
else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment
drop down into hell."

Under such teachings the girl of colonial New England grew into
womanhood; with such thoughts in mind she saw her children go down
into the grave; with such forebodings she herself passed out into an
uncertain Hereafter. Nor was there any escape from such sermons; for
church attendance was for many years compulsory, and even when not
compulsory, was essential for those who did not wish to be politically
and socially ostracized. The preachers were not, of course, required to
give proof for their declarations; they might well have announced,
"Thus saith the Lord," but they preferred to enter into disquisitions
bristling with arguments and so-called logical deductions. For instance,
note in Edwards' sermon, Why Saints in Glory will Rejoice to see the
Torments of the Damned, the chain of reasoning leading to the
conclusion that those enthroned in heaven shall find joy in the
unending torture of their less fortunate neighbors:
"They will rejoice in seeing the justice of God glorified in the
sufferings of the damned. The misery of the damned, dreadful as it is, is
but what justice requires. They in heaven will see and know it much
more clearly than any of us do here. They will see how perfectly just
and righteous their punishment is and therefore how properly inflicted
by the supreme Governor of the world.... They will rejoice when they
see him who is their Father and eternal portion so glorious in his justice.
The sight of this strict and immutable justice of God will render him
amiable and adorable in their eyes. It will occasion rejoicing in them, as
they will have the greater sense of their own happiness, by seeing the
contrary misery. It is the nature of pleasure and pain, of happiness and
misery, greatly to heighten the sense of each other.... When they shall
see how miserable others of their fellow-creatures are, who were
naturally in the same circumstances with themselves; when they shall
see the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames of their
burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that
they in the meantime are in the most blissful state, and shall surely be
in it to all eternity; how will they rejoice!... When they shall see the
dreadful miseries of the damned, and consider that they deserved the
same misery, and that it was sovereign grace, and nothing else, which
made them so much to differ from the damned, that if it had not been
for that, they would have been in the same condition; but that God from

all eternity was pleased to set his love upon them, that Christ hath laid
down his life for them, and hath made them thus gloriously happy
forever, O how will they adore that dying love of Christ, which has
redeemed them from so great a misery, and purchased for them so great
happiness, and has so distinguished them from others of their
fellow-creatures!"
It was a strange creed that led men to teach such theories. And when we
learn that Jonathan Edwards was a man of singular gentleness and
kind-heartedness, we realize that it must have tortured him to preach
such doctrines, but that he believed it his sacred duty to do so.
The religion, however, that the Puritan woman imbibed from girlhood
to old age went further than this; it taught the theory of a personal devil.
To the New England colonists Satan was a very real individual capable
of taking to himself a physical form with the proverbial tail, horns, and
hoofs. Hear what Cotton Mather, one of the most eminent divines of
early Massachusetts, has to say in his Memorable Providences about
this highly personal Satan: "There is both a God and a Devil and
Witchcraft: That there is no out-ward Affliction, but what God may
(and sometimes doth) permit Satan to trouble his people withal: That
the Malice of Satan and his Instruments, is very great against the
Children of God: That the clearest Gospel-Light shining in a place, will
not keep some from entering hellish Contracts with infernal Spirits:
That Prayer is a powerful and effectual Remedy against the malicious
practices of Devils and those in Covenant with them."[8]
And His Satanic Majesty had legions of followers, equally insistent on
tormenting humanity. In The Wonders of the Invisible World, published
in 1692, Mather proves that there is a devil and that the being has
specific attributes, powers, and limitations:
"A devil is a fallen angel, an angel fallen from the fear and love of God,
and from all celestial glories; but fallen to all manner of wretchedness
and cursedness....