SOURCE: "The Salem Witchcraft Prosecutions: The Invisible World at the Vanishing Point," in Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984, pp. 160-83.

In the following excerpt, Weisman assesses Mather's Cases of Conscience as an attempt to end theological uncertainties about the accusations of witchcraft.

… Even before the Salem trials, there are ample indications that the clergy regarded the discovery of witchcraft as problematic. In the pre-Salem litigations, adherence to theological strictures had rendered the translation of popular suspicions into convictive proofs inoperational. During the Salem trials, the ecclasiastical recommendations of June 15 had advised against the use of spectral evidence without offering any alternative criteria for the validation of imputations of witchcraft. Now, in the aftermath of the Salem trials, some members of the clergy were prepared, however reluctantly, to reexamine the epistemological assumptions in terms of which acts of witchcraft and the...