“1692, July 3.—­After sacrament, the elders propounded to the church,—­and it was, by an unanimous vote, consented to,—­that our sister Nurse, being a convicted witch by the Court, and condemned to die, should be excommunicated; which was accordingly done in the afternoon, she being present.”

The scene presented on this occasion must have been truly impressive at the time, as it is shocking to us in the retrospect.  The action of the church, at the close of the morning service, of course became universally known; and the “great and spacious meeting-house” was thronged by a crowd that filled every nook and corner of its floor, galleries, and windows.  The sheriff and his subordinates brought in the prisoner, manacled, and the chains clanking from her aged form.  She was placed in the broad aisle.  Mr. Higginson and Mr. Noyes—­the elders, as the clergy were then called—­were in the pulpit.  The two ruling elders—­who were lay officers—­and the two deacons were in their proper seats, directly below and in front of the pulpit.  Mr. Noyes pronounced the dread sentence, which, for such a crime, was then believed to be not merely an expulsion from the church on earth, but an exclusion from the church in heaven.  It was meant to be understood as an eternal doom.  As it had been proved, in his estimation, beyond a question, that she had given her soul to the Devil, he delivered her over to the great adversary of God and man.

From the dismal cell, which, for but a few days longer, was to hold her body, he proclaimed the transferrence of her soul to—­

    “A dungeon horrible on all sides round,
    As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
    No light, but rather darkness visible;
    Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
    And rest can never dwell; hope never comes
    That comes to all; but torture without end,
    As far removed from God, and light of heaven,
    As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.”

Language and imagery, exhausting the resources of the divine genius of the greatest of poets, fail to give expression to what was felt to be the import of this fearful sentence.  It sunk the recipient of it below the reach of human sympathy.  She was regarded, by that blinded multitude, with a horror that cast out pity, and was full of hate.  But in our view now, and, as we believe, in the view of God and angels then, she occupied an infinite height above her persecutors.  Her mind was serenely fixed upon higher scenes, and filled with a peace which the world could not take away, or its cruel wrongs disturb.  She went back to her prison walls, and then to the scaffold, with a pious and humble faith which has not failed to be recorded among men, as it has been rewarded where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.

Calef, as already quoted, gives the impression produced by her demeanor at her death.  Hutchinson expresses in the following words the judgment of history and the sense of all coming times:—­