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Thaumatographia Pneumatica
Cotton Mather
Introduction | The First Example | The Second Example | The Third Example | The Fourth Example | The Fifth Example | The Sixth Example | The Seventh Example | The Eighth Example | The Ninth Example | The Tenth Example | The Eleventh Example | The Twelfth Example | The Thirteenth Example | The Fourteenth Example | An Appendix
The Ninth Example
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV
Part IV
The ministers of Boston and Charlestown kept another day of prayer with fasting for Goodwin's afflicted family, after which the children had a sensible, but a gradual, abatement of their sorrows, until perfect ease was at length restored unto them. The young woman dwelt at my house the rest of the winter, having by a virtuous conversation made herself enough welcome to the family. But ere long I thought it convenient for me to entertain my congergation with a sermon on the "memorable providences" wherein these children had been concerned. When I had begun to study my sermon, her torments again seized upon her and managed her with a special design, as was plain, to disturb me in what I was then about. In the worst of her extravagancies formerly, she was more dutiful to me than I had reason to expect. But now her whole carriage to me was with a sauciness wich I was not used anywhere to be treated withal. She would knock at my study door, affirming that "some below would be glad to see me," though there was none that asked for me. And when I chided her for telling me what was false, her answer was, "Mrs. Mather is always glad to see you!" She would call to me with numberless impertinences, and when I came down, she would throw things at me, though none of them could ever hurt me, and she would hecter me at a strange rate for something I was doing above and threaten me with mischief and reproach that should revenge it. Few tortures now attended her, but such as were provoked. Her frolicks were numberless, if we may call them hers. I was, in Latin, telling some young gentleman that, if I should bid her to look to God, her eyes would be put out, upon which, her eyes were presently served so. Perceiving that her troublers understood Latin, some trials were thereupon made whether they understood Greek and Hebrew, which it seems they also did. But the Indian languages they did seem not so well to understand. When we went unto prayer, the daemons would throw her on the floor at the feet of him that prayed, where she would whistle and sing and yell to drown the voices of prayer, and she would fetch blows with her fist and kicks with her foot at the man that prayed. But still, her fist and foot would always recoyl when they came within an inch or two of him, as if rebounding against a wall, and then she would beg hard of other people to strike him, which (you may be sure) not being done she cried out, "He has wounded me in the head." But before the prayer was over she would be laid for dead, wholly senseless and (unto appearances) breathless, with her belly swelled like a drum, and sometimes with croaking noises in her. Thus would she lie, most exactly with the stiffness and posture of one that had been two days laid out for dead. Once lying thus, as he that was praying was alluding to the words of the Canaanites and saying, "Lord, have mercy on a daughter vexed with a devil," there came a big, but low, voice from her, in which the spectators did not see her mouth move: "There's two or three of us." When prayer was ended she would revive in a minute or two and continue, as frolicksome as before. She thus continued until Saturday towards the evening, when she assayed with as nimble and various and pleasant an application as could easily be used, for to divert the young folks in the family from such exercises as it was proper to meet the Sabbath withal. But they refusing to be diverted, she fell fast asleep and, in two or three hours, waked perfectly herself, weeping bitterly to remember what had befallen her. When Christmas arrived, both she at my house and her sister at home were by the daemons made very drunk, though we are fully satisfied they had no strong drink to make them so, nor would they willingly have been so, to have gained the world. When she began to feel herself drunk, she complained, "Oh, they say they will have me to kep Christmas with them. They will disgrace me when they can do nothing else." And immediately the ridiculous behaviors of one drunk were, with a wondrous exactness, represented in her speaking and reeling and spewing and anon sleeping, till she was well again. At last the daemons put her upon saying that she was dying, and the matter proved such that we feared she really was, for she lay, she tossed, she pulled, just like one dying, and urged hard for someone to die with her, seeming loth to die alone. She argued concerning death with a paraphrase on the thirty-first Psalm in strains that quite amazed us, and concluded that tho' she was "loth to die,"if God said she must, she must! Adding that the Indians would quickly shed much blood in the country and horrible tragedies would be acted in the land. Thus the vexation of the children ended. But after awhile, they began again, and then one particular minister, taking a particular compassion on the family, set himself to serve them in the methods prescribed by our Lord Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the Lord being besought thrice in three days of prayer, with fasting on this occasion, the family then saw their deliverance perfected, and the children afterwards -- all of them -- not only approved themselves devout Christians, but unto the praise of God reckoned these, their afflictions, among the special incentives of their Christianity. The ministers of Boston and Charlestown afterwards accompanied the printed narrative of these things with their attestation to the truth of it. And when it was reprinted at London, the famous Mr. Baxter prefixed a preface unto it, wherein he says: "This great instance comes with such convincing evidence that he must be a very obdurate Sadducee that will not believe it."
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