Note 1, page 24. The Pythoness of ancient Lynn was the redoubtable Moll Pitcher, who lived under the shadow of High Rock in that town, and was sought far and wide for her supposed powers of divination. She died about 1810. Mr. Upham, in his Salem Witchcraft, has given an account of her.
Note 2, page 88. Bashaba was the name which the Indians
of New England gave to two or three of their principal
chiefs, to whom all their inferior sagamores acknowledged
allegiance. Passaconaway seems to have been one of these
chiefs. His residence was at Pennacook. (Mass. Hist. Coll.,
vol. iii. pp. 21, 22.) “He was regarded,” says Hubbard,
“as a great sorcerer, and his fame was widely spread. It
was said of him that he could cause a green leaf to grow in
winter, trees to dance, water to burn, etc. He was, undoubtedly,
one of those shrewd and powerful men whose
achievements are always regarded by a barbarous people as
the result of supernatural aid. The Indians gave to such
the names of Powahs or Panisees.”
“The Panisees are men of great courage and wisdom, and
to these the Devill appeareth more familiarly than to others.”—
Winslow's Relation.
Note 3, page 93. “The Indians,” says Roger Williams, “have a god whom they call Wetuomanit, who presides over the household.”
Note 4, page 97. There are rocks in the river at the Falls of Amoskeag, in the cavities of which, tradition says, the Indians formerly stored and concealed their corn.
Note 5, page 101. The Spring God.—See Roger Williams's Key to the Indian Language.
Note 6, page 106. “Mat wonck kunna-monee.” We shall see thee or her no more.—See Roger Williams's Key.
Note 7, page 106. “The Great South West God.”—See Roger Williams's Observations, etc.
Note 8, page 109. The barbarities of Count de Tilly after the siege of Magdeburg made such an impression upon our forefathers that the phrase “like old Tilly” is still heard sometimes in New England of any piece of special ferocity.
Note 9, page 134. Dr. Hooker, who accompanied Sir
James Ross in his expedition of 1841, thus describes the appearance
of that unknown land of frost and fire which was
seen in latitude 77° south,—a stupendous chain of mountains,
the whole mass of which, from its highest point to the
ocean, was covered with everlasting snow and ice:—
“The water and the sky were both as blue, or rather more
intensely blue, than I have ever seen them in the tropics, and
all the coast was one mass of dazzlingly beautiful peaks of
snow, which, when the sun approached the horizon, reflected
the most brilliant tints of golden yellow and scarletl; and
then, to see the dark cloud of smoke, tinged with flame,
rising from the volcano in a perfect unbroken column, one
side jet-black, the other giving back the colors of the sun,
sometimes turning off at a right angle by some current of
wind, and stretching many miles to leeward! This was a
sight so surpassing everything that can be imagined, and so
heightened by the consciousness that we had penetrated, under
the guidance of our commander, into regions far beyond
what was ever deemed practicable, that it caused a feeling of
awe to steal over us at the consideration of our own comparative
insignificance and helplessness, and at the same time
an indescribable feeling of the greatness of the Creator in
the works of his hand.”
Note 10, page 210. It was the custom in Sewall's time for churches and individuals to hold fasts whenever any public or private need suggested the fitness; and as state and church were very closely connected, the General Court sometimes ordered a fast. Out of this custom sprang the annual fast in spring, now observed, but it is of comparatively recent date. Such a fast was ordered on the 14th of January,
1697, when Sewall made his special confession of guilt in condemning innocent persons under the supposition that they were witches. He is said to have observed the day privately on each annual return thereafter.
Note 11, page 244. Dr. John Dee was a man of erudition, who had an extensive museum, library, and apparatus; he claimed to be an astrologer, and had acquired the reputation of having dealings with evil spirits, and a mob was raised which destroyed the greater part of his possessions. He professed to raise the dead and had a magic crystal. He died a pauper in 1608.
Note 12, page 325. Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau, or, as Sewall the Quaker Historian gives it, Von Merlane, a noble young lady of Frankfort, seems to have held among the Mystics of that city very much such a position as Anna Maria Schurmaus did among the Labadists of Holland. William Penn appears to have shared the admiration of her own immediate circle for this accomplished and gifted lady.
Note 13, page 330. Magister Johann Kelpius, a graduate
of the University of Helmstadt, came to Pennsylvania
in 1694, with a company of German Mystics. They made
their home in the woods on the Wissahickon, a little west of
the Quaker settlement of Germantown. Kelpius was a believer
in the near approach of the Millennium, and was a
devout student of the Book of Revelation, and the Morgen-Rothe
of Jacob Behmen. He called his settlement “The
Woman in the Wilderness” (Das Weib in der Wueste). He
was only twenty-four years of age when he came to America,
but his gravity, learning, and devotion placed him at the
head of the settlement. He disliked the Quakers, because
he thought they were too exclusive in the matter of ministers.
He was, like most of the Mystics, opposed to the
severe doctrinal views of Calvin and even Luther, declaring
“that he could as little agree with the Damnamus of the
Augsburg Confession as with the Anathema of the Council of
Trent.”
He died in 1704, sitting in his little garden surrounded by
his grieving disciples. Previous to his death it is said that
he cast his famous “Stone of Wisdom” into the river, where
that mystic souvenir of the times of Van Helmont, Paracelsus,
and Agrippa has lain ever since, undisturbed.
Note 14, page 331. Peter Sluyter, or Schluter, a native
of Wesel, united himself with the sect of Labadists, who believed
in the Divine commission of John De Labadie, a Roman
Catholic priest converted to Protestantism, enthusiastic,
eloquent, and evidently sincere in his special calling and
election to separate the true and living members of the
Church of Christ from the formalism and hypocrisy of the
ruling sects. George Keith and Robert Barclay visited him
at Amsterdam, and afterward at the communities of Herford
and Wieward; and, according to Gerard Croes, found
him so near to them on some points, that they offered to
take him into the Society of Friends. This offer, if it was
really made, which is certainly doubtful, was, happily for
the Friends at least, declined. Invited to Herford in Westphalia by Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector Palatine, De
Labadie and his followers preached incessantly, and succeeded
in arousing a wild enthusiasm among the people, who
neglected their business and gave way to excitements and
strange practices. Men and women, it was said, at the Communion
drank and danced together, and private marriages,
or spiritual unions, were formed. Labadie died in 1674 at
Altona, in Denmark, maintaining his testimonies to the last.
“Nothing remains for me,” he said, “except to go to my
God. Death is merely ascending from a lower and narrower
chamber to one higher and holier.”
In 1679, Peter Sluyter and Jasper Dankers were sent
to America by the community at the Castle of Wieward.
Their journal, translated from the Dutch and edited by
Henry C. Murphy, has been recently published by the Long
Island Historical Society. They made some converts, and
among them was the eldest son of Hermanns, the proprietor
of a rich tract of land at the head of Chesapeake Bay, known
as Bohemia Manor. Sluyter obtained a grant of this tract,
and established upon it a community numbering at one time
a hundred souls. Very contradictory statements are on record
regarding his headship of this spiritual family, the discipline
of which seems to have been of more than monastic
severity. Certain it is that he bought and sold slaves, and
manifested more interest in the world's goods than became
a believer in the near Millennium. He evinces in his journal
an overweening spiritual pride, and speaks contemptuously
of other professors, especially the Quakers whom he met in
his travels. The latter, on the contrary, seem to have
looked favorably upon the Labadists, and uniformly speak
of them courteously and kindly. His journal shows him to
have been destitute of common gratitude and Christian
charity. He threw himself upon the generous hospitality of
the Friends wherever he went, and repaid their kindness by
the coarsest abuse and misrepresentation.
Note 15, page 332. Among the pioneer Friends were
many men of learning and broad and liberal views. Penn
was conversant with every department of literature and
philosophy. Thomas Lloyd was a ripe and rare scholar.
The great Loganian Library of Philadelphia bears witness
to the varied learning and classical taste of its donor, James
Logan. Thomas Story, member of the Council of State,
Master of the Rolls, and Commissioner of Claims under
William Penn, and an able minister of his Society, took a
deep interest in scientific questions, and in a letter to his
friend Logan, written while on a religious visit to Great
Britain, seems to have anticipated the conclusion of modern
geologists. “I spent,” he says, “some months, especially at
Scarborough, during the season attending meetings, at
whose high cliffs and the variety of strata therein and their
several positions I further learned and was confirmed in
some things,—that the earth is of much older date as to
the beginning of it than the time assigned in the Holy Scriptures
as commonly understood, which is suited to the common
capacities of mankind, as to six days of progressive
work, by which I understand certain long and competent
periods of time, and not natural days.” It was sometimes
made a matter of reproach by the Anabaptists and other
sects, that the Quakers read profane writings and philosophies,
and that they quoted heathen moralists in support of
their views. Sluyter and Dankers, in their journal of American
travels, visiting a Quaker preacher's house at Burlington,
on the Delaware, found “a volume of Virgil lying on
the window, as if it were a common hand-book; also Helmont's
book on Medicine (
Ortus Medicinæ, id est Initia Physica
inaudita progressus medicinæ novus in morborum ultionam
ad vitam longam), whom, in an introduction they have made
to it, they make to pass for one of their own sect, although
in his lifetime he did not know anything about Quakers.”
It would appear from this that the half-mystical, half-scientific
writings of the alchemist and philosopher of Vilverde
had not escaped the notice of Friends, and that they had included
him in their broad eclecticism.
Note 16, page 333. “The Quaker's Meeting,” a painting
by E. Hemskerck (supposed to be Egbert Hemskerck the
younger, son of Egbert Hemskerck the old), in which William
Penn and others—among them Charles II., or the
Duke of York—are represented along with the rudest and
most stolid class of the British rural population at that period.
Hemskerck came to London from Holland with King
William in 1689. He delighted in wild, grotesque subjects,
such as the nocturnal intercourse of witches and the temptation
of St. Anthony. Whatever was strange and uncommon
attracted his free pencil. Judging from the portrait of
Penn, he must have drawn his faces, figures, and costumes
from life, although there may be something of caricature in
the convulsed attitudes of two or three of the figures.
Note 17, page 337. In one of his letters addressed to German
friends, Pastorius says: “These wild men, who never
in their life heard Christ's teachings about temperance and
contentment, herein far surpass the Christians. They live
far more contented and unconcerned for the morrow. They
do not overreach in trade. They know nothing of our everlasting
pomp and stylishness. They neither curse nor swear,
are temperate in food and drink, and if any of them get
drunk the mouth-Christians are at fault, who, for the sake
of accursed lucre, sell them strong drink.”
Again he wrote in 1698 to his father that he finds the
Indians reasonable people, willing to accept good teaching
and manners, evincing an inward piety toward God, and
more eager, in fact, to understand things divine than many
among you who in the pulpit teach Christ in word, but by
ungodly life deny him.
“It is evident,” says Professor Seidensticker, “Pastorius
holds up the Indian as Nature's unspoiled child to the eyes
of the ‘European Babel,’ somewhat after the same manner
in which Tacitus used the barbarian Germani to shame his
degenerate countrymen.”
As believers in the universality of the Saving Light, the
outlook of early Friends upon the heathen was a very cheerful
and hopeful one. God was as near to them as to Jew
or Anglo-Saxon; as accessible at Timbuctoo as at Rome or
Geneva. Not the letter of Scripture, but the spirit which
dictated it, was of saving efficacy. Robert Barclay is nowhere
more powerful than in his argument for the salvation
of the heathen, who live according to their light, without
knowing even the name of Christ. William Penn thought
Socrates as good a Christian as Richard Baxter. Early
Fathers of the Church, as Origen and Justin Martyr, held
broader views on this point than modern Evangelicals.
Even Augustine, from whom Calvin borrowed his theology,
admits that he has no controversy with the admirable philosophers
Plato and Plotinus. “Nor do I think,” he says in
De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii., cap. 47, “that the Jews dare affirm
that none belonged unto God but the Israelites.”
Note 18, page 346. A common saying of Valdemar; hence his sobriquet Alterday.
Note 19, page 420. “He [Macy] shook the dust from off
his feet, and departed with all his worldly goods and his
family. He encountered a severe storm, and his wife, influenced
by some omens of disaster, besought him to put
back. He told her not to fear, for his faith was perfect.
But she entreated him again. Then the spirit that impelled
him broke forth: ‘Woman, go below and seek thy God. I
fear not the witches on earth, or the devils in hell!’”—
Life of Robert Pike, page 55.
