Analysis: A Defense Of The Salem Witch Trials

A Defense of the Salem Witch Trials Should witches be able to torment and anathematize English colonists without being punished? A Defense of the Salem Witch Trials provides reasons why eliminating witches out of the English colonists’ land was not only acceptable but also required to rid the area of the devil. On the other hand, An Attack on the Salem Witch Trials discussed the terrors in ridding the land of devilish spirits. The author of A Defense of the Salem Witch Trials, Cotton Mather, was a leading minister in Boston at the time of the trials (Dudley 26). Thomas Brattle, author of An Attack on the Salem Witch Trials, was an eye-catching merchant also from Boston (Dudley 29). By providing information from confessions as well as specific evidence from the trials themselves, Cotton Mather made a strong argument in supporting the Salem Witch Trials.
Cotton Mather stated, “Convicted of a very Damnable Witchcraft: yea, more than one Twenty have Confessed, that they have Signed unto a Book, which the Devil show’d them, and Engaged in his Hellish Design of Bewitching, and Ruining our Land” (Dudley 27). When the multiple witches confessed, they were stating that they had, in fact, participated in the evil act of witchcraft. A confession will hold up in a court of law; therefore, the confessions of the accused were a reliable source for the colonist to depend upon when ridding the land of devilish colonists. The admission of the witches gave colonists the right to believe that they were a danger to society (Dudley