Compare And Contrast Cotton Mather And John Hale

It was the late 1600’s and people of strong religion in Salem, Massachusetts were becoming oddly stricken by recent events regarding the practice of witchcraft. Through this period of time twenty people were executed due to mere assumption to have been involved in witchcraft or Devil worship. Living through these events and making accounts of them were two men by the names, Cotton Mather and John Hale. Both Cotton Mather and John Hale, influential Puritan Ministers, were supporters of the Salem Witch Trials which took place for two years between 1692 and 1693 and, had both written two very influential pieces detailing them, Mather's "Wonders of the Invisible World" and, Hale's "A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft". Through similar and contrasting rhetorical style and device the two proved their separate messages of the trials, Mather's being that the
Mather wanted to detail the horror that would ensue if the Devil and his followers were allowed to continue spreading through Colonial Massachusetts and the whole of New England, according to the Puritans, God’s holiest of lands. Hale, who had at first supported the trials and then in his piece had challenged the morality and the truth of the trials in that they had not been run in a decent manner with good evidence to back up those accused and their connections with the Devil and hellish dealings. Both using established, similar, and, contrasting unique rhetorical devices, they were able to sway their audiences to believe their points and were indeed very successful in doing so. They became two of the most famous men, and their writings along with them, of the time period of the Salem Witch Trials which forever will live in history as a horrific, religion shifting period of suffering, enlightenment, and