Revocation of the covenant


"This was the last time that a ruler of Massachusetts, in an hour of hesitation, formally and officially asked advice of the churches" ( Colony, pg. 195).
"The Salem Trials were the rock upon which the Theocracy was smashed" (author unknown).

 
During the smallpox epidemic of 1721-1722 in Boston, Cotton Mather suggested to the physicians that they cautiously attempt a method used by the Ottoman Turks that infects the patient to build up immunity to the disease.  In June of 1721 the attending Boston physicians replied to his urgings "that his medical hypothesis was no more to be trusted than had been the theory of spectral evidence employed in 1692 by the Salem Court."  They believed Mather to be the ringleader who killed the innocent by hanging and now he wanted to infect with smallpox the society he could not possess ( Colony, pg. 346, 348).

 
"...after 1692...the very word witchcraft almost vanishes from public discourse...although new and fascinating abuses are relentlessly explored, no one any longer tires to induce a confession or sinfulness by predicting a spate of witches" ( Colony, pg. 191).
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The Salem Witchcraft Trials ruptured the community of the Covenant of Grace.  Deodot Lawson's prophecy that the witchcraft plaguing Salem was a judgement on their destiny was all too true.  The dominance of the Puritan Theocracy ended with the Salem Witch Trials and the Covenant was reexamined. "The whole edifice of the New England mind rocked at the very thought that it might be based, not upon a cosmic design of the covenant, but merely upon fallible founders..." (Colony, pg. 207).  A flaw in the foundation of the covenant allowed the magistrates to twist repentance into a malignant ruse.


"Out of sorrow and chagrin, out of dread, was born a new love for the land which had been desecrated, but somehow also consecrated, in the blood of innocents" (Colony, pg. 208).

 
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