Harry Potter Morning Light

Chapter 1749 The Queen of Hell ([-])
If Salem shattered the illusion of idyllic love, Andover was more hopeless than Salem.

This is not to say that Andover experienced a natural disaster, but that this small village of only 600 people is more dead than Salem, a town of 8000 people. After all, Salem has also competed with Boston. , which almost became the capital of Massachusetts.

The fun of "witch hunting" lies in resistance, whether they are desperately defending themselves in court, or trying to escape, the crying "witches" who are dragged by their husbands, sons, and brothers to plead guilty look not only It makes the investigators feel disgusted, hated, and feared, but it makes people feel pity.

They are like lambs in the wilderness, and the Indians at that time have been confused with wolves and devils.The devil always appears in the wilderness. Moses took the Israelites wandering and Jesus encountered them when he was traveling in the wilderness. The men accused them of sleeping with the Indians.The servant will accuse the mistress, but the mistress will not accuse the servant, and the wife will not accuse the husband, but the husband will not sue for defamation in defense of his wife.These women have to endure the pain of standing for a long time, not sleeping, and being questioned mercilessly, not to mention that insisting on innocence is tantamount to proving that they have committed a heinous crime, so the Andover witches confessed very quickly, and many people did not know what they should believe. Others start to believe everything others tell them.

There was an elder brother who was the headmaster of a primary school. He had a lot of ways to make the children tell the truth. He warned his sister not to lie. She was a witch. The girl begged, "Good brother, don't say that. If I admit it, I am lying. I should How to explain to God?" But her brother was still unmoved, insisting that she was complicit with Satan, and he could not just stand by and watch so many good people being deceived by her, she would be hanged if she refused to admit it, and finally the girl couldn't stand it. She was so mentally tortured that she told law enforcement to send her to jail as soon as possible.

Perhaps to these peasants a woman is worth as much as a cow or a piece of furniture, or else sin incarnate, requiring strict discipline, and the confessions of these girls are usually "I have always been a disobedient-" and then become obedient again. He repeated everything others told her. At first, Cotton Mather was surprised when he heard that there were so many wizards in Andover. The place where de Carrier said the baptism of the devil.

Around the middle of the 17th century, an independent denomination emerged among the Puritans. It was named Baptist because of the baptism method of immersing the whole body in water. They opposed the baptism of infants and insisted that adults can choose whether to be baptized.Apart from baptism, this denomination has no liturgical regulations, including communion.Pastors are appointed by the congregation, there are no deacons, and they are very liberal in doctrine and etiquette, and most importantly, believers can directly feel the connection with God without the intermediary of clergy and the church, which is the same as the Puritans .

The original purpose was to oppose the arbitrariness, corruption, and red tape of the priesthood, and to pursue a simple, practical, and equal life for believers before God, but then it deteriorated.The Puritans soon found that it was difficult for people to accept the radical charism that if a person’s salvation is not up to him and has nothing to do with his efforts to do good or bad things, then there are always some signs and signs that can be found.This job was done by pastors in the past. For example, the pastor has the right to explain things like indulgences. The merits of former saints are accumulated. They can’t be used up after being redeemed, and they can be sold to sinners who bought indulgences for their atonement. .

The Puritans believed that success was earned by themselves, and success was a divine grace, similar to what the saints did. At that time, the occupation was not "job" but "calling", similar to the call of duty, often seen in recruitment advertisements As far as this word is concerned, it has a certain religious meaning and represents a task arranged by God.It is God's arrangement to become a rich man, and it is also God's arrangement to become a general. It is not God's arrangement to go bankrupt, and it is not God's arrangement to be a prisoner after losing a battle. At this time, believers should not blame others, but look for other "calling". A soldier, a captured soldier can call himself a merchant and do fur business with the Indians. As long as he can bury his head in it, it is a sign that this person has been chosen for salvation.

The world is our monastery, and the work in this world is our way of monasticism, a task arranged by God.

The vocation will increase the value of wealth. If someone asks how to know God's will for him, the answer can be found in the inheritance that God bestows on him.

This creates a kind of hegemony that despises the losers and admires the winners.But there was no elitism at that time, and there was no equating money with morality, otherwise Giles Corey and Philip English would not have been accused of bad deeds, and no one would be like Rebecca Nas also pleaded for them.

There is a kind of arrogance that is characteristic of the elite class. They feel that they are more diverse than the nobles, but they don't believe that there are people like Andover Village in the world.College education is already very low for them, shouldn't primary school teachers be sweet female teachers?
In fact, there are still Puritans in some places in the 21st century. They will leave the village for a year after they become adults, and decide whether to leave their parents and live in American mass society, or return to the village. During this year, they will live a very indulgent life. , but most of them will choose to go back to the village. When they were Puritans, they still traveled by horse-drawn carriage, as if they still lived more than 300 years ago.

The elite leave "Electric" almost as if they're in the jungle, and if they're followed by a man with a shotgun hunting them down, it could make for a thriller.

What's worse is that those people are their neighbors. Because of the uncertainty of the future, many people at the bottom began to believe in divination and voodoo, just like the Puritans who believed in divination hundreds of years ago, and came to find their so-called "omens", Andor There wasn't even a fortune teller in the small village of Fleur, and they were going to share the fortune teller in Salem.

It stands to reason that those who read palms should be arrested as witches first, but the Salem witch trials are characterized by confessions. Sarah Goode and Bridget Bishop are the type of "witches" at first glance, Sarah La Goode confessed to Osborn, and Osborn confessed to others. It snowballed more and more, and now the devil simply started the party. He appeared in Andor as a man wearing a high hat. in an orchard in Verde.

He met the two brothers there. Andrew stuttered before, but he spoke smoothly after seeing the devil. Two months ago, when the milk of Salem was fermented into butter and the villagers sowed corn, a large number of witches landed in Paris. home lawn, the farthest they've come from Connecticut.

There was a large table and chairs on the lawn, and the Devil sat at one end of the communion table, while Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor chanted spells and distributed red bread and blood wine, while Abigail Ho The Booth mother and daughter were there too, and Rebecca convinced them they were drinking blood, sweeter than wine, and Martha Khalil, chosen "Queen of Hell," was also in charge of pouring, and it was clear that if the beer served Represents the queen, so there is more than one candidate for the queen.

As for the bread, it was as red as raw meat, and not much, and not everyone got their share, except Mary Lacey's grandmother, Ann Foster, who fortunately brought her own food.

Richard Carrier's younger brother, Andrew Carrier, drank but did not eat, and was too far away to hear what was said during the sacrament administered by the Devil.

Later, the devil took out a book, and some people used blood, some used fingers, some used sticks and pens, and some people wrote their names on the white bark.

The devil promised Richard new clothes and horses, seduced Andrew with land and houses, paid off the debts of a farmer who was busy making a living for a large family, and gave a carpenter from Andover the captaincy of the militia .

The condition of these promises is to help him overthrow the church, cancel Judgment Day, remove shame and guilt, and make all beings equal. Martha Carrier boasted that she would take care of everything underground like a priest.

Two days after the Khalil brothers gave their contrite testimony, John Proctor asked for some papers, the first man to be arrested. He had been in a Boston jail since the end of April, and his family almost All were arrested and imprisoned.

He wrote a petition behind bars, and he had testified as a suspect before, but that didn't turn him from a defendant into a plaintiff.

The court clerk said that the Khalil brothers had their hands tied for a while when they were escorted out, but John Proctor saw more than that, and at first Andrew Khalil didn't want to admit anything, until the five flowers were dumped, and then As for the nosebleed, he only started to confess.

If there were no officials interfering, this kind of torture would have lasted all night. The key point is that Proctor’s son was also dumped, so after he asked for a letter, he wrote to five famous pastors in Boston, including Cotton Mather's father Ingersoll Mather and Samuel Conrad, whom he considered sympathetic.

In his letter, he said that a terrible judicial injustice was about to happen. He not only spoke for himself, but also for his fellow prisoners, all of whom were innocent.Before the suspects ever set foot in court, the suspects have been convicted and most of their properties are gone.After John Proctor's arrest, George Corwin raided his family's fifteen-acre farm, sold and slaughtered the cattle, confiscated Proctor's property, and left his 11 young children Next morsel of food.

Proctor did not lash out at the court like Cary did, nor did he refute the accusation as strongly as Alden, nor did he slander the girls. He asked the pastors to either appoint another judge or reduce prejudice. People are as cruel as the magistrate, can you send more priests, all he wants is a fair trial.

England abolished the Inquisition a long time ago. Perhaps Proctor hadn't heard of the divine judgment and the "drilling" law, so he came up with the idea of ​​letting the priest be the presiding judge.

His trial took place on August 8. On the morning of August 2, the pastors gathered on the second floor of the Harvard University library to discuss the topic of the Salem trial. They believed that someone might be innocently implicated. These pastors It includes the three people who Proctor wrote to appeal.

In civil justice, innocent people are rarely tried in court, and priests can exonerate some people if necessary, as long as they try to ensure that certain cases do not go to trial.It is true that there are wizards in Massachusetts, but Stoughton's courts are so cruel that there is not even a single reprieve, which makes prisoners escape from prison regardless of the consequences. Two days after the Salem judge ordered the arrest of the Andover suspect, Captain Cary's wife She broke free of her eight-pound shackles, and the suspects, Philip English and his wife, also fled without a trace, along with a 16-year-old girl named Elizabeth Colson. She was nowhere to be seen when the arrest warrant was issued, and she was said to have fled to Boston, where the sheriff and an underling were looking for her.

They brought dogs, and it didn't look like they were catching criminals at all, but hunting animals.

Pastor Moody, who assisted the English and his wife in their escape, was also present, but he must not show any abnormal behavior, and the pastor is not safe, Burroughs is an example.

Elizabeth Colson is like a fresh and juicy prey. Witch hunters, especially young and beautiful witches, can arouse the bloodthirsty instinct of human beings. If she is older and uglier, maybe the sheriffs will go after others the wizard.

It's a pity there aren't many forests left in Massachusetts, or it might be safer to run into them.

If there is no authority declaring that he is sent by God, and the laws he promulgates are also from God, then others have no obligation to obey. This is the description of the Christian state system in Leviathan.

There was a pastor who had to tell those believers sitting on the pews under the altar in a dignified manner: We are born equal.

There is also a priest who tells and tells the believers in the pew: We are not born equal, and we will not die so, so why should we pretend to be equal while we are alive?

Which of the two priests looked more like the demon in disguise?
If it's the devil who's assembled in the backyard of Reverend Parris's house, and he's saying all things are equal, and the guy is saying, "We're not born equal, and we won't die, so why do we pretend to be equal while we're alive?" A real pastor, can people who pursue equality accept this?

If it wasn't the devil who assembled in the backyard, why would the justice of the peace use witchcraft trials to plunder other people's wealth?

The authority represented by the judge, if the authority is unjust, others have no obligation to obey, and there will be people who escape from prison and resist arrest.

Violence is inevitable in the process of resisting arrest. A weak girl faces two big men and a dog. She is not a real wizard, and a gun is her only guarantee.

Well, she shouldn't have resisted arrest, she should have obeyed the sheriff, then gone to that unjust court, accepted the punishment of "civil case" and hanged, what crime did she commit, as a minor, by Ann Putnam Jr. The gang accused of being witches?
If it's just bickering between little girls, isn't it a bit too ruthless, to the point of death?

Who gave them so much power?
Can't everyone eat bread contaminated with ergot bacteria?

(End of this chapter)