Free Salem Witch Judge by Eve LaPlante

bed-and-breakfasts do today. Lodging was also available at many public houses, which served as taverns and inns every day except the Sabbath, when they were required to close.
    Early the next morning Mather prayed over his notes of the proceedings before sending for the accused. Mather told Cheever that the council believed the accusations against him. Cheever replied, “If I ever did violate any of the Commandments, I have no memory of it.”
    Angrily the older minister said, “The council, at the request of this church in Malden, declares Thomas Cheever guilty of great scandals, by more than two or three witnesses…. We have cause to fear that he has been too much accustomed to an evil course of levity and profaneness. Also we find that as to some particulars he pretends he does not remember them. Nor,” he emphasized, “have we seen that humble penitential frame in him when before us, that would have become him.”
    Repentance, that key ingredient for Puritans, was lacking. A few years later an exemplary Massachusetts minister, Joseph Green, who took the pulpit of Salem Village in the troubled period after the witch trials, enumerated in his diary the steps to living rightly as a Puritan. Repentance was essential to his list.
    1. Pray to God in secret…. Pray to God that he would pardon your sins…. Pray to Jesus Christ to pardon you…and save you from hell fire, and from eternal misery….
    3. Keep holy the Sabbath day. Do not speak your own words nor think your own thoughts on the Sabbath, but spend the whole day in reading and praying and other holy duties….
    5. Remember Death; think much of death; think how it will be on a death bed, whether then you will not wish that you had prayed….
    6. Think much of the Day of Judgment, when…all secret sins shall be discovered and shall be punished with eternal burnings….
    7. Think…seriously of eternity. Think of those that are in hell, that must abide under all the pain imaginable to eternity, and those that are in heaven shall live in the greatest happiness with God forever….
    9. Do not put off your repentance ’til tomorrow; but today while the day of grace lasts give all diligence to secure your souls; for you know not you may be in hell before tomorrow if you defer your repentance.
    Sin is a natural consequence of humanity’s fall in both Jewish and Christian traditions. As descendants of Adam and Eve, humans cannot avoid sin. But after sinning must come repentance, turning away from the sin. That is the only way to redemption. At Malden that day the ministers urged Cheever to do what was right. They prayed that he would turn away from his sin and toward God. Cheever refused.
    Seeing young Cheever fail to manifest “that repentance which the rule requires,” the Reverend Increase Mather spoke for the council.“We suspend Mr. Thomas Cheever from the exercise of his ministerial function” and “keep him from the Lord’s Table” for six weeks. In addition to losing his work as a preacher, young Cheever lost his enjoyment of one of the two sacraments of the Congregational Church. Reformed churches had left behind most of the seven Roman Catholic sacraments, preserving only two, baptism and communion. (They called their sacraments ordinances, also to separate themselves from the Catholic Church.) Baptism could be granted to children of the elect in the Puritan church, but communion was reserved for the elect, those people who could convincingly show they were under God’s grace, which Cheever no longer could.
    The church council met again six weeks later, this time in Boston, to determine if Cheever could be brought back into communion. Brought before the ministers and judges, Cheever again refused to acknowledge guilt. In response, the council unanimously found him guilty and dismissed him as Malden’s pastor. He would later move east to Rumney Marsh, which is now Revere, and find work as a teacher. The church council also urged a fast day in Malden