Daily the possessed became more bold, more tricky, and more wild.

No plea availed anything.

In behalf of several women, whose lives had been of the purest and gentlest, petitions were presented, but to no effect.

A scriptural text was always ready to aid in the repression of mercy: it was remembered that "Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light," and above all resounded the Old Testament injunction, which had sent such multitudes in Europe to the torture-chamber and the stake, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Such clergymen as Noyes, Parris, and Mather, aided by such judges as Stoughton and Hathorn, left nothing undone to stimulate these proceedings.

The great Cotton Mather based upon this outbreak of disease thus treated his famous book, Wonders of the Invisible World, thanking God for the triumphs over Satan thus gained at Salem; and his book received the approbation of the Governor of the Province, the President of Harvard College, and various eminent theologians in Europe as well as in America.
But, despite such efforts as these, observation, and thought upon observation, which form the beginning of all true science, brought in a new order of things.