Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/69

 members of the minister's own family, and he did not seem to dare to check or blame them, it was of course to be understood that he countenanced and believed in the strange influence under which they professed to be suffering, and of course his belief governed that of many of his congregation.

But all were not so compliant of faith. Several members of the Nurse family and others openly manifested their strong disapprobation of such desecration of the Lord's house and the Lord's day, and declared their intention of absenting themselves from attendance on the Sabbath services while such a state of things was allowed; and it was afterward noticed that whosoever did this was sure to be marked out as an object of revenge.

In the mean time fasts and prayer-meetings were resorted to in private families for the restoration of the afflicted ones and the subjugation of the power of the Evil Spirit, who, as the great enemy of souls, was believed to have come among them. All this heightened and helped on the terrible popular excitement, and Mr. Parris convened an