eason. It was the result of rationally determined actions. Since the actions were rationally determined, the individual could be held responsible for those actions (Miller, Seventeenth Century 264). However, in a state of sin, the reasoning was faulty.
             Fallen man was man in a state of a malfunctioning hierarchy. Fallen man was, for the Puritans, particularly vulnerable to the imagination. It was the imagination that Satan "can insert images into it without any agency of the senses, thus tempting the will with imaginations of such vices as could never have been conceived merely from experience." (Miller, Seventeenth Century 257).
             The Puritan's believed that studying to acquire the knowledge of good and evil would not result in a corrective of the malfunctioning hierarchy. Grace was required to provide a new light for the mind to understand and for the will to act appropriately to the images that the imagination produces. The new understanding that grace supplied made up for the malfunctioning hierarchy that is the normal state of fallen man. "Knowledge alone. . . will not persuade the will, yet grace never persuades any will except through the agency of some knowledge; grace is not a formless, mystical infusion, but is tied to concrete phantasms. . . . Passions will not embrace the good unless encouraged by grace, but grace never works upon them except through an image of the good." (Miller, Seventeenth Century 282).
             The Salem witchcraft trials began in spring 1692. By middle summer, several of the accused had been executed. By the middle of September, 19 of the accused had been executed. The number and pace of executions and the increasing numbers of accused had caused some to believe "that there was a going too far in this affair." (Mather, Magnalia 2: 477). Concern over the divisions developing among the Puritans and criticism of his handling of the situation from England, prompted Sir William Phips, the new governor of the colo...