Dr Paul Allen

Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) On January l5, l697, Salem and the Massachusetts Bay Colony proclaimed a day of fasting and repentance before God for the tragic error and folly of the Salem witch trials. Among the reasons for the day of fasting given by the resolution were, "so all of God's people may offer up fervent supplications unto him, that all iniquity may be put away, which hath stirred God's holy jealousy against this land; that he would show us what we know not, and help us, wherein we have done amiss, to do so no more." The witch trials, a senseless, isolated and unbiblical miscarriage of justice, left an unfair stain on the reputation of all New England's Puritans. Over 150 suspected witches were imprisoned and nineteen were hanged during a few frenzied months of 1692. Most of the accused were women and social misfits. Sad to say, only a few of Salem's townspeople opposed preacher Samuel Parris, who encouraged the proceed...

English: Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University. Photo by C. Szabla. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Universities sprang up in Medieval Christendom. Nothing like them had been seen in history, for not only did they concentrate teachers, they embraced the idea of set coursework whose requirements must be fulfilled before a specific degree was awarded. Students were periodically tested before being certified in their chosen subjects. Universities were modeled on guilds which trained and rated apprentices and journeymen and gathered members for mutual protection. The Christian ideal often tends to clump people together for mutual support in a body. Puritans, many of them university educated in England , brought the idea of a university to New England . "After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for Gods worship and setled the Civill Government: One of the next things we longed f...