HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MEDFORD, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT, IN 1630, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1855.
Charles Brooks, Ed.

[229] so liberally bestowed at this day. Give yourself to prayer, to reading and hearing the word, to meditation, self-examination; and let nothing satisfy you short of a whole Christ and a whole salvation. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.

Feb. 5, 1743: Mr. Turell preached a strong sermon against the Separatists, from Isa. XLIX. 4. William Hall and wife walked out of the meeting-house during the delivery of the sermon; whereupon Mr. Turell, before the congregation, immediately pronounced Mrs. Hall a Separatist. If the preacher knew that Mrs. Hall was the Eve in this obliquity, he showed his sense in not blaming her husband. This insurrectionary movement disclosed two things: first, that Mr. Turell fearlessly preached what he thought was needed by the times; and, secondly, that some people did not pin their faith upon their minister's sleeve, but thought for themselves, and acted accordingly. We can imagine how much raw wonder and sly surmise an event of this kind must have awakened in some quarters. On this account, Mr. Turell, on the next Sunday, preached the two sermons he first preached in Medford; and, on the succeeding Sunday, he repeated the two sermons he preached immediately after his ordination, nineteen years before. In these discourses, doubtless, were found ample vindications of the extraordinary course he had pursued.

Mr. Turell wrote against witchcraft, and his printed pamphlet (Hist. Col., 2d series, vol. x. p. 6) contains statements sufficiently marvellous and revolting. The opinions and feelings of the writer may be best gathered from his “introduction.” It is as follows :--

Although I am as far as any one from holing or maintaining the doctrine of the Sadducees, and firmly believe the existence of spirits, an invisible world, and particularly the agency of Satan and his instruments in afflicting and tormenting the children of men (when permitted by God) ; yet I fear the world has been wretchedly imposed upon by relations of such matters. Tricks and legerdemain have been fathered upon Satan, and others falsely reputed as being in covenant with him, by ignorant and designing people, in which they were not so immediately concerned. Many things have been dubbed witchcraft, and called the works of the devil, which were nothing more than the contrivances of the children of men, who are wise to do evil, and who, upon strict examination, might have been detected. There are some books in the world, filled with stories of witchcrafts, apparitions, haunted houses, &c., to which we owe no more faith than to the tales of fairies and other idle romances.