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You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time—we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God’s grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it.
This statement, given by Danforth in
Act III, aptly sums up the attitude of the authorities toward the
witch trials. In his own right, Danforth is an honorable man, but,
like everyone else in Salem, he sees the world in black and white.
Everything and everyone belongs to either God or the Devil. The
court and government of Massachusetts, being divinely sanctioned,
necessarily belong to God. Thus, anyone who opposes the court’s
activities cannot be an honest opponent. In a theocracy, one cannot
have honest disagreements because God is infallible. Since the court
is conducting the witch trials, anyone who questions the trials,
such as Proctor or Giles Corey, is the court’s enemy. From there,
the logic is simple: the court does God’s work, and so an enemy
of the court
