By [Jonathan] Edwards’ time witchcraft and the preternatural had almost disappeared from clerical attention. In 1690 Cotton Mather could preach about a prodigious cabbage root he had seen that had one branch shaped like a cutlass, another like a rapier, and another like an Indian club, and pronounce that this was a special providential warning to New England. By the next generation such interpretation of prodigies would be a bit of an embarrassment. —Marsden’s bio of JE, p. 69