Isolation, threats, and the predestination of the universe

Of my various readings about the context of the witch trials, the following, from the introduction of a book I picked up in modern Salem in the 1990s, seems to bring it into focus most effectively:

"In 1692, the colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England was an isolated foothold in the wilderness of the North American continent, a small light of civilization clinging to the boundaries of the brooding gloom of the unknown western lands.  The population was scattered over a vast countryside.  Villages and farms were separated by great distances.  Communication and travel were exceedingly slow, and the isolation of the people was exacerbated by the constant threat of Indian attacks and the whimsical but devastating forces of nature. 

"Many of the colony's inhabitants counterbalanced their physical solitude in the New World with a spiritual foundation in the Calvinist doctrines of the Puritans of Mother England.  But their spiritual hope proved nearly as bleak as their physical condition.  The Puritans postulated an afterlife consisting of either everlasting bliss or eternal torment.  The individual believer, however, was incapable of gaining his salvation by virtue of any act he might perform.  God had instead predestined those to be consigned to the fires of perdition.  The individual had no control over his own fate; it was left solely to the authority of an omnipotent God.

"This unquestioning obedience to God's mandates was the hallmark of Puritan society.  Every occurrence in men's lives was part of God's overriding plan for the universe.  Any good which came into people's lives was the direct result of God's mercy and beneficence; misfortunes, however, were attributed to an entirely different source.  God occasionally permitted His fallen angel, Satan, to bring misery to the land as part of God's judgment on the people for deviating from His chosen path.  The Puritan world was framed in this juxtaposition of good and evil, in an era before the Age of Reason, when men would begin seeking answers through secular means. 

"The combined forces of Puritanism and isolation created an environment in which all actions were attributed to mystical powers which governed the world and were ever outside the control of men.  The slightest mishap was attributed to some devil who had been unleashed by God to punish the person concerned.  The surrounding countryside, it was supposed, abounded with demons poised to snatch the righteous person from the fold of God.  Strange diseases, coincidental occurrences, and other miseries were all caused by Satan's servants.  With their neighbors far away and unable to give support, people turned to their inner fears when they heard strange noises or imagined strange happenings.  To these New England Puritans, the devil's legions roamed almost at will over the land, and the object was to subvert the kingdom of God on earth.  Their greatest chance came in 1692 in a wayside community known as Salem Village (now Danvers, Massachusetts)." *

* Brown, David C.  A Guide to the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692.  David C. Brown, 1984.