Basic Puritan beliefs.

Here are a few basic beliefs of early American puritans.

The five tenants

1. Total Depravity - through Adam's fall, every human is born sinful - concept of Original Sin  

2.Unconditional Election - God "saves" those he wishes - only a few are selected for salvation - concept of predestination.

3. Limited Atonement - Jesus died for the chosen only, not for everyone. 

4. Irresistible Grace - God's grace is freely given, it cannot be earned or denied. Grace is defined as the saving and transfiguring power of God. 

5. Perseverance of the "saints" - those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God, and to live uprightly. If anyone rejects grace after feeling its power in his life, he will be going against the will of God - something impossible in Puritanism.

Individual bio's

This is a good resource to look up biographies on individual people. Not everyone that is in the play is listed, but quite a few are. Check it out Here

Court transcripts

I know that many of you have expressed interest in looking at actual transcripts from the Salem trials. Here are a couple links for you to check out.

This link is a great resource of typed transcripts from the University of Virginia.

This link goes to a collection of scanned original documents. They are hard to read, but nice to see the actual handwriting.

As an example of what can be found at the above links, here is an image of  Abigail's testimony against Elizabeth. At the bottoms of the page you can see Abigail's "mark". By the handwriting you can tell that she had limited education, only being able to painfully write her initials.