ABSTRACT
Sorcery or magic, in the understanding of late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century colonists, involved human attempts to make use of supernatural forces. This distinguished it from wonders which were manifestations of God's power. Religious authorities were hostile to magical practices and often associated them with witchcraft, though evidently lay people sometimes believed that such practices might do good. Ezra Michener (1794-1887) was a doctor and pioneer historian of Quakerism who himself lived and worked in the Chester County, Pennsylvania, in which the Society of Friends had so much trouble with sorcery between 1695 and 1738.
