"The devil is right at home. The devil — the devil, himself, is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of."

— Hugo Chavez, U.N. speech, Sept. 20, 2006

Hugo Chavez is not the first to find the devil's hand in contemporary events. As we watched the Venezuelan firebrand declaim these words (while crossing himself and clasping his hands in prayer to exorcise the demons floating around the podium), we were reminded of another public address delivered in March 1692, in the tiny farm community of Salem Village (now Danvers), Mass. In a sermon titled "Christ Knows How Many Devils There Are," the village's Puritan minister, Samuel Parris, gave his congregation frightening news: "There are ... devils ... here in Christ's little church. ... Here are bad men to be found, yea the very worst. ... We are either saints or devils; the Scripture gives us no medium."

Parris' warning came at no ordinary time. Like Chavez, he felt menaced by powerful forces he could not control. A few weeks earlier, several village girls had started exhibiting bizarre signs of physical torment. Parris and others had soon divined the cause: witchcraft. After interrogations by local magistrates, three village women had been jailed on suspicion of witchcraft.

At this terrifying moment, with supernatural powers apparently assailing the village, minister Parris delivered his somber warning: the devil was abroad, even in the little meetinghouse itself. He pursued the theme in a second sermon that September, after 18 accused witches, one a member of his own church, had been convicted by a court in nearby Salem Town.

Again anticipating Hugo Chavez, who sees the devil in George W. Bush, Parris warned that the devil can assume the shape of actual people, "vile and wicked persons ... who for their villainy and impiety do most resemble devils and wicked spirits." The "bloody French monarch and his confederates" menacing New England from Canada were certainly devils, Parris suggested.

Even more dangerous were "devils in the guise of saints" who masquerade as pious believers. Such people, Parris argued, had caused the "dreadful Witchcraft" afflicting the village. They had sold their souls in exchange for demonic powers to advance their interests and torment their enemies. "If ever there were witches — men and women in covenant with the devil," Parris insisted, "here are multitudes in New England."

The danger was great. Whenever the devil and his allies gain power, they "make war" on all who oppose them. The Evil One need only "hold up his finger" and "his servants and slaves will obey." And Parris knew just who they might be: the ambitious, over-reaching people, grasping for power and wealth. New England's devils included those who "prefer farms and merchandise above (Christ) and his ordinances."

More than 30 years ago, as we researched the Salem witchcraft outbreak and Samuel Parris' role in it, we found a rational economic basis for the fears that gripped the community in 1692. The leading witchcraft accusers were hard-pressed village farmers whose status was declining in contrast to neighbors who were prospering through their access to Salem Town, a thriving commercial center. Parris himself, a failed merchant, was consumed by money worries.

The devil that stalked Salem in 1692 has also served more recent political purposes. In his 1953 play "The Crucible," Arthur Miller used the Salem outbreak as an allegory of Cold War anti-communist hysteria.

Hugo Chavez, in short, invoking vivid devil imagery to dramatize his view of the Bush administration, is in good company. He brandishes Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival" rather than the Bible as his sacred text, but the similarities between his U.N. discourse and Samuel Parris' sermon to his little flock in Salem Village are intriguing.

The Parris comparison might give Chavez reason for both caution and encouragement. On one hand, Parris' invocation of the devil as an explanation for Salem Village's troubles worsened the community's divisions, contributed to the hanging of 19 people and the imprisonment of scores more, and did little to slow the long-term rise of commercial capitalism that ultimately overwhelmed the farmers of the village. Within four years he left Salem Village, a discredited and broken man.

Yet Chavez might also take heart from the hopeful notes in Parris' 1692 sermons. Convinced of God's sovereignty, Parris took the long view — the very long view. The devil and his minions will make war "as long as they can," he conceded, but "(i)t will not be forever. There will be a time when they shall war no longer." Despite powerful evidence to the contrary, they are ultimately "the weakest side." When God so wills, the devil will be "chained up, so that he cannot ... form an army ... against the saints." Seemingly omnipotent today, he will someday "be cast into the lowest and fiercest flames of misery."

Chavez, too, concluded on an upbeat note, though without invoking divine aid: "The American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. ... (W)e cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated."

Do Chavez's gutsy words presage any greater success against his world-straddling American foe than Samuel Parris enjoyed against the demonic forces that he saw arrayed against Salem Village? Time will tell.

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum are co-authors of "Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Salem Witchcraft" (1974). They wrote this for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.