The Ranters Monster

I'm amazed at how well crafted The Ranters Monster is as a work of anti-catholic propaganda. It opens with an account of Mary Adams and the terrible things she's done, and her blasphemy would surely have offended many of the original readers. Likewise, the following tales all relate individuals engaged in fornication, blasphemy, or otherwise offending God in general. However, the author, in the very end, includes almost as if it were an oversight "One thing I had almost omited[sic]..." the story of how Mary Adams was a Papist! It is as if the entire pamphlet were to set up a feeling of unrest and proper indignation toward heathen individuals, and then in the very end we find out that, gasp, Mary Adams' worst sin was that she doesn't support Independents! The way the author includes this as if it were an almost forgettable afterthought reinforces its strength - surely the author didn't "almost omit[sic]" this story, and even if (s)he had, the author wouldn't have so casually mentioned his or her near folly. Instead the author does a great job of utilizing language to develop a feeling of unrest, and then at the very end redirect the readers' outrage to a specific group, all while cleverly concealing his or her true intentions: from the start, this work was designed to smear Catholics, not to relate stories of monsters and strange happenings. In fact, it's interesting to see the progression the author creates in Mary Adams. She starts out devout, honest, and little by little falls away from "normal" Christianity as seen by the Renaissance. Eventually she joins varies sects, becomes very sexually promiscuous, and is eventually characterized as completely insane. Given modern knowledge of psychology, it is almost certain Mary Adams had some mental imbalance, but I doubt this would have been known in her own time - in the end, all of her strange and monstrous behavior is credited to her words against the Independents, and it seems pretty clear the author wants the reader to believe that her political/religious views were the sole cause for her insanity and blasphemy.