History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3

489

In 1684, with ‘black cloaths, and a blue band, and white handcuffs.’ Sinclair's Satan's Invisible World Discovered, p. 8.

490

‘He observed one of the black man's feet to be cloven, and that the black man's apparel was black, and that he had a blue band about his neck, and white hand-cuffs, and that he had hoggers upon his legs without shoes; and that the black man's voice was hollow and ghastly.’ Satan's Invisible World Discovered, p. 9. ‘The devil appeared in the shape of a black man,’ p. 31. See also Brand's Description of Orkney, p. 126: ‘all in black.’

491

‘The acquired knowledge of the Devill is great, hee being an advancing student, and still learning now above five thousand yeares.’ Rutherford's Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himselfe, p. 204. ‘He knowes very well, partly by the quicknesse of his nature, and partly by long experience, being now very neere six thousand yeeres old.’ Cowper's Heaven Opened, p. 219. ‘Hee, being compared with vs, hath many vantages; as that he is more subtill in nature, being of greater experience, and more ancient, being now almost sixe thousand yeeres old.’ Ibid. p. 403. ‘The diuell here is both diligent and cunning, and (now almost of sixe thousand yeeres) of great experience.’ Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 142. ‘Satan, such an ingenious and experimented spirit.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. i. p. 67. ‘His great sleight and cunning.’ Ibid. p. 110. Other eulogies of his skill may be seen in Fergusson's Exposition of the Epistles of Paul, p. 475; and in Fleming's Fulfilling of the Scripture, p. 45. A ‘minister,’ whose name is not mentioned, states that he is ‘of an excellent substance, of great natural parts, long experience, and deep understanding.’ Sinclair's Satan's Invisible World Discovered, p. 78.

492

In Professor Sinclair's work (Satan's Invisible World Discovered, p. 141), we find, in 1684, ‘an evident instance, that the devil can transport the bodies of men and women through the air. It is true, he did not carry her far off, but not for want of skill and power.’ Late in the seventeenth century, it was generally believed that one of Satan's accomplices was literally ‘strangled in his chair by the devil, least he should make a confession to the detriment of the service.’ Crawfurd's History of the Shire of Renfrew, part iii. p. 319.

493

See the account of a young preacher being deceived in this way, in Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i. pp. 103, 104. The Rev. Robert Blair detected the cheat, and ‘with ane awful seriousness appearing in his countenance, began to tell the youth his hazard, and that the man whom he took for a Minister was the Divel, who had trepanned him, and brought him into his net; advised him to be earnest with God in prayer, and likewise not to give way to dispair, for ther was yet hope.’ The preacher had, on this occasion, been so far duped as to give the devil ‘a written promise’ to do whatever he was requested. As soon as the Rev. Mr. Blair ascertained this fact, he took the young man before the Presbytery, and narrated the circumstance to the members. ‘They were all strangely affected with it, and resolved unanimously to dispatch the Presbitry business presently, and to stay all night in town, and on the morrow to meet for prayer in one of the most retired churches of the Presbitry, acquainting none with their business, (but) taking the youth alongst with them, whom they keeped alwise close by them. Which was done, and after the Ministers had prayed all of them round, except Mr. Blair, who prayed last, in time of his prayer there came a violent rushing of wind upon the church, so great that they thought the church should have fallen down about their ears, and with that the youth's paper and covenant’ (i. e. the covenant which he had signed at the request of Satan) ‘droops down from the roof of the church among the Ministers.’

494

‘The devil strikes at them, that in them he may strike at the whole congregation.’ Boston's Sermons, p. 186. Fleming (Fulfilling of the Scripture, p. 379) gives an account of his appearing to one of the Scotch clergy. Compare Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iv. p. 110. In 1624, Bruce writes, ‘I heard his voice as vively as ever I heard any thing, not being sleeping, but waking.’ Life of Bruce, p. 8, prefixed to Bruce's Sermons. The only remedy was immediate resistance. ‘It is the duty of called ministers to go on with courage in the work of the Lord, notwithstanding of any discouragement of that kind, receiving manfully the first onset chiefly of Satan's fury, as knowing their ceding to him will make him more cruel.’ Fergusson's Exposition of the Epistles of Paul, p. 74. In the seventeenth century, the Scotch clergy often complimented each other on having baffled him, and thereby put him in a passion. Thus, in 1626, Dickson writes to Boyd: ‘The devil is mad against you, he fears his kingdom.’ Life of Robert Boyd, in Wodrow's Collections upon the Lives of Ministers, vol. ii. part i. p. 238. See also pp. 165, 236.

495

‘He can delude ears, eyes, &c., either by misrepresenting external objects, or by inward disturbing of the faculties and organes, whereby men and women may, and do often, apprehend that they hear, see, &c. such and such things, which, indeed, they do not.’ Durham's Commentarie upon the Book of the Revelation, p. 128. ‘Raise tempests.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. i. p. 122. ‘His power and might, whereby through God's permission, he doth raise up storms, commove the elements, destroy cattle,’ &c. Fergusson's Exposition of the Epistles of Paul, p. 264. ‘Hee can work curiously and strongly on the walls of bodily organs, on the shop that the understanding soule lodgeth in, and on the necessary tooles, organs, and powers of fancie, imagination, memory, humours, senses, spirits, bloud,’ &c. Rutherford's Christ Dying, p. 212. Semple, giving notice of his intention to administer the sacrament, told the congregation ‘that the Devil would be so envious about the good work they were to go about, that he was afraid he would be permitted to raise a storm in the air with a speat of rain, to raise the waters, designing to drown some of them; but it will not be within the compass of his power to drown any of you, no not so much as a dog.’ Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr. John Semple, Minister of the Gospel, pp. 168, 169, in vol. i. of Walker's Biographia Presbyteriana.

496

Sinclair's Satan's Invisible World Discovered, p. 137. Memoirs of the Life and Experiences of Marion Laird of Greenock, with a Preface by the Rev. Mr. Cock, pp. 43, 44, 45, 84, 85, 172, 222, 223.

497

‘I shall next show how the murderer Satan visibly appeared to a wicked man, stirred him up to stab me, and how mercifully I was delivered therefrom.’ The Autobiography of Mr. Robert Blair, Minister of St. Andrews, p. 65. See also Fleming's Fulfilling of the Scripture, pp. 379, 380.

498

‘One Mr. Thomas Hogg, a very popular presbyterian preacher in the North, asked a person of great learning, in a religious conference, whether or not he had seen the Devil? It was answered him, “That he had never seen him in any visible appearance.” “Then, I assure you,” saith Mr. Hogg, “that you can never be happy till you see him in that manner; that is, until you have both a personal converse and combat with him.”’ Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, pp. 28, 29.

499

‘Ye go to the kirk, and when ye hear the devil or hell named in the preaching, ye sigh and make a noise.’ The Last and Heavenly Speeches of John, Viscount Kenmure, in Select Biographies, vol. i. p. 405.

500

Andrew Gray, who died in 1656, used such language, ‘that his contemporary, the foresaid Mr. Durham, observed, That many times he caused the very hairs of their head to stand up.’ Howie's Biographia Scoticana, p. 217. James Hutcheson boasted of this sort of success. ‘As he expressed it, “I was not a quarter of ane hour in upon it, till I sau a dozen of them all gasping before me.” He preached with great freedome all day, and fourteen or twenty dated their conversion from that sermon.’ Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i. p. 131. When Dickson preached, ‘many were so choaked and taken by the heart, that through terrour, the spirit in such a measure convincing them of sin, in hearing of the word they have been made to fall over, and thus carried out of the church.’ Fleming's Fulfilling of the Scripture, p. 347. There was hardly any kind of resource which these men disdained. Alexander Dunlop ‘entered into the ministry at Paislay, about the year 1643 or 1644.’ … ‘He used in the pulpit, to have a kind of a groan at the end of some sentences. Mr. Peebles called it a holy groan.’ Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iii. pp. 16, 21.

501

A schoolmaster, recording his religious experiences (Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i. p. 246), says: ‘If any thing had given a knock, I would start and shiver, the seeing of a dogg made me affrayed, the seeing of a stone in the feild made me affrayed, and as I thought a voice in my head saying, “It's Satan.”’

502

Only those who are extensively read in the theological literature of that time, can form an idea of this, its almost universal tendency. During about a hundred and twenty years, the Scotch pulpits resounded with the most frightful denunciations. The sins of the people, the vengeance of God, the activity of Satan, and the pains of hell, were the leading topics. In this world, calamities of every kind were announced as inevitable; they were immediately at hand; that generation, perhaps that year, should not pass away without the worst evils which could be conceived, falling on the whole country. I will merely quote the opening of a sermon which is now lying before me, and which was preached, in 1682, by no less a man than Alexander Peden. ‘There is three or four things that I have to tell you this day; and the first is this, A bloody sword, a bloody sword, a bloody sword, for thee, O Scotland, that shall reach the most part of you to the very heart. And the second is this, Many a mile shall ye travel in thee, O Scotland! and shall see nothing but waste places. The third is this, The most fertile places in thee, O Scotland! shall be waste as the mountain tops. And fourthly, The women with child in thee, O Scotland! shall be dashed in pieces. And fifthly, There hath been many conventicles in thee, O Scotland! but ere it be long, God shall have a conventicle in thee, that shall make thee Scotland tremble. Many a preaching hath God wared on thee, O Scotland! but ere it be long God's judgments shall be as frequent in Scotland as these precious meetings, wherein he sent forth his faithful servants to give faithful warning in his name of their hazard in apostatizing from God, and in breaking all his noble vows. God sent out a Welsh, a Cameron, a Cargill, and a Semple to preach to thee; but ere long God shall preach to thee by a bloody sword.’ Sermons by Eminent Divines, pp. 47, 48.

503

To ‘thunder out the Lord's wrath and curse.’ Durham's Commentarie upon the Book of the Revelation, p. 191. ‘It is the duty of Ministers to preach judgments.’ Hutcheson's Exposition on the Minor Prophets, vol. i. p. 93. ‘If ministers when they threaten be not the more serious and fervent, the most terrible threatening will but little affect the most part of hearers.’ Fergusson's Exposition of the Epistles of Paul, p. 421.

504

The clergy were not ashamed to propagate a story of a boy who, in a trance, had been mysteriously conveyed to hell, and thence permitted to revisit the earth. His account, which is carefully preserved by the Rev. Robert Wodrow (Analecta, vol. i. p. 51) was, that ‘ther wer great fires and men roasted in them, and then cast into rivers of cold water, and then into boyling water; others hung up by the tongue.’

505

‘Scortched in hell-fire and hear the howling of their fellow-prisoners, and see the ugly devils, the bloody scorpions with which Satan lasheth miserable soules.’ Rutherford's Christ Dying, pp. 491, 492.

506

‘Boiling oil, burning brimstone, scalding lead.’ Sermons by Eminent Divines, p. 362.

507

‘A river of fire and brimstone broader than the earth.’ Rutherford's Religious Letters, p. 35. ‘See the poor wretches lying in bundles, boiling eternally in that stream of brimstone.’ Halyburton's Great Concern of Salvation, p. 53.

508

‘Tongue, lungs, and liver, bones and all, shall boil and fry in a torturing fire.’ Rutherford's Religious Letters, p. 17. ‘They will be universal torments, every part of the creature being tormented in that flame. When one is cast into a fiery furnace, the fire makes its way into the very bowels, and leaves no member untouched: what part then can have ease, when the damned swim in a lake of fire burning with brimstone?’ Boston's Human Nature in its Four-fold State, p. 458.

509

‘While wormes are sporting with thy bones, the devils shall make pastime of thy paines.’ Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 97. ‘They will have the society of devils in their torments, being shut up with them in hell.’ Boston's Human Nature in its Four-fold State, p. 442. ‘Their ears filled with frightful yellings of the infernal crew.’ Ibid. p. 460.

510

This fundamental doctrine of the Scotch divines is tersely summed up in Binning's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 130: ‘You shall go out of one hell into a worse; eternity is the measure of its continuance, and the degrees of itself are answerable to its duration.’ The author of these sermons died in 1653.

511

And, according to them, the barbarous cruelty was the natural result of His Omniscience. It is with pain, that I transcribe the following impious passage. ‘Consider, Who is the contriver of these torments. There have been some very exquisite torments contrived by the wit of men, the naming of which, if ye understood their nature, were enough to fill your hearts with horror; but all these fall as far short of the torments ye are to endure, as the wisdom of man falls short of that of God.’ … ‘Infinite wisdom has contrived that evil.’ The Great Concern of Salvation, by the late Reverend Mr. Thomas Halyburton, edit. Edinburgh, 1722, p. 154.

512

‘Men wonder what he could be doing all that time, if we may call it time which hath no beginning, and how he was employed.’ … ‘Remember that which a godly man answered some wanton curious wit, who, in scorn, demanded the same of him – “He was preparing hell for curious and proud fools,” said he.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. i. p. 194.

513

‘Hell hath inlarged itselfe.’ Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 146.

514

‘Eternal shriekings.’ Sermons by Eminent Divines, p. 394. ‘Screakings and howlings.’ Gray's Great and Precious Promises, p. 20. ‘O! the screechs and yels that will be in hell.’ Durham's Commentarie upon the Book of the Revelation, p. 654. ‘The horrible scrieches of them who are burnt in it.’ Cowper's Heaven Opened, p. 175.

515

‘When children and servants shall go, as it were, in sholes to the Pit, cursing their parents and their masters who brought them there. And parents and masters of families shall be in multitudes plunged headlong in endless destruction, because they have not only murdered their own souls, but also imbrued their hands in the blood of their children and servants. O how doleful will the reckoning be amongst them at that day! When the children and servants shall upbraid their parents and masters. “Now, now, we must to the Pit, and we have you to blame for it; your cursed example and lamentable negligence has brought us to the Pit.”’ … ‘And on the other hand, how will the shrieks of parents fill every ear? “I have damn'd myself, I have damn'd my children, I have damn'd my servants. While I fed their bodies, and clothed their backs, I have ruined their souls, and brought double damnation on myself.”’ Halyburton's Great Concern of Salvation, pp. 527, 528. See this further worked out in Boston's Human Nature in its Four-fold State, pp. 378, 379: ‘curses instead of salutations, and tearing of themselves, and raging against one another, instead of the wonted embraces.’

516

William Vetch, ‘preaching in the town of Jedburg to a great congregation, said, “There are two thousand of you here to day, but I am sure fourscore of you will not be saved;” upon which, three of his ignorant hearers being in despair, despatch'd themselves soon after.’ Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, p. 23. See also the life, or rather panegyric, of Vetch in Howie's Biographia Scoticana, where this circumstance is not denied, but, on the contrary, stated to be no ‘disparagement to him,’ p. 606. The frame of mind which the teachings of the clergy encouraged, and which provoked self-murder, is vividly depicted by Samuel Rutherford, the most popular of all the Scotch divines of the seventeenth century. ‘Oh! hee lieth down, and hell beddeth with him; hee sleepeth, and hell and hee dreame together; hee riseth, and hell goeth to the fields with him; hee goes to his garden, there is hell.’ … ‘The man goes to his table, O! hee dare not eat, hee hath no right to the creature; to eat is sin and hell; so hell is in every dish. To live is sinne, hee would faine chuse strangling; every act of breathing is sin and hell. Hee goes to church, there is a dog as great as a mountaine before his eye: Here be terrors.’ Rutherford's Christ Dying, 1647, 4to, pp. 41, 42. Now, listen to the confessions of two of the tortured victims of the doctrines enunciated by the clergy; victims who, after undergoing ineffable agony, were more than once, according to their own account, tempted to put an end to their lives. ‘The cloud lasted for two years and some months.’ … ‘The arrows of the Almighty did drink up my spirits; night and day his hand lay heavy upon me, so that even my bodily moisture was turned into the drought of summer. When I said sometimes that my couch would ease my complaint, I was filled with tossings to the dawning of the day.’ … ‘Amidst all my downcastings, I had the roaring lion to grapple with, who likes well to fish in muddy waters. He strongly suggested to me that I should not eat, because I had no right to food; or if I ventured to do it, the enemy assured me, that the wrath of God would go down with my morsel; and that I had forfeited a right to the divine favour, and, therefore, had nothing to do with any of God's creatures.’ … ‘However, so violent were the temptations of the strong enemy, that I frequently forgot to eat my bread, and durst not attempt it; and when, through the persuasion of my wife, I at any time did it, the enemy through the day did buffet me in a violent way, assuring me that the wrath of God had gone over with what I had taken.’ … ‘The enemy after all did so pursue me, that he violently suggested to my soul, that, some time or other, God would suddenly destroy me as with a thunderclap: which so filled my soul with fear and pain, that, every now and then, I looked about me, to receive the divine blow, still expecting it was a coming; yea, many a night I durst not sleep, lest I had awakened in everlasting flames.’ Stevenson's Rare Cordial, pp. 11–13. Another poor creature, after hearing one of Smiton's sermons, in 1740, says, ‘Now, I saw myself to be a condemned criminal; but I knew not the day of my execution. I thought that there was nothing between me and hell, but the brittle thread of natural life.’ … ‘And in this dreadful confusion, I durst not sleep, lest I had awakened in everlasting flames.’ … ‘And Satan violently assaulted me to take away my own life, seeing there was no mercy for me.’ … ‘Soon after this, I was again violently assaulted by the tempter to take away my own life; he presented to me a knife therewith to do it; no person being in the house but myself. The enemy pursued me so close, that I could not endure so much as to see the knife in my sight, but laid it away.’ … ‘One evening, as I was upon the street, Satan violently assaulted me to go into the sea and drown myself; it would be the easiest death. Such a fear of Satan then fell upon me, as made my joints to shake, so that it was much for me to walk home; and when I came to the door, I found nobody within; I was afraid to go into the house, lest Satan should get power over me.’ Memoirs of the Life and Experiences of Marion Laird of Greenock, pp. 13, 14, 19, 45, 223, 224.

517

Binning says, that ‘since the first rebellion’ (that is, the fall of Adam), ‘there is nothing to be seen but the terrible countenance of an angry God.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 254.

518

‘He will, as it were, lie in wait to take all advantages of sinners to undo them.’ Hutcheson's Exposition on the Minor Prophets, vol. i. p. 247.

519

‘His wrath rages against walls, and houses, and senselesse creatures more now then at that time’ (i. e. at the time when the Old Testament was written). ‘See what desolation he hath wrought in Ireland, what eating of horses, of infants, and of killed souldiers, hath beene in that land, and in Germany.’ Rutherford's Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, pp. 244, 245.

520

‘Albeit there were no earthly man to pursue Christ's enemies; yet avenging angels, or evil spirits shall be let forth upon them and their families to trouble them.’ Dickson's Explication of the First Fifty Psalms, p. 229.

521

‘God hath many wayes and meanes whereby to plague man, and reach his contentments.’ Hutcheson's Exposition on the Minor Prophets, vol. i. p. 286. ‘God hath variety of means whereby to plague men, and to bring upon them any affliction he intendeth against them; and particularly he hath several wayes whereby to bring on famine. He can arme all his creatures to cut off men's provision, one of them after another; he can make the change of aire, and small insects do that worke when he pleaseth.’ Ibid., vol. i. p. 422. The same divine, in another elaborate treatise, distinctly imputes to the Deity a sensation of pleasure in injuring even the innocent. ‘When God sends out a scourge, of sword, famine, or pestilence, suddenly to overthrow and cut people off, not only are the wicked reached thereby (which is here supposed), but even the innocent, that is such as are righteous and free of gross provocations; for, in any other sense, none are innocent, or free of sin, in this life. Yea, further, in trying of the innocent by these scourges, the Lord seems to act as one delighted with it, and little resenting the great extremities wherewith they are pressed.’ Hutcheson's Exposition of the Book of Job, 1669, folio, p. 123. Compare p. 359. ‘It pleaseth the Lord to exercise great variety in afflicting the children of men,’ &c. But, after all, mere extracts can give but a faint idea of the dark and malignant spirit which pervades these writings.

522

‘The present dearth and famine quhilk seases vpon many, quhairby God his heavie wrath is evidentlie perceaved to be kindlit against vs.’ Selections from the Minutes of the Synod of Fife, p. 98. ‘Smiting of the fruits of the ground.’ Hutcheson's Exposition on the Minor Prophets, vol. i. p. 277. ‘Makes fruits to wither.’ Ibid., vol. ii. p. 183. ‘Hee restraines the clouds, and bindeth up the wombe of heaven, in extreme drought.’ Rutherford's Christ Dying, p. 52. ‘Sometime hee maketh tho heauen aboue as brasse, and the earth beneath as iron; so that albeit men labour and sow, yet they receiue no increase: sometime againe hee giues in due season the first and latter raine, so that the earth renders abundance, but the Lord by blasting windes, or by the caterpillar, canker-worme and grasse-hopper doth consume them, who come out as exacters and officers sent from God to poind men in their goods.’ Cowper's Heaven Opened, p. 433.