History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3. Henry Buckley

History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3

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

Скачать книгу