the air. Usually, he wore the garb of laymen, but it was said, that, on more than one occasion, he had impudently attired himself as a minister of the gospel. At all events, in one dress or other, he frequently appeared to the clergy, and tried to coax them over to his side.85 In that, of course, he failed; but, out of the ministry, few, indeed, could withstand him. He could raise storms and tempests; he could work, not only on the mind, but also on the organs of the body, making men hear and see

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.

63 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.

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."

85 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 discourVOL. II. 2 B

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whatever he chose.86 Of his victims, some he prompted to commit suicide,87 others to commit murder. Still, formidable as he was, no Christian was considered to have attained to a full religious experience, unless he had literally seen him, talked to him, and fought with him." The clergy were constantly preaching about him, and preparing their audience for an interview with their great enemy. The consequence was, that the people be

agement of that kind, receiving manfully the first onset chiefly of Satan's fury, as knowing their ceding to him will make him more cruel." Fergus son'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.

86 "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.

87 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.

se "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.

"One Mr. Thomas Hogg, a very popular presbyterian preacher in the ked a person of great learning, in a religious conference, whether had seen the Devil? It was answered him, 'That he had never n any visible appearance.' 'Then, I assure you,' saith Mr. Hogg, can never be happy till you see him in that manner; that is, have both a personal converse and combat with him.'" Scotch in Eloquence, pp. 28, 29.

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came almost crazed with fear. Whenever the preacher mentioned Satan, the consternation was so great, that the church resounded with sighs and groans. The aspect of a Scotch congregation in those days, is, indeed, hard for us to conceive. Not unfrequently the people, benumbed and stupefied with awe, were rooted to their seats by the horrible fascination exercised over them, which compelled them to listen, though they are described as gasping for breath, and with their hair standing on end." Such impressions were not easily effaced. Images of terror were left on the mind, and followed the people to their homes, and in their daily pursuits. They believed that the devil was always, and literally, at hand; that he was haunting them, speaking to them, and tempting them. There was no escape. Go where they would, he was there. A sudden noise, nay, even the sight of an inanimate object, such as a stone, was capable of reviving the association of ideas, and of bringing back to the memory the language uttered from the pulpit."2

Nor is it strange that this should be the case. All over Scotland, the sermons were, with hardly an excep

50 "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. 91 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.

2 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.'"

tion, formed after the same plan, and directed to the same end. To excite fear, was the paramount object." The clergy boasted, that it was their special mission to thunder out the wrath and curses of the Lord.94 In their eyes, the Deity was not a beneficent being, but a cruel and remorseless tyrant. They declared that all mankind, a very small portion only excepted, were doomed to eternal misery. And when they came to describe what that misery was, their dark imaginations revelled and gloated at the prospect. In the pictures which they drew, they reproduced and heightened the barbarous imagery of a barbarous age. They delighted in telling their hearers, that they would be roasted in great fires, and hung up by their tongues." They were to be lashed

93 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 denunciatious. 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 Ålexander 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.

94 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.

95 The clergy were not ashamed to propagate a story of a boy who, in a

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with scorpions, and see their companions writhing and howling around them. They were to be thrown into boiling oil and scalding lead." A river of fire and brimstone, broader than the earth, was prepared for them;98 in that, they were to be immersed; their bones, their lungs, and their liver, were to boil, but never be consumed.99 At the same time, worms were to prey upon them; and while these were gnawing at their bodies, they were to be surrounded by devils, mocking and making pastime of their pains.100 Such were the first stages of suffering, and they were only the first. For the torture, besides being unceasing, was to become gradually worse. So refined was the cruelty, that one hell was succeeded by another; and, lest the sufferer should grow callous, he was, after a time, moved on, that he might undergo fresh agonies in fresh places, provision being made that the torment should not pall on the sense, but should be varied in its character, as well as eternal in its duration.101

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."

96 "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.

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

98 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.

"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.

100 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.

101 This fundamental doctrine of the Scotch divines is tersely summed up