[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."'
Nor is it strange that this should be the case. All over Scotland, the sermons were, with hardly an exception, formed after the same plan, and directed to the same end. To excite fear, was the paramount object.[502] The clergy boasted, that it was their special mission to thunder out the wrath and curses of the Lord.[503] 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.[504] They were to be lashed with scorpions, and see their companions writhing and howling around them.[505] They were to be thrown into boiling oil and scalding lead.[506] A river of fire and brimstone, broader than the earth, was prepared for them;[507] in that, they were to be immersed; their bones, their lungs, and their liver, were to boil, but never be consumed.[508] 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.[509] 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.[510]