[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.