History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3. Henry Buckley
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Название: History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3
Автор: Henry Buckley
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
isbn: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44495
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Little comfort, indeed, could men then gain from their religion. Not only the devil, as the author of all evil, but even He whom we recognise as the author of all good, was, in the eyes of the Scotch clergy, a cruel and vindictive being, moved with anger like themselves. They looked into their own hearts, and there they found the picture of their God. According to them, He was a God of terror, instead of a God of love.517 To Him they imputed the worst passions of their own peevish and irritable nature. They ascribed to Him, revenge, cunning, and a constant disposition to inflict pain. While they declared that nearly all mankind were sinners beyond the chance of redemption, and were, indeed, predestined to eternal ruin, they did not scruple to accuse the Deity of resorting to artifice against these unhappy victims; lying in wait for them, that He might catch them unawares.518 The Scotch clergy taught their hearers, that the Almighty was so sanguinary, and so prone to anger, that He raged even against walls and houses and senseless creatures, wreaking His fury more than ever, and scattering desolation on every side.519 Sooner than miss His fell and malignant purpose, He would, they said, let loose avenging angels, to fall upon men and upon their families.520 Independently of this resource, He had various ways whereby He could at once content Himself and plague His creatures, as was particularly shown in the devices which He employed to bring famine on a people.521 When a country was starving, it was because God, in His anger, had smitten the soil, had stopped the clouds from yielding their moisture, and thus made the fruits of the earth to wither.522 All the intolerable sufferings caused by a want of food, the slow deaths, the agony, the general misery, the crimes which that misery produced, the anguish of the mother as she saw her children wasting away and could give them no bread, all this was His act, and the work of His hands.523 In His anger, He would sometimes injure the crops by making the spring so backward, and the weather so cold and rainy, as to insure a deficiency in the coming harvest.524 Or else, he would deceive men, by sending them a favourable season, and, after letting them toil and sweat in the hope of an abundant supply, He would, at the last moment, suddenly step in, and destroy the corn just as it was fit to be reaped.525 For, the God of the Scotch Kirk was a God who tantalized His creatures as well as punished them; and when He was provoked, He would first allure men by encouraging their expectations, in order that their subsequent misery might be more poignant.526
Under the influence of this horrible creed, and from the unbounded sway exercised by the clergy who advocated it, the Scotch mind was thrown into such a state, that, during the seventeenth, and part of the eighteenth, century, some of the noblest feelings of which our nature is capable, the feelings of hope, of love, and of gratitude, were set aside, and were replaced by the dictates of a servile and ignominous fear. The physical sufferings to which the human frame is liable, nay, even the very accidents to which we are casually exposed, were believed to proceed, not from our ignorance, nor from our carelessness, but from the rage of the Deity. If a fire chanced to break out in Edinburgh, the greatest alarm was excited, because it was the voice of God crying out against a luxurious and dissolute city.527 If a boil or a sore appeared on your body, that, too, was a divine punishment, and it was more than doubtful whether it might lawfully be cured.528 The small-pox, being one of the most fatal as well as one of the most loathsome of all diseases, was especially sent by God; and, on that account, the remedy of inoculation was scouted as a profane attempt to frustrate His intentions.529 Other disorders, which, though less terrible, were very painful, proceeded from the same source, and all owed their origin to the anger of the Almighty.530 In every thing, His power was displayed, not by increasing the happiness of men, nor by adding to their comforts, but by hurting and vexing them in all possible ways. His hand, always raised against the people, would sometimes deprive them of wine by causing the vintage to fail;531 sometimes, would destroy their cattle in a storm;532 and sometimes, would even make dogs bite their legs when they least expected it.533 Sometimes, He would display His wrath by making the weather excessively dry;534 sometimes, by making it equally wet.535 He was always punishing; always busy in increasing the general suffering, or, to use the language of the time, making the creature smart under the rod.536 Every fresh war was the result of His special interference; it was not caused by the meddling folly or insensate ambition of statesmen, but it was the immediate work of the Deity, who was thus made responsible for all the devastations, the murders, and other crimes more horrible still, which war produces.537 In the intervals of peace, which, at that period, were very rare, He had other means of vexing mankind. The shock of an earthquake was a mark of His displeasure;538 a comet was a sign of coming tribulation;539 and when an eclipse appeared, the panic was so universal, that persons of all ranks hastened to church to deprecate His wrath.540 What they heard there, would increase their fear, instead of allaying it. For the clergy taught their hearers, that even so ordinary an event as thunder, was meant to excite awe, and was sent for the purpose of showing to men with how terrible a master they had to deal.541 Not to tremble at thunder, was, therefore, a mark of impiety; and, in this respect, man was unfavourably contrasted with the lower animals, since they were invariably moved by this symptom of divine power.542
These visitations, eclipses, comets, earthquakes, thunder, famine, pestilence, war, disease, blights in the air, failures in the crops, cold winters, dry summers, these, and the like, were, in the opinion of the Scotch divines, outbreaks of the anger of the Almighty against the sins of men; and that such outbreaks were incessant is not surprising, when we consider that, in the same age, and according to the same creed, the most innocent, and even praiseworthy, actions were deemed sinful, and worthy of chastisement. The opinions held on this subject are not only curious, but extremely instructive. Besides forming an important part of the history of the human mind, they supply decisive proof of the danger of allowing a single profession to exalt itself above all other professions. For, in Scotland, as elsewhere, directly the clergy succeeded in occupying a more than ordinary amount of public attention, they availed themselves of that circumstance to propagate those ascetic doctrines, which, while they strike at the root of human happiness, benefit no one except the class which advocates them. That class, indeed, can hardly fail to reap advantage from a policy, which, by increasing the apprehensions to which the ignorance and timidity of men make them too liable, does also increase their eagerness to fly for support to their spiritual advisers. And the greater the apprehension, the greater the eagerness. Of this, the Scotch clergy, who were perfect masters of their own art, were well aware. Under their influence, a system of morals was established, which, representing nearly every act as sinful, kept the people in perpetual dread, lest unwittingly they were committing some enormous offence, which would bring upon their heads a signal СКАЧАТЬ
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.’
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.’
‘He will, as it were, lie in wait to take all advantages of sinners to undo them.’
‘His wrath rages against walls, and houses, and senselesse creatures more now then at that time’ (
‘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.’
‘God hath many wayes and meanes whereby to plague man, and
‘The present dearth and famine quhilk seases vpon many, quhairby God his heavie wrath is evidentlie perceaved to be kindlit against vs.’
‘Under the late dearth this people suffered greatly, the poor were numerous, and many, especially about the town of Kilsyth, were at the point of starving; yet, as I frequently observed to them, I could not see any one turning to
‘Men sweat, till, sow much, and the sun and summer, and clouds, warme dewes and raines smile upon cornes and meddowes, yet God steppeth in betweene the mouth of the husbandman and the sickle, and blasteth all.’
‘When the Lord is provoked, he can not only send an affliction, but so order it, by faire appearances of a better lot, and heightening of the sinners expectation and desire, as may make it most sad.’
In 1696, there was a fire in Edinburgh; whereupon Moncrief, in his sermon next day, ‘told us, “That God's voice was crying to this city, and that he was come to the very ports, and was crying over the walls to us; that we should amend our ways, lest he should come to our city, and consume us in a terrible manner.” I cannot tell what this Dispensation of Providence wrought on me,’ &c.
The Rev. James Fraser had a boil, and afterwards a fever. ‘During this sickness he miraculously allayed the pain of my boil, and speedily, and that without means, cured it; for however I bought some things to prevent it, yet, looking on it as a punishment from God, I knew not if I could be free to take the rod out of his hand, and to counterwork him.’
It was not until late in the eighteenth century, that the Scotch clergy gave up this notion. At last, even they became influenced by the ridicule to which their superstition exposed them, and which produced more effect than any argument could have done. The doctrines, however, which they and their predecessors had long inculcated, had so corrupted the popular mind, that instances will, I believe, be found even in the nineteenth century, of the Scotch deeming precautions against small-pox to be criminal, or, as they called it, flying in the face of Providence. The latest evidence I can at this moment put my hand on, is in a volume published in 1797. It is stated by the Rev. John Paterson, that, in the parish of Auldearn, in the county of Nairn, ‘Very few have fallen a sacrifice to the small-pox, though the people are in general averse to inoculation, from the general gloominess of their faith, which teaches them, that all diseases which afflict the human frame are instances of the Divine interposition, for the punishment of sin; any interference, therefore, on their part, they deem an usurpation of the prerogative of the Almighty.’
The Rev. John Welsh, when suffering from a painful disorder, and also from other troubles, writes: ‘My douleurs ar impossible to expresse.’ … ‘It is the Lord's indignation.’ See his letter, in
In January 1653, ‘This tyme, and mony monethis befoir, thair wes great skairshtie of wynes. In this also appered Godis justice toward this natioun for abusing of that blissing many yeiris befoir.’
This idea was so deeply rooted, that we actually find a public fast and humiliation ordered, on account of ‘this present uncouth storme of frost and snaw, quhilk hes continewit sa lang that the bestiall ar dieing thik fauld.’
‘There was a dog bit my leg most desperately. I no sooner received this, but I saw the hand of God in it.’
‘The evident documentis of Goddis wrath aganes the land, be the extraordinarie drouth.’
‘The hynous synnes of the land produced much takines of Godis wraith; namelie, in this spring tyme, for all Februar and a great pairt of Marche wer full of havie weittis.’
‘War is one of the sharp scourges whereby God punisheth wicked nations; and it cometh upon a people, not accidentally, but
‘Earthquakes, whereby God, when he is angry, overthrows and overturns very mountains.’
‘Whatever natural causes may be adduced for those alarming appearances, the system of comets is yet so uncertain, and they have so frequently preceded desolating strokes and turns in public affairs, that they seem designed in providence to stir up sinners to seriousness. Those preachers from heaven, when God's messengers were silenced, neither prince nor prelate could stop.’
‘People of all sortes rane to the churches to deprecat God's wrath.’
‘By it, he manifests his power and shows himself terrible.’
‘The stupidity and senselessnesse of man is greater than that of the brute creatures, which are all more moved with the thunder, then the hearts of men for the most part.’