apoleipesthai], be left in the lurch.’[266] But these were exceptions.  For the most part, among religious writers of every school of thought there was perfect acquiescence in a doctrine of intolerable never-ending torments, and no attempt whatever to find some mode of explanation by which to escape from the horrors of the conception.  Pearson and Bull, Lake and Kettlewell, Bentley, Fleetwood, Worthington,[267] Sherlock, Steele and Addison, Bunyan and Doddridge—­theologians and scholars, Broad Churchmen and Nonjurors, preachers and essayists, Churchmen and Nonconformists—­expressed themselves far more unreservedly than is at all usual in our age, even among those who, in theory, interpret Scripture in the same sense.  The hideous imagery depicted by the graphic pencil of Orcagna on the walls of the Campo Santo was reproduced no less vividly in the prose works of Bunyan, and with equal vigour, if not with equal force of imagination, by almost all who sought to kindle by impassioned pulpit appeals the conscience of their hearers.  Young’s poem of ‘The Last Day,’ in which panegyrics of Queen Anne are strangely blended with a powerful and awe-inspiring picture of the most extreme and hopeless misery, was highly approved, we are told, not only by general readers but by the Tory Ministry and their friends.[268] No doubt the practical and regulative faith which exercised a real influence upon life was of quite a different nature.  A tenet which cannot be in the slightest degree realised, except perhaps in special moments of excitement or depression, is rendered almost neutral and inefficacious by the conscience refusing to dwell upon it.  Belief in certain retribution compatible with human ideas of justice and goodness cannot fail in practical force.  A doctrine which does not comply with this condition, if not questioned, is simply evaded.  ‘And dost thou not,’ cried Adams, ’believe what thou hearest in Church?’ ‘Most part of it, Master,’ returned the host.  ’And dost not thou then tremble at the thought of eternal punishment?’ ’As for that, Master,’ said he, ’I never once thought about it; but what signifies talking about matters so far off?’[269] But if by the majority the doctrine in point was practically shelved, it was everywhere passively accepted as the only orthodox faith, and all who ventured to question it were at once set down as far advanced in ways of Deism or worse.

Nothing can be more confirmatory of what has been said than the writings of Tillotson himself.  His much-famed sermon ’On the Eternity of Hell Torments’ was preached in 1690 before Queen Mary, a circumstance which gave occasion to some of the bitterest of his ecclesiastical and political opponents to pretend that it was meant to assuage the horrors of remorse felt by the Queen for having unnaturally deserted her father.[270] His departure, however, from what was considered the orthodox belief was cautious in the extreme.  He acknowledged indeed that the words translated by eternal and ‘everlasting’