[48] Sir Robert Walpole’s Excise Scheme made a wonderful noise in this Nation; but we may safely suppose, that if flagellations, like those above-mentioned, had been made part of the project, the noise would have been still greater. A fact, supplied by the Abbé Boileau himself, will be introduced in a subsequent Chapter, from which it appears, that Theodoret was not unacquainted with the practice of self-flagellation. The silence of that Author on the subject, in certain parts of his writings, only shews that that practice was not yet become, in his time, that settled method of atoning for past sins, which has been since adopted, and that a scourge had not yet been made a necessary part of the furniture of Devotees. [49] _Insidet dorso ejus festivus Gladiator, & latera calcibus, cervicem flagello verberans._ [50] Instances of flagellations bestowed by the Devil, occur frequently in the Books in which the Lives of Saints, either antient or modern, are recited; whether it was that those Saints, after having dreamed of such flagellations, fancied they had in reality received them, and spoke accordingly, or that they had some scheme in view, when they made complaints of that kind. St. Francis of _Assisa_, for instance, as is related in the Golden Legend, received a dreadful flagellation from the Devil the very first night he was in Rome, which caused him to leave that place without delay. And, to say the truth, it is not at all unlikely that, having met there with a colder reception than he judged his sanctity intitled him to, he thought proper to decamp immediately, and when he returned to his Convent, told the above story to his Monks. Among those Saints who received flagellations, or visits in general, from the Devil, St. Anthony is however the most celebrated. At sometimes the Devil, as is mentioned above, flagellated him vigorously; and at others, employed temptations of quite a different kind, in order to seduce him: thus, he assumed in one instance, the shape of a beautiful young Woman, who made all imaginable advances to the Saint: but, happily, all was to no purpose. The celebrated Engraver _Calot_ has made one of those visits of the Devil to St. Anthony, the subject of one of his Prints, which is inscribed _The Temptation of St. Anthony_; and he has represented in it such a numerous swarm of Devils of all sizes, pouring at once into the Saint’s cavern, and exhibiting so surprising a variety of faces, postures, and ludicrous weapons, such as squirts, bellows, and the like, that this Print may very well be mentioned as an instance, among others, of the great fertility of the imagination of that Engraver.