Although this decree, being eternal and immutable, could not be altered by anything that the individual could do, as he was forever blessed or damned irrespective of his character or conduct, yet, since the wills of those chosen as the elect were in harmony with God's will, by careful observation of one's own actions it might be possible to lift the veil and discover whether one were, perhaps, of the elect or not. Hence all those torturing self-examinations and searchings of heart, which fill so much of the early Puritan letters and diaries. Such doctrine, though apparently stripping God of every shred of what we consider moral character, would be of profound influence upon that of those who truly believed it; and the Puritan believed with extraordinary tenacity. His imagination was wholly concentrated on questions of religion, and that religion was a “narrow Hebraism” which “kept open its windows toward Jerusalem, but closed every other avenue to the soul.”[180] His creed must not be considered as merely a series of logical deductions from the Bible, which appealed to him solely through the intellect. Heaven and hell were as vividly visualized by him as external facts.[181] In the early seventeenth century this doctrine was a living thing, the word-pictures not having lost their reality by long familiarity and much repetition. Footnote 180: J. F. Jameson, Introduction to _Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence_ (New York, 1910), p. 16. Footnote 181: _Cf._ S. N. Patten, _The Development of English Thought_ (New York, 1904), p. 121; and B. Wendell, _The Temper of the 17th Century in English Literature_ (New York, 1904), p. 227. If it be asked how people who believed that no efforts that they could make would save them from everlasting damnation, if not of the elect, could possibly face life with any cheerfulness, the answer is that the Puritans considered themselves as elected. Now and then a poor wretch did torture himself with the belief that he was damned, and occasional qualms were experienced by the staunchest; but, on the whole, the terrible doctrine seems to have lost its greatest sting for the individual in the comfortable assurance that, although the bulk of his neighbors were going to hell, he himself was one of the everlasting Saints. Such belief naturally fostered, too, that smugness of self-assurance that has always been characteristic of Puritan reformers in all ages, and also a hard intolerance. Those who did not believe as the Puritans believed were not of the elect, and so were condemned by God to eternal torment. No act of intolerance shown toward them by the Puritans could thus compare with the almost unthinkable intolerance displayed toward them by the author of their being. To show toleration or mercy toward such was, logically, to exalt humanity above the deity.