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MEMBER 2 SUBSECTION 1 Religious Melancholy from Deficiency: Those Affected—Epicures, Atheists, Hypocrites, the Worldly and Complacent, Carnalists, All Impious People, Impenitent Sinners, and Others
At the other extreme, where this love of God, knowledge, faith, fear, hope and so on are deficient, stand those who err in both doctrine and conduct: Sadducees, Herodians, Libertines, political schemers, every kind of atheist, Epicure and unbeliever who is complacent, has a corrupted understanding and does not fear God at all; also those who are excessively distrustful and fearful, as despairing people are.
Melanchthon calls that great sin of atheism or impiety monstrous melancholy—monstrous melancholy—or poisoned melancholy—poisoned melancholy. They are a band of Cyclopes or Giants warring against the gods, as the poets imagined, the opposite of Christians: they mock all religion and God himself, denying him and all his attributes—his wisdom, power, providence, mercy and judgment.
That there are ghosts and kingdoms underground, A boatman’s pole, and black frogs in the Styx’s pool, And thousands crossing the water in one boat— Not even boys believe, except those too young to pay for baths.
That there is either heaven or hell, resurrection of the dead, suffering, happiness or a world to come—let Apella the Jew believe it! For their part, they regard these as so many poets’ tales and bogeys, like Lucian’s Alexander. Moses, Muhammad and Christ are all the same in their creed.
When those bloody religious wars in France were fought so fiercely between Huguenots and Catholics, says Richard Dinothus, a band of merry companions laughed them all to scorn as superstitious fools for losing their lives and fortunes. They considered faith, religion and the immortality of the soul mere nonsense and delusion.
Such dissolute, atheistical spirits are all too prevalent in every kingdom. Let others dispute, pray, tremble and torment themselves if they will; these people fear neither God nor devil, but behave like the Cyclops in Euripides:
They fear none of the heavenly powers, But offer sacrifice to one, the greatest god, Their belly, and acknowledge no other gods.
They fear no god but one; They sacrifice to none But Belly, whom they adore, And know no gods besides.
Their god is their belly, as Paul says: holy mother Fullness!
—— whose only reason for living lies in their palate.
The idol they worship and adore is their mistress. Like the man in Plautus, I would rather this woman loved me than the gods did—they would rather have her favour than the gods’. Satan is their guide, the flesh their teacher, hypocrisy their counsellor, vanity their fellow soldier, their own will their law, ambition their captain, custom their rule; rashness, audacity and shamelessness are their art, trifles their business and damnation their end.
All their efforts go towards satisfying their lust and appetite, indulging their own inclinations and making merry for the present:
Eat, play, drink: after death there is no pleasure.
Human beings and beasts share the same condition: as one dies, so does the other, Ecclesiastes 3:19. The world goes round:
—— day is driven out by day, And new moons keep passing away:
In former times they ate and drank, married and buried, bought and sold, planted and built, and they will go on doing so.
Our life is short and wearisome; there is no remedy when a person dies, and no one has been known to return from the grave. We are born by chance, and afterwards shall be as though we had never existed; the breath in our nostrils is like smoke, and so on, and the spirit vanishes like thin air.
Come, let us enjoy the pleasures before us; let us eagerly use created things as in our youth, fill ourselves with costly wine and perfumes, let the flower of life not pass us by, and crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither, and so on.
Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and so on. Come, let us take our fill of love and find pleasure in embraces, for this is our portion, this is our lot.
Time slips away, and we grow old as the years pass silently.
As for the rest, heaven and hell, let children and superstitious fools believe it. These people are so far from trembling at the dreadful day of judgment that they wish with Nero, let it happen while I am alive—let it come in their own time. They are so complacent, so reckless, so excessive in lust and pleasure, so ready for revenge,
that, as Velleius Paterculus said of certain villains in Rome in his time, what they wickedly dared, they resolutely carried out. Whatever they undertake will be carried out with as much recklessness as the attempt was wicked.
Were it not for God’s restraining grace, fear and shame, earthly punishment and their own disgrace, they would disembowel one another like Lycaon, devour one another like cannibals, or destroy one another like Cadmus’s soldiers.
These are utterly impious and commonly avowed atheists, who use God’s name only to swear by it. Their behaviour expresses nothing but sensual indulgence or hypocrisy. Like Pentheus, they neglect and scorn the gods’ rites and religious ceremonies; they would be gods themselves, or at least companions of the gods:
Caesar shares dominion with Jove.
Apries, an Egyptian tyrant, rose, says Herodotus, to such a height of pride, arrogance and impiety, such contempt for God and humanity, that he thought his kingdom so secure that no god or human being could wrest it from him—neither God nor men could take it from him.
A certain blasphemous king of Spain, as Lansius reports, issued an edict forbidding any of his subjects for ten years to believe in, invoke or worship any god.