and, as Lemnius adds in book 4, chapter 21, if they are inclined to solitude, superstitious, strict in religious observance or very devout. You will seldom find a merchant, soldier, innkeeper, procurer, host or usurer so troubled in mind: their consciences are like supple leather that stretches, and they are seldom disturbed or troubled in this way. Young and middle-aged people are wilder and less apprehensive; those affected are mostly older people, especially the timid and religiously inclined.

Pieter van Foreest, in his Observations, book 10, chapter 12, On Diseases of the Brain, gives a terrible example of a minister who developed this affliction through rigorous fasting during Lent and excessive meditation. Eventually he fell into despair, thought he saw devils in his room and believed that he could not be saved. He said he smelled nothing but fire and sulphur, that he was already in hell, and kept asking the others whether they smelled it too.

I told him he was melancholy, but he laughed me to scorn and replied that he saw devils and really talked with them. He would spit in my face and ask whether I did not smell sulphur. Yet at last he was cured by Foreest.

I find another such story in Platter’s Observations, book 1. A poor man had committed some grave offence and would eat nothing for fourteen days. He eventually fell into despair; the theologians attending him could not relieve him, and in that condition he died.

Continual meditation on God’s judgements troubles many. Many fall into despair through fear and apprehension of the coming judgement, says Guaineri, chapter 5, treatise 15. David himself complains that God’s judgements terrified his soul: Psalm 119, part 16, verse 8: My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgements.

Whenever I think of that day, says Jerome, my whole body trembles: I tremble whenever I think of it.

The terrible contemplation of hellfire and eternal punishment greatly torments a poor sinful soul. What is a thousand years beside eternity? Where there is sorrow, where there is weeping, where there is everlasting pain. Death without death, an end without end. We can scarcely endure an accidentally burned finger: the pain is so grievous that an hour is more than we can bear, a night intolerable. What, then, must that indescribable fire be, burning for ever, for countless, infinite millions of years, through every age, for eternity? O eternity!

Eternity is that word, That word that hurls the thunderbolt, More threatening than thunder, Than the crashes of the heavens. Eternity is that word, —— without end or beginning, and so on.

No torments terrify That end after a span of years; Eternity, eternity Wrings and burns the heart. It increases punishments day by day And multiplies the flames a hundredfold, and so on.

This meditation terrifies these poor distressed souls, especially if melancholy has predisposed their bodies and they are religiously inclined, with sensitive consciences. Every small thing frightens them—even an unreflective reading of Scripture itself, and misinterpretation of particular passages, such as these:

Many are called, but few are chosen. Not everyone who says Lord. Do not fear, little flock. Let anyone who stands take care lest he fall. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. That night two will be in one bed: one taken, the other left. Narrow is the way that leads to heaven, and few enter it.

The parable of the seed and the sower: some fell on barren ground; some was choked. Those whom he has predestined, he has chosen. He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. It depends neither on the one who wills nor on the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy.

These and similar passages terrify many souls. Misconceived ideas of election, predestination and reprobation distress many people, together with much foolish presumption, curiosity, needless speculation, contemplation and anxiety. They torment and bewilder themselves over questions of grace, free will, perseverance and God’s secrets. They insist on knowing more than God has revealed in his word, more than human capacity—or human ignorance—can grasp; and then comes their relentless inquiry into what has been revealed:

mysteries, ceremonies, Sabbath observance, laws, duties and the like, with many similar matters debated by casuists and raised by scholastic theologians. Many misunderstand and misconstrue them, applying them wrongly to themselves, to their own undoing, and so fall into this abyss. They doubt their election: how can they know it, and by what signs? Through these subtle questions, says Luther, they torture and crucify themselves until they are almost mad. All they gain is to open a breach through which the devil can carry them to hell by means of despair;

but the greatest harm of all comes from those thundering ministers, a very frequent cause of this affliction. They do more harm in the Church, says Erasmus, than those who flatter. There is great danger on both sides: one lulls people to sleep in worldly complacency; the other drives them to despair.

Saint Bernard, however, wisely advises that we should not handle one without the other, or speak of judgement without mercy: one alone brings despair, the other complacency.

But these men are wholly devoted to judgement. Harsh by disposition, they offer no mercy, no salvation, no balm for afflicted souls. They can speak of nothing but reprobation, hellfire and damnation, loading people with burdens hard to bear, as in Luke 11:46, while refusing to touch those burdens with a finger themselves.

Our Papists commonly terrify people’s souls with purgatory, tales, visions and apparitions, dismaying even the noblest spirits, and require charity, generosity, meekness, love and patience from others, as Brenz observes, while breathing nothing but lust, envy and greed themselves.

They teach others to fast, give alms, do penance and torment their minds with superstitious observances—bread and water, hair shirts, whips and the like—while enjoying every delicacy the world can offer and lying on feather beds with courtesans in their arms. Alas, how much we suffer for Christ! as one of them said. What cruel tyranny this is, to domineer over people’s souls and terrify them!