For if we love God, we shall love our neighbour and carry out the duties required of us, to which we are exhorted in 1 Corinthians 13:4–5, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3 and Romans 12. We shall not envy, swell with pride, boast, show contempt, think evil or give way to anger, but bear all things; strive to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Bear with one another, forgive one another, clothe the naked, visit the sick and perform all those works of mercy that Clement of Alexandria calls the fulfilment and extension of love and friendship—the reach and completion of love. And do this neither from fear nor for worldly considerations, but with reference to God, for the love of God himself.

This is what we shall do if we truly love; yet we fall short in both respects, loving neither God nor our neighbour as we should. Our love in spiritual things is too deficient, and in worldly things too excessive: there is discord in both. We love the world too much, God too little, and our neighbour either not at all or for our own ends.

The crowd judges friendships by their usefulness.

Our chief concern is our own advantage. What we do is prompted by fear of worldly punishment, by vanity, by human praise, by fashion and by such secondary motives, rather than done for God’s sake. We neither know God rightly nor seek, love or worship him as we should. Through these failings we entangle ourselves in a multitude of errors and stray from this true love and worship of God, bringing unspeakable miseries upon ourselves. Rushing into both extremes, we become fools and madmen, deprived of reason, as I shall now go on to show you.

Those affected are almost innumerable, scattered far and near across the face of the earth, and have been so in every previous age, from the beginning of the world until now, among all ranks and conditions of people. For the sake of method, I shall arrange them in two divisions corresponding to the two extremes of excess and deficiency: impiety and superstition, idolatry and atheism.

This does not mean that worship or love of God can be excessive: that is impossible. We cannot love God too much; nor can we fulfil our duty as we ought, as the Papists claim, or attain any perfection in this life, much less do more than duty requires. When we have done everything, we are unprofitable servants. The excess lies in pursuing something else, being zealous without knowledge and too anxious about what is unnecessary, occupying ourselves with irrelevant, needless, idle and empty ceremonies to please the people, as the Jews did with sacrifices, oblations, offerings, incense, new moons, festivals and so on. As Isaiah reproaches them, 1:12: Who required this of you?

We think too highly of our own worth: we suppose that we can satisfy the Law and do more than is required of us, by observing the evangelical counsels and performing such works beyond duty, earning merit for others. Bellarmine, Gregory of Valencia and all their Jesuits and champions defend these claims: even if God judged them strictly, some of their Franciscans and Dominicans are supposedly so pure that nothing could be held against them.

Others among us consider ourselves especially dear to God, more godly and sanctified than other people, made of better stuff and endowed with greater gifts. Like that proud Pharisee, we despise others in comparison with ourselves: we are better Christians, more learned, select spirits, inspired; we know more, receive special revelations and perceive God’s secrets. On this presumption we often say and do things that ought neither to be said nor done.

Among these are all superstitious idolaters, pagans, Muslims, Jews, heretics, enthusiasts, diviners, prophets, sectarians and schismatics. Zanchi divides such unbelievers into four main groups; but I shall persevere with my own intended method. All these, together with many other people given to excessive religious curiosity—monks, hermits and so on—may be placed at this extreme, fighting under the banner of superstition alongside the ignorant simpletons and countless swarms of people they lead astray.

At the opposite extreme, that of deficiency, march those impious pleasure-seekers, libertines, atheists, hypocrites and unbelievers: worldly, complacent, unrepentant, ungrateful and carnally minded people who attribute everything to natural causes and acknowledge no supreme power; whose consciences are seared, or who live with depraved judgement; or those despairing people who distrust his mercy too much. There are many subdivisions among them and different degrees of madness and folly, some greater than others, as will be shown under the Symptoms. Yet all are miserably astray, perplexed, deluded and beside themselves over religion.

For, as Zanchi rightly distinguished, and everyone knows, religion is of two kinds, true or false. False religion is the empty superstition of idolaters, such as the ancient Greeks and Romans, present-day Muslims and so on. Cicero could call it a groundless fear of the gods; or, as Zanchi defines it, where false gods are worshipped, or God is worshipped with false worship—when the gods are false, or God is falsely worshipped.

It is a wretched plague, a torture of the soul, sheer madness: religious insanity, as van Meteren calls it; or a mad error, as Seneca says, a frantic error; or, in Augustine’s words, a raging disease of the mind, a furious disease of the soul; the maddest of all madnesses, the very essence of madness. For a superstitious person can never be at peace.

It belongs to humanity alone: to humanity alone belong pride, greed and superstition, says Pliny, book 7, chapter 1; and even afterwards he rages with anxiety about the future. It wrings his soul over both the present and what is to come. Humanity bears the greatest misery: perpetual servitude, slavery, fear springing from fear, a heavy yoke, the seal of damnation, an intolerable burden. Superstitious people are continually afraid, suspicious and tormented by omens, portents, false tales, dreams, idle and empty works, and fruitless labours. As Botero observes, they are tossed about by the anxiety of an uncertain mind: enemies of God and of themselves.