General symptoms: love of their own sect; hatred of all other religions; obstinacy and ill temper; readiness to undergo any danger or adversity for it; martyrs; blind zeal and blind obedience; fasts and vows; belief in incredible and impossible things. Particular symptoms among pagans, Muslims, Jews and Christians; and among Christians, heretics old and new, schismatics, scholastic theologians, prophets, enthusiasts and so on.

“Should Heraclitus weep, or Democritus laugh?” In attempting to speak of these symptoms, shall I laugh with Democritus or weep with Heraclitus? They are so ridiculous and absurd on the one hand, so lamentable and tragic on the other. A mixed scene presents itself, so full of errors and such a confused variety of objects that I do not know in what manner to portray it.

When I think of that Turkish paradise, those Jewish fables and priestly rites, those pagan superstitions, their sacrifices and ceremonies—making images out of every sort of material and worshipping them when they are finished—or see people kiss the pyx, creep to the cross and so on, I cannot help laughing with Democritus. But when I see them whip and torture themselves, torment their souls over toys and trifles, despairing and now ready to die, I cannot help weeping with Heraclitus.

When I see a priest say Mass with all those ape-like gestures and mutterings, or read of the customs of Jewish synagogues or Muslim mosques, I must laugh at their folly: “Could you keep from laughing, friends?” But when I see them make matters of conscience of such toys and trifles, worship the Devil, endanger their souls and offer their children to their idols, I must pity their misery.

When I see two superstitious orders contend “for altars and hearths,” with such fierce persistence, “about goat’s wool”; when some write such great volumes to no purpose, take so much trouble to so little effect with their satires, invectives, defences and dull, crude fictions; when I see grave, learned men rail and scold like women selling butter, I think it is fine sport, fit for Calphurnius and Democritus to laugh at. But when I see so much blood shed, so many murders and massacres, so many cruel battles fought, it is a fitter subject for Heraclitus to lament.

As Merlin, when sitting beside the lake with Vortigern, after seeing the white and red dragons fight, “burst into tears” before he began to interpret or speak—fell to weeping, and then went on to tell the king what it meant—so I should first pity and mourn this misery of humankind in some passionate preface, wishing my eyes a fountain of tears, as Jeremiah did, and then turn to my task.

For this is that great torment, that infernal plague of mortals, “superstition, the most pestilent of all plagues,” capable by itself of matching all other plagues, miseries and calamities whatsoever: far more cruel, more destructive, more grievous, more widespread, more violent and more far-reaching.

Other fears and sorrows, afflictions of body and mind, trouble us for a time; but this is for ever: eternal damnation, hell itself. A plague, a fire or a flood harms only one province, and the loss may be repaired; but this superstition engulfs almost the whole world and can never be remedied.

Sickness and sorrows come and go, but a superstitious soul has no rest: “A mind steeped in superstition can never be at peace”—no peace, no quiet. True religion and superstition are complete opposites: “Torture and piety are far apart,” as Lactantius puts it. One raises us, the other casts us down; “their piety is sheer impiety.”

One is an easy yoke, the other an intolerable burden, an absolute tyranny; one a secure anchor, a harbour, the other a stormy ocean; one builds up, the other ruins; one is wisdom, the other folly, madness and lack of judgment; one sincere, the other counterfeit; one a careful observer, the other a mere imitator; one leads to heaven, the other to hell. These differences will appear more clearly in their particular symptoms.

Every catechism will tell you what religion is and what its parts are, what signs it has and what effects it produces. But as for their superstitions, no tongue can tell them, no pen describe them: they are so many, so diverse, so uncertain, so unstable and so inconsistent with themselves. “As many superstitions in the world as stars in heaven,” someone says: there are as many superstitions in the world as stars in heaven, or as the devils themselves who first founded them.

They are accompanied by such ridiculous, absurd symptoms and signs, so many different rites, ceremonies, torments and afflictions, that they plainly display the Devil as their author and supporter, as befits him. I shall only point out some of them—“from the claw, the lion”; infer the rest—and examples from the chief kinds of superstition that, besides those of us Christians, now tyrannize over and torment the world: pagans, Muslims, Jews and so on.

Some of these symptoms are general; others belong to each individual sect. Common to all are the extraordinary love and affection they bear and show towards members of their own sect, and more than Vatinian hatred towards those who oppose them in religion, as they call it, or differ from them in their superstitious rites; blind zeal, which is as much a symptom as a cause; groundless fears; blind obedience; needless works; incredible and impossible beliefs; monstrous rites and ceremonies; wilfulness, blindness, obstinacy, and so on.

As for the first, love and hatred, Montanus says, “No friendship is stronger than that formed by religion; no discord greater than that which arises from it”: no greater concord, no greater discord than that which proceeds from religion.

Were it not proved by daily experience, it would be incredible to relate what factions—what utterly hideous factions, as Richard Dinoth writes—have lately arisen over religion in France, and what turmoil has convulsed all Europe for so many years. “Nothing carries people away so uncontrollably as an accepted belief about salvation: for its sake, all nations commonly devote their bodies and souls and bind themselves to one another by the closest ties of fellowship.”