The Anatomy of Melancholy

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!