The Anatomy of Melancholy

Such, says Chemnitz, are most of your scholastic theologians—mere alchemists: two hundred commentators on Peter Lombard. Pits’s Catalogue of English Writers counts one hundred and eighty English commentators alone on the subject of the Sentences: Scotists, Thomists, realists, nominalists and the rest.

And so perhaps Saint Augustine’s saying may be proved true: The unlearned seize heaven, while the learned descend into hell. Thus they persisted in such error, blindness, decrees, sophisms and superstitions. Pointless ceremonies and traditions made up their newly minted holiness and religion. Through these tricks and stratagems they could entangle multitudes, deceive the most sanctified souls and, if it were possible, the very elect.

Meanwhile the true Church, like wine mixed with water, lay virtually hidden and obscure until Luther’s time. Suddenly he began to clarify it and, like another sun, to drive away those foggy mists of superstition and restore the purity of the early Church. After him, many good and godly men, inspired spirits, have worked to the same end, and still do.

And what their ignorance thought so holy, Our wiser ages reckon as folly.

But look at the devil, who will never let the Church be quiet or at rest. No garden is so well cultivated that harmful weeds do not spring up in it; no wheat is without its tares. Even among ourselves we have a mad, giddy company of religious rigorists, schismatics and some heretics at the opposite extreme: Fools, avoiding one vice, rush into its opposite.

In their excessive zeal against Antichrist, human traditions, Roman rites and superstitions, they would demolish everything. They allow no ceremonies whatever, no fast days, no sign of the cross at baptism, no kneeling at Communion, no church music and so on; no bishops’ courts, no church government. They rail against all our ecclesiastical discipline and will not hold their tongues—all for your peace, O Zion!

Some will not even tolerate degrees, universities or any human learning—it is the devil’s sewer. Hoods, robes, caps and surplices, things morally indifferent in themselves and used solely for ornament, propriety or distinction, they abhor, hate and snort at like a stallion meeting a bear. They make matters of conscience of them and would rather give up their church livings than assent to their use.

They allow no holy days or innocent recreations such as hawking and hunting; some allow no churches or bells because Catholics use them. They accept no discipline or ceremonies except those they invent themselves; no interpretations of Scripture, commentaries of the Church Fathers or councils except what their own fanciful spirits dictate—or right reason, as the Socinians call it. Misled by this spirit, they often put forward paradoxes as monstrous as those of the Catholics themselves.

Some become prophets, have secret revelations, claim to sit on God’s own privy council and know all his secrets: They hold the Holy Spirit by the hair and know everything, although they are the most obstinate asses of all.