The Anatomy of Melancholy

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.