'For to have pryd of his gud dedis is a temptacioune callyt preſumcioune; and dreid of the mercy of god for Ill dedis Is ane vthir temptacioune callyt dyſpar; and he that can weill eſchef thir twa, in the hour of ded, ourcumys the deuill.'—The Craft of Deyng (circa 1450)
These last weeks I've spent the better part of my book-time in sixteenth-century England, with Richard Hooker, Sir Thomas More, et al. (It's been on my conscience to do better by the English writers, whom I've not spent many quality hours with, being ever away on the mainland.) Hooker's prose is uncommonly good by Tudor standards. One finds oneself reading it aloud. More's prose, although not as reliable style-wise, is the more lively—item more philosophically substantive. Here's an extract on super-scrupulous people from the Dialoge of Comfort Agaynst Trybulacion (written in 1534 when Sir Thomas was gaoled in the Tower of London, scheduled for death):
'Lo the scriplouse person, which frameth hym selfe many tymes dowble the feare that he hath cause / & many tymes a greate feare wher there is no cause at all / And of that that is in dede no synne, maketh a veniall/ & that that is venyall, imageneth to be dedly / & yet for all that falleth in them beying namely of their nature such as no man long liveth without / And then he fereth that he be neuer full confessid, nor neuer full contrite, & than that his synnes be neuer full forgeven hym / & than he confessith & confessith agayne, & cumbreth hym selfe & his confessour both / & than euery prayour that he sayth though he say it as well as the frayle infyrmyte of the man wil suffre, yet is he not satisfied, but yf he say it agayne & yet after that agayne / & whan he hath said one thyng thrise: as litell is he satisfied at the last as with the first / & than is his hart euermore in hevynes vnquiat & in fere, full of dout & of dulnes without comfort or spirituall consolacion.It put me in mind of Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, of the unexpected fourth tempter to Thomas à Becket. (Thomas: 'Is there no way, in my soul’s sickness, | Does not lead to damnation in pride? ... Can sinful pride be driven out | Only by more sinful? Can I neither act nor suffer Without perdition?' Etc.) It also put me in mind of Herr Nietzsche on the 'Christian school of scepticism' (The Gay Science, §122), which turns men into spiritual valetudinarians:
'With this nightes feare the devill sore trobleth the mynd of many a right good man, & that doth he bryng hym to some greate inconvenience / For he will yf he can, dreve hym so mich to the myndyng of godes rigorouse iustice, that he will kepe hym from the comfortable remembraunce of godes greate mightie mercie, & so make hym do all his good workes werely, & and without consolacion or quyckenes ... Yee & further the devill longeth to make all his good workes & spirituall exersice so paynfull & so tedious vnto hym, that with some other suggestion or false wily doctryne of a false spirituall libertie, he shuld for the false ease & pleasure that he shuld sodenly fynd therin, be easely conveyd from that evill faute into a much worse / & haue his conscienc as wide & as large after, as euer it was narow & strayt before. For better ys yet of trouth a conscience litle to strayt than a litell to large' (Ch. 14).
'Christianity [...] taught moral scepticism in an extremely trenchant and effective way—accusing, embittering, but with untiring patience and refinement. It annihilated in every single man the faith in his "virtues." It caused those great virtuous men, of whom there was no dearth in antiquity, to disappear forever from the face of the earth—those popular men who with a faith in their own perfection went about with the dignity of a toreador. When we now, educated in the Christian school of scepticism, read the moral books of antiquity, e.g. those of Seneca or Epictetus, we feel an amusing superiority and are full of secret insights and overviews, as if a child were speaking before an old man or an overenthusiastic young beauty were speaking before La Rochefoucauld: we know better what virtue is! In the end, however, we have applied the same scepticism also to all religious states and procedures, such as sin, repentance, grace, sanctification; and we have allowed the worm to dig so deeply that even when reading Christian books we now have the same feeling of refined superiority and insight.'Is it not so? And how do we look on ourselves aright, we who are not made perfect in love (1Jo. 4.18)? There is no falling away from the absolute that isn't itself absolute. If we're sinfully hypersensitive to sin then, as the Danish psychologist Johannes Climacus has written, 'every weakness, every flatness, every state of low spirits' is mortal (Postscript, pp. 417-18). Maybe such thinkers want desensitizing (Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, §581). But, then, are not all our righteousnesses as filthy rags (Isa. 64.6)? And are we not adjured to rend ourselves inwardly (Joe. 2.13)? God is nigh unto us then (Psa. 34.18; cf. 51.17). Yet not all penitential exercises are uprighting and corrective. (Recall the mortificatio of the Middle Ages: the flagellants who rent themselves outwardly, the nuns who wilfully exposed themselves to contagion, and so on.) And no man of super-scrupulous conscience is uprighted or corrected by sacraments of penance, for they, too, are shot through with sin, like all he does or doesn't, his action and inaction. Penance future for penance past: a purgatory in advance. Then 'is his hart euermore in hevynes vnquiat.'
'When someone self-tormentingly thinks to do God a service by torturing himself, what is his sin except not willing to love himself in the right way?' (Kierkegaard, Works of Love, p. 23).Thus we have an invalid, on the sickbed of Christianity. The sequela of his pathology are many. He's not much good to heaven in his sorry condition. And it isn't that he's unaware of this; he's all too aware. Like the psalmist, he communes with his heart on his bed, privatissime. But his is a sinful communion, a merciless cross-examination of conscience, an 'enhanced interrogation technique' (possibly useful to the American government). He cannot lay him down in peace, and sleep. He's searchingly wakeful, never rested, never renewed. If only he could sleep alertly, like the beasts of the field in their vulnerability to predation, with one eye open.
'If þou haddest a goode conscience, þou shuldest not muche drede dethe' (Imitatio Christi, I.23:6).
The wisdom of Sir Thomas, whom Erasmus blessed as omnium horarum homo, is that the super-scrupulous person, however shrewd and knowledgeable, forbear self-judgement and submit to the authority of another, commending himself thus into God's hands:
'Let them I say therefor that are in the troubelouse feare of their own scripelouse conscience, to the counsayle of some other good man, which after the varietie & the nature of the scriples may temper the advise / yee although a man be very well lernid hym selfe / yet let him in this case lern the custume vsid among phisitiens / For be one of them neuer so conyng, yet in his own decease & siknes, he neuer vseth to trust all to hym selfe / but send for such of his felows as he knowith mete, & puttith hym selfe in there handes for many consideracions wherof they assigne the causes ...
'And therfor as I say who so hath such a trowble of his scrupulouse conscience: let hym for a while forbere the iugement of hym selfe, & folow the counsayle of some other, whom he knowith for well lernid & vertuouse, & specially in the place of confession / For there is god specially present with his grace assistyng his sacrament / & let hym not doute to aquiete his mynd, & folow that that he is there bode, and thinke for a while less of the fere of godes iustice, & be more mery in remembraunce of his mercie, & percever in prayour for grace, & abyde & dwell faythfully in the sure hope of his helpe / and than shall he fynd without any dout, that the pauice of godes trouth shall (as the prophet sayth) so compasse hym about, that he shall not dreade this nightes fere of scrupulositie, but shall haue his conscience stablyshid in good quiet & rest.' (Dialoge of Comfort, ch. 14.)
PS: The last word to my beloved Kierkegaard: 'If a person wants to sit brooding and staring at his sin and is unwilling to have faith that it is forgiven, he is indeed also guilty of thinking poorly of Christ's merits' (Journals and Notebooks: Vol. 7, NB 16:10).