Pyrobolia, seu de ignitis Sathanae telis, commonefactio theologica

to a contest, so we must not provide the same an opportunity to attack us through an idle life. Therefore, Jerome prudently says, "Always do something good, so that the Devil may find you occupied."

But let us also remember that those suffering from black Melancholia clinical depression/melancholy, while they do not recognize the infirmity of nature, are so troubled by miraculous specters of images in the imagination, by verisimilitude in reasoning, and by the memory of falls in the conscience, that they can hardly be persuaded to believe anything different from their own opinion.

And how often do we notice that certain people, suffering from a spiritual fascination, consider the darts of Satan to be divine gifts and remedies? How many hold and admire monsters of opinion as if they were delights?

But, to say nothing of the other wiles of Satan (which cannot even be weighed sufficiently by thinking, let alone be recounted by speaking): Is that not a horribly shrieking spear, with which he tries to knock the Shield of Faith from our hands when it is brandished against us: when he dares to call into doubt the light and truth, the authority and perfection of the Word of God, so that, having stripped us of our spiritual arms, he may pierce and destroy us with lethal darts? He says that faith should not only look to the written Word of God, but also to merely human doctrines and traditions: so that he may gradually accustom us to assent to these rather than that, and to defer much to them; and so that he may persuade us that no more is to be attributed to divine things than to human ones.

And when, alas, many have more regard for the belly than the mind, for this life than for eternal life, for the favor of men than for God: and by their whole life testify that they think either never or very rarely about death and the day of the last judgment, he easily imposes upon and deludes those children of this age.