Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/345

Rh of the Lord, and for a few days behaved myself as was becoming after so holy an act.

In the sequel, however, there came over me that evil, which, from the fact of our religion being complicated by various dogmas, and founded on texts of Scripture which admit of several interpretations, attacks scrupulous men in such a manner that it brings on a hypochondriacal condition, and raises this to its highest point, to fixed ideas. I have known several men, who, though their manner of thinking and living was perfectly rational, could not free themselves from thinking about the sin against the Holy Ghost, and from the fear that they had committed it. A similar trouble threatened me on the subject of the communion; for the text, that one who unworthily partakes of the sacrament eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, had, very early, already made a monstrous impression upon me. Every fearful thing that I had read in the histories of the Middle Ages, of the judgments of God, of those most strange ordeals, by red-hot iron, flaming fire, swelling water, and even what the Bible tells us of the draught which agrees well with the innocent, but puffs up and bursts the guilty, — all this pictured itself to my imagination, and formed itself into the most frightful combinations; since false vows, hypocrisy, perjury, blasphemy, all seemed to weigh down the unworthy person at this most holy act, which was so much the more horrible, as no one could dare to pronounce himself worthy: and the forgiveness of sins, by which everything was to be at last done away, was found limited by so many conditions, that one could not with certainty dare appropriate it to one's self.

This gloomy scruple troubled me to such a degree, and the expedient which they would represent to me as sufficient seemed so bald and feeble, that it gave the bugbear only a more fearful aspect; and, as soon as I