Revelation

'There have always been some people who hate themselves, who torture themselves with guilt for real or imagined offences. I saw such cases sometimes as an infirmarian. Then we could tell people that God promises salvation to any who repent their sins, because He places no one outside His mercy and charity.' He looked up, a rare anger in his face. 'But now some tell us that God has decided, as though from caprice, to save some and damn others to perpetual torment; and if God does not give you the assurance of His Grace you are doomed. That is one of Luther's central doctrines. I know, I have read him. Luther may have felt himself a worthless creature saved by God's grace, but did he ever stop to think what his philosophy might mean for those without his inner strength, his arrogance?'

'If that were true,' Roger said, 'surely half the population would be running mad?'

'Do you believe you are saved?' Guy asked suddenly. 'That you have God's grace?'

'I hope so. I try to live well and hope I may be saved.'

'Yes. Most, like you, or I, are content with the hope of salvation and leave matters in God's hands. But now there are some who are utterly certain they are saved. They can be dangerous because they believe themselves special, above other people. But just as every coin has two sides, so there are others who crave the certainty, yet are convinced they are unworthy, and that can end in the piteous condition of this young man. I have heard it called salvation panic, though the term hardly does justice to the agonies of those who suffer it.' He paused. 'The question perhaps is why the boy became consumed with guilt in the first place.'

'Maybe he has committed some great sin,' I said. I was glad to see Guy shake his head.

'No, usually in such cases their sins are small, it is something in the workings of their minds that brings them to this pass.'

'Will you help me try to find what it is, Guy? Some in the Bedlam think Adam is possessed. I fear they may do him harm.'

'I will come and see him, Matthew,' Guy said. 'I will go as a doctor, of course, not an ex-monk, or he would probably fear he was indeed in the hands of the devil.' Suddenly my friend looked old and tired.

'Thank you,' I said. 'Young Piers seems a hard worker,' I observed.

'Yes, he is. A good apprentice. Perhaps better than I deserve,' he added quietly.

'How so?' I asked, puzzled.

He did not answer. 'Piers is very clever, too. His understanding is marvellous quick.' Guy gave a sudden smile that transformed his face. 'Let me show you something I have been discussing with Piers, something new in the world of healing, that many of my fellow physicians disapprove of. He rose and crossed to his shelf of books. He took down the big volume that Piers had replaced earlier. He cleared a space on the table and placed it there carefully. Roger and I went over to join him.

'De Humani Corpora Fabrica,' Guy said quietly. 'The workings of the human body. Just published, a German merchant friend brought it over for me. It is by Andreas Vesalius, a Dutch physician working in Italy. They have been allowed to practise dissection of bodies there for years, though it has been forbidden here till recently.'

'The old church disapproved,' Roger said.

'They did, and they were wrong. Vesalius is the first man to dissect human bodies on a large scale for centuries, perhaps ever. And you know what he has found? That the ancients, Hippocrates and Galen, the ultimate authorities whom a physician may not question without risking expulsion from the College of Physicians, were wrong.' He turned to us, a gleam in his dark eyes. 'Vesalius has shown that the ancients erred in many of their descriptions of the inner form of the body. He concludes they too were not allowed to dissect bodies, and that their descriptions came from studies not of men but of animals.' He laughed. 'This book will cause a great stir. The college will try to have it discredited, even suppressed.'

'But how can we know Vesalius is right, and the ancients wrong?' I asked.

'By comparing his descriptions and drawings here with what we can see for ourselves when a body is opened. Four bodies of hanged criminals the barber-surgeons' college is allowed now, for public dissection.' I quailed a little as his words, for I was ever of a squeamish disposition, but he went on. 'And there is another way I have been able to see for myself.

'How so?' Roger asked.