often so increases that people begin to think that they lack both the gifts of grace, which they do possess, as well as those they do not. External causes and occasions are: a cross, and all sorts of external burdens; reading, hearing but not rightly discerning and appropriating the things in Scripture that are most conducive to a rigorous examination of one’s conscience and to the removal of hypocrisy or pretense. Also to be mentioned here are the observation and incautious appropriation of any