About “Panic” terrors there is much talk in the mouths of many, even while they expound these sacred [matters]. But I briefly apply two little distinctions. First: Pan is either the feigned and fictitious god of the Heathens, or the true God. For since τὸ πᾶν signifies “the all,” it truly answers to that Name [Him] from whom all things are and are governed, and who in a certain way is all things; and so [say] Clement of Alexandria (book 1 of the Stromata), Eusebius (book On the Preparation [of the Gospel], chapter 9), Baronius (volume 1 of the Annals), and Masius, from Plutarch (book On Oracles). Secondly: “Panic” terrors are either true, and aroused by a true cause, or feigned and empty. Thus Cicero often calls [them] τὰ πανικά in the Epistles To [his] Friends and To Atticus; [as do] Pausanias in the Phocica, and Synesius (book On Providence). And Polyaenus gives the cause (book 1); [also] Lipsius (On the Roman Militia, book 4, Dialogue 11), as will be cited below. Otherwise, and more copiously, Angelo Poliziano (Miscellanies, chapter 28).
Now I say, first: this terror was not from Pan the fictitious god, but from the true God, as is clear from the text (verse 10); and therefore it was [a “Panic” terror] in that latter sense — “Panic,” not in the former — since not even the fable about Pan had then yet been devised. Secondly: this [terror], as much as all the others which are sent by God — terrors and consternations of [men’s] minds — have a true cause, as [was] expounded above (question 8). And so [at] Leviticus 26, verse 36: “Upon those of you who shall remain, I will send fear in their hearts, in the regions of [their] enemies; the sound of a flying leaf shall terrify them,…
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