Faustus and hypocrisy

I think that the end of ‘Doctor Faustus’ is an interesting portrayal of how many Christians live today. He realizes that he is actually going to die and go to hell, so he calls out to God, but he is not willing to change anything or give up his pleasures in order to go to heaven. He just keeps trying to bargain with God while still worrying about himself above everything and still serving and trusting Lucifer over God. While Faustus is too exaggerated a character to be a living person, Marlowe would have seen the hypocrisy and self-love in the people around him. The most obvious symbolism of the play is the attack on Catholicism, but I wonder if there is a criticism of Protestantism in the play as well. While Catholicism had hypocrites and self-serving people, so does every other group of people on the planet, and I wonder if Marlowe might have been trying to point out the hypocrisy in his own society as well as making fun of the rejected Catholic church.

Rachel Means