wrath, fitted to destruction, or that they have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, hearts and understand not, they think, This is all spoken of me;' or 'This is just my case.' If they hear of any terrible example of God's judgments on any, they think it will be so with them. If any die suddenly, or a house be burned, or any be distracted, or die in despair, they think it will be so with them. The reading of Spira's case, causeth or increaseth melancholy in many; the ignorant author having described a plain melancholy, contracted by the trouble of sinning against conscience, as if it were a damnable despair of a sound understanding. 10. And yet they think that never any one was as they are. I have had abundance in a few weeks with me, almost just in the same case, and yet every one say that never any one was as they. 11. They are utterly unable to rejoice in any thing; they cannot apprehend, believe, or think of any thing that is comfortable to them. They read all the threatenings of the Word with quick sense and application, but the promises they read over and over, without taking notice of them, as if they had not read them; or else say, 'They do not belong to me the greater the mercy of God is, and the riches of grace, the more miserable am I that have no part in them.' They are like a man in continual pain or sickness, that cannot rejoice, because the feeling of his pain forbiddeth him. They look on husband, wife, friends, children, house, goods and all without any comfort; as one would do that is going to be executed for some crime. 12. Their consciences are quick in telling them of sin, and putting them upon any dejection as a duty; but they are dead to all duties that tend to consolation; as to thanksgiving for mercies, praises of God, meditating on his love, and grace, and Christ, and promises: put them never so hard on these, and they feel not their duty, nor make any conscience of it, but think it is a duty for others, but unsuitable to them. 13. They always say that they cannot believe, and therefore think they cannot be saved because that commonly they mistake the nature of faith, and take it to be a believing that they themselves are forgiven and in favour with God, and shall be saved: and because they cannot believe this (which their disease will not suffer them to believe,) therefore they think that they are no believers: whereas saving faith is nothing but

such a belief that the Gospel is true, and Christ is the Saviour to be trusted with our souls, as causeth our wills to consent that he be ours and that we be his, and so to subscribe the covenant of grace. Yet while they thus consent, and would give a world to be sure that Christ were theirs, and to be perfectly holy, yet they think they believe not, because they believe not that he will forgive or save them. 14. They are still displeased and discontented with themselves just as a peevish, froward person is apt to be with others: see one that is hard to be pleased, and is finding fault with every thing that he sees or hears, and offended at every one that comes in his way, and suspicious of every body that he sees whispering; and just so is a melancholy person against himself; suspecting, displeased, and finding fault with all. 15. They are much addicted to solitariness, and weary of company for the most part. 16. They are given up to fixed musings, and long, poring thoughts to little purpose: so that deep musings and thinkings are their chief employments, and much of their disease. 17. They are much averse to the labours of their callings, and given to/ idleness; either to lie in bed, or sit thinking unprofitably by themselves. 18. Their thoughts are most upon themselves, like the millstones that grind on themselves, when they have no grist: so one thought begets another: their thoughts are taken up about their thoughts: when they have been thinking irregularly, they think again what they have been thinking on: they meditate not much on God, (unless on his wrath) nor heaven, nor Christ, nor the state of the church, nor any thing without them (ordinarily); but all their thoughts are contracted and turned inwards on themselves self-troubling is the sum of their thoughts and lives. 19. Their thoughts are all perplexed like ravelled yarn or silk; or like a man in a maze, or wilderness, or that hath lost himself and his way in the night: he is poring and groping about, and can make little of any thing, but is bewildered, and moidered, and entangled the more; full of doubts and difficulties, out of which he cannot find the way. 20. He is endless in his scruples: afraid lest he sin in every word he speaketh, and in every thought, and every look, and every meal he eateth, and all the clothes he weareth: and if he think to amend them, he is still scrupling his supposed

amendments: he dare neither travel, nor stay at home, neither speak, nor be silent; but he is scrupling all: as if he were wholly composed of self-perplexing scruples. 21. Hence it comes to pass that he is greatly addicted to superstition; to make many laws to himself that God never made him; and to ensnare himself with needless vows, and resolutions, and hurtful austerities; touch not, taste not, handle not; and to place his religion much in such outward, selfimposed tasks; to spend so many hours in this or that act of devotion; to wear such clothes, and forbear other that are finer; to forbear all diet that pleaseth the appetite, with much of the like. A great deal of the perfection of Popish devotion proceeded from melancholy, though their government come from pride and covetousness. 22. They have lost the power of governing their thoughts by reason: so that if you convince them that they should cast out their self-perplexing, unprofitable thoughts, and turn their thoughts to other subjects, or be vacant; they are not able to obey you: they seem to be under a necessity or constraint: they cannot cast out their troublesome thoughts: they cannot turn away their minds: they cannot think of love and mercy: they can think of nothing but what they do think of, any more than a man in the toothach can forbear to think of his pain. 23. They usually grow hence to a disability to any private prayer or meditation: their thoughts are presently cast all into a confusion, when they should pray or meditate: they scatter abroad a hundred ways; and they cannot keep them upon any thing: for this is the very point of their disease; a distempered, confused fantasy, with a weak reason which cannot govern it. Sometimes terror driveth them from prayer: they dare not hope, and therefore dare not pray and usually they dare not receive the Lord's supper; here they are most fearful of all: and if they do receive it, they are cast down with terrors, fearing that they have taken their own damnation, by receiving unworthily. 24. Hence they grow to a great averseness to all holy duty: fear and despair make them go to prayer, hearing, reading, as a bear to the stake: and then they think they are haters of God and godliness, imputing the effects of their disease to their souls; when yet at the same time, those of them that are godly, would rather be

freed from all their sins, and be perfectly holy, than have all the riches or honour in the world. 25. They are usually so taken up with busy and earnest thoughts (which being all perplexed, do but strive with themselves, and contradict one another,) that they feel it just as if something were speaking within them, and all their own violent thoughts were the pleadings and impulse of some other: and therefore they are wont to impute all their fantasies, either to some extraordinary actings of the devil, or to some extraordinary motions of the Spirit of God: and they are used to express themselves in such words as these, It was set upon my heart, or it was said to me, that I must do thus and thus: and then it was said, I must not do this or that: and I was told I must do so or so.' And they think that their own imagination is something talking in them, and saying to them all that they are thinking. 26. When melancholy groweth strong, they are almost always troubled with hideous, blasphemous temptations, against God, or Christ, or the Scripture, and against the immortality of the soul; which cometh partly from their own fears, which make them think most (against their will) of that which they are most afraid of thinking as the spirits and blood will have recourse to the part that is hurt. The very pain of their fears doth draw their thoughts to what they fear. As he that is over-desirous to sleep, and afraid lest he shall not sleep, is sure to wake, because his fears and desires keep him waking: so do the fears and desires of the melancholy cross themselves. And withal, the malice of the devil plainly here interposeth, and taketh advantage of this disease, to tempt and trouble them, and to shew his hatred to God, and Christ, and Scripture, and to them. For as he can much easier tempt a choleric person to anger, than another, and a phlegmatic, fleshly person to sloth, and a sanguine or hot-tempered person to lust, and wantonness; so also a melancholy person to thoughts of blasphemy, infidelity, and despair. And ofttimes they feel a vehement urgency, as if something within them urged them to speak such or such a blasphemous or foolish word; and they can have no rest unless they yield in this and other such cases, to what they are urged to. And some are ready to yield in a temptation to be quiet : and when they have done, they are tempted utterly to despair

because they have committed so great a sin: and when the devil hath got this advantage of them, he is still setting it before them. 27. Hereupon they are further tempted to think they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost; not understanding what that sin is, but fearing it is theirs, because it is a fearful sin: at least they think they shall not be forgiven; not considering that a temptation is one thing, and a sin another: and that no man hath less cause to fear being condemned for his sin, than he that is least willing of it, and most hateth it. And no man can be less willing of any sin, than these poor souls are of the hideous, blasphemous thoughts which they complain of. 28. Hereupon some of them grow to think that they are possessed of devils: and if it do but enter into their fantasy how possessed persons used to act, the very strength of imagination will make them do so too so that I have known those that would swear, and curse, and blaspheme, and imitate an inward, alien voice, thinking themselves that it was the devil in them that did all this. But these that go so far are but few. 29. Some of them that are near distraction, verily think that they hear voices, and see lights and apparitions, that the curtains are opened on them, that something meets them, and saith this or that to them, when all is but the error of a crazed brain, and sick imagination. 30. Many of them are weary of their lives, through the constant, trying perplexities of their minds; and yet afraid of dying: some of them resolutely famish themselves: some are strongly tempted to murder themselves, and they are haunted with the temptation so restlessly, that they can go no whither but they feel as if somewhat within them, put them on, and said, 'Do it, do it:' so that many poor creatures yield, and make away with themselves. 31. Many of them are restlessly vexed with fears of want, and poverty, and misery to their families; and of imprisonment or banishment; and lest somebody will kill them; and every one that they see whisper, they think is plotting to take away their lives. 32. Some of them lay a law upon themselves that they will not speak, and so live long in resolute silence. 33. All of them are intractable, and stiff in their own conceits, and hardly persuaded out of them, be they never so irrational. 34. Few of them are the better for any reason, conviction, or counsel that is given