Causes of despair: the devil, melancholy, meditation, distrust, weakness of faith, harsh ministers, misunderstanding Scripture, guilty consciences, and so on.

The chief agent and author of this affliction is the devil. Those whom God forsakes, the devil seizes with God’s permission. Sometimes he torments them with that gnawing worm of conscience, as he did Judas, Saul and others. The poets call it Nemesis, but it is in fact God’s just judgement: late, but in earnest. He strikes home at last and comes upon them like a thief in the night, 1 Thessalonians 2.

This temporary affliction made David cry out, Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or chastise me in your fierce displeasure; for your arrows have struck me, and so on. There is nothing sound in my flesh because of your anger. Again, I roar from the very grief of my heart;

and in Psalm 22: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, and why are you so far from helping me and from the words of my cry? I am like water poured out; my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax melted within me.

So in Psalm 88, verses 15 and 16, and Psalm 102: I am miserable and at the point of death; from my youth I suffer your terrors, fearing for my life; your wrath has swept over me, and the fear you inspire has cut me off. Job often complains in this way. Those whom God does not help, the devil is ready to test and torment, always seeking someone to devour.

If he finds them cheerful, says Gregory, he immediately tempts them to some dissolute act; if troubled and sad, to a desperate end. He either entices them with persuasion or terrifies them with threats: sometimes by fair means, sometimes by foul, according to the inclinations he perceives in different people.

His usual instrument for producing this effect is the melancholy humour itself, which is the devil’s bath, the devil’s bathing place. As with Saul, those evil spirits seem to enter and take possession of us. Black bile is a shoehorn to ease their entrance, a bait to attract them,

so much so that many writers regard melancholy as a common cause and a symptom of despair. Because their bodily constitution is disordered, such people are especially prone to distrust, fear, grief and error, and to magnify whatever they conceive perversely or apprehend falsely. A scrupulous conscience arises from a natural defect, a melancholy constitution, says Navarrus, chapter 27, number 282, volume 2 of Cases of Conscience.

The body acts upon the mind by clouding the spirits and through impaired instruments. Perkins illustrates this with the comparison of a craftsman who has a bad tool: his skill is good and his ability adequate, but because his tools are faulty, his work must be defective and imperfect.

But although melancholy and despair often occur together, they do not always do so. There is a great difference: melancholy fears without a cause; despair fears on serious grounds. Melancholy is caused by fear and grief, while this torment produces them, together with the utmost bitterness. Much melancholy occurs without distress of conscience, as Bright and Perkins explain through four reasons. Yet melancholy alone may sometimes be a sufficient cause of this terror of conscience.

Felix Platter found this in his observations: some melancholy people think themselves damned, uncared for by God and not predestined, and so on. They think they are not predestined and that God has forsaken them, though otherwise they are very zealous and religious. It is commonly seen that melancholy arising from fear of God’s judgement and hellfire drives people to despair; excessive fear and sorrow often end in it.

Unbearable pain and anguish, prolonged sickness, captivity, misery, loss of property or friends, and lesser griefs sometimes produce it, as do other dreadful misfortunes. If they are not relieved immediately, says Mersenne, they doubt whether God exists: if they are not eased at once, they doubt whether there is any God. They rave, curse and become mad with despair because good people are oppressed, the wicked flourish, and they do not receive what they believe they deserve. Their inability to endure calamity brings them into this distressed condition.

Democritus put out his eyes so that he would not see the success of wicked citizens, because he could not bear to see wicked people prosper; he was therefore ready to kill himself, as Aulus Gellius writes of him.

Felix Platter has a memorable example of this kind: a painter’s wife in Basel became melancholy over her son’s death and through melancholy fell into despair. She thought God would not forgive her sins, and for four months continually raved that she was in hellfire, already damned. Once the humour is stirred up, every small thing aggravates and inflames it, according to the sufferer’s disposition.

The same author gives the example of a merchant who, after losing a little wheat he had kept too long, was troubled in conscience because he had not sold it sooner or given it to the poor. He was nevertheless a good scholar and an accomplished theologian. No persuasion could dislodge his belief that he was damned for this deed; in other matters he was very judicious and sensible.

Solitude, excessive fasting, religious meditation and contemplation of God’s judgements generally accompany this melancholy and are principal causes of it, as Navarrus maintains. For some people, associating with others troubled in this way is enough to cause distress.

Some, because of prolonged fasting, study and heavenly meditations, continually occupy their minds with sacred matters and religion, and so on. Many, says Pieter van Foreest, fall into such attacks through prolonged fasting and intense meditation on heavenly things;