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Prognosis of despair: atheism, blasphemy, violent death, and so on.
Most people of this kind kill themselves; some go mad, blaspheme, curse and deny God, but most do violence to themselves, and sometimes to others. Who can bear a wounded spirit? Proverbs 18:14. Thus Cain, Saul, Ahithophel and Judas blasphemed and died. Bede says that Pilate died in despair eight years after Christ.
Felix Platter has collected many examples. A merchant’s wife, long troubled by such temptations, rose from bed at night and fell from the window into the street, breaking her neck. Another, in despair, drowned himself in the Rhine; some cut their throats, many hang themselves. But this needs no further illustration.
Some dispute whether a person who thus does violence to himself and dies in despair may be saved. If they die so obstinately and suddenly that they cannot even wish for mercy, the worst must be feared, because they die unrepentant.
If their death had been a little slower, allowing them some time to cry for mercy in their hearts, charity may judge favourably. Several people have been rescued in the very act of hanging or drowning themselves and so brought back to a sound mind. They have been deeply penitent, abhorred their former act and confessed that they repented in an instant and cried for mercy in their hearts.
If someone lays desperate hands upon himself because of madness or melancholy, and has previously shown evidence of his spiritual rebirth, we must interpret it as favourably as possible, since he does this less from his own will than under the force of illness. This is what the Turks do, believing that all fools and mad people go directly to heaven.