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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On.

It does not repel a fornicator, reject a drunkard, resist a proud person or turn away an idolater. It welcomes everyone and gives itself to everyone.

Who persecuted the Church more than Paul, or offended more than Peter? Yet through repentance, says Chrysologus, they gained both the teaching office and the ministry of holiness, the mastery of holiness.

The prodigal son went far away, but through repentance he came home at last. This alone will turn a wolf into a sheep, make a tax collector a preacher, turn a thorn into an olive tree, make a debauched fellow religious, set a blasphemer singing Hallelujah, make Alexander the coppersmith truly devout and turn a devil into a saint.

And it will make someone who polluted his mouth with slanders, lies, oaths and filthy songs and sounds cleanse his throat with divine psalms. Repentance will bring about extraordinary cures and an astonishing transformation.

A hawk entered the ark and came out a hawk; a lion entered and came out a lion; a bear, a bear; a wolf, a wolf. But if a hawk enters this sacred temple of repentance, it will go out a dove, says Chrysostom; a wolf will go out a sheep, a lion a lamb.

It gives sight to the blind and legs to the lame, cures every disease, confers grace, drives out vice, implants virtue, comforts and strengthens the soul. Shall I say it? Whatever your sin may be, only repent: that is sufficient.

One who regrets having sinned is almost innocent.

All this is indeed true and entirely sufficient, they admit, if they could repent. But they are hardened; their consciences are seared; their minds are reprobate. They cannot think a good thought, hope for grace, pray, believe, repent or be sorry for their sins. They find no sorrow for sin in themselves, but rather delight; no groaning of spirit. They are carried headlong to their own destruction, storing up wrath for themselves against the day of wrath, Romans 2:5.

I grant that this is a grievous condition, yet it need not be despaired of. In his generosity and mercy God calls all to repentance, Romans 2:4. You may at last be called, restored and received into his grace, like the thief on the cross at the final hour; like Mary Magdalene and many other sinners who had been buried in sin.

God, says Fulgentius, delights in a sinner’s conversion and sets no time limit; neither the length of time nor the gravity of sin prejudices God: delay or the gravity of sin does not prejudice his grace. Things past and things to come are all alike present to him. It is never too late to repent.

This heaven of repentance remains open to all distressed souls. Although no signs yet appear, you may repent in due time. Hear a consoling saying of Saint Augustine: Whatever you may do, however great a sinner you may be, you are still alive. If God would not help you, he would surely take you away; but in sparing your life, he gives you time and invites you to repent.

Although, I say, you perceive no fruit or feeling yet and find no sign of it in yourself, wait patiently for the Lord’s appointed time. Do not despair or think yourself rejected by God. He came to call sinners to repentance, Luke 5:32, and you are one of that number. He came to call you, and in his own time he will surely call you.

Although you have no inclination yet to pray or repent, although your faith is cold and dead and you are wholly averse to religious duties, it may revive, as trees are dead in winter but flourish in spring. These virtues may lie hidden in you for the present and reveal themselves later; perhaps they are already budding, though you do not perceive it. Satan’s strategy is to argue against you, suppress and aggravate, and conceal those sparks of faith within you.

You say that you do not believe, yet you would believe if you could: you desire to believe. Then pray, Lord, help my unbelief, and in time you will certainly believe: It will be given to the thirsty; it will be given to the one who thirsts.

You cannot repent yet; in time you will. A black cloud of sin still darkens your soul and terrifies your conscience, but this cloud may at last bring forth a rainbow and be entirely dispersed by repentance. Take heart: a child is rational in potential, though not in its exercise; so you are penitent in desire, though not yet in action.

You desire to please God and to be sincerely sorry. Take comfort: the time has not passed; it is never too late. The desire to repent is itself repentance, if not in its nature, then in God’s acceptance of it; a willing mind is enough. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, Matthew 5:6. Anyone who lacks God’s grace and longs for it shall have it.

The Lord, says David in Psalm 10:17, will hear the desire of the poor, meaning those distressed in body and mind. I grant that you cannot yet grieve for your sin and have no feeling of faith. Yet can you grieve because you do not grieve? It troubles you, I am sure, that your heart should be so unrepentant and hard; you would have it otherwise. You desire to grieve, repent and believe.

Meanwhile you love God’s children and saints; you do not hate or persecute them. Rather, you wish to be a true professing believer, to be as they are and as you yourself once were. This plainly indicates that your condition is not so desperate. It is a good sign of your conversion: your sins can be pardoned; you are, or surely will be, reconciled.

13115.Entertains means receives or welcomes. The marginal Latin also names an adulterer, omitted from Burton’s English restatement; the fuller list is retained in the translated Burton note.

13116.Chrysologus is distinct from Chrysostom. The Latin names both a teaching office and a ministry; Burton’s following English abbreviates them into Magistery. Both forms remain. The exact Chrysologus passage requires collation.

13118.Publican means a tax collector. Alexander the coppersmith is named as an opponent in 2 Timothy 4:14. Burton’s sequence states repentance’s transforming power; it does not report Alexander’s actual conversion. The Homily 5 citation remains for edition-specific verification.

13120.The marginal Latin speaks of purifying the soul with divine hymns; Burton’s English extends the mouth and throat imagery and adds slander, lying and swearing. Both versions are retained.

13122.Compare Chrysostom, On Repentance, Homily 8.1 (PG 49.336–337), in English translation: the church, unlike the ark, transforms moral choice rather than animal nature. Its final pair is serpent and lamb; Burton has lion and lamb. His printed Homily 5 and all animal pairs are retained. The numbering and Latin transmission remain uncollated.

13124.The catalogue culminates in sufficiency of repentance. The next paragraph immediately raises the objection that the sufferer cannot repent; the present assurance is not the end of Burton’s argument.

13126.Seneca, Agamemnon 243. In the tragedy Clytemnestra speaks of returning to marital fidelity; Burton applies the maxim to repentance. Pene, almost, is essential and is retained.

13127.Burton voices the sufferer’s objection to the preceding assurance. Cauterized evokes a conscience seared into insensibility; reprobate sense means a corrupt or rejected understanding. These are descriptions within the imagined religious complaint, not the editor’s judgement of the sufferer.

13128.The thief is the penitent criminal in Luke 23:39–43. The last hour also anticipates Burton’s later use of the labourers called late to the vineyard. Mary Magdalene appears here in the traditional role of the penitent sinner.

13130.Prejudicate means prejudice or impair a claim. The Latin sentence and Burton’s English restatement are both retained. The precise Fulgentius passage remains for collation; the margin adds that the whole span of life is allotted for conversion.

13133.The scan’s heaven is retained; the margin’s portus means harbour or haven. That first saying remains unlocated. The following reassurance about being spared to repent corresponds to Augustine, Sermon 351.5.12, in a fuller Latin passage on God’s patience. Burton compresses and varies its wording; his intermediary is untraced. Comfortable means consoling.

13134.Reprobate is used here in the theological sense of one excluded from salvation. Fruit means the effects or outward signs of grace. Burton’s assurance answers a feared judgement, not a demonstrated fact about the person’s spiritual state.

13135.The images of dormant trees and hidden sparks make lack of present feeling compatible with future revival. The objects of suppress and aggravate are compressed in Burton’s syntax; the translation does not supply a new catalogue of sins or symptoms.

13138.Lord help mine unbelief comes from Mark 9:24, not the printed marginal Matthew 6:23. The second margin correctly points to Revelation 21:6. The Latin promise and Burton’s separate English translation both remain.

13139.Obnubilates means clouds or darkens. In power and in act distinguish a capacity from its actual exercise; affection here means an inward disposition or desire. The rainbow continues the cloud image without cancelling the delay Burton acknowledges.

13140.Compare Perkins, Cases of Conscience (1606), I.7, third question, section 4, pp. 97–98: desire to repent and believe in a touched heart is accepted as faith and repentance. Burton preserves the distinction between nature and God’s acceptance; removing it would falsely make a simple identity. The EEBO-TCP comparison does not identify his edition or settle the adjoining attributions.

13141.The question shifts attention from the absence of sorrow to distress about that absence. Burton treats this second response as evidence of the desire for repentance. His poor is an interpretive paraphrase of the psalm’s afflicted or humble.

13142.Professor means someone who professes the faith, not an academic teacher. The distinction between present reconciliation and a hoped-for future reconciliation is retained.