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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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

The Lord is near those with a contrite heart, Luke 4:18. A true desire for mercy when mercy is lacking is itself mercy; a desire for grace when grace is lacking is itself grace. A constant and earnest desire to believe, repent and be reconciled to God, if it is in a heart that has been moved, is acceptance by God, reconciliation, faith and repentance itself.

For what has effect, as Chrysostom truly teaches, is not your faith and repentance but God’s mercy joined to it: he accepts the will for the deed. I therefore conclude that to feel the lack of grace within ourselves and grieve over it is itself grace.

I am troubled by the fear that my sins are not forgiven, Careless objects. But Bradford answers that they are: God has given you a penitent and believing heart, meaning a heart that desires to repent and believe. He regards such a heart—accepting the will for the deed—as truly penitent and believing.

All this is true, you reply, but it does not apply to you. It holds for ordinary offenders and common sins, while yours are of a higher order, against the Holy Spirit himself: unforgivable sins, sins of the greatest magnitude, written with an iron pen and engraved with a diamond point.

You are worse than a pagan, unbeliever, Jew or Turk, for you are an apostate and more: you have deliberately blasphemed and renounced God and all religion. You are worse than Judas himself or those who crucified Christ, for they sinned out of ignorance, whereas you have thought in your heart that there is no God.

You have given your soul to the devil, as witches and conjurers do, explicitly and implicitly, by pact, bond and obligation—a desperate and fearful condition—to satisfy your lust or take revenge on your enemies. You have never prayed, attended church, listened, read or performed any religious duty with devotion, but only for form’s sake and to follow custom, with a kind of reluctance. Any such performance was troublesome and painful to you, contrary to your will, against your will.

You have never had any scruple about lying, swearing, bearing false witness, murder, adultery, bribery, oppression, theft, drunkenness or idolatry. You have always fulfilled duties from fear of punishment, when they were most advantageous and served your own ends, and committed all such notorious sins with extraordinary delight, hating what you should love and loving what you should hate.

In place of faith, fear and love of God, repentance and so on, blasphemous thoughts have always lodged in his mind, even against God himself, the blessed Trinity: Scripture is false, crude, harsh and disordered; heaven, hell and resurrection are mere trifles and fables—incredible, impossible, absurd, empty and badly devised. Religion is statecraft and human invention, devised by priests and lawmakers to keep people obedient or to make a profit.

If there is such a supreme power, he takes no notice of our actions, does not hear or regard our prayers, will not or cannot help; or else he is partial, shows favouritism, authors sin—a cruel and destructive God who creates our souls and destines them for eternal damnation, making us worse off than our dogs and horses. Why does he not govern things better, protect good people and root out the wicked? Why do they prosper and flourish? As she raged in the tragedy, mistresses occupy heaven: there they shine,

And Perseus has his golden stars.

Where is his providence? How does it show itself?

Licinus lies in a marble tomb, Cato in a small one, Pomponius in none: who would think that gods exist?

Why does he allow Turks to overcome Christians, the enemy to triumph over his Church, paganism to prevail everywhere as it does, heresies to multiply and such atrocities to be committed? Why so many bloody wars, murders, massacres, plagues and deadly diseases? Why does he not make us all good, capable and healthy? Why does he make venomous creatures, rocks, sands and deserts, and this earth itself the universe’s dunghill, a prison, a house of correction?

We lie when we say that Jupiter reigns, and so on.

With many other such horrible and accursed notions, unfit to be uttered: terrible things about faith, horrible things about the Godhead. Some cannot help thinking evil; they are compelled, willing or unwilling, to blaspheme, especially when they attend church, pray or read. Such foul and monstrous suggestions enter their hearts.

These are abominable, unspeakable offences, utterly opposed to God, foul and impious temptations. Yet anyone tempted and affected in this way must know that no living person is wholly free of such thoughts; at times even the most godly souls have been tempted in some degree. Evil habit, neglect of religious exercises, bad company, idleness, solitude, melancholy or corrupted nature may contribute, and the devil is always ready to corrupt, trouble and divert our souls, suggesting such blasphemous thoughts to our imaginations—ungodly, profane, monstrous and wicked notions.

If they come from Satan, they are swifter, more frightening and more violent, and the sufferers cannot avoid them. They are more frequent, I say, and monstrous when they come. For the devil is a spirit and has the means and opportunity to mingle himself with our spirits, introducing such devilish thoughts into our hearts sometimes more secretly, sometimes more abruptly and openly. He assails and dominates especially those people and imaginations disturbed by melancholy.

13144.The opening wording corresponds to Psalm 34:18. Burton prints Luke 4:18, a related passage that speaks in the King James tradition of healing the brokenhearted. Both the printed locator and the distinction are preserved. Touched means inwardly moved, particularly by an awareness of sin.

13146.Vailable means effective or availing. The marginal Latin names repentance and divine mercy; Burton’s body adds faith and the acceptance of intention. No work or homily is specified for the Chrysostom attribution.

13147.John Bradford’s letter to John Careless, preserved in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, contains this assurance and the explanation of a heart that desires to repent and believe. The exchange is cited testimony, not a confession by Burton.

13148.The iron pen and diamond point echo Jeremiah 17:1. First magnitude borrows the language of ranking stars by brightness. Burton is again stating the sufferer’s objection, which he will answer by distinguishing unwanted thoughts from final, wilful rejection.

13149.The hierarchy of religious outsiders belongs to the imagined self-accusation and to Burton’s Christian polemical vocabulary. Apostate means one who abandons a previously professed faith. The translation retains the accusation rather than endorsing its ranking of people.

13150.Band means bond, particularly a binding undertaking. Explicit and implicit pacts belong to the period’s demonological account of witchcraft. The passage continues the sufferer’s catalogue of accusations. The Latin phrase and its English restatement are both translated.

13151.To make conscience of something means to consider it as a matter of moral obligation or scruple. The catalogue deliberately accumulates accusations; it is not evidence that a particular person committed them all.

13154.Burton shifts from thou to his while presenting thoughts he condemns. Policie here means political contrivance or statecraft. The margin invokes Caecilius, the pagan speaker in Minucius Felix’s Octavius 11; Burton abbreviates and extends that speech. These objections are not the conclusions of the dialogue or of this edition.

13156.The speaker is Juno in Seneca’s Hercules Furens 5. She complains that Jupiter’s mistresses occupy the sky as constellations. An excepter of persons is one who shows partiality. Burton uses Juno’s complaint within the imagined objection about divine justice; the following line is also hers.

13157.Seneca, Hercules Furens 13, continuing Juno’s complaint. Aureas makes golden describe the stars. Suásq; abbreviates suasque, and the reference is to the constellation Perseus.

13158.A circulating Latin epigram contrasts burial honours with merit. Camden’s Remaines prints Pompeius, Pompey, where Burton prints Pomponius, and Credimus esse Deos as its closing question. Burton’s name and wording remain; they have not been silently replaced by the parallel. The epigram’s authorship remains unresolved.

13159.Burton continues the objection from the existence of suffering and evil, using the religious conflicts and hostile terminology of his own period. World in the earth–world contrast means the larger cosmos; a house of correction was a penal institution.

13162.Lucan, Civil War 7.447, in the narrator’s outcry over civil war and divine inaction. The scan’s two dagger margins, Campanella and Lucan, are both attached here. In the Campanella margin, the final word after unde appears as colum; the familiar question would require malum, evil. The reading and tentative sense are explicitly recorded for collation.

13163.Volentes nolentes means whether willing or not. Burton moves from the content of the objections to their unwanted occurrence, particularly during religious exercises. Prodigious here means monstrous, not impressively large.

13164.Burton’s syntax compresses a list of contributing conditions before returning to the devil’s agency. Phantasies means the imagination or its representations. The religious and humoral explanation is preserved as Burton’s account, without converting it into a modern diagnosis.

13165.Spirits can refer to the subtle bodily vehicles of sensation and mental activity in early modern physiology, while Satan is described as a spiritual being. Burton combines these meanings in his explanation. Insults means attacks or assails.