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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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

——let this be a wall of bronze.

Let this be a rampart, a wall of bronze to defend you. Steady yourself in that certainty of faith; let it be your comfort. CHRIST will protect and deliver you; you are one of his flock. He will triumph over the law, vanquish death, overcome the devil and destroy hell.

If he says that you are not among the elect and are no believer, reject and defy him. You have thought otherwise and may be assured of it again. Take comfort: this conviction cannot come from the devil, and still less can it be grounded in yourself; human beings are liars, and why should you distrust?

Peter who denied, Paul who persecuted, and David who was adulterous and cruel have been received; Solomon who fell away may be converted. No sin but unrepentance can testify to final rejection. Why, then, should you distrust and doubt yourself? On what grounds, on what suspicion? Merely this opinion that salvation is restricted to particular people?

Against that opinion, and in support of certainty of election and salvation, consider God’s goodwill towards humanity. Hear how universally his grace is offered to this person, that person and those people, to each individual and to all. 1 Timothy 2:4: God wills that all people be saved and come to knowledge of the truth.

It is a universal promise: God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved, John 3:17. Anyone, then, who acknowledges himself to be a person in the world must also acknowledge that he is among those to be saved. Ezekiel 33:11: I do not will a sinner’s death, but that he repent and live. But you are a sinner; therefore he does not will your death.

This is the will of him who sent me, that everyone who believes in the Son should have everlasting life, John 6:40. He wishes no one to perish, but all to come to repentance, 2 Peter 3:9. Moreover, forgiveness of sins is to be preached universally, to everyone, not merely a few. Go therefore and tell all nations, baptizing them, and so on, Matthew 28:19. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, Mark 16:15.

Now God cannot have contradictory wills: he wills that all be saved, and that not all be saved—how can these stand together? Be assured, then; believe, trust in him, hope for the best and be saved.

Yes, that is the main difficulty: how can I believe or distinguish my assurance from fleshly presumption? My faith is weak and faint. I lack the signs and fruits of sanctification: sorrow for sin, thirst for grace, groanings of the spirit, love of Christians as Christians, avoidance of occasions of sin, striving for renewed obedience, charity, love of God and perseverance.

Although these signs are weak in you and not established in your heart, you must not therefore be dejected or terrified. The effects of faith and the Spirit are not yet fully felt within you. Do not therefore conclude that you are rejected, or doubt your election, for even the elect lack these signs before their conversion. You may be converted in the Lord’s good time; some are called at the eleventh hour. Use, I say, the means of your conversion; wait for the Lord’s appointed time. If you have not yet been called, pray that you may be, or at least wish and desire it.

Despite all that might be said to this purpose to ease their afflicted minds, despite whatever comfort our best theologians—Zanchius, Beza and others—can offer in this case, this frenzied curiosity, needless speculation and fruitless meditation on election, reprobation, free will and grace, and these passages of Scripture perversely understood, still torment and crucify too many souls and set the whole world at odds.

To prevent these troubles, settle distressed minds and soften those theological pronouncements—though some go to the other extreme—our recent Arminians have revived the appealing doctrine of universal grace. Many Church Fathers, recent Lutherans and present-day Roman Catholics still maintain it: that we have free will of ourselves, and that grace is available to all who will believe.

Others, though less orthodox, hold that far more will be saved than damned—as Caelius Secundus firmly maintains in his book On the Extent of the Heavenly Kingdom, or as some impostor writing under his name maintains: the number of the blessed is far greater than that of the damned.

He calls the other doctrine, of particular election and reprobation, a prejudiced, envious and malicious opinion, apt to drive everyone to despair. Against Many are called, few are chosen, and similar passages, he sets other, contrary passages of Scripture: Christ came into the world to save sinners, and so on.

He produces four principal arguments, one drawn from God’s power. If more are damned than saved, he wrongly concludes, the devil has the greater sovereignty; for what is power but the ability to protect? And majesty consists in numbers. If the devil has the greater share, where is God’s mercy, where is his power? How is he God Most Good, Most Great and Merciful, and so on? Where is his greatness, where his goodness?

He continues: We consider someone a murderer who merely assists the crime, or fails to help when he can. Such a thing cannot be supposed of God without great offence, since he can do whatever he wills; otherwise he is an accomplice and the author of sin.

Goodness by its nature is shared. God is good, and therefore will not be restricted in his goodness: for how is he the Father of mercy and comfort if his goodness concerns only a few? How envious and ungrateful people are to think otherwise!

13185.Horace, Epistles 1.1.60–61. In Horace the wall is a clear conscience; Burton applies the image to certainty of faith. The verse fragment and Burton’s following English expansion are both retained. Aheneus means made of bronze or brass.

13186.Stay means support or steady; vindicate here includes rescue or deliverance. The repeated fortification image translates the Latin wall into the language of spiritual protection.

13187.This perswasion has an unstable antecedent: the passage moves between the devil’s accusation and assurance of faith. The wording is retained without silently resolving the ambiguity. The next sentences return to reasons against despair.

13188.Particularity concerns election confined to particular persons, in contrast to the universal promises Burton now assembles. May be converted is retained for Solomon rather than turned into a claim that his conversion is established.

13189.The distribution to him, and him, and them insists that a general promise reaches the individual hearer. Burton’s argument concerning universal grace continues beyond this block and will include objections and competing positions.

13190.Burton frames the promises as arguments addressed to the individual sufferer. The Ezekiel quotation contains the printed irregularity but he that he, rendered according to its evident sense. Will here means desire or intend, not merely a prediction of the future.

13191.The sequence preserves the condition believes alongside the language of universality. Burton prints tell all Nations in the Matthew quotation; it is not silently replaced with teach or make disciples from other biblical texts.

13192.This is Burton’s rhetorical question within a pastoral argument. It should not be taken as a resolution of every distinction concerning divine will; the discussion of election and universal grace continues in the following discussion.

13194.The sufferer objects again. Carnall presumption means unfounded confidence rooted in the unrenewed self; security here means assurance. Sanctification is growth in holiness. The margin names Abernethy as a source for the signs.

13195.The eleventh hour recalls the labourers hired late in Matthew 20:6–9. Expect means await. This completes the response about weak signs of faith; the next paragraph turns to the continuing torment caused by speculation about election, reprobation, free will and grace.

13196.Election is God’s choosing for salvation; reprobation, exclusion from it. Burton connects private torment with public religious conflict. The scan reads minds at the opening; mindes was an earlier transcription of the continuation cue. The wording here follows the scan.

13197.Plausible means attractive or persuasive, not necessarily true. Papists is Burton’s polemical term for Roman Catholics. These are his compressed descriptions of disputed teachings, not exact definitions accepted by every theologian he groups together.

13199.Caelius Secundus is Celio Secondo Curione. Basel’s catalogue identifies De amplitudine beati regni Dei (1554) as dialogi sive libri duo, dialogues or two books. Burton’s book 3, leaf 122 locator therefore remains unexplained. Catalogue identification does not verify his attributed arguments or suspicion about the author; his shortened title and wording are retained.

13202.Prejudicate means prejudged or prejudiced. The contrasting texts recall Matthew 22:14 and 1 Timothy 1:15. The second margin recommends counterarguments in Chamier and Downam; it is Burton’s intervention in the reported dispute.

13204.Erroneously marks Burton’s rejection of the inference. The Latin divine titles are translated. Burton announces four arguments but does not set out four formally numbered divisions here; none have been supplied.

13206.Accessary means complicit or an accomplice. This continues the argument Burton is reporting; its accusation is not the editor’s conclusion. The full Latin marginal version appears in the Burton note.

13207.Communicated means imparted or shared; contracted means confined or narrowed. The argument moves from divine power to the nature and extent of divine goodness.