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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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

Faith, hope and repentance are the sovereign cures and remedies, the only comforts in this case. Confess, humble yourself and repent: that is enough. What purple cannot do, sackcloth can, says Chrysostom. The king of Nineveh’s sackcloth and ashes accomplished what his purple robes and crown could not: what the diadem could not do, ashes achieved.

Turn to him and he will turn to you. The Lord is near those whose hearts are contrite and will save those afflicted in spirit, Psalm 34:18. He came to the lost sheep of Israel, Matthew 15:14. If he sees someone falling, he stretches out a merciful hand: he is always ready to help. God never scorns repentance if it is offered sincerely and without pretence: he never rejects a penitent sinner, even one who has reached the height of wickedness and wallowed and delighted in sin. If that person will abandon his former ways, he gladly embraces him; he will receive him.

I will spare this person, says Augustine, speaking in God’s person, because he has not spared himself; I will forgive him because he has acknowledged his sin. I will spare him because he has not spared himself; I will pardon him because he acknowledges his offence. However enormous the sin, his grace is sufficient, 2 Corinthians 12:9.

Do not despair, then, or lose heart at all; do not be cast down, but rely on God. Call on him in your trouble and he will hear you, support, help and deliver you. Draw near to him and he will draw near to you, James 4:8. Lazarus was poor and covered in sores, yet still relied on God; Abraham hoped beyond hope.

You object: these were eminent people, godly spirits, dear to God, beloved by him and especially favoured. But I am a contemptible and abandoned wretch, forsaken by God and left to the merciless fury of evil spirits. I cannot hope, pray, repent and so on. How often must I say it? You may perform all these duties and Christian observances, and be restored in due time.

A sick person loses appetite, strength and ability. His illness advances so far that all his powers are exhausted: hand and foot cannot do their work, his eyes are dim, hearing dull, and his tongue finds pleasantly flavoured things distasteful. Yet nature lies hidden, recovers and expels all that foul matter through vomiting, sweat or similar discharges.

You are spiritually sick; your heart is heavy and your mind distressed. You may yet recover and drive out those dreadful emotions of fear and grief. God did not allow you to be tried beyond measure. Those he loves, I say, he loves to the end. Hope for the best.

In his misery David prayed to the Lord, remembering how God had formerly dealt with him. By meditating on God’s mercy he strengthened his faith and calmed his own turbulent heart in its greatest agony. O my soul, why are you so troubled within me? And so on.

I grant that your soul is darkened for a time, as the sun is obscured by a cloud. Yet those gracious beams of God’s mercy will surely shine upon you again, as they have before. Those embers of faith, hope and repentance, now buried in ashes, will burst into fresh flame and fully revive.

A lack of faith or a present absence of any feeling of grace are not reliable guides. We must live by faith, not by feeling. To wish for grace is the beginning of grace: we must wait and be patient.

David, a man after God’s own heart, was himself troubled in this way: Awake! Why do you sleep? O Lord, arise; do not cast me off. Why do you hide your face and forget my affliction and oppression? My soul is bowed down to the dust. Arise and redeem us, and so on, Psalm 44:22. He prayed long before he was heard: waiting, he waited. He endured much before relief came. In Psalm 69:3 he complains, I am weary of crying, my throat is dry and my eyes fail as I wait for the Lord; yet he perseveres. Do not be dismayed: at last you will be attended to.

God often works through opposites: he first kills and then makes alive, first wounds and then heals; he makes a person sow in tears so that he may reap in joy. This is God’s method. Whoever is afflicted in this way must endure patiently and be content for the present.

The Passover lamb was eaten with bitter herbs. We shall feel no sweetness from his blood until we first feel the sting of our sins.

Your pains are great and, for the time, unbearable; you lack grace and comfort. Wait for the Lord’s appointed time. He will not, I say, allow you to be tried beyond what you can bear, 1 Corinthians 10:13, but will provide a way out of the trial. He makes all things work for the best for those who love God, Romans 8:28.

Do not doubt your election: it is an unchangeable decree, a mark that can never be erased. You have been otherwise; you may and will be so again. As for your present affliction, hope for the best: it will soon end. He is present with his servants in their affliction, Psalm 91:15. Great are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them from them all, Psalm 34:19. Our light affliction, which lasts only a moment, produces in us an eternal weight of glory, 2 Corinthians 4:17. It cannot compare with the glory to come; though now in sorrow, says 1 Peter 1:6, you will rejoice.

Now, last of all, to those outward disturbances: the terrifying things they often hear and see—devils, bogeymen and spectres—foul smells, and so on. As I explained earlier in my discussion of the symptoms of melancholy, these may arise from internal causes. Just as a concave mirror reflects solid bodies, a brain disturbed by lack of sleep or nourishment, and by that agitation of the spirits to which Hercules de Saxonia attributes almost all the symptoms, may reflect and display monstrous shapes, as our groundless fear and disordered imagination suggest and invent them,

just as many helpless, weak women and children in the dark, sick people, and those driven frantic by lack of food and sleep imagine that they see what they do not see. Such terrors may often arise from natural causes, and all the other senses may likewise be deceived.

13247.Jonah 3:6 supplies the king’s descent from his throne into sackcloth and ashes. The antitheses occur in the Chrysostomic On Repentance tradition, with a parallel at PG 49.311–312. Both Latin formulations and Burton’s intervening English restatement are preserved.

13248.The lost sheep saying is Matthew 15:24, not the printed 15:14. Each Latin sentence and Burton’s separate English elaboration remain. A related assurance about sincere return appears in Chrysostom’s To Theodore After His Fall; the precise sources of all three Latin phrases still require collation.

13250.The Latin and English versions are both retained. The margin prints On Psalm 52. A related argument about confession, self-judgement and pardon occurs in Augustine’s exposition of Psalm 50 in Latin numbering, commonly Psalm 51 in English; this parallel does not establish the exact source of Burton’s quotation.

13251.Lazarus is the beggar of Luke 16:19–31, not the man raised from the dead in John 11. Abraham’s hope recalls Romans 4:18. Faint means lose courage or give up.

13252.Exceptest means raise an objection; chief means eminent. The Latin dear to God and Burton’s immediate English repetition remain. His repeated answer maintains possibility and deferred recovery rather than demanding a present feeling of certainty.

13253.Fæculent means foul or dreg-like. This is Burton’s bodily analogy for powers that seem absent but may recover, expressed through the period’s theory of evacuation; it is not a prescription offered by the modern edition.

13254.Happily here carries the sense of perhaps or by good fortune, not merely cheerfully. Passions means powerful emotions. The bodily comparison now becomes an argument for possible spiritual recovery.

13255.The repeated question recalls Psalms 42:5, 42:11 and 43:5. Burton calls the speaker David in keeping with his broad treatment of the Psalms; the attribution is retained.

13256.Burton moves from a clouded sun to embers under ashes: what is hidden is not necessarily extinguished. Eclipsed is used broadly for darkening, not as a precise astronomical explanation.

13257.Directions means guides for judging one’s condition; expect and tarry both concern waiting. The distinction between faith and felt assurance is central to the counsel, despite the apparent tension in opening with want of faith.

13258.The Psalm 44 extract corresponds chiefly to verses 23–26 in the King James Bible, not only the printed verse 22; Burton also shifts the psalm’s plural voice to singular. Expectans expectavit adapts the patient-waiting formula of Psalm 40:1. Respected means regarded or attended to.

13259.The reversals recall Deuteronomy 32:39 and 1 Samuel 2:6; sowing in tears and reaping in joy recalls Psalm 126:5. For the present keeps the emphasis on endurance during an interval of distress.

13260.Exodus 12:8 supplies the bitter herbs. Burton reads the Passover lamb as a figure of Christ and turns the contrast of bitter and sweet into a sequence of repentance and consolation.

13261.Issue means a way out or deliverance. Burton places the felt unbearable pain beside the promise of a limit to trial; the tension is preserved rather than resolved by weakening either statement.

13262.Not answerable means not comparable and recalls Romans 8:18 before the reference to 1 Peter. Burton’s assurances close this sequence of spiritual counsel. The next paragraph turns to frightening sights, sounds and smells, their possible bodily causes and proposed remedies.

13263.Bugbears and Mormeluches are frightening apparitions or bogeys. Glass means mirror; phantasie is the faculty of imagination. Spirits here are the subtle bodily spirits of historical physiology. Burton allows a bodily origin for appearances experienced as external; he does not yet exclude supernatural causes.

13264.Silly can mean helpless or vulnerable; repast means food or a meal; terriculaments are things that frighten. The original’s gendered generalization is retained as Burton’s, not converted into a modern clinical description.