The Anatomy of Melancholy

and, as Lemnius adds in book 4, chapter 21, if they are inclined to solitude, superstitious, strict in religious observance or very devout. You will seldom find a merchant, soldier, innkeeper, procurer, host or usurer so troubled in mind: their consciences are like supple leather that stretches, and they are seldom disturbed or troubled in this way. Young and middle-aged people are wilder and less apprehensive; those affected are mostly older people, especially the timid and religiously inclined.

Pieter van Foreest, in his Observations, book 10, chapter 12, On Diseases of the Brain, gives a terrible example of a minister who developed this affliction through rigorous fasting during Lent and excessive meditation. Eventually he fell into despair, thought he saw devils in his room and believed that he could not be saved. He said he smelled nothing but fire and sulphur, that he was already in hell, and kept asking the others whether they smelled it too.

I told him he was melancholy, but he laughed me to scorn and replied that he saw devils and really talked with them. He would spit in my face and ask whether I did not smell sulphur. Yet at last he was cured by Foreest.

I find another such story in Platter’s Observations, book 1. A poor man had committed some grave offence and would eat nothing for fourteen days. He eventually fell into despair; the theologians attending him could not relieve him, and in that condition he died.

Continual meditation on God’s judgements troubles many. Many fall into despair through fear and apprehension of the coming judgement, says Guaineri, chapter 5, treatise 15. David himself complains that God’s judgements terrified his soul: Psalm 119, part 16, verse 8: My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgements.

Whenever I think of that day, says Jerome, my whole body trembles: I tremble whenever I think of it.

The terrible contemplation of hellfire and eternal punishment greatly torments a poor sinful soul. What is a thousand years beside eternity? Where there is sorrow, where there is weeping, where there is everlasting pain. Death without death, an end without end. We can scarcely endure an accidentally burned finger: the pain is so grievous that an hour is more than we can bear, a night intolerable. What, then, must that indescribable fire be, burning for ever, for countless, infinite millions of years, through every age, for eternity? O eternity!

Eternity is that word, That word that hurls the thunderbolt, More threatening than thunder, Than the crashes of the heavens. Eternity is that word, —— without end or beginning, and so on.

No torments terrify That end after a span of years; Eternity, eternity Wrings and burns the heart. It increases punishments day by day And multiplies the flames a hundredfold, and so on.

This meditation terrifies these poor distressed souls, especially if melancholy has predisposed their bodies and they are religiously inclined, with sensitive consciences. Every small thing frightens them—even an unreflective reading of Scripture itself, and misinterpretation of particular passages, such as these: