The Anatomy of Melancholy

Hemmingius identifies two chief antidotes to despair: good hope from God’s word, to be embraced; and perverse complacency and presumption, arising from the devil’s deceit, to be rejected. The former is the soul’s salvation, the latter its plague: one saves, the other kills; it kills the soul, says Augustine, and does as much harm as despair itself.

Navarrus the casuist lists ten particular remedies from Antoninus, part 1, title 3, chapter 10: 1. God. 2. Medicine. 3. Avoiding the objects that caused it. 4. Submitting oneself to other people’s judgement. 5. Answering every objection, and so on. Cajetan, Gerson in his On the Spiritual Life, and Sayrus in book 1 of his Cases of Conscience, chapter 14, repeat and approve all these from Emanuel Rodrigues, chapters 51 and 52.

Greenham prescribes six particular rules, Culmannus seven. First, acknowledge that all help comes from God. 2. That sin is the cause of their present misery. 3. Repent and be sincerely sorry for their sins. 4. Pray earnestly to God for relief. 5. Look for and implore the Church’s prayers and good people’s advice. 6. Medicine. 7. Entrust themselves to God and rely on his mercy. Others put it differently, but all to this effect.

But since most people with this illness are spiritually sick, almost deprived of reason, overwhelmed by their miseries and by an excessively deep apprehension of their sins, they cannot attend to good counsel, pray, believe or repent. We must therefore do all we can to meet and help their particular infirmities, according to their different causes and symptoms, as we find them suffering and complaining.

What chiefly terrifies and torments most people troubled in mind is the enormity of their offences, the intolerable burden of their sins and God’s heavy wrath and displeasure, apprehended so deeply that they consider themselves reprobates, utterly forsaken by God, already damned, beyond all hope of grace and incapable of receiving mercy, the devil’s slaves, slaves of sin, with offences so great that they cannot be forgiven.

But these people must know that no sin is so heinous as to be unpardonable in itself; no crime is so great that God’s mercy cannot forgive it. Where sin abounds, grace abounds much more, Romans 5:20. And what the Lord said to Paul in his extremity, 2 Corinthians 11:9—My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect through weakness—concerns everyone in a similar case.

His promises are made without restriction to all believers, addressed generally to all who are truly penitent, grieved by their offences and desirous of reconciliation, concerning the forgiveness of sins. Matthew 9:12–13: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; that is, those whose consciences are truly touched by their sins. Again, Matthew 11:28: Come to me, all you who are heavily burdened, and I will give you relief.

Ezekiel 18:27: Whenever a sinner repents of his sins from the bottom of his heart, I will blot all his wickedness from my remembrance, says the Lord. Isaiah 43:25: I, even I, am he who puts away your iniquity for my own sake, and will not remember your sins.