The Anatomy of Melancholy

Melancholy is the devil’s bath, as Serapio holds—the devil’s bath, inviting him into it. Just as a sick person frets and raves during attacks, saying and doing he knows not what, so the devil violently compels such disordered souls to think these damned thoughts against their wills. They cannot help it. Sometimes continuously, sometimes in attacks, he exploits their reduced power to resist: he exaggerates, minimizes, affirms, denies, condemns, confounds the spirits, troubles the heart, brain, humours, organs and senses, and wholly dominates their imaginations.

If such thoughts proceed from the sufferers themselves, they are weaker and more moderate, less violent and monstrous, and less frequent. The devil commonly suggests things contrary to nature, contrary to God and his word: impious, absurd things that a person would never, or could never, conceive unaided. They strike terror and horror into the sufferer’s own heart.

For if the sufferer is asked whether he approves of such thoughts, he answers—and his own soul truly tells him the same—that he abhors them as much as hell and the devil himself. He would gladly think otherwise if he could. He has thought otherwise and desires with his whole soul to think so again; he resists and sometimes has good impulses mingled with the rest.

Thus these blasphemous, impious and unclean thoughts are not his own but the devil’s. They proceed not from him but from a disordered imagination, disturbed humours and black vapours that injure his brain. They are your afflictions and the devil’s sins, and he shall answer for them: he forces you to do what you abhor and have never consented to.

Although he has sometimes attacked so secretly and prevailed so far as to make you assent in some degree to these wicked thoughts and take delight in them, they have not proceeded from a settled will within you; they are thoughts that you afterwards reject and abhor.

Therefore do not be excessively troubled or dismayed by such suggestions, at least if they give you no pleasure, because they are not your personal sins, bringing God’s wrath or displeasure upon you. Disregard and ignore them; let them go as they come. Do not struggle too violently or distress yourself too much. Instead, as our Saviour said to Satan in a similar case, say, Begone, Satan; I detest you and these thoughts.

It is Satan’s part to thrust evil upon us, says Augustine, ours not to consent. As Satan labours to suggest it, so we must strive not to consent, and that will be enough. The more anxious and preoccupied you are, the more perplexed, troubled and entangled you will otherwise become.

Besides, all who are so troubled and disordered must know that, although these are most accursed and grievous sins, they can still be pardoned. Through God’s mercy and goodness they may be forgiven if the sufferers repent and are sorry for them. Paul himself confesses in Romans 7:19: He did not do the good he wished to do, but the evil he did not wish to do; it is not I, but sin dwelling in me.