The Anatomy of Melancholy

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.