The cure of melancholy and excessive sorrow. By faith and medicine, Richard Baxter. Question. What are the preservatives against melancholy and excessive sorrow? Lest, perhaps, such a one should be swallowed up with excessive sorrow. 2 Corinthians 2 verse 7. The brevity of a sermon not allowing me time for any unnecessary work. I will not stay to open the context nor to inquire whether the person spoken of here is the same one condemned for incest in 1 Corinthians 5.1. or some other, nor whether Chrysostom had good tradition for it that it was a teacher of the church, or was made such after his sin, nor whether the late expositor is right who gathers from this that he was one of the bishops of Achaiai, and it was the sin of the bishops who were to excommunicate him. He further held that this very congregation then had a bishop who was to be excommunicated in the congregation, that the people should not have followed or favored such a teacher, and that it would not have been a schism or sinful separation to have forsaken him. And that I now intend is to open this last clause of the verse that gives us a reason why this censored sinner, being penitent, should be forgiven and comforted. Namely, lest he be swallowed up with excessive sorrow. For this includes the three doctrines which I will handle together. Number one, That sorrow, even for sin, may be excessive. Number two, that excessive sorrow swallows one up. Number three, therefore it must be resisted and assuaged by necessary comfort, both by others and by ourselves. In handling these, I will observe this order. I will show when sorrow is excessive, how excessive sorrow swallows a man up, What are its causes, and finally, what is the cure? 1. When sorrow, even for sin, may be excessive. It is too well known that excessive sorrow for sin is not the ordinary case of the world. A stupid, blockish disposition is the common cause of men's perdition. The plague of a hard heart and seared conscience keeps most men from all due sense of sin, danger, or misery. and of all the great and everlasting concerns of their guilty souls. A dead sleep and sin deprives most people of the use of sense and understanding. They do some of the outward acts of religion as in a dream. For example, they are vowed to God and baptism by others, and they profess to stand to it themselves. They go to church and repeat the words of the Creed and the Lord's Prayer and the commandments. They receive the Lord's Supper and they do all this as in a dream. They take it upon themselves to believe that sin is the most hateful thing to God. and hurtful to man, and yet they live in it with delight and obstinacy. They dream that they repent of it when indeed no persuasion will draw them to forsake it, and meanwhile they hate those who would cure them. They dream they are not as bad and mad as those who would see in them any effectual sorrow for what is past, or effectual sense of their present badness, or effectual resolution for a new and holy life. They must dream there is a judgment, a heaven and a hell, for wouldn't they be more affected with things of such unspeakable consequence if they were awake? Would they be wholly taken up with the matters of the flesh and world, and scarcely have a serious thought or word about eternity if they were awake? Oh, how sleepily and senselessly they think and talk and hear of the great work of man's redemption by Christ, and of the need of justifying and sanctifying grace, and of the joys and miseries of the next life, and yet they say that they believe them. When we preach or talk to them of the greater things, with the greatest evidence and plainness and earnestness that we can, we speak as to the dead or to men who are asleep. They have ears and do not hear. Nothing goes to their hearts. One would think that a man who reads a scripture and believes the everlasting glory offered and the dreadful punishment threatened, the necessity of holiness to salvation and of a savior to deliver us from sin and hell. and how sure and near such a passage into the unseen world is to us all that he would be affected to moderate and bear the sense of such overwhelming things. But most men so little regard or feel them that they have neither time nor heart to think of them as their concern. Rather, they hear of them as of some foreign land where they have no interest, and which they never think to see. Yes, one would think by their senseless neglect of preparation, and their worldly minds and lives that they were asleep or in jest when they confessed that they must die. and think that when they lay their friends in the grave and see the skulls and bones cast up they were all this while but in a dream or didn't believe their turn is near. If we could tell how to awaken sinners, they would come to their senses and have other thoughts about these great things and show it quickly by another kind of life. Surely awakened reason could never be so duped and drunken as we see the wicked world to be. But God has an awakening day for all, and he will make the most senseless soul to feel, whether by grace or punishment. Because a hardened heart is so great a part of the malady and misery of the unregenerate. And because the soft and tender heart is so much of the new nature promised by Christ, many awakened souls under the work of conversion think they can never have sorrow enough, and that their danger lies in hard-heartedness. They never fear excessive sorrow till it has swallowed them up. Indeed, though there is too much of other causes in it, if any of it is for sin, then they cherish sorrow as a necessary duty, or at least they don't perceive the danger of excess. Some think those are the best Christians who are most in doubts and fears and sorrows and speak almost nothing but uncomfortable complaints. But this is a great mistake. 1. Sorrow is excessive when it is fed by a mistaken cause. All sorrow is too much where none is due and great sorrow is too much when the cause only requires less. If a man thinks that something is a duty which is not a duty, and then sorrows for omitting it, such sorrow is all too much because it is undue and caused by error. I have known many who have been greatly troubled because they could not bring themselves to that length or order of meditation for which they had neither the ability nor the time. And many are troubled because they could not reprove sin in others, when prudent instruction and discretion was more suitable than reproof. And many are troubled because in their shops and collages they think of anything but God, as if our outward business must have no thoughts at all. Superstition always breeds such sorrows when men make religious duties for themselves which God never made for them. and income short in the performance of them. Many dark souls are assaulted by the erroneous and told they are in a wrong way and must take up some air as a necessary truth. And so they are cast into perplexing difficulties and perhaps turn from the truth which they accepted before. Many fearful Christians are troubled about every meal they eat, about their clothes, their thoughts and words, thinking or fearing that all is sinful, which is in fact lawful. and that unavoidable infirmities are heinous sins. All such things as these are troubles and sorrows without cause, and therefore they are excessive. 2. Sorrow is excessive when it hurts and overwhelms nature itself and destroys bodily health or understanding. Grace is a due qualification of nature, and duty is the right employment of it, but neither of them must destroy it. As civil, ecclesiastic, and domestic governments are for edification and not for destruction, so also is self-government. God will have mercy and not sacrifice. Matthew 9 verse 13. He that would not have us kill or hurt our neighbor on the pretense of religion would not have us destroy or hurt ourselves. For we are bound to love our neighbor as ourselves, just as fasting is a duty no further than it tends to some good, such as to express or exercise true humiliation, or to mortify some fleshly lust, and so on. So it is with sorrow for sin. It is too much when it does more hurt than good, but more of this next. 2. How Excessive Sorrow Swallows One Up When sorrow swallows up the sinner, it is excessive and it is to be restrained, such as 1. The passions of grief and trouble of mind often overthrow the sober and sound use of reason, so that a man's judgment is corrupted and perverted by it. In that case, it is not to be trusted. Like a man in raging anger, so is someone in fear or great trouble of mind. He doesn't think of things as they are, but only as his passion represents them. Things about God and religion, about his own soul and his actions, or about his friends or enemies. His judgment is perverted and usually false. Like an inflamed eye, he thinks all things are of the same color as itself. When sorrow prefers reason, it is excessive. 2. Excessive sorrow disables a man from governing a thought. and ungoverned thoughts must be both sinful and very troublesome. Grief carries them away as in a torrent. You may almost as easily keep the leaves of trees in stillness and order in a blustering wind as to so keep the thoughts of someone in troubling passions. If reason wishes to stop them from perplexing subjects or turn them to better and sweeter things, it cannot do it. It has no power against a stream of troubling passions. 3. Excessive sorrow would swallow up faith itself, and greatly hinder its exercise. The Gospel calls us to believe matters of unspeakable joy, and it is amazingly hard for a grieved troubled soul to believe anything that is a matter of joy. much less has so great a joy as pardon and salvation. Though it dares not flatly lie to God, it heartily believes his free and full promises in the expressions of his readiness to receive all penitent returning sinners. Passionate grief serves to feel somewhat contrary to the griefs and promises of the gospel, and that feeling hinders faith. 4. Excessive sorrow hinders hope even more. When men think that they believe God's Word and that His promises are all true for others, yet they cannot hope that the promised blessings are true for themselves. Hope is that grace by which a soul who believes the Gospel to be true comfortably expects that the benefits promised will be his own. It is an applying act, the first act of faith. says the gospel is true, which promises grace and glory through Christ. The next act of faith says, I will trust my soul and all upon it and take Christ for my Savior and help. But then hope says, I hope for this salvation by Him. But melancholy, overwhelming sorrow and trouble is as great an adversary to this hope as water is to fire or snow to heat. Despair is this very pulse and breath. Such people would gladly have hope, but they cannot. All their thoughts are suspicious and misgiving. They can see nothing but danger and misery in a helpless state. And when hope, which is the anchor of the soul, is gone, it is no wonder that they are continually tossed with storms. Number five. Excessive sorrow swallows up all comfortable sense of the infinite goodness and love of God. and thereby it hinders the soul from loving Him. And in this it is an adversary to the very life of holiness. It is exceedingly hard for such a troubled soul to apprehend the goodness of God at all, but much harder to judge that He is good and amiable to him. Rather, he is like a man in the deserts of Libya, scorched with the violent heat of the sun and ready to die with drought and faintness. He may confess that the sun is a life of the earth and a blessing to mankind, but it is misery and death to him. Even so, these souls overwhelmed with grief may say that God is good to others, but seems like an enemy to them and seeks their destruction. They think he hates them and has forsaken them, and how can they love such a God? They think hates them and resolves to damn them and has decreed them to this from eternity and brought them into the world for no other end. Those who can hardly love an enemy, that only defames them, or oppresses and wrongs them, will hardly love a God more, whom they believe will damn them and has appointed them to it without remedy. 6. And then it must follow that this disorder is a false and injurious judge of all the word and works of God, and of all his mercies and corrections. Whatever such a person reads or hears, he thinks it is all against him. Him. He thinks every sad word and threatening of scripture is meant for Him, as if it named Him, but He has no part in the promises and comforts as if He had been accepted by name. All God's mercies are extenuated and are not taken as mercies, as if God intended them all but to make His thing greater and to increase His heavy reckoning and further His damnation. He thinks God but sugarcoats what is poison to him, and gives it all in hatred and not in any love, with the design to sink him even deeper in hell. And if God corrects him, he supposes it is but the beginning of his misery, and God is tormenting him before the time. Number 7. By this you see that sorrow is an enemy to thankfulness. It reproaches God for His mercies as if they were injuries, rather than giving Him any hearty thanks. 8. And by this you may see that this disorder is quite contrary to the joy in the Holy Spirit. Yes, and to the peace in which God's kingdom largely consists, nothing seems joyful to such distressed souls. Delighting in God and in His Word and ways is a flower in life of true religion, but those whom I speak of can delight in nothing. not in God, nor in his word, nor in any duty. They are like a sick man who eats his food for mere necessity and does it with some loathing and averseness. Number nine. All of this shows us that this disease is greatly contrary to the very tenor of the gospel. Christ came as a deliverer of the captives, a savior to reconcile us to God and to bring us glad tidings of pardon and everlasting joy. Where the gospel was received, it was with great rejoicing and so proclaimed by angels and by men. But under this disease, all that Christ has done, purchased, offered, and promised seems nothing but a manner of doubt and sadness. 10. It is a disorder that greatly advantages Satan, who casts in blasphemous thoughts of God, as if he were bad, and a hater and destroyer even of those who would gladly please him. The design of the devil is to describe God to us as being like him, a malicious enemy who delights to do hurt. And if all men hate the devil for his hurtfulness, wouldn't he draw men to hate and blaspheme God? If he could make men believe that God is even more hurtful, the worship of God is represented by an image as odious to God because it seems to make him like a creature, such as that image represents. How much more blasphemous is it to imagine that he is like the malicious devil's diminutive low thoughts of God's goodness and his greatness as a sin which greatly injures God, as if you thought he was no better or trustier than a father or friend, and moreover to think of him as disordered souls imagine him. You would wrong his minister as if you described him as Christ describes the false prophets. It's hurtful thorns, thistles, and wolves, and isn't it worse to think far worse than this about God? 11. A successive sorrow unfits man for all profitable meditation. It confounds their thoughts and turns them to hurtful distractions and temptations, so that the more they muse, the more they are overwhelmed. It turns prayer into mere complaint, instead of childlike, believing supplications. It quiet and disposes the soul to God's worship, especially to a comfortable sacramental communion, and it fetches greater terror from it. Less unworthy receiving only hasten and increases their damnation, 1 Corinthians 11, 27. Too often it renders preaching and counsel unprofitable. Say what you will, however convincing, either it does not change them or else it is quickly lost. Number 12. It is a disorder which makes all sufferings heavier. It's falling upon a poor diseased soul who has no comfort to set against it, and it makes death exceedingly terrible, because they think death will be the gates of hell, so that life seems burdensome to them and death terrible. They are weary of living and afraid of dying. Thus, excessive sorrow swallows one up. What are its causes, number three? Question. What are the causes and cure of it? Answer. With very many. Most of the cause is found in a disorder, weakness, and disease of the body. The soul is greatly disabled by this from having any sense of comfort. But the more it arises from such a natural necessity, it is less sinful and less dangerous to the soul. But it is never less troublesome. Only more. Three diseases cause excessive sorrow. One. Those diseases that consist in such violent pain its natural strength is unable to bear, but does not be in very long usually. It is not now chiefly spoken of. Number two. A naturally passionate nature and a weakness of that reason which acquired that passion. It is too frequently the case with aged persons who are greatly debilitated to be apt to offense and passion, and children cannot help but cry when they are hurt. But it is more troublesome and hurtful to many women and some men who are so easily troubled and hardly quieted that they have very little power over themselves. Even many who fear God and who have very sound understandings and quick wits have almost no more power against troubling passions, anger, grief, and especially fear than any other persons. Their very natural temper is a strong disease of troubling sorrow, fear, and displeasedness. Even those who are not melancholy still have so childish, sick, and impatient a temper that one thing or another still discontents, grieves, or frightens them. They're like an aspen leaf still shaken with the least emotion of the air. The wisest and most patient man cannot please and justify such a person. A word, even a look, offends them. Every sad story, news, or noise frightens them. Just as children must have all they cry for before they will be quiet, so it is with too many adults. The case is very sad to those around them, but much more to themselves. To dwell with the sick in the house of mourning is less uncomfortable. So long as reason is not overthrown, the case is not remedy-less nor wholly excusable. 3. But when the brain and imagination are crazed, and reason is partly overthrown by the disease called melancholy, this makes the cure still more difficult. For commonly it is the aforesaid persons whose natural temper is timorous and passionate and apt to discontent and grief, who fall into craziness and melancholy. In the conjunction of both the natural temperament and the disease increases the misery. The Signs of Diseasing Melancholy Elsewhere I have often described the signs of such diseasing melancholy such as 1. The trouble and disquiet of the mind then becomes a settled habit. They can see nothing but manners of fear and trouble. All that they hear or do feeds it. Dangerous fix before their eyes. All that they read and hear seems against them. They can delight in nothing. Fearful dreams trouble them when they sleep, and distracted thoughts keep them awake. It offends them to see another laugh. Or be merry. They think that every beggar's case is happier than their own. They find it hard to believe that anyone else is in their case. When some two or three in a week or a day come to me in the same case, it is so alike. You would think it was the same person's case, which they all express. They have no pleasure in relations, friends, estate, or anything. They think that God has forsaken them and that the day of grace has passed and there is no more hope. They say they cannot pray except to howl and groan and God will not hear them. They won't believe they have any sincerity and grace. They say they cannot repent and cannot believe but that their hearts are utterly hardened. Usually, they are afraid that they have committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit. In a word, fears and troubles and near despair are the constant temper of their minds. 2. If you convince them that they have some evidences of sincerity and that their fears are baseless and injurious to themselves and to God, you have nothing to say against it. Yet, either it takes away none of their trouble or else it returns the next day, for the cause remains in their bodily disease. Quiet them a hundred times and their fears return a hundred times. Number three. Their misery is at what they think they cannot help but think. You may as well try to persuade a man not to shake in a fever or not to feel when he is paying to persuade them to cast away their self-troubling thoughts. or not to think all the enormous and confounding thoughts that they do. They cannot get them out of their heads night or day. Tell them that they must forbear long musings which disturb them, and they cannot do it. Tell them that they must cast false imaginations out of their minds when Satan casts them in, and that they must turn their thoughts to something else. And they cannot do it. Their thoughts, troubles, and fears are outside their power, and more outside by how much more melancholy and crazed they are. Number four. When they have gotten to this point, they usually seem to feel something speak in them, as it were, besides themselves, saying this and that to them, and bidding them to do this or that. And they will tell you that now it says this or that, and will tell you when and what it has said to them. They find it hard to believe how much of it is a disease of their own imagination. 5. In this case, they are exceedingly prone to think. They have revelations, whatever comes into their minds. They think some revelation brought it there. They say, this text of scripture at such a time was set upon my mind, and at another time that text was set on my mind. Often the sense they took it in was false, or they made a false application of it to themselves. Perhaps several texts were applied to contrary conclusions, as if one gave them hope, and another contradicted it. And upon this, some of them are very prone to prophecies, and truly believe that God has foretold them, this or that. Until they see that it doesn't come to pass, then they are ashamed. Many of them turn heretical and take affairs in religion, truly believing that God believed them, and set such things upon their minds. Some who have been long troubled get quietness and joy by such changes of their opinions, thinking that now they are in God's way, which they were out of all this while. And this was the reason they had no comfort. Of these I have known diverse persons be comforted who have fallen into the clean contrary opinions. Some have turned papist and superstitious, some have run too far from papists, and some have found comfort becoming Anabaptists. Some, antinomians, some Arminians, and some perfectionists, some Quakers. Some have turned from Christianity itself to infidelity. They have denied the life to come and lived in licentious uncleanness. But these melancholy heretics and apostates usually cast off their sadness by doing this. They are not the sort that I will now deal with. Number six, but the sadder, better sort. Feeling his talk and stirring within them are often apt to be confident that they are possessed by the devil, or at least bewitched. Most of them are violently haunted with blasphemous interjections, in which they tremble and yet cannot keep them out of their mind. They are tempted and haunted to doubt the scripture, or Christianity, or the life to come, or to think some ill of God. Oftentimes they are strangely urged, as if by something inside them, to speak some blasphemous word about God, or to renounce Him. They tremble at this suggestion, and yet it still follows them. Some poor souls yield to it and say some bad word against God. And then, as soon as it is spoken, something within them says, Now, your damnation is sealed, you have sinned against the Holy Spirit, there is no hope. Number 8. When it has gone too far, they are tempted to lay some vow upon themselves never to speak again or not to eat. Some of them have starved themselves to death. Number nine. And when it has gone too far, they often think they have apparitions and this and that likeness appears to them, especially lights in the night around their beds. Sometimes they are confident that they hear voices and feel something touch or heard them. Number 10. They flee from company and can do nothing but sit alone and muse. 11. They cast off all business and will not be brought to any diligent labor in their callings. 12. When it becomes extreme, they worry of their lives, strongly followed by temptations to do away with themselves. It's as if something within them were urging them either to drown themselves cut their own throats, pain themselves or cast themselves headlong off some height, which alas too many have done. Number 13. And if they escape all this, when the disease is ripe, they become quite agitated. These are the doleful symptoms and effects of melancholy and therefore how undesirable it is to prevent them or to be cured while it is only beginning before they fall into so sad a state. Richard Baxter.