A Description of Melancholy.] [831]"Great travail is created for all men, and an heavy yoke on the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother’s womb, unto that day they return to the mother of all things.  Namely, their thoughts, and fear of their hearts, and their imagination of things they wait for, and the day of death.  From him that sitteth in the glorious throne, to him that sitteth beneath in the earth and ashes; from him that is clothed in blue silk and weareth a crown, to him that is clothed in simple linen.  Wrath, envy, trouble, and unquietness, and fear of death, and rigour, and strife, and such things come to both man and beast, but sevenfold to the ungodly.”  All this befalls him in this life, and peradventure eternal misery in the life to come.

Impulsive Cause of Man’s Misery and Infirmities.] The impulsive cause of these miseries in man, this privation or destruction of God’s image, the cause of death and diseases, of all temporal and eternal punishments, was the sin of our first parent Adam, [832]in eating of the forbidden fruit, by the devil’s instigation and allurement.  His disobedience, pride, ambition, intemperance, incredulity, curiosity; from whence proceeded original sin, and that general corruption of mankind, as from a fountain, flowed all bad inclinations and actual transgressions which cause our several calamities inflicted upon us for our sins.  And this belike is that which our fabulous poets have shadowed unto us in the tale of [833] Pandora’s box, which being opened through her curiosity, filled the world full of all manner of diseases.  It is not curiosity alone, but those other crying sins of ours, which pull these several plagues and miseries upon our heads.  For Ubi peccatum, ibi procella, as [834]Chrysostom well observes. [835]"Fools by reason of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted.” [836]"Fear cometh like sudden desolation, and destruction like a whirlwind, affliction and anguish,” because they did not fear God. [837]"Are you shaken with wars?” as Cyprian well urgeth to Demetrius, “are you molested with dearth and famine? is your health crushed with raging diseases? is mankind generally tormented with epidemical maladies? ’tis all for your sins,” Hag. i. 9, 10; Amos i.; Jer. vii.  God is angry, punisheth and threateneth, because of their obstinacy and stubbornness, they will not turn unto him. [838]"If the earth be barren then for want of rain, if dry and squalid, it yield no fruit, if your fountains be dried up, your wine, corn, and oil blasted, if the air be corrupted, and men troubled with diseases, ’tis by reason of their sins:”  which like the blood of Abel cry loud to heaven for vengeance, Lam. v. 15.  “That we have sinned, therefore our hearts are heavy,” Isa. lix. 11, 12.  “We roar like bears, and mourn like doves, and want health, &c. for our sins and trespasses.”  But this we cannot endure to hear or to take notice of, Jer.