his dear friend, now both carried to prison by Opimius, and in despair of pardon, seeing the young man weep, quin tu potius hoc inquit facis, do as I do; and with that knocked out his brains against the door-cheek, as he was entering into prison, protinusque illiso capite in capite in carceris januam effuso cerebro expiravit, and so desperate died.  But these are equivocal, improper.  “When I speak of despair,” saith [6689]Zanchie, “I speak not of every kind, but of that alone which concerns God.  It is opposite to hope, and a most pernicious sin, wherewith the devil seeks to entrap men.”  Musculus makes four kinds of desperation, of God, ourselves, our neighbour, or anything to be done; but this division of his may be reduced easily to the former:  all kinds are opposite to hope, that sweet moderator of passions, as Simonides calls it; I do not mean that vain hope which fantastical fellows feign to themselves, which according to Aristotle is insomnium vigilantium, a waking dream; but this divine hope which proceeds from confidence, and is an anchor to a floating soul; spes alit agricolas, even in our temporal affairs, hope revives us, but in spiritual it farther animateth; and were it not for hope, “we of all others were the most miserable,” as Paul saith, in this life; were it not for hope, the heart would break; “for though they be punished in the sight of men,” (Wisdom iii. 4.) yet is “their hope full of immortality:”  yet doth it not so rear, as despair doth deject; this violent and sour passion of despair, is of all perturbations most grievous, as [6690]Patritius holds.  Some divide it into final and temporal; [6691]final is incurable, which befalleth reprobates; temporal is a rejection of hope and comfort for a time, which may befall the best of God’s children, and it commonly proceeds [6692]"from weakness of faith,” as in David when he was oppressed he cried out, “O Lord, thou hast forsaken me,” but this for a time.  This ebbs and flows with hope and fear; it is a grievous sin howsoever:  although some kind of despair be not amiss, when, saith Zanchius, we despair of our own means, and rely wholly upon God:  but that species is not here meant.  This pernicious kind of desperation is the subject of our discourse, homicida animae, the murderer of the soul, as Austin terms it, a fearful passion, wherein the party oppressed thinks he can get no ease but by death, and is fully resolved to offer violence unto himself; so sensible of his burthen, and impatient of his cross, that he hopes by death alone to be freed of his calamity (though it prove otherwise), and chooseth with Job vi. 8. 9. xvii. 5.  “Rather to be strangled and die, than to be in his bonds.” [6693]The part affected is the whole soul, and all the faculties of it; there is a privation of joy, hope, trust, confidence, of present and future good, and in their place succeed fear, sorrow, &c. as in the symptoms shall be shown.  The heart is grieved, the conscience wounded, the mind eclipsed with black fumes arising from those perpetual terrors.