SUBSECT.  III.—­Causes of Despair, the Devil, Melancholy, Meditation, Distrust, Weakness of Faith, Rigid Ministers, Misunderstanding Scriptures, Guilty Consciences, &c.

The principal agent and procurer of this mischief is the devil; those whom God forsakes, the devil by his permission lays hold on.  Sometimes he persecutes them with that worm of conscience, as he did Judas, [6694]Saul, and others.  The poets call it Nemesis, but it is indeed God’s just judgment, sero sed serio, he strikes home at last, and setteth upon them “as a thief in the night,” 1 Thes. ii. [6695]This temporary passion made David cry out, “Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thine heavy displeasure; for thine arrows have light upon me, &c. there is nothing sound in my flesh, because of thine anger.”  Again, I roar for the very grief of my heart:  and Psalm xxii.  “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, and art so far from my health, and the words of my crying?  I am like to water poured out, my bones are out of joint, mine heart is like wax, that is molten in the midst of my bowels.”  So Psalm lxxxviii. 15 and 16 vers. and Psalm cii.  “I am in misery at the point of death, from my youth I suffer thy terrors, doubting for my life; thine indignations have gone over me, and thy fear hath cut me off.”  Job doth often complain in this kind; and those God doth not assist, the devil is ready to try and torment, “still seeking whom he may devour.”  If he find them merry, saith Gregory, “he tempts them forthwith to some dissolute act; if pensive and sad, to a desperate end.” Aut suadendo blanditur, aut minando terret, sometimes by fair means, sometimes again by foul, as he perceives men severally inclined.  His ordinary engine by which he produceth this effect, is the melancholy humour itself, which is balneum diaboli, the devil’s bath; and as in Saul, those evil spirits get in [6696]as it were, and take possession of us.  Black choler is a shoeing-horn, a bait to allure them, insomuch that many writers make melancholy an ordinary cause, and a symptom of despair, for that such men are most apt, by reason of their ill-disposed temper, to distrust, fear, grief, mistake, and amplify whatsoever they preposterously conceive, or falsely apprehend. Conscientia scrupulosa nascitur ex vitio naturali, complexione melancholica (saith Navarrus cap. 27. num. 282. tom. 2. cas. conscien.) The body works upon the mind, by obfuscating the spirits and corrupted instruments, which [6697]Perkins illustrates by simile of an artificer, that hath a bad tool, his skill is good, ability correspondent, by reason of ill tools his work must needs be lame and imperfect.  But melancholy and despair, though often, do not always concur; there is much difference:  melancholy fears without a cause, this upon great occasion; melancholy is caused by fear and grief, but this torment procures them and all extremity of bitterness; much melancholy is without affliction of conscience,