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.

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 suffe