r 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, as [6698]Bright and Perkins illustrate by
four reasons; and yet melancholy alone may be sometimes a sufficient cause
of this terror of conscience. [6699]Felix Plater so found it in his
observations, _e melancholicis alii damnatos se putant, Deo curae, non
sunt, nec praedestinati_, &c. "They think they are not predestinate, God
hath forsaken them;" and yet otherwise very zealous and religious; and 'tis
common to be seen, "melancholy for fear of God's judgment and hell-fire,
drives men to desperation; fear and sorrow, if they be immoderate, end
often with it." Intolerable pain and anguish, long sickness, captivity,
misery, loss of goods, loss of friends, and those lesser griefs, do