A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

10. A mere sinful backwardness is not to be indulged. A diseased disability (such as comes from melancholy, weak-headedness, or decay of memory) must be endured, and not too much accused; when Christ excused worse in his disciples, saying, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." But a sinful backwardness in cases of absolute necessity, is not at all to be endured, but striven against with all your power, whatever it cost you: as to bring yourselves to so much serious consideration, as is necessary to your repentance and unfeigned faith, and godly conversation, this must be done whatever follow; though the devil persuade you that it will make you melancholy or mad; for without it, you are far worse than mad.

11. The most desirable life, to those that have their choice, is that which joineth together contemplation and action; so as there shall be convenient leisure for the most high and serious contemplation, and this improved to fit us for the most great and profitable action. And such is the life of a faithful minister of Christ: and therefore no sort of men on earth are more obliged to thankfulness than they.

12. Servants, and poor men, and diseased men, and others, that are called off from much contemplation, and employed in a life of obedient action, yea, or suffering, by the providence of God, and not by their own sinful choice, must understand, that their labour and patience is the way of their acceptable attendance upon God, in the expense of most part of their time. And though it is madness in those that hope God will accept of their labours, instead of true faith and repentance, and a godly life; (for these must go together, and hinder not each other;) yet, instead of such further contemplations as are not necessary to the being of a godly life, a true christian may believe that his obedient labours and sufferings shall be accepted. If you set one servant to cast up an account, and another to sweep your chimney or channels, you will not accept the former, and reject the latter, for the difference of their works; but you will rather think that he hath most merited your acceptance, who yielded without grudging to the basest service. And doubtless it is an aggravation of acceptable obedience, when we readily and willingly serve God in the lowest, meanest work. He is too fine to serve him, who saith, I will serve thee in the magistracy or ministry, but not at plough or cart, or any such drudgery.[311] And if thou be but in God's way, he can make thy very obedience a state of greater holiness and safety, than if thou hadst spent all that time in the study of holy things, as you see many ungodly ministers do all their lifetime, and are never the better for it. It is not the quality of the work, but God's blessing, that makes it do you good. Nor is he most beloved of God, who hath rolled over the greatest number of good thoughts in his mind, or of good words in his mouth, no, nor he that hath stirred up the strongest passions hereabouts; but he that loveth God and heaven best, and hateth sin most, and whose will is most confirmed for holiness of life. He that goeth about his labour in obedience to God, may have as much comfort as another that is meditating or praying. But neither labour nor prayer is matter of comfort to an ungodly, carnal heart.

Yea, if decay of memory or natural ability take you off both action and contemplation, you may have as much acceptance, and solid comfort, in a patient bearing of the cross, and an obedient, cheerful submission to the holy will of God.

Tit. 5. Directions to the Melancholy about their Thoughts.

It is so easy and ordinary a thing for some weak-headed persons, to cast themselves into melancholy, by over-straining either their thoughts or their affections, and the case of such is so exceeding lamentable, that I think it requisite to give such some particular directions by themselves.[312] And the rather because I see some persons that are unacquainted with the nature of this and other diseases, exceedingly abuse the name of God, and bring the profession of religion into scorn, by imputing all the effects and speeches of such melancholy persons to some great and notable operations of the Spirit of God, and thence draw observations of the methods and workings of God upon the soul, and of the nature of the legal workings of the spirit of bondage. (As some other such have divulged the prophecies, the possessions and dispossessing of hysterical women, as I have read, especially in the writings of the friars.) I do not call those melancholy, who are rationally sorrowful for sin, and sensible of their misery, and solicitous about their recovery and salvation, though it be with as great seriousness as the faculties can bear; as long as they have sound reason, and the imagination, fantasy, or thinking faculty is not crazed or diseased: but by melancholy I mean this diseased craziness, hurt, or error of the imagination, and consequently of the understanding, which is known by these following signs (which yet are not all in every melancholy persons).[313]

1. They are commonly exceeding fearful, causelessly or beyond what there is cause for: every thing which they hear or see is ready to increase their fears, especially if fear was the first cause, as ordinarily it is. 2. Their fantasy most erreth in aggravating their sin, or dangers, or unhappiness: every ordinary infirmity they are ready to speak of with amazement, as a heinous sin; and every possible danger they take for probable, and every probable one for certain; and every little danger for a great one; and every calamity for an utter undoing. 3. They are still addicted to excess of sadness: some weeping they know not why, and some thinking it ought to be so: and if they should smile or speak merrily, their hearts smite them for it, as if they had done amiss. 4. They place most of their religion in sorrowing and austerities to the flesh. 5. They are continual self-accusers, turning all manner of accusation against themselves, which they hear, or read, or see, or think of: quarrelling with themselves for every thing they do, as a contentious person doth with others. 6. They are still apprehending themselves forsaken of God, and are prone to despair: they are just like a man in a wilderness, forsaken of all his friends and comforts, forlorn and desolate: their continual thought is, I am undone, undone, undone! 7. They are still thinking that the day of grace is past, and that it is now too late to repent or to find mercy. If you tell them of the tenor of the gospel, and offers of free pardon to every penitent believer, they cry out still, Too late, too late, my day is past; not considering that every soul that truly repenteth in this life is certainly forgiven. 8. They are oft tempted to gather despairing thoughts from the doctrine of predestination, and to think that if God have reprobated them, or have not elected them, all that they can do, or that all the world can do, cannot save them; and next they strongly conceit that they are not elected, and so that they are past help or hope: not knowing that God electeth not any man separately or simply to be saved, but conjunctly to believe, repent, and to be saved; and so to the end and means together; and that all that will repent and choose Christ and a holy life, are elected to salvation, because they are elected to the means and condition of salvation, which, if they persevere, they shall enjoy. To repent is the best way to prove that I am elected to repent. 9. They never read or hear of any miserable instance, but they are thinking that this is their case. If they hear of Cain, of Pharaoh given up to hardness of heart, or do but read that some are vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, or that they have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, hearts and understand not, they think, This is all spoken of me; or, This is just my case. If they hear of any terrible example of God's judgments on any, they think it will be so with them. If any die suddenly, or a house be burnt, or any be distracted, or die in despair, they think it will be so with them. The reading of Spira's case causeth or increaseth melancholy in many; the ignorant author having described a plain melancholy, contracted by the trouble of sinning against conscience, as if it were a damnable despair of a sound understanding. 10. And yet they think that never any one was as they are. I have had abundance in a few weeks with me, almost just in the same case, and yet every one say that never any one was as they. 11. They are utterly unable to rejoice in any thing; they cannot apprehend, believe, or think of any thing that is comfortable to them. They read all the threatenings of the word with quick sense and application, but the promises they read over and over, without taking notice of them, as if they had not read them; or else say, They do not belong to me: the greater the mercy of God is, and the riches of grace, the more miserable am I that have no part in them. They are like a man in continual pain or sickness, that cannot rejoice, because the feeling of his pain forbiddeth him. They look on husband, wife, friends, children, house, goods, and all without any comfort; as one would do that is going to be executed for some crime. 12. Their consciences are quick in telling them of sin, and putting them upon any dejection as a duty; but they are dead to all duties that tend to consolation; as to thanksgiving for mercies, praises of God, meditating on his love, and grace, and Christ, and promises: put them never so hard on these, and they feel not their duty, nor make any conscience of it, but think it is a duty for others, but unsuitable to them. 13. They always say that they cannot believe, and therefore think they cannot be saved: because that commonly they mistake the nature of faith, and take it to be a believing that they themselves are forgiven and in favour with God, and shall be saved; and because they cannot believe this, (which their disease will not suffer them to believe,) therefore they think that they are no believers: whereas saving faith is nothing but such a belief that the gospel is true, and Christ is the Saviour to be trusted with our souls, as causeth our wills to consent that he be ours and that we be his, and so to subscribe the covenant of grace. Yet while they thus consent, and would give a world to be sure that Christ was theirs, and to be perfectly holy, yet they think they believe not, because they believe not that he will forgive or save them. 14. They are still displeased and discontented with themselves; just as a peevish, froward person is apt to be with others: see one that is hard to be pleased, and is finding fault with every thing that he sees or hears, and offended at every one that comes in his way, and suspicious of every body that he sees whispering; and just so is a melancholy person against himself; suspecting, and displeased and finding fault with all. 15. They are much addicted to solitariness, and weary of company for the most part. 16. They are given up to fixed musings, and long, poring thoughts to little purpose: so that deep musings and thinkings are their chief employments, and much of their disease. 17. They are much averse to the labours of their callings, and given to idleness; either to lie in bed, or sit thinking unprofitably by themselves. 18. Their thoughts are most upon themselves, like the millstones that grind on themselves, when they have no grist: so one thought begets another: their thoughts are taken up about their thoughts: when they have been thinking irregularly, they think again what they have been thinking on: they meditate not much on God, (unless on his wrath,) nor heaven, nor Christ, nor the state of the church, nor any thing without them (ordinarily); but all their thoughts are contracted and turned inwards on themselves: self-troubling is the sum of their thoughts and lives. 19. Their thoughts are all perplexed like ravelled yarn or silk; or like a man in a maze, or wilderness, or that hath lost himself and his way in the night: he is poring and groping about, and can make little of any thing, but is bewildered, and moidered, and entangled the more; full of doubts and difficulties, out of which he cannot find the way. 20. He is endless in his scruples: afraid lest he sin in every word he speaketh, and in every thought, and every look, and every meal he eateth, and all the clothes he weareth: and if he think to amend them, he is still scrupling his supposed amendments: he dare neither travel, nor stay at home, neither speak, nor be silent; but he is scrupling all; as if he were wholly composed of self-perplexing scruples. 21. Hence it comes to pass that he is greatly addicted to superstition; to make many laws to himself that God never made him; and to insnare himself with needless vows, and resolutions, and hurtful austerities; "touch not, taste not, handle not;" and to place his religion much in such outward, self-imposed tasks;[314] to spend so many hours in this or that act of devotion; to wear such clothes, and forbear other that are finer; to forbear all diet that pleaseth the appetite, with much of the like. A great deal of the perfection of popish devotion proceeded from melancholy, though their government come from pride and covetousness. 22. They have lost the power of governing their thoughts by reason; so that if you convince them that they should cast out their self-perplexing, unprofitable thoughts, and turn their thoughts to other subjects, or be vacant, they are not able to obey you: they seem to be under a necessity or constraint; they cannot cast out their troublesome thoughts; they cannot turn away their minds; they cannot think of love and mercy; they can think of nothing but what they do think of, any more than a man in the tooth-ache can forbear to think of his pain. 23. They usually grow hence to a disability to any private prayer or meditation; their thoughts are presently cast all into a confusion, when they should pray or meditate; they scatter abroad a hundred ways; and they cannot keep them upon any thing: for this is the very point of their disease; a distempered, confused fantasy, with a weak reason which cannot govern it. Sometimes terror driveth them from prayer; they dare not hope, and therefore dare not pray: and usually they dare not receive the Lord's supper; here they are fearfulest of all; and if they do receive it, they are cast down with terrors, fearing that they have taken their own damnation, by receiving unworthily. 24. Hence they grow to a great averseness to all holy duty: fear and despair make them go to prayer, hearing, reading, as a bear to the stake; and then they think they are haters of God and godliness, imputing the effects of their disease to their souls; when yet at the same time, those of them that are godly, would rather be freed from all their sins, and be perfectly holy, than have all the riches or honour in the world. 25. They are usually so taken up with busy and earnest thoughts, (which being all perplexed, do but strive with themselves, and contradict one another,) that they feel it just as if something were speaking within them, and all their own violent thoughts were the pleadings and impulse of some other; and therefore they are wont to impute all their fantasies, either to some extraordinary actings of the devil, or to some extraordinary motions of the Spirit of God: and they are used to express themselves in such words as these, It was set upon my heart, or it was said to me, that I must do thus and thus; and then it was said, I must not do this or that; and I was told I must do so or so. And they think that their own imagination is something talking in them, and saying to them all that they are thinking. 26. When melancholy groweth strong, they are almost always troubled with hideous, blasphemous temptations, against God, or Christ, or the Scripture, and against the immortality of the soul; which cometh partly from their own fears, which make them think most (against their will) of that which they are most afraid of thinking: as the spirits and blood will have recourse to the part that is hurt. The very pain of their fears doth draw their thoughts to what they fear. As he that is over-desirous to sleep, and afraid lest he shall not sleep, is sure to wake, because his fears and desires keep him waking: so do the fears and desires of the melancholy cross themselves. And withal, the malice of the devil plainly here interposeth, and taketh advantage by this disease, to tempt and trouble them, and to show his hatred to God, and Christ, and Scripture, and to them. For as he can much easier tempt a choleric person to anger, than another, and a phlegmatic, fleshly person to sloth, and a sanguine or hot-tempered person to lust, and wantonness; so also a melancholy person to thoughts of blasphemy, infidelity, and despair. And ofttimes they feel a vehement urgency, as if something within them urged them to speak such or such a blasphemous or foolish, word; and they can have no rest unless they yield in this, and other such cases, to what they are urged to. And some are ready to yield in a temptation to be quiet: and when they have done, they are tempted utterly to despair because they have committed so great a sin: and when the devil hath got this advantage of them, he is still setting it before them. 27. Hereupon they are further tempted to think they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost; not understanding what that sin is, but fearing it is theirs, because it is a fearful sin: at least they think they shall not be forgiven; not considering that a temptation is one thing, and a sin another; and that no man hath less cause to fear being condemned for his sin, than he that is least willing of it, and most hateth it. And no man can be less willing of any sin, than these poor souls are of the hideous, blasphemous thoughts which they complain of. 28. Hereupon some of them grow to think that they are possessed of devils: and if it do but enter into their fantasy how possessed persons used to act, the very strength of imagination will make them do so too: so that I have known those that would swear, and curse, and blaspheme, and imitate an inward alien voice, thinking themselves that it was the devil in them that did all this. But these that go so far are but few. 29. Some of them that are near distraction, verily think that they hear voices, and see lights and apparitions, that the curtains are opened on them, that something meets them, and saith this or that to them, when all is but the error of a crazed brain and sick imagination. 30. Many of them are weary of their lives, through the constant, tiring perplexities of their minds; and yet afraid of dying: some of them resolutely famish themselves: some are strongly tempted to murder themselves, and they are haunted with the temptation so restlessly, that they can go no whither but they feel as if somewhat within them put them on, and said, Do it, do it; so that many poor creatures yield, and make away with themselves. 31. Many of them are restlessly vexed with fears of want, and poverty, and misery to their families; and of imprisonment or banishment; and lest somebody will kill them; and every one that they see whisper, they think is plotting to take away their lives. 32. Some of them lay a law upon themselves that they will not speak, and so live long in resolute silence. 33. All of them are intractable, and stiff in their own conceits, and hardly persuaded out of them, be they never so irrational. 34. Few of them are the better for any reason, conviction, or counsel that is given them: if it seem to satisfy, and quiet, and rejoice them at the present, to-morrow they are as bad again: it being the nature of their disease, to think as they do think; and their thoughts are not cured while the disease is uncured. 35. Yet in all this distemper, few of them will believe that they are melancholy; but abhor to hear men tell them so, and say it is but the rational sense of their unhappiness, and the forsakings and heavy wrath of God. And therefore they are hardly persuaded to take any physic or use any means for the cure of their bodies, saying that they are well, and being confident that it is only their souls that are distressed.

This is the miserable case of these poor people, greatly to be pitied, and not to be despised by any. I have spoken nothing but what I have often seen and known. And let none despise such, for men of all sorts do fall into this misery; learned and unlearned, high and low, good and bad, yea, some that have lived in greatest jollity and sensuality, when God hath made them feel their folly.

The causes of it are, 1. Most commonly some worldly loss, or cross, or grief, or care, which made too deep an impression on them. 2. Sometimes excess of fear upon any common occasion of danger. 3. Sometimes over-hard and unintermitted studies, or thoughts, which screw up and rack the fantasy too much. 4. Sometimes too deep fears, or too constant, and serious, and passionate thoughts and cares about the danger of the soul. 5. The great preparatives to it, (which are indeed the principal cause,) are a weak head, and reason, joined with strong passion, which are oftest found in women, and those to whom it is natural. 6. And in some it is brought in by some heinous sin, the sight of which they cannot bear, when conscience is but once awakened.

When this disease is gone very far, directions to the persons themselves are vain, because they have not reason and free-will to practise them; but it is their friends about them that must have the directions. But because with the most of them, and at first, there is some power of reason left, I give directions for the use of such.