1. The nature of spiritual distresses will be best discovered by a consideration of those ingredients of which they are made up, and of the different degrees thereof.
(1.) As to the ingredients, there are several things that do concur for the begetting of these violent distresses. As,
[1.] There is usually a complication of several kinds of troubles. Sometimes there are outward troubles and inward discomposures of spirit arising from thence; sometimes affrightments of blasphemous thoughts long continued, and usually spiritual troubles, in which their state or condition have been called to question, have gone before. Heman, who is as famous an instance in this case as any we meet withal in Scripture, in Ps. lxxxviii., seems not obscurely to tell us so much; his ‘soul was full of troubles,’ ver. 3; and in ver. 7 he complains that God had afflicted him ‘with all his waves.’ And that these were not all of the same kind, though all concurred to the same end, he himself explains, ver. 8, 18, where he bemoans himself for the unkindness of his friends: ‘Thou hast put away mine acquaintance; lover and friend hast thou put far from me.’
[2.] These troubles drive at a further end than any of the former; for their design was only against the present quietness and peace of God’s children, but these design the ruin of their hopes for the future. They are troubled, not for that they are not converted, but for that they expect never to be converted. This is a trouble of a high nature, making them believe that they are eternally reprobated, cut off from God for ever, and under an impossibility of salvation.
[3.] These troubles have the consent and belief of the party. In some other troubles Satan disquieted the Lord’s servants by imposing upon them his own cursed suggestions, violently bearing in upon them temptations to sin and blasphemy, or objections against their state of regeneration, while in the meantime they opposed and refused to give consent; but in these Satan prevails with them to believe that their case is really such as their fears represent it to be.
[4.] They are troubles of a far higher degree than the former; the deepest sorrows, the sharpest fears, the greatest agonies. Heman, Ps. lxxxviii. 15, 16, calls them ‘terrors even to distraction:’ ‘While I suffer thy terrors, I am distracted; thy fierce wrath goeth over me, thy terrors have cut me off.‘
[5.] There is also God’s deserting of them in a greater measure than ordinary, by withdrawing his aids and comforts. And, as Mr Perkins notes, ‘If the withdrawing of grace be joined with the feeling of God’s anger, thence ariseth the bitterest conflict that the soul of a poor creature undergoes.’[348]
(2.) As to the different degrees of spiritual distresses, we must observe—That according to the concurrence of all or fewer of these ingredients, for they do not always meet together, though most frequently they do; and according to the higher or lower degrees in which these are urged upon the conscience, or apprehended and believed by the troubled party, these agonies are more or less; and accordingly we may distinguish them variously. As,
[1.] Some are desperate terrors of cursed reprobates under desperation. These terrors in them are, in the greatest extremity, the very pit of misery, of the same nature with those of the damned in hell, ‘where the worm that never dies,’ is nothing else but the dreadful vexation and torment of an accusing conscience.[349] They are commonly accompanied with blaspheming of God, and an utter rejection of all means for remedy; and though they sometimes turn to a kind of secure desperation,—by which, when they see it will be no better, they harden themselves in their misery, and seek to divert their thoughts—as Cain did, betaking himself to the building of cities; and Esau, when he had sold his birthright, despised it, and gave himself up to the pursuit of a worldly interest;—yet sometimes these terrors end in self-murder, as in Judas, who being smitten with dread of conscience, went and hanged himself. We have many sad instances of these desperate terrors. Cain is the first we read of; and though the account the Scriptures give of him be but short, yet it is sufficient to let us see what his condition was—Gen. iv. 11-16. First, He was cursed from the earth. Of this part of his curse there were two branches: 1. That his labour and toil in tillage should be great and greatly unsuccessful; for thus God himself explains it, ver. 12, ‘When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength,’ The earth was cursed with barrenness before to Adam, but now to Cain it hath a double curse. 2. That he should be a man of uncertain abode in any place: ‘A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth;’ not being able to stay long in a place by reason of the terrors of his conscience. His own interpretation of it, ver. 14, shews that herein lay a great part of his misery: ‘Thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth.’ By which it appears that he was to be as one that was chased out of all society, and as one that thought himself safe in no place. Secondly, He was ‘hid from the face of God’—that is, he was doomed to carry the inward feeling of God’s wrath, without any expectation of mercy. Thirdly, His mind being terrified under the apprehension of that wrath, he cries out that his ‘sin was greater than it could be pardoned,’ or that his ‘punishment was greater than he could bear; ‘for the word in the original signifies both sin and punishment, עון. Take it which way you will, it expresseth a deep horror of heart. If in the former sense, then it signifies a conviction of the greatness of his sin to desperation; if in the latter sense, then it is no less than a blasphemous reflection upon God, as unjustly cruel. Fourthly, This horror was so great, that he was afraid of all he met with, suspecting everything to be armed with divine vengeance against him: ‘Every one that findeth me shall slay me,’ Or if that speech was a desire that any one that found him might kill him, as some interpret,[350] it shews that he preferred death before that life of misery. It seems, then, that God smote him with such terror and consternation of mind, and with such affrightful trembling of body, for his bloody fact, that he was weary of himself, and afraid of all men, and could not stay long in a place. By these tokens, or some other way, God sets his mark upon him, as upon a cursed miscreant, to be noted and abhorred of all. Such another instance was Lamech, of whom the same chapter speaks: 1. The sting of conscience was so great, that he is forced to confess his fault—the interpretations of those that take it interrogatively, ‘Have I slain?’ or, ‘If I have, what is that to you?’ &c., are upon many accounts improper, much more are those so that take it negatively—which, whether it were the abomination of polygamy, as some think, by which example he had destroyed more than Cain did; or if it were murder in a proper sense, as the words and context plainly carry it, it is not very material to our purpose. However, God smote him with horror, that he might be a witness against himself. 2. He accuseth himself for a more grievous sinner and more desperate wretch by far than Cain: ‘If Cain,’ ver. 24, ‘shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.’ Which is as much as to say, that there was as much difference betwixt his sin and Cain’s, as betwixt seven and seventy-seven. 3. It seems also, by his discourse to his wives, that he was grievously perplexed with inward fears, suspecting, it may be, his very wives as well as others might have private combinations against him; for the prevention whereof, he tells them by Cain’s example of God’s avenging him. These two early examples of desperation the beginning of the world affords; and there have been many more since, as Esau and Judas. Of late years we have the memorable instance of Francis Spira, one of the clearest and most remarkable examples of spiritual horror that the latter ages of the world were ever acquainted with. Yet I shall not dare to be confident of his reprobation, as of Cain’s and Judas’s; because the Scripture hath determined their case, but we have no such certain authority to determine his.
[2.] There are also distresses from melancholy; which may be further differenced according to the intenseness or remissness of the distemper upon which they depend. For sometimes the imagination is so exceedingly depraved, the fears of heart so great, and the sorrows so deep, that the melancholy person, crying out of himself that he is damned, under the curse of God, &c., appears to be wholly besides himself, and his anguish to be nothing else but a delirious, irrational disturbance. There are too many sad instances of this. Some I have known that for many years together have laboured under such apprehensions of hell and damnation, that they have at last proceeded to curse and blaspheme God in a most dreadful manner, so that they have been a terror to all their friends and acquaintance. And though sometimes they would fall into fits of obstinate silence, yet being urged to speak, they would amaze all that were about them with the confident averment of their damnation, with horrible outcries of their supposed misery and torments, and with terrible rage against heaven. Some in this distemper will fancy themselves to be in hell already, and will discourse as if they saw the devils about them and felt their torture. Such as these give plain discovery by their whole carriage under their trouble, and some concomitant false imaginations about other things—as when they fancy themselves to be in prison or sentenced to death, and that torments or fire are provided for them by the magistrate, &c.—that it is only melancholy perverting their understanding that is the cause of all their sorrow. Others there are who are not altogether irrational, because in most other things their understanding is right; yet being driven into melancholy upon the occasion of crosses or other outward afflictions, they at last fix all their thoughts upon their souls; and now their fancy becoming irregular in part, the whole of the irregularity appears only in that wherein they chiefly concern themselves. Hence they misjudge themselves, and condemn themselves to everlasting destruction; sometimes without any apparent cause; and sometimes they accuse themselves of such things as they never did. They fear and cry out they are damned, but they cannot give a particular reason why they should entertain these fears, neither can they shew any cause why they should refuse the comforts of the promises that are offered; but they say they know or are persuaded it is so, upon no better account than this, It is so, because it is so. Or if they give reasons of their imagination, they are commonly either feigned or frivolous; and yet in all other matters they are rational, and speak or act like men in their right minds. Of both these kinds of desperation I shall speak nothing further. It is enough to have noted that such there are, because the cure of the former is impossible, and the cure of the latter doth wholly depend upon physic.