GOD'S GOODNESS VINDICATED. To help all such persons out ofthe snare of this dangerous and troublesome temptation, as are described in the propounded case, we must have respect, I. To the special case of the melancholy, who are more liable than others to such disturbances. II. To the common cause of their trouble and perplexity, as it consisteth in such opinions as you describe. 1. With the melancholy, the greatest difficulty lieth in making them capable to receive plain truths for it will work, not as it is, but as it is received. And melancholy cloth breed and feed such kind of thoughts, as naturally as a dead carcass feedeth vermin. Of forty or fifty melancholy persons that I have to deal with, there are scarce four that are not hurried with suggestions to blasphe- mous thoughts against God and the Sacred Scriptures ; and scarce two that are not under dismal apprehensions that they are misera- ble, undone. creatures, (except only some that are all carried to conceits of prophecies, revelations, and some rare, exalting com- munications of light unto themselves.) This unhappy disease of melancholy is first seated in the organs of imagination and passion both ; that is, in the spirits, and thereby in the very imagining fac- ulty itself; though the naturalparts beingwithout pain or sickness, they will not believe that it is a disease at all. It inclineth them usually to sólitariness, to musing, and to dismal thoughts, that they are undone, graceless, hopeless, &c., which because they passion- ately séèm to feel, no words which silence them, will satisfy them; or ifyou seem a little to satisfy them to-day, it is all gone tomor- row ; for a melancholy man is like the eye that looketh on all things through a colored glass, or in anophthalmy, and seeth them according to-the medium. Thedisease, irfsome few, beginneth with over-stretching thoughts and troubles about things spiritual ; but in most that I -have met with, (ten to one,) it beginneth with some worldly cross, loss, or trouble, which grieveth them, and casteth them into troublesome anxieties and cares ; and then when by these the spirits are dis- eased, it presently turneth upon conscience ; first, against them- selves, aggravating sin and misery, apprehending calamity from every thing which they. see, hear, or think of; and next, against God and Scripture, perplexed in every thing that cometh before
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