A Continuation of morning-exercise questions and cases of conscience practically resolvedA Continuation of morning-exercise questions and cases of conscience practicaly resolved

If you have privacy out of hearing, I would give you this advice, that instead of long meditation or long secret Prayer, you will sing a Psalm of praise to God, such as the 23, or the 133, &c. This will excite your Spirit to that sort of holy affection, which is much more acceptable to God, and suitable to the hopes of a believer, than your repining troubles are.

IV. But yet I have not done with the duty of those that take care of distressed melancholy persons, especially Husbands to their Wives (for it is much more frequently the disease of Women than of men) when the disease disableth them to help themselves, the most of their helps under God must be from others: And this is of two Sorts, 1. In prudent carriage to them. 2. In Medicine and Diet: A little of both.

IV. But yet I have not done with the duty of those that take care of distressed melancholly persons, especially Husbands to their Wives (for it is much more frequently the disease of Women than of men) when the disease disableth them to help themselves, the most of their helps under God must be from others: And this is of two Sorts, 1. In prudent carriage to them. 2. In Medicine and Diet: A little of both.

1. A great part of their cure lieth in pleasing them, and avoiding all displeasing things as far as lawfully can be done: Displeasedness is much of the Disease, and a Husband that hath such a Wife, is obliged to do his best to cure her, both in Charity and by his relative Bond, and for his own peace. It is a great weakness in some men, that if they have Wives, who by natural passionate weakness, or by melancholy or crazedness, is wilful and will not yield to reason, they show their anger at them to their further provocation: You took her in marriage for better and for worse, for sickness and health: If you have chosen one that, as a Child, must have every thing that she crieth for, and must be spoken fair, and as it was rocked in the Cradle, or else it will be worse, you must condescend to do it, and so bear the burden which you have chosen, as may not make it heavier to you. Your passion and sourness towards a person that cannot cure her own unpleasing carriage, is a more unexcusable fault and folly than hers, who hath not the power of reason as you have.