A26892:2376
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Part 1 › Chapter 6 › Tit. 5. Directions to the Melancholy about their Thoughts.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
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 Melancholy1 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. 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 affects 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, which2 is known by these following signs, (which yet are not all in every Melancholy person.)
IT is so easie and ordinary a thing for some weak-headed persons, to cast themselves into Melancholy1 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. 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 affects 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 Fryars). I do not call those Melancholy, who are rationally sorrowful for sin, and sensible of their misery, and sollicitous 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, fantasie or thinking faculty is not crazed or diseased: But by Melancholy I mean, this diseased crazynes, hurt, or errour of the imagination, and consequently of the understanding, which