or the cutting off limbs, or other bodily pains: and yet for the loss of sons and daughters, or other dear friends and relations, one may find several overwhelmed with grief unconsolable. The reason, I suppose, is, the exceeding great delicacy and tenderness of those soft passions, by which we are carried to love those whom we have chiefly set our hearts upon crosses and disappointments in things of that tender nature are very affecting, and often overset the mind.

Loss of honour, estate, subsistence, is likewise very afflicting to some persons; to those especially who have long supported their credit, and have made a handsome figure in the world, having at the same time fair and promising hopes that they should ever do so. When such persons unexpectedly fall to decay, the calamity sits hard upon them; and the more honest and ingenuous they have all along been, so much the sorer is the affliction; because they have a quick sense of shame, and are most tenderly affected with the thought, that they can no longer look up, and appear like their neighbours.

As to men of profligate lives, I do not perceive that they are half so much affected, though they come to be stripped of all. They are more hardened in their tempers, and are not very sensible of shame; besides that they might have expected it beforehand, having really deserved it: and so it is no wonder if sometimes a condemned felon is not much afflicted with his confinement in a dungeon; or if he goes with less concern in his looks even to execution, than many an honest man discovers upon some family losses, or upon the decay of his credit in the world.

These smaller calamities to an ingenuous mind are more affecting than the greatest can be to hard, stupid, and incorrigible wretches: and the reason, as I before hinted, is, because the passions of those are more tender, and the mind more susceptible of impression. Hence arises sometimes deep melancholy in such persons. Their minds become dejected and sunk, their spirit wounded and broken with losses, crosses, and disappointments. The like sometimes happens when men have set out into the world with fair hopes and expectations, have been flattered with golden promises, and been long dependant upon persons in power, and at last defeated and sent away empty. The regret and indignation which such treatment is apt to raise, may be enough to overpower the succours of the mind, and to break

their spirit beyond recovery. These instances may suffice for illustration of the first particular, the head of outward calamities.

2. A second cause of breaking a man's spirits I must not omit to mention, (though I question whether it be very common,) which is, the sense of some grievous sins lying hard upon the conscience. It is very certain, that the greatest calamity that can be is an ill-spent life; and the remembrance of it, if seriously laid to heart, may well break the spirit, and overwhelm the strongest mind. But it rarely happens that any man falls into deep melancholy on any such account. Much the greatest number of the most profligate sinners die hard and impenitent, and go out of the world without any signs of true godly sorrow or remorse at all. And if some discover a kind of relenting sorrow, yet it is so slight and superficial, and they think so well of their state, and so flatter themselves with the hopes of mercy, that there is infinitely more danger of their dying in a fond presumption, than of their dying in the depth of despair. The truth is, men are very hardly brought to have any feeling sense of a world to come, like to what they have of this; and so they are the less in danger of being affected with their sins, or the consequence of them, to a degree of melancholy or despondency. Yet some examples there have been of religious despair: and I suppose Judas was one; who being struck with the sense of his cursed treachery, sunk under its weight; and being wounded and sore broken in his spirit, went and hanged himself in grief and despair. There have been some few dreadful instances of like nature besides, enough to justify the reckoning a guilty conscience as one among the many other causes of a wounded spirit.

I am sensible, that there is such a thing as religious melancholy, and the case is not very uncommon. But I take that to be quite another thing from what I have been speaking of, and falling properly under quite a different head, which I now proceed to speak to, in the third place; namely,

3. Bodily indisposition, which is frequently the sole cause of a broken, dejected mind. By this I do not mean, that men fall into melancholy, as being troubled for the ill state of health they are under: but as the soul and the body sympathise, any disorder of the nerves, blood, or spirits, will naturally affect and discompose the mind; and it is in this sense that a wounded spirit may be sometimes owing to an ill habit of body, in like manner as lunacy also may, of which this may be a degree.

Religious melancholy, generally speaking, seems to be nothing else but a disordered imagination, owing to some ill disposition of the blood, or some distemper in the nerves, or in the brain, the centre of them. The fine spirits, which are the instruments the soul makes use of to think by, move irregularly, and raise odd fantastical ideas, like as they do in dreams: hence come very odd conceits, and perhaps profane and even blasphemous thoughts in persons otherwise very piously disposed; and who at the same time abhor those thoughts, and are deeply concerned on that very account. Here seems to be nothing in all this, but a bodily indisposition, which is indeed a misfortune, but no fault of the person suffering under it.

There may indeed have been a fault sometimes in a person's conduct, to occasion such an ill disposition of body; as, if it hath been brought on by hard drinking, or indulging some foolish passion more than was meet but yet the effect might arise from other causes, wherein the person had not been accessory to it at all. It might be the remains of a fever, or other bodily distemper, which the patient had been afflicted with; or it might have been owing to several other natural causes, too tedious for me to mention, and which it more concerns a physician to inquire into, than it does a Divine. I mention this case however for two reasons. One, for the satisfaction of scrupulous consciences; that if any persons find themselves so affected, they should not be cast down on that account, nor suspect that they are guilty of a crime in what they cannot help and the other reason of my taking notice of the case is, that we may pass the more charitable judgment upon any unhappy persons who have been afflicted in this way. But to proceed.

Besides religious melancholy, there are also several other kinds, which often arise from some bodily indisposition, which may be presumed to have the greatest hand in them, in such particular constitutions. For when misfortunes or disappointments, though slight and trivial, (and none are without some,) fall in with a temper or disposition inclined to melancholy, they have a much greater force upon them than they would otherwise have; and the effect produced is really owing partly to the outward calamity and partly to the inward disorder; it is the result of both together, both contributing, as it were, their share towards it. In such cases it is not always easy to say which is the principal cause or which the subordinate; for in compounded powers of that

kind, it may be difficult to compute their respective forces, or to determine exactly which is the more prevailing. But I have said enough of the causes which lead to dejection of mind, which break or wound the spirit of a man within him.

III.

I now pass on, thirdly, to prescribe some proper remedies or preservatives against it.

to maintain For it is a

It is worth the pains, to keep up our spirits, and the vigour of our minds, in all cases, if we can. lamentable thing to be overset with trouble, or to be overwhelmed with grief and despair. It makes life miserable as life can be for the time, and then brings men down to the grave. When the mind is sunk, the spirit wounded, or, as we vulgarly say, the heart broken, life does not hold on much longer; or if it does, it is a burden, and a weary load, worse than death. There is no remedy for it, when the malady seizes us in any deep degree for when the mind itself is seized, a man has no longer any command over his own thoughts; there is no room left for advice or instruction; no handle for reason and counsel to take hold of. This makes me speak rather of preservatives than remedies; supposing the text to mean by a wounded spirit, a spirit quite broken: but if it may be understood of the approaches only, or the intermediate degrees, short of extremities; there may then be some remedies, the same which I also call preservatives, and am now going to lay down. It must be owned, that natural courage, inborn strength of mind, is one of the best preservatives, or strongest securities against it: but as that is a blessing of nature, and I am only to speak of what may be acquired, I shall pass that over as foreign to this head. business will be to lay down rules either for preserving that natural courage where it is, or for acquiring an artificial courage, (if I may so call it,) which may answer or more than answer the other.

My

1. And here undoubtedly the first and principal rule must be, to trust in God, and to live a life conformable to the doctrine of Christ. There is no prescription so infallible, no cordial so comfortable, as this now mentioned. "Come unto me," says our blessed Lord, "all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I "will give you rest b." There is nothing so fortifies the mind, or

b Matt. xi. 28.

so invigorates the spirit, as faith and trust in God, joined with a good life; that we may be able to say with St. Paul, “Herein do "we exercise ourselves, to have always a conscience void of "offence towards God and towards man." This consideration taken together with the comfortable hope and expectation of joys eternal in a life to come; I say, these two, taken together, are sufficient to warm the coldest heart, and to give courage and bravery to every drooping spirit. The strength of these principles has been tried and proved; and it appeared most to advantage in the early ages of the Church, when persons of the most tender age or timorous sex would run to a stake or to a rack, without discovering the least uneasiness in look or gesture; and never fainted in heart, nor became broken in spirit, for any trouble or terror that wit and malice combined could expose them to. Now, if a principle of religion was thus effectual in the very hardest circumstances which human life could fall under, why might not the same principle be of like force in the ordinary and common casualties incident to mortality? If therefore you are desirous to keep up your spirits, and never to sink under a misfortune; fortify your minds by faith, and by a serious and constant endeavour to please God. This will inspire courage when nothing else will, or when the world itself fails: it will do it at all times, and under all circumstances, even upon the bed of sickness, or at the hour of death; provided only, that you have then your thoughts awake, and that the bodily indisposition does not disorder the freedom of the soul.

2. Next to a thorough sense of religion, I shall mention a second preservative, nearly allied to it, and rather a branch or part of it, than distinct from it; which is, to sit as loose as possible to this world; to wean and disentangle our affections from temporal things: for since it is impossible not to meet with infinite crosses and disappointments here, if we set our hearts on this world; the surest way is, not to expect or desire any great happiness here, but to become more and more indifferent to all worldly enjoyments. If we can be content with a moderate share of temporal prosperity, we shall be the less concerned at disappointments, and, of conséquence, the better prepared to meet afflictions, and to bear up under them. These two first rules which I have mentioned both meet together in one rule of St. Paul's, "Set your affections on things above, not on things on