Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

It is some trouble to me that I cannot get so much time to write as I could wish; your father expected with his to have had one from you, which I hope you will not neglect this time, by no means you may not, lest he should have cause to think you slight his kindness. Be sure to write to him as often as you can, for he was one great encouragement, and put your father on to send you where you are. It seems by your letters you are where you would be, so blessed be God that gives you so good health of body. I beseech the Lord would make you sensible of your spiritual desires and soul wants, your misery by nature, and your great inability to extricate your self out of that condition that you and all the sons of Adam are in, till it please the Lord to open your eyes and turn you from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God. I entreat you set some time apart to study and seriously to consider of this, for what is learning without grace to improve it aright, it will but aggravate your condemnation. Therefore cry unto God that he would make you a new creature, and let you see your necessity of a saviour, to deliver you from sin here, and from wrath that is to come hereafter, to all that is out of Christ.

Comment

Comment

Marie is articulating the Calvinist metaphysical explanation of depression:

According to Calvin, the activity of self-examination before the mirror of God’s law created anxiety and dejection, but this would provoke the turning to God required for the reception of saving grace… For Calvin, despair had a necessary and unequivocally positive eschatological function. Properly interpreted, it was a sign of the working of divine providence, part of the punishment preceding redemption that manifested itself in the afflicted conscience. David Harley has shown that seventeenth-century English physicians often applied Calvinist psychology of this sort, interpreting the melancholic passion of sorrow as a divinely sent affliction that was propaedeutic to godly virtue, and constructing fear as a useful stimulus to the realization of spiritual weakness (Gowland 2006/05).

We don’t know how Sam died, but

for my part, I will subscribe to the king’s declaration, and was ever of that mind, those May games, wakes, and Whitsun ales, etc., if they be not at unseasonable hours, may justly be permitted. Let them freely feast, sing and dance, have their puppet-plays, hobby-horses, tabors, crowds, bagpipes, etc., play at ball, and barley-breaks, and what sports and recreations they like best (Burton 1638).

Afterwards, Marie wrote to Thom inter alia as follows:

I desire to know what became of brother Sam’s linen; it would trouble me to lose it. I mean his sheets, and shirts, and napkins, for I had provided well for him. If God had given him life he would have wanted no more for a long time, but we unworthy of such a mercy, and God hath hid him from an evil which I fear is to come. God help us all that are left behind to stand in the gap and to cry mightily for redeeming grace (Cudworth 1889).

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Original

Dear son Sam,

It is some trouble to me that I cannot get so much time to write as I could wish; your father expected with his to have had one from you, which I hope you will not neglect this time, by no means you may not, lest he should have cause to think you slight his kindness. Be sure to write to him as often as you can, for he was one great encouragement, and put your father on to send you where you are. It seems by your letters you are where you would be, so blessed be God that gives you so good health of body. I beseech the Lord would make you sensible of your spiritual desires and soul wants, your misery by nature, and your great inability to extricate your self out of that condition that you and all the sons of Adam are in, till it please the Lord to open your eyes and turn you from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God. I entreat you set some time apart to study and seriously to consider of this, for what is learning without grace to improve it aright, it will but aggravate your condemnation. Therefore cry unto God that he would make you a new creature, and let you see your necessity of a saviour, to deliver you from sin here, and from wrath that is to come hereafter, to all that is out of Christ. It is no small comfort to your father and me that it hath pleased our good God to awaken your brother Thom: and to let him see what he is of himself. The Lord awaken him more, and though it hath been sad with him, yet our hopes are that our God will perfect his own work and make him a comfort to us all. The good Lord make you and all the rest so too. Company with him as much as you can while he stays in the College, for I perceive he hath an inclination to leave C for a time, the Lord direct him, and be with him, and keep you also from sin and vanity, is the earnest request of your careful mother

Marie Sharp

382 words.

Tags

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• Calvinism (8) ·
• Cambridge (4) ·
• Clare College, Cambridge (1) ·
• Depression (mood) (3) ·
• Learned medicine (1) ·
• 📌Little Horton (9) ·
• Melancholia (1) ·
• Mental disorder (13) ·
• Mental state (1) ·
• Robert Burton (1) ·
• Sharp, Mary (1615/16-1678/79) (1), née Clarkson, wife of John Sharp, mother of Abraham, Samuel and others ·
• Sharp, Samuel (1640-56) (1), third son of John and Mary Sharp, elder brother of Abraham ·
• The Anatomy of Melancholy (1) ·

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