ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace that the description of psychological states or psychiatric symptoms is highly specific to different cultures, and differences between one society and another or one period and another are accentuated by differences in the language used to describe such conditions. Extremes of emotion in seventeenth-century England were very often described in religious terms. Thus sublime happiness was not necessarily distinguished from feeling at one with God, nor despair from the temptings of the Devil. Religious language is still widely used today when people describe their own emotions, but in seventeenth-century England the content of religious language had real meaning for most people. 1 To some extent, also, people were looking for religious experiences in order to test their faith, because of the emphasis placed by English Puritanism upon experiential religion.
