George Trosse and His Mental Struggles

George Trosse and His Mental Struggles

The vulnerable honesty of some Puritan diaries can be startling at a time when we tend to guard our words. Yet it is through this honesty that we understand the depths of human struggles and, in the case of the Puritans, the tenacious confidence in the unwavering faithfulness of a God who acts in mysterious ways.

A Profligate Youth

            Such is the diary of George Trosse, born at Exeter on 25 October 1631 to a well-to-do family. Apart from church attendance on Sunday, religion didn’t have much room in his life. After church, he played sports, which was legally allowed but frowned on by Puritans. And since his parents didn’t review with him the sermons they heard in church, he didn’t give them much thought.

Although he did well in school and was “modest, civil, and dutiful,”[1] he considered himself an atheist. He was particularly averse to the Puritans and made fun of them. Around the age of 14, he decided to leave school and become a merchant. By that time, his father had died and his mother, being the daughter of a prosperous merchant, agreed with his decision.

She sent him to France to learn the language. This decision turned out to be detrimental, as independence gave him freedom to indulge in his whims. Among other vices, he became an alcoholic, constantly making and breaking vows to stop his addiction.

After some time, he was sent to Portugal as an apprentice of the Woollen Drapers' Company. There, he continued his habits of drinking, gambling, wasting time and money, and flirting with girls, although, he said, God restrained him “from all gross compleat acts of fornication.”[2]

Three years later, he was forced to leave Portugal due to a dispute over money between Trosse's brother-in-law and the merchant who had taken Trosse as his apprentice. Trosse arrived in England around the time of Charles I’s execution, and continued to express his contempt for the Puritans. He also continued his bad habits, in spite of his mother’s reproofs. At one point, his extravagant spending forced him to sell his interest in a house his father had left him.

A Disturbed Mind

            It was around this time that he started to hear voices. Initially, he thought it was the voice of God. First, the voice told him to become more and more humble, but it was never satisfied with any of Trosse’s prostrations, even when he laid naked on the floor. Then it told him to cut off his hair. Since Trosse had no scissors, the voice told him to use a knife. But Trosse didn’t have a knife either. Looking back, he thought that, had he had a knife, the voice might have asked him to go from the hair to the throat.

            The voice then told him to put on his clothes but only in a certain order, reproving him when he didn’t. Eventually, it told Trosse that he had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost and could never be pardoned. To this awful news, Trosse stumbled half-naked into the hallway and told a maid to give him scissors to cut off his hair. She didn’t.

            A brother-in-law tried to help him, suggesting that if Trosse could just listen to advice, he would be well again. Trosse agreed, but his resolution didn’t last long, as his mind was too filled with unwanted thoughts, including a desire to end his life and “a great many terrifying and disquieting visions and voices” which he believed to be real.

            This went on for a while, with a multitude of voices which at that time he attributed to fairies hidden in the wall. He even stopped eating or drinking, thinking that food and drink were filled with devils or their agents. When his friends tried to convince him to see a doctor in nearby Glastonbury, he refused to leave the bed, thinking that if he did he will fall into hell. Eventually, his friends took him by force, while he struggled in the conviction that they were devils sent to abduct him.

            The doctor couldn’t do much more than keep him in a room under guard to prevent him from hurting himself. When Trosse became violent, they bound his hands and feet with chains. But this only provoked new strange thoughts in Trosse’s mind, as he imagined he could use the chains to mortify the flesh and seek for redemption. To this purpose, he started to twist his arms and legs to cause excruciating pain.

A Compassionate Friend

            Trosse’s autobiography extends the description of his struggles over several pages. Among his apprehensions of devils, one person stood out: the lady of the house, Mrs. Gollop, “a very religious woman” who prayed every evening with her servants. “She was very well acquainted with the Scriptures, insomuch, that I sometimes received a Letter from her with a Hundred and odd Proofs in the Margin, fitted in good Measure to comfort poor tempted and dejected Souls. She had great Compassion upon me; would many times sit and discourse with me; would give me good Directions, and offer me considerable Encouragements.”[3]

            Looking back, Trosse could say: “If any one was more eminently Instrumental in my Conversion than another, she was the Person.”[4] At that time, however, her words seemed “as Water spilt upon the Rocks,” rolling off without much effect. “All was, for some Time, lost upon me, who understood little or nothing of what was said to me, and would apply nothing to my Soul for my Comfort and Ease in such a dreadfully sinful and woful Condition.”[5]

            When Mrs. Gollop introduced him to a pastor who tried to bring him comfort, Trosse refused to hear him, stating that he had sinned against the Holy Ghost. “But at length,” he wrote, “thro’ the Goodness of God, and by His Blessing upon Physick, a low Diet, and hard Keeping, I began to be somewhat quiet and compos’d in my Spirits, to be orderly and civil in my Carriage and Converse, and gradually to regain the Use of my Reason and to be a fit Companion for my Fellow Creatures.”[6]

            Trosse started to read and memorize the Bible, committing to memory the whole gospel of Matthew and twenty-one Psalms. He also joined Mrs. Gollop in her prayers and attended church, benefiting from the “plain and serious”[7] sermons of the Presbyterian pastor he would have despised a few years earlier.

Ups and Downs

            As it is often the case, Trosse’s road to recovery included some relapses. When he returned to Exeter, his old friends drew him back into his previous habits. The voices and delusions returned, and Trosse was brought back to Glastonbury. “I thought I was in Hell again,” he wrote, “and that all about me were devils and executioners.”[8]

            He eventually recovered, relapsed again, and finally arrived to a lasting healing. “Tho’ I deserv’d either that then God should have cut me off and have sent me to Hell, as having been prepared for it, if any Sinner was; or that I should have been left for the Remaining Part of my Life in the Power of the Devil, the Sway of my Lusts and the Base Practice of my Crimes, and so to have encreas’d my eternal Torments every Minute of my future Continuance on Earth. Yet, such was the infinite and matchless Goodness of God, such his incomparable and wonderful Grace, such the Riches of the Merits of Christ, such the Prevalency of his Intercession, that there was a Period put to my rebellious and ungodly Courses ... He has (blessed his Name!) lenghten’d out my Days, that I might employ myself in Holy Duties.”[9]

            Trosse then enrolled at Pembroke College, Oxford, but left it when some changes made to the university rendered it, he said, “no way suited to a Person of my Principles, Persuasion and Inclinations.”

Persuaded by Robert Adkins, one of the two thousand pastors who had been victims of the Great Ejection in 1662, Trosse pursued ordination as a Presbyterian minister. He was ordained in 1666 and started to preach in Exeter, in spite of the reputation he had acquired. Due to government restrictions, he had to preach in secret. He was fined three times, and imprisoned once for preaching outside of the allowed file-mile range. He stayed in prison six months.

After the accession to the throne of England of William III, and the subsequent restoration of pastors, Trosse was called to be the pastor of a church in Exeter. Besides his autobiography, he wrote The Lord's Day Vindicated, a defense of the practice of the Lord’s Day on Sundays, and A Discourse of Schism, where he called (1701), a reply to Robert Burscough. He called for “understanding and charity towards dissenting Christians, preferring an exercise in peace-making to polemics.” He thought that Presbyterians should be “of one Heart and Affection with [Anglicans], though in all things they cannot be of one Head and Opinion.”[10]

Trosse died on 13 January 1713, aged eighty-one. Before dying, he asked his wife Susanna to publish his autobiography.

The book’s jacket describes Trosse’s story as “an unusually engaging spiritual autobiography by virtue both of its lively prose style and of the surprising candour of its author.” It’s also a powerful testimony of the faithfulness of God in the most trying circumstances and an encouragement both to those who walk through them and those who walk beside them.