(Latin: desperare; to lose hope)
Psychologically, the passion contrary to hope; morally, the abandonment of all hope of salvation or of the means required for it; not merely an anxiety about one's future state, or fear that one may be lost, but a deliberate yielding to the conviction that human nature cannot cooperate with God's grace, that one's sins are unpardonable, or that Almighty God has cast one away. It is an offense against God's goodness and mercy, temptation to which should be resisted not only for moral but for physiological reasons also, since it commonly results in melancholy, or in sinful indulgence.
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