Title: The Anatomy of Melancholy
Author: Robert Burton
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #10800]
Most recently updated: October 3, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Karl Hagen, D. Moynihan and Distributed Proofreaders
This edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy is based on a nineteenth-century edition that modernized Burton's spelling and typographic conventions. In preparing this electronic version, it became evident that the editor had made a variety of mistakes in this modernization: some words were left in their original spelling (unusual words were a particular problem), portions of book titles were mistaken for proper names, proper names were mistaken for book titles or Latin words, etc. A certain number of misprints were also introduced into the Latin. As a result, I have re-edited the text, checking it against images of the 1638 edition, and correcting all errors not present in the earlier edition. I have continued to follow the general editorial practice of the base text for quotation marks, italics, etc. Rare words have been normalized according to their primary spelling in the Oxford English Dictionary. When Burton spells a person's name in several ways, I have normalized the names to the most common spelling, or to modern practice if well-known. In a few cases, mistakes present in both the 1683 edition and the base text have been corrected. These are always minor reference errors (e.g., an incorrect or missing section number in the synopses, or misnumbered footnotes). Incorrect citations to other texts (Burton seems to quote by memory and sometimes gets it wrong) have not been changed if they are wrong in both editions. To display some symbols (astrological signs, etc.) the HTML version requires a browser with unicode support. Most recent browsers should be OK.—KTH
The work now restored to public notice has had an extraordinary fate. At the time of its original publication it obtained a great celebrity, which continued more than half a century. During that period few books were more read, or more deservedly applauded. It was the delight of the learned, the solace of the indolent, and the refuge of the uninformed. It passed through at least eight editions, by which the bookseller, as WOOD records, got an estate; and, notwithstanding the objection sometimes opposed against it, of a quaint style, and too great an accumulation of authorities, the fascination of its wit, fancy, and sterling sense, have borne down all censures, and extorted praise from the first Writers in the English language. The grave JOHNSON has praised it in the warmest terms, and the ludicrous STERNE has interwoven many parts of it into his own popular performance. MILTON did not disdain to build two of his finest poems on it; and a host of inferior writers have embellished their works with beauties not their own, culled from a performance which they had not the justice even to mention. Change of times, and the frivolity of fashion, suspended, in some degree, that fame which had lasted near a century; and the succeeding generation affected indifference towards an author, who at length was only looked into by the plunderers of literature, the poachers in obscure volumes. The plagiarisms of Tristram Shandy, so successfully brought to light by DR. FERRIAR, at length drew the attention of the public towards a writer, who, though then little known, might, without impeachment of modesty, lay claim to every mark of respect; and inquiry proved, beyond a doubt, that the calls of justice had been little attended to by others, as well as the facetious YORICK. WOOD observed, more than a century ago, that several authors had unmercifully stolen matter from BURTON without any acknowledgment. The time, however, at length arrived, when the merits of the Anatomy of Melancholy were to receive their due praise. The book was again sought for and read, and again it became an applauded performance. Its excellencies once more stood confessed, in the increased price which every copy offered for sale produced; and the increased demand pointed out the necessity of a new edition. This is now presented to the public in a manner not disgraceful to the memory of the author; and the publisher relies with confidence, that so valuable a repository of amusement and information will continue to hold the rank to which it has been restored, firmly supported by its own merit, and safe from the influence and blight of any future caprices of fashion. To open its valuable mysteries to those who have not had the advantage of a classical education, translations of the countless quotations from ancient writers which occur in the work, are now for the first time given, and obsolete orthography is in all instances modernized.
Robert Burton was the son of Ralph Burton, of an ancient and genteel family at Lindley, in Leicestershire, and was born there on the 8th of February 1576. [1]He received the first rudiments of learning at the free school of Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire [2]from whence he was, at the age of seventeen, in the long vacation, 1593, sent to Brazen Nose College, in the condition of a commoner, where he made considerable progress in logic and philosophy. In 1599 he was elected student of Christ Church, and, for form's sake, was put under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. In 1614 he was admitted to the reading of the Sentences, and on the 29th of November, 1616, had the vicarage of St. Thomas, in the west suburb of Oxford, conferred on him by the dean and canons of Christ Church, which, with the rectory of Segrave, in Leicestershire, given to him in the year 1636, by George, Lord Berkeley, he kept, to use the words of the Oxford antiquary, with much ado to his dying day. He seems to have been first beneficed at Walsby, in Lincolnshire, through the munificence of his noble patroness, Frances, Countess Dowager of Exeter, but resigned the same, as he tells us, for some special reasons. At his vicarage he is remarked to have always given the sacrament in wafers. Wood's character of him is, that “he was an exact mathematician, a curious calculator of nativities, a general read scholar, a thorough-paced philologist, and one that understood the surveying of lands well. As he was by many accounted a severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humorous person; so by others, who knew him well, a person of great honesty, plain dealing and charity. I have heard some of the ancients of Christ Church often say, that his company was very merry, facete, and juvenile; and no man in his time did surpass him for his ready and dexterous interlarding his common discourses among them with verses from the poets, or sentences from classic authors; which being then all the fashion in the University, made his company the more acceptable.” He appears to have been a universal reader of all kinds of books, and availed himself of his multifarious studies in a very extraordinary manner. From the information of Hearne, we learn that John Rouse, the Bodleian librarian, furnished him with choice books for the prosecution of his work. The subject of his labour and amusement, seems to have been adopted from the infirmities of his own habit and constitution. Mr. Granger says, “He composed this book with a view of relieving his own melancholy, but increased it to such a degree, that nothing could make him laugh, but going to the bridge-foot and hearing the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter. Before he was overcome with this horrid disorder, he, in the intervals of his vapours, was esteemed one of the most facetious companions in the University.”
His residence was chiefly at Oxford; where, in his chamber in Christ Church College, he departed this life, at or very near the time which he had some years before foretold, from the calculation of his own nativity, and which, says Wood, “being exact, several of the students did not forbear to whisper among themselves, that rather than there should be a mistake in the calculation, he sent up his soul to heaven through a slip about his neck.” Whether this suggestion is founded in truth, we have no other evidence than an obscure hint in the epitaph hereafter inserted, which was written by the author himself, a short time before his death. His body, with due solemnity, was buried near that of Dr. Robert Weston, in the north aisle which joins next to the choir of the cathedral of Christ Church, on the 27th of January 1639-40. Over his grave was soon after erected a comely monument, on the upper pillar of the said aisle, with his bust, painted to the life. On the right hand is the following calculation of his nativity:
and under the bust, this inscription of his own composition:—
Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus,
Hic jacet Democritus junior
Cui vitam dedit et mortem
Melancholia
Ob. 8 Id. Jan. A. C. MDCXXXIX.
Arms:—Azure on a bend O. between three dogs' heads O. a crescent G.
A few months before his death, he made his will, of which the following is a copy:
In nomine Dei Amen. August 15th One thousand six hundred thirty nine because there be so many casualties to which our life is subject besides quarrelling and contention which happen to our Successors after our Death by reason of unsettled Estates I Robert Burton Student of Christ-church Oxon. though my means be but small have thought good by this my last Will and Testament to dispose of that little which I have and being at this present I thank God in perfect health of Bodie and Mind and if this Testament be not so formal according to the nice and strict terms of Law and other Circumstances peradventure required of which I am ignorant I desire howsoever this my Will may be accepted and stand good according to my true Intent and meaning First I bequeath Animam Deo Corpus Terrae whensoever it shall please God to call me I give my Land in Higham which my good Father Ralphe Burton of Lindly in the County of Leicester Esquire gave me by Deed of Gift and that which I have annexed to that Farm by purchase since, now leased for thirty eight pounds per Ann. to mine Elder Brother William Burton of Lindly Esquire during his life and after him to his Heirs I make my said Brother William likewise mine Executor as well as paying such Annuities and Legacies out of my Lands and Goods as are hereafter specified I give to my nephew Cassibilan Burton twenty pounds Annuity per Ann. out of my Land in Higham during his life to be paid at two equal payments at our Lady Day in Lent and Michaelmas or if he be not paid within fourteen Days after the said Feasts to distrain on any part of the Ground or on any of my Lands of Inheritance Item I give to my Sister Katherine Jackson during her life eight pounds per Ann. Annuity to be paid at the two Feasts equally as above said or else to distrain on the Ground if she be not paid after fourteen days at Lindly as the other some is out of the said Land Item I give to my Servant John Upton the Annuity of Forty Shillings out of my said Farme during his life (if till then my Servant) to be paid on Michaelmas day in Lindley each year or else after fourteen days to distrain Now for my goods I thus dispose them First I give an C'th pounds to Christ Church in Oxford where I have so long lived to buy five pounds Lands per Ann. to be Yearly bestowed on Books for the Library Item I give an hundredth pound to the University Library of Oxford to be bestowed to purchase five pound Land per Ann. to be paid out Yearly on Books as Mrs. Brooks formerly gave an hundred pounds to buy Land to the same purpose and the Rent to the same use I give to my Brother George Burton twenty pounds and my watch I give to my Brother Ralph Burton five pounds Item I give to the Parish of Seagrave in Leicestershire where I am now Rector ten pounds to be given to a certain Feoffees to the perpetual good of the said Parish Oxon [3]Item I give to my Niece Eugenia Burton One hundredth pounds Item I give to my Nephew Richard Burton now Prisoner in London an hundredth pound to redeem him Item I give to the Poor of Higham Forty Shillings where my Land is to the poor of Nuneaton where I was once a Grammar Scholar three pound to my Cousin Purfey of Wadlake [Wadley] my Cousin Purfey of Calcott my Cousin Hales of Coventry my Nephew Bradshaw of Orton twenty shillings a piece for a small remembrance to Mr. Whitehall Rector of Cherkby myne own Chamber Fellow twenty shillings I desire my Brother George and my Cosen Purfey of Calcott to be the Overseers of this part of my Will I give moreover five pounds to make a small Monument for my Mother where she is buried in London to my Brother Jackson forty shillings to my Servant John Upton forty shillings besides his former Annuity if he be my Servant till I die if he be till then my Servant [4]—ROBERT BURTON—Charles Russell Witness—John Pepper Witness.
An Appendix to this my Will if I die in Oxford or whilst I am of Christ Church and with good Mr. Paynes August the Fifteenth 1639.
I give to Mr. Doctor Fell Dean of Christ Church Forty Shillings to the Eight Canons twenty Shillings a piece as a small remembrance to the poor of St. Thomas Parish Twenty Shillings to Brasenose Library five pounds to Mr. Rowse of Oriell Colledge twenty Shillings to Mr. Heywood xxs. to Dr. Metcalfe xxs. to Mr. Sherley xxs. If I have any Books the University Library hath not, let them take them If I have any Books our own Library hath not, let them take them I give to Mrs. Fell all my English Books of Husbandry one excepted to her Daughter Mrs. Katherine Fell my Six Pieces of Silver Plate and six Silver spoons to Mrs. Iles my Gerards Herball To Mrs. Morris my Country Farme Translated out of French 4. and all my English Physick Books to Mr. Whistler the Recorder of Oxford I give twenty shillings to all my fellow Students Mrs of Arts a Book in fol. or two a piece as Master Morris Treasurer or Mr. Dean shall appoint whom I request to be the Overseer of this Appendix and give him for his pains Atlas Geografer and Ortelius Theatrum Mond' I give to John Fell the Dean's Son Student my Mathematical Instruments except my two Crosse Staves which I give to my Lord of Donnol if he be then of the House To Thomas Iles Doctor Iles his Son Student Saluntch on Paurrhelia and Lucian's Works in 4 Tomes If any books be left let my Executors dispose of them with all such Books as are written with my own hands and half my Melancholy Copy for Crips hath the other half To Mr. Jones Chaplin and Chanter my Surveying Books and Instruments To the Servants of the House Forty Shillings ROB. BURTON—Charles Russell Witness—John Pepper Witness—This Will was shewed to me by the Testator and acknowledged by him some few days before his death to be his last Will Ita Testor John Morris S Th D. Prebendari' Eccl Chri' Oxon Feb. 3, 1639.
Probatum fuit Testamentum suprascriptum, &c. 11° 1640 Juramento Willmi Burton Fris' et Executoris cui &c. de bene et fideliter administrand. &c. coram Mag'ris Nathanaele Stephens Rectore Eccl. de Drayton, et Edwardo Farmer, Clericis, vigore commissionis, &c.
The only work our author executed was that now reprinted, which probably was the principal employment of his life. Dr. Ferriar says, it was originally published in the year 1617; but this is evidently a mistake; [5]the first edition was that printed in 4to, 1621, a copy of which is at present in the collection of John Nichols, Esq., the indefatigable illustrator of the History of Leicestershire; to whom, and to Isaac Reed, Esq., of Staple Inn, this account is greatly indebted for its accuracy. The other impressions of it were in 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651-2, 1660, and 1676, which last, in the titlepage, is called the eighth edition.
The copy from which the present is reprinted, is that of 1651-2; at the conclusion of which is the following address:
"TO THE READER.
“Be pleased to know (Courteous Reader) that since the last Impression of this Book, the ingenuous Author of it is deceased, leaving a Copy of it exactly corrected, with several considerable Additions by his own hand; this Copy he committed to my care and custody, with directions to have those Additions inserted in the next Edition; which in order to his command, and the Publicke Good, is faithfully performed in this last Impression.”
H. C. (i.e. HEN. CRIPPS.)
The following testimonies of various authors will serve to show the estimation in which this work has been held:—
“The ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, wherein the author hath piled up variety of much excellent learning. Scarce any book of philology in our land hath, in so short a time, passed so many editions.”—Fuller's Worthies, fol. 16.
“'Tis a book so full of variety of reading, that gentlemen who have lost their time, and are put to a push for invention, may furnish themselves with matter for common or scholastical discourse and writing.”—Wood's Athenae Oxoniensis, vol. i. p. 628. 2d edit.
“If you never saw BURTON UPON MELANCHOLY, printed 1676, I pray look into it, and read the ninth page of his Preface, 'Democritus to the Reader.' There is something there which touches the point we are upon; but I mention the author to you, as the pleasantest, the most learned, and the most full of sterling sense. The wits of Queen Anne's reign, and the beginning of George the First, were not a little beholden to him.”—Archbishop Herring's Letters, 12mo. 1777. p. 149.
“BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, he (Dr. Johnson) said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.”—Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. i. p. 580. 8vo. edit.
“BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY is a valuable book,” said Dr. Johnson. “It is, perhaps, overloaded with quotation. But there is great spirit and great power in what Burton says when he writes from his own mind.”—Ibid, vol. ii. p. 325.
“It will be no detraction from the powers of Milton's original genius and invention, to remark, that he seems to have borrowed the subject of L' Allegro and Il Penseroso, together with some particular thoughts, expressions, and rhymes, more especially the idea of a contrast between these two dispositions, from a forgotten poem prefixed to the first edition of BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, entitled, 'The Author's Abstract of Melancholy; or, A Dialogue between Pleasure and Pain.' Here pain is melancholy. It was written, as I conjecture, about the year 1600. I will make no apology for abstracting and citing as much of this poem as will be sufficient to prove, to a discerning reader, how far it had taken possession of Milton's mind. The measure will appear to be the same; and that our author was at least an attentive reader of Burton's book, may be already concluded from the traces of resemblance which I have incidentally noticed in passing through the L' Allegro and Il Penseroso.”—After extracting the lines, Mr. Warton adds, “as to the very elaborate work to which these visionary verses are no unsuitable introduction, the writer's variety of learning, his quotations from scarce and curious books, his pedantry sparkling with rude wit and shapeless elegance, miscellaneous matter, intermixture of agreeable tales and illustrations, and, perhaps, above all, the singularities of his feelings, clothed in an uncommon quaintness of style, have contributed to render it, even to modern readers, a valuable repository of amusement and information.”—Warton's Milton, 2d edit. p. 94.
“THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY is a book which has been universally read and admired. This work is, for the most part, what the author himself styles it, 'a cento;' but it is a very ingenious one. His quotations, which abound in every page, are pertinent; but if he had made more use of his invention and less of his commonplace-book, his work would perhaps have been more valuable than it is. He is generally free from the affected language and ridiculous metaphors which disgrace most of the books of his time.”—Granger's Biographical History.
“BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, a book once the favourite of the learned and the witty, and a source of surreptitious learning, though written on a regular plan, consists chiefly of quotations: the author has honestly termed it a cento. He collects, under every division, the opinions of a multitude of writers, without regard to chronological order, and has too often the modesty to decline the interposition of his own sentiments. Indeed the bulk of his materials generally overwhelms him. In the course of his folio he has contrived to treat a great variety of topics, that seem very loosely connected with the general subject; and, like Bayle, when he starts a favourite train of quotations, he does not scruple to let the digression outrun the principal question. Thus, from the doctrines of religion to military discipline, from inland navigation to the morality of dancing-schools, every thing is discussed and determined.”—Ferriar's Illustrations of Sterne, p. 58.
“The archness which BURTON displays occasionally, and his indulgence of playful digressions from the most serious discussions, often give his style an air of familiar conversation, notwithstanding the laborious collections which supply his text. He was capable of writing excellent poetry, but he seems to have cultivated this talent too little. The English verses prefixed to his book, which possess beautiful imagery, and great sweetness of versification, have been frequently published. His Latin elegiac verses addressed to his book, shew a very agreeable turn for raillery.”—Ibid. p. 58.
“When the force of the subject opens his own vein of prose, we discover valuable sense and brilliant expression. Such is his account of the first feelings of melancholy persons, written, probably, from his own experience.” [See p. 154, of the present edition.]—Ibid. p. 60.
“During a pedantic age, like that in which BURTON'S production appeared, it must have been eminently serviceable to writers of many descriptions. Hence the unlearned might furnish themselves with appropriate scraps of Greek and Latin, whilst men of letters would find their enquiries shortened, by knowing where they might look for what both ancients and moderns had advanced on the subject of human passions. I confess my inability to point out any other English author who has so largely dealt in apt and original quotation.”—Manuscript note of the late George Steevens, Esq., in his copy of THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.
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Gentle reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world's view, arrogating another man's name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; although, as [7]he said, Primum si noluero, non respondebo, quis coacturus est? I am a free man born, and may choose whether I will tell; who can compel me? If I be urged, I will as readily reply as that Egyptian in [8]Plutarch, when a curious fellow would needs know what he had in his basket, Quum vides velatam, quid inquiris in rem absconditam? It was therefore covered, because he should not know what was in it. Seek not after that which is hid; if the contents please thee, [9]“and be for thy use, suppose the Man in the Moon, or whom thou wilt to be the author;” I would not willingly be known. Yet in some sort to give thee satisfaction, which is more than I need, I will show a reason, both of this usurped name, title, and subject. And first of the name of Democritus; lest any man, by reason of it, should be deceived, expecting a pasquil, a satire, some ridiculous treatise (as I myself should have done), some prodigious tenet, or paradox of the earth's motion, of infinite worlds, in infinito vacuo, ex fortuita atomorum collisione, in an infinite waste, so caused by an accidental collision of motes in the sun, all which Democritus held, Epicurus and their master Lucippus of old maintained, and are lately revived by Copernicus, Brunus, and some others. Besides, it hath been always an ordinary custom, as [10]Gellius observes, “for later writers and impostors, to broach many absurd and insolent fictions, under the name of so noble a philosopher as Democritus, to get themselves credit, and by that means the more to be respected,” as artificers usually do, Novo qui marmori ascribunt Praxatilem suo. 'Tis not so with me.
Thou thyself art the subject of my discourse.
My intent is no otherwise to use his name, than Mercurius Gallobelgicus, Mercurius Britannicus, use the name of Mercury, [13]Democritus Christianus, &c.; although there be some other circumstances for which I have masked myself under this vizard, and some peculiar respect which I cannot so well express, until I have set down a brief character of this our Democritus, what he was, with an epitome of his life.
Democritus, as he is described by [14]Hippocrates and [15]Laertius, was a little wearish old man, very melancholy by nature, averse from company in his latter days, [16]and much given to solitariness, a famous philosopher in his age, [17]coaevus with Socrates, wholly addicted to his studies at the last, and to a private life: wrote many excellent works, a great divine, according to the divinity of those times, an expert physician, a politician, an excellent mathematician, as [18]Diacosmus and the rest of his works do witness. He was much delighted with the studies of husbandry, saith [19]Columella, and often I find him cited by [20]Constantinus and others treating of that subject. He knew the natures, differences of all beasts, plants, fishes, birds; and, as some say, could [21]understand the tunes and voices of them. In a word, he was omnifariam doctus, a general scholar, a great student; and to the intent he might better contemplate, [22]I find it related by some, that he put out his eyes, and was in his old age voluntarily blind, yet saw more than all Greece besides, and [23] writ of every subject, Nihil in toto opificio naturae, de quo non scripsit. [24]A man of an excellent wit, profound conceit; and to attain knowledge the better in his younger years, he travelled to Egypt and [25] Athens, to confer with learned men, [26]“admired of some, despised of others.” After a wandering life, he settled at Abdera, a town in Thrace, and was sent for thither to be their lawmaker, recorder, or town-clerk, as some will; or as others, he was there bred and born. Howsoever it was, there he lived at last in a garden in the suburbs, wholly betaking himself to his studies and a private life, [27]“saving that sometimes he would walk down to the haven,” [28]“and laugh heartily at such variety of ridiculous objects, which there he saw.” Such a one was Democritus.
But in the mean time, how doth this concern me, or upon what reference do I usurp his habit? I confess, indeed, that to compare myself unto him for aught I have yet said, were both impudency and arrogancy. I do not presume to make any parallel, Antistat mihi millibus trecentis, [29]parvus sum, nullus sum, altum nec spiro, nec spero. Yet thus much I will say of myself, and that I hope without all suspicion of pride, or self-conceit, I have lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life, mihi et musis in the University, as long almost as Xenocrates in Athens, ad senectam fere to learn wisdom as he did, penned up most part in my study. For I have been brought up a student in the most flourishing college of Europe, [30] augustissimo collegio, and can brag with [31]Jovius, almost, in ea luce domicilii Vacicani, totius orbis celeberrimi, per 37 annos multa opportunaque didici; for thirty years I have continued (having the use of as good [32]libraries as ever he had) a scholar, and would be therefore loath, either by living as a drone, to be an unprofitable or unworthy member of so learned and noble a society, or to write that which should be any way dishonourable to such a royal and ample foundation. Something I have done, though by my profession a divine, yet turbine raptus ingenii, as [33]he said, out of a running wit, an unconstant, unsettled mind, I had a great desire (not able to attain to a superficial skill in any) to have some smattering in all, to be aliquis in omnibus, nullus in singulis, [34] which [35]Plato commends, out of him [36]Lipsius approves and furthers, “as fit to be imprinted in all curious wits, not to be a slave of one science, or dwell altogether in one subject, as most do, but to rove abroad, centum puer artium, to have an oar in every man's boat, to [37] taste of every dish, and sip of every cup,” which, saith [38]Montaigne, was well performed by Aristotle, and his learned countryman Adrian Turnebus. This roving humour (though not with like success) I have ever had, and like a ranging spaniel, that barks at every bird he sees, leaving his game, I have followed all, saving that which I should, and may justly complain, and truly, qui ubique est, nusquam est, [39]which [40]Gesner did in modesty, that I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of good method; I have confusedly tumbled over divers authors in our libraries, with small profit, for want of art, order, memory, judgment. I never travelled but in map or card, in which mine unconfined thoughts have freely expatiated, as having ever been especially delighted with the study of Cosmography. [41]Saturn was lord of my geniture, culminating, &c., and Mars principal significator of manners, in partile conjunction with my ascendant; both fortunate in their houses, &c. I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva's tower. Greater preferment as I could never get, so am I not in debt for it, I have a competence (laus Deo) from my noble and munificent patrons, though I live still a collegiate student, as Democritus in his garden, and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum, sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world, Et tanquam in specula positus, ([42]as he said) in some high place above you all, like Stoicus Sapiens, omnia saecula, praeterita presentiaque videns, uno velut intuitu, I hear and see what is done abroad, how others [43]run, ride, turmoil, and macerate themselves in court and country, far from those wrangling lawsuits, aulia vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo: I laugh at all, [44]only secure, lest my suit go amiss, my ships perish, corn and cattle miscarry, trade decay, I have no wife nor children good or bad to provide for. A mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they act their parts, which methinks are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre or scene. I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, &c., daily musters and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies and sea-fights; peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, corantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, &c. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions, now comical, then tragical matters. Today we hear of new lords and officers created, tomorrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh: he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, &c. This I daily hear, and such like, both private and public news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world; jollity, pride, perplexities and cares, simplicity and villainy; subtlety, knavery, candour and integrity, mutually mixed and offering themselves; I rub on privus privatus; as I have still lived, so I now continue, statu quo prius, left to a solitary life, and mine own domestic discontents: saving that sometimes, ne quid mentiar, as Diogenes went into the city, and Democritus to the haven to see fashions, I did for my recreation now and then walk abroad, look into the world, and could not choose but make some little observation, non tam sagax observator ac simplex recitator, [45] not as they did, to scoff or laugh at all, but with a mixed passion.
You have had a reason of the name. If the title and inscription offend your gravity, were it a sufficient justification to accuse others, I could produce many sober treatises, even sermons themselves, which in their fronts carry more fantastical names. Howsoever, it is a kind of policy in these days, to prefix a fantastical title to a book which is to be sold; for, as larks come down to a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gazing like silly passengers at an antic picture in a painter's shop, that will not look at a judicious piece. And, indeed, as [52]Scaliger observes, “nothing more invites a reader than an argument unlooked for, unthought of, and sells better than a scurrile pamphlet,” tum maxime cum novitas excitat [53]palatum. “Many men,” saith Gellius, “are very conceited in their inscriptions,” “and able” (as [54]Pliny quotes out of Seneca) “to make him loiter by the way that went in haste to fetch a midwife for his daughter, now ready to lie down.” For my part, I have honourable [55]precedents for this which I have done: I will cite one for all, Anthony Zara, Pap. Epis., his Anatomy of Wit, in four sections, members, subsections, &c., to be read in our libraries.
If any man except against the matter or manner of treating of this my subject, and will demand a reason of it, I can allege more than one; I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, “no better cure than business,” as [56] Rhasis holds: and howbeit, stultus labor est ineptiarum, to be busy in toys is to small purpose, yet hear that divine Seneca, aliud agere quam nihil, better do to no end, than nothing. I wrote therefore, and busied myself in this playing labour, oliosaque diligentia ut vitarem torporum feriandi with Vectius in Macrobius, atque otium in utile verterem negatium.
To this end I write, like them, saith Lucian, that “recite to trees, and declaim to pillars for want of auditors:” as [58]Paulus Aegineta ingenuously confesseth, “not that anything was unknown or omitted, but to exercise myself,” which course if some took, I think it would be good for their bodies, and much better for their souls; or peradventure as others do, for fame, to show myself (Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter). I might be of Thucydides' opinion, [59]“to know a thing and not to express it, is all one as if he knew it not.” When I first took this task in hand, et quod ait [60]ille, impellents genio negotium suscepi, this I aimed at; [61]vel ut lenirem animum scribendo, to ease my mind by writing; for I had gravidum cor, foetum caput, a kind of imposthume in my head, which I was very desirous to be unladen of, and could imagine no fitter evacuation than this. Besides, I might not well refrain, for ubi dolor, ibi digitus, one must needs scratch where it itches. I was not a little offended with this malady, shall I say my mistress Melancholy, my Aegeria, or my malus genius? and for that cause, as he that is stung with a scorpion, I would expel clavum clavo, [62]comfort one sorrow with another, idleness with idleness, ut ex vipera Theriacum, make an antidote out of that which was the prime cause of my disease. Or as he did, of whom [63]Felix Plater speaks, that thought he had some of Aristophanes' frogs in his belly, still crying Breec, okex, coax, coax, oop, oop, and for that cause studied physic seven years, and travelled over most part of Europe to ease himself. To do myself good I turned over such physicians as our libraries would afford, or my [64]private friends impart, and have taken this pains. And why not? Cardan professeth he wrote his book, De Consolatione after his son's death, to comfort himself; so did Tully write of the same subject with like intent after his daughter's departure, if it be his at least, or some impostor's put out in his name, which Lipsius probably suspects. Concerning myself, I can peradventure affirm with Marius in Sallust, [65]“that which others hear or read of, I felt and practised myself; they get their knowledge by books, I mine by melancholising.” Experto crede Roberto. Something I can speak out of experience, aerumnabilis experientia me docuit; and with her in the poet, [66]Haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco; I would help others out of a fellow-feeling; and, as that virtuous lady did of old, [67]“being a leper herself, bestow all her portion to build an hospital for lepers,” I will spend my time and knowledge, which are my greatest fortunes, for the common good of all.
Yea, but you will infer that this is [68]actum agere, an unnecessary work, cramben bis coctam apponnere, the same again and again in other words. To what purpose? [69]“Nothing is omitted that may well be said,” so thought Lucian in the like theme. How many excellent physicians have written just volumes and elaborate tracts of this subject? No news here; that which I have is stolen, from others, [70]Dicitque mihi mea pagina fur es. If that severe doom of [71]Synesius be true, “it is a greater offence to steal dead men's labours, than their clothes,” what shall become of most writers? I hold up my hand at the bar among others, and am guilty of felony in this kind, habes confitentem reum, I am content to be pressed with the rest. 'Tis most true, tenet insanabile multos scribendi cacoethes, and [72]“there is no end of writing of books,” as the wiseman found of old, in this [73]scribbling age, especially wherein [74]“the number of books is without number,” (as a worthy man saith,) “presses be oppressed,” and out of an itching humour that every man hath to show himself, [75]desirous of fame and honour (scribimus indocti doctique——) he will write no matter what, and scrape together it boots not whence. [76]“Bewitched with this desire of fame,” etiam mediis in morbis, to the disparagement of their health, and scarce able to hold a pen, they must say something, [77]“and get themselves a name,” saith Scaliger, “though it be to the downfall and ruin of many others.” To be counted writers, scriptores ut salutentur, to be thought and held polymaths and polyhistors, apud imperitum vulgus ob ventosae nomen artis, to get a paper-kingdom: nulla spe quaestus sed ampla famae, in this precipitate, ambitious age, nunc ut est saeculum, inter immaturam eruditionem, ambitiosum et praeceps ('tis [78]Scaliger's censure); and they that are scarce auditors, vix auditores, must be masters and teachers, before they be capable and fit hearers. They will rush into all learning, togatam armatam, divine, human authors, rake over all indexes and pamphlets for notes, as our merchants do strange havens for traffic, write great tomes, Cum non sint re vera doctiores, sed loquaciores, whereas they are not thereby better scholars, but greater praters. They commonly pretend public good, but as [79]Gesner observes, 'tis pride and vanity that eggs them on; no news or aught worthy of note, but the same in other terms. Ne feriarentur fortasse typographi vel ideo scribendum est aliquid ut se vixisse testentur. As apothecaries we make new mixtures everyday, pour out of one vessel into another; and as those old Romans robbed all the cities of the world, to set out their bad-sited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men's wits, pick the choice flowers of their tilled gardens to set out our own sterile plots. Castrant alios ut libros suos per se graciles alieno adipe suffarciant (so [80]Jovius inveighs.) They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works. Ineruditi fures, &c. A fault that every writer finds, as I do now, and yet faulty themselves, [81]Trium literarum homines, all thieves; they pilfer out of old writers to stuff up their new comments, scrape Ennius' dunghills, and out of [82]Democritus' pit, as I have done. By which means it comes to pass, [83]“that not only libraries and shops are full of our putrid papers, but every close-stool and jakes,” Scribunt carmina quae legunt cacantes; they serve to put under pies, to [84]lap spice in, and keep roast meat from burning. “With us in France,” saith [85]Scaliger, “every man hath liberty to write, but few ability.” [86]“Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers,” that either write for vainglory, need, to get money, or as Parasites to flatter and collogue with some great men, they put cut [87]burras, quisquiliasque ineptiasque. [88]Amongst so many thousand authors you shall scarce find one, by reading of whom you shall be any whit better, but rather much worse, quibus inficitur potius, quam perficitur, by which he is rather infected than any way perfected.
Thus, as when women scold, have I cried whore first, and in some men's censures I am afraid I have overshot myself, Laudare se vani, vituperare stulti, as I do not arrogate, I will not derogate. Primus vestrum non sum, nec imus, I am none of the best, I am none of the meanest of you. As I am an inch, or so many feet, so many parasangs, after him or him, I may be peradventure an ace before thee. Be it therefore as it is, well or ill, I have essayed, put myself upon the stage; I must abide the censure, I may not escape it. It is most true, stylus virum arguit, our style bewrays us, and as [108]hunters find their game by the trace, so is a man's genius descried by his works, Multo melius ex sermone quam lineamentis, de moribus hominum judicamus; it was old Cato's rule. I have laid myself open (I know it) in this treatise, turned mine inside outward: I shall be censured, I doubt not; for, to say truth with Erasmus, nihil morosius hominum judiciis, there is nought so peevish as men's judgments; yet this is some comfort, ut palata, sic judicia, our censures are as various as our palates.
Our writings are as so many dishes, our readers guests, our books like beauty, that which one admires another rejects; so are we approved as men's fancies are inclined. Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli.. That which is most pleasing to one is amaracum sui, most harsh to another. Quot homines, tot sententiae, so many men, so many minds: that which thou condemnest he commends. [110]Quod petis, id sane est invisum acidumque duobus. He respects matter, thou art wholly for words; he loves a loose and free style, thou art all for neat composition, strong lines, hyperboles, allegories; he desires a fine frontispiece, enticing pictures, such as [111]Hieron. Natali the Jesuit hath cut to the Dominicals, to draw on the reader's attention, which thou rejectest; that which one admires, another explodes as most absurd and ridiculous. If it be not point blank to his humour, his method, his conceit, [112]si quid, forsan omissum, quod is animo conceperit, si quae dictio, &c. If aught be omitted, or added, which he likes, or dislikes, thou art mancipium paucae lectionis, an idiot, an ass, nullus es, or plagiarius, a trifler, a trivant, thou art an idle fellow; or else it is a thing of mere industry, a collection without wit or invention, a very toy. [113]Facilia sic putant omnes quae jam facta, nec de salebris cogitant, ubi via strata; so men are valued, their labours vilified by fellows of no worth themselves, as things of nought, who could not have done as much. Unusquisque abundat sensu suo, every man abounds in his own sense; and whilst each particular party is so affected, how should one please all?
One or two things yet I was desirous to have amended if I could, concerning the manner of handling this my subject, for which I must apologise, deprecari, and upon better advice give the friendly reader notice: it was not mine intent to prostitute my muse in English, or to divulge secreta Minervae, but to have exposed this more contract in Latin, if I could have got it printed. Any scurrile pamphlet is welcome to our mercenary stationers in English; they print all
I might indeed, (had I wisely done) observed that precept of the poet, ———nonumque prematur in annum, and have taken more care: or, as Alexander the physician would have done by lapis lazuli, fifty times washed before it be used, I should have revised, corrected and amended this tract; but I had not (as I said) that happy leisure, no amanuenses or assistants. Pancrates in [137]Lucian, wanting a servant as he went from Memphis to Coptus in Egypt, took a door bar, and after some superstitious words pronounced (Eucrates the relator was then present) made it stand up like a serving-man, fetch him water, turn the spit, serve in supper, and what work he would besides; and when he had done that service he desired, turned his man to a stick again. I have no such skill to make new men at my pleasure, or means to hire them; no whistle to call like the master of a ship, and bid them run, &c. I have no such authority, no such benefactors, as that noble [138]Ambrosius was to Origen, allowing him six or seven amanuenses to write out his dictates; I must for that cause do my business myself, and was therefore enforced, as a bear doth her whelps, to bring forth this confused lump; I had not time to lick it into form, as she doth her young ones, but even so to publish it, as it was first written quicquid in buccam venit, in an extemporean style, as [139]I do commonly all other exercises, effudi quicquid dictavit genius meus, out of a confused company of notes, and writ with as small deliberation as I do ordinarily speak, without all affectation of big words, fustian phrases, jingling terms, tropes, strong lines, that like [140]Acesta's arrows caught fire as they flew, strains of wit, brave heats, elegies, hyperbolical exornations, elegancies, &c., which many so much affect. I am [141]aquae potor, drink no wine at all, which so much improves our modern wits, a loose, plain, rude writer, ficum, voco ficum et ligonem ligonem and as free, as loose, idem calamo quod in mente, [142]I call a spade a spade, animis haec scribo, non auribus, I respect matter not words; remembering that of Cardan, verba propter res, non res propter verba: and seeking with Seneca, quid scribam, non quemadmodum, rather what than how to write: for as Philo thinks, [143]“He that is conversant about matter, neglects words, and those that excel in this art of speaking, have no profound learning,”
For the matter itself or method, if it be faulty, consider I pray you that of Columella, Nihil perfectum, aut a singulari consummatum industria, no man can observe all, much is defective no doubt, may be justly taxed, altered, and avoided in Galen, Aristotle, those great masters. Boni venatoris ([148]one holds) plures feras capere, non omnes; he is a good huntsman can catch some, not all: I have done my endeavour. Besides, I dwell not in this study, Non hic sulcos ducimus, non hoc pulvere desudamus, I am but a smatterer, I confess, a stranger, [149]here and there I pull a flower; I do easily grant, if a rigid censurer should criticise on this which I have writ, he should not find three sole faults, as Scaliger in Terence, but three hundred. So many as he hath done in Cardan's subtleties, as many notable errors as [150]Gul Laurembergius, a late professor of Rostock, discovers in that anatomy of Laurentius, or Barocius the Venetian in Sacro boscus. And although this be a sixth edition, in which I should have been more accurate, corrected all those former escapes, yet it was magni laboris opus, so difficult and tedious, that as carpenters do find out of experience, 'tis much better build a new sometimes, than repair an old house; I could as soon write as much more, as alter that which is written. If aught therefore be amiss (as I grant there is), I require a friendly admonition, no bitter invective, [151]Sint musis socii Charites, Furia omnis abesto, otherwise, as in ordinary controversies, funem contentionis nectamus, sed cui bono? We may contend, and likely misuse each other, but to what purpose? We are both scholars, say,
If any physician in the mean time shall infer, Ne sutor ultra crepidam, and find himself grieved that I have intruded into his profession, I will tell him in brief, I do not otherwise by them, than they do by us. If it be for their advantage, I know many of their sect which have taken orders, in hope of a benefice, 'tis a common transition, and why may not a melancholy divine, that can get nothing but by simony, profess physic? Drusianus an Italian (Crusianus, but corruptly, Trithemius calls him) [164]“because he was not fortunate in his practice, forsook his profession, and writ afterwards in divinity.” Marcilius Ficinus was semel et simul; a priest and a physician at once, and [165]T. Linacer in his old age took orders. The Jesuits profess both at this time, divers of them permissu superiorum, chirurgeons, panders, bawds, and midwives, &c. Many poor country-vicars, for want of other means, are driven to their shifts; to turn mountebanks, quacksalvers, empirics, and if our greedy patrons hold us to such hard conditions, as commonly they do, they will make most of us work at some trade, as Paul did, at last turn taskers, maltsters, costermongers, graziers, sell ale as some have done, or worse. Howsoever in undertaking this task, I hope I shall commit no great error or indecorum, if all be considered aright, I can vindicate myself with Georgius Braunus, and Hieronymus Hemingius, those two learned divines; who (to borrow a line or two of mine [166]elder brother) drawn by a “natural love, the one of pictures and maps, prospectives and chorographical delights, writ that ample theatre of cities; the other to the study of genealogies, penned theatrum genealogicum.” Or else I can excuse my studies with [167]Lessius the Jesuit in like case. It is a disease of the soul on which I am to treat, and as much appertaining to a divine as to a physician, and who knows not what an agreement there is betwixt these two professions? A good divine either is or ought to be a good physician, a spiritual physician at least, as our Saviour calls himself, and was indeed, Mat. iv. 23; Luke, v. 18; Luke, vii. 8. They differ but in object, the one of the body, the other of the soul, and use divers medicines to cure; one amends animam per corpus, the other corpus per animam as [168]our Regius Professor of physic well informed us in a learned lecture of his not long since. One helps the vices and passions of the soul, anger, lust, desperation, pride, presumption, &c. by applying that spiritual physic; as the other uses proper remedies in bodily diseases. Now this being a common infirmity of body and soul, and such a one that hath as much need of spiritual as a corporal cure, I could not find a fitter task to busy myself about, a more apposite theme, so necessary, so commodious, and generally concerning all sorts of men, that should so equally participate of both, and require a whole physician. A divine in this compound mixed malady can do little alone, a physician in some kinds of melancholy much less, both make an absolute cure.
If these reasons do not satisfy thee, good reader, as Alexander Munificus that bountiful prelate, sometimes bishop of Lincoln, when he had built six castles, ad invidiam operis eluendam, saith [171]Mr. Camden, to take away the envy of his work (which very words Nubrigensis hath of Roger the rich bishop of Salisbury, who in king Stephen's time built Shirburn castle, and that of Devises), to divert the scandal or imputation, which might be thence inferred, built so many religious houses. If this my discourse be over-medicinal, or savour too much of humanity, I promise thee that I will hereafter make thee amends in some treatise of divinity. But this I hope shall suffice, when you have more fully considered of the matter of this my subject, rem substratam, melancholy, madness, and of the reasons following, which were my chief motives: the generality of the disease, the necessity of the cure, and the commodity or common good that will arise to all men by the knowledge of it, as shall at large appear in the ensuing preface. And I doubt not but that in the end you will say with me, that to anatomise this humour aright, through all the members of this our Microcosmus, is as great a task, as to reconcile those chronological errors in the Assyrian monarchy, find out the quadrature of a circle, the creeks and sounds of the north-east, or north-west passages, and all out as good a discovery as that hungry [172]Spaniard's of Terra Australis Incognita, as great trouble as to perfect the motion of Mars and Mercury, which so crucifies our astronomers, or to rectify the Gregorian Calendar. I am so affected for my part, and hope as [173]Theophrastus did by his characters, “That our posterity, O friend Policles, shall be the better for this which we have written, by correcting and rectifying what is amiss in themselves by our examples, and applying our precepts and cautions to their own use.” And as that great captain Zisca would have a drum made of his skin when he was dead, because he thought the very noise of it would put his enemies to flight, I doubt not but that these following lines, when they shall be recited, or hereafter read, will drive away melancholy (though I be gone) as much as Zisca's drum could terrify his foes. Yet one caution let me give by the way to my present, or my future reader, who is actually melancholy, that he read not the [174]symptoms or prognostics in this following tract, lest by applying that which he reads to himself, aggravating, appropriating things generally spoken, to his own person (as melancholy men for the most part do) he trouble or hurt himself, and get in conclusion more harm than good. I advise them therefore warily to peruse that tract, Lapides loquitur (so said [175]Agrippa de occ. Phil.) et caveant lectores ne cerebrum iis excutiat. The rest I doubt not they may securely read, and to their benefit. But I am over-tedious, I proceed.
Of the necessity and generality of this which I have said, if any man doubt, I shall desire him to make a brief survey of the world, as [176] Cyprian adviseth Donat, “supposing himself to be transported to the top of some high mountain, and thence to behold the tumults and chances of this wavering world, he cannot choose but either laugh at, or pity it.” S. Hierom out of a strong imagination, being in the wilderness, conceived with himself, that he then saw them dancing in Rome; and if thou shalt either conceive, or climb to see, thou shalt soon perceive that all the world is mad, that it is melancholy, dotes; that it is (which Epichthonius Cosmopolites expressed not many years since in a map) made like a fool's head (with that motto, Caput helleboro dignum) a crazed head, cavea stultorum, a fool's paradise, or as Apollonius, a common prison of gulls, cheaters, flatterers, &c. and needs to be reformed. Strabo in the ninth book of his geography, compares Greece to the picture of a man, which comparison of his, Nic. Gerbelius in his exposition of Sophianus' map, approves; the breast lies open from those Acroceraunian hills in Epirus, to the Sunian promontory in Attica; Pagae and Magaera are the two shoulders; that Isthmus of Corinth the neck; and Peloponnesus the head. If this allusion hold, 'tis sure a mad head; Morea may be Moria; and to speak what I think, the inhabitants of modern Greece swerve as much from reason and true religion at this day, as that Morea doth from the picture of a man. Examine the rest in like sort, and you shall find that kingdoms and provinces are melancholy, cities and families, all creatures, vegetal, sensible, and rational, that all sorts, sects, ages, conditions, are out of tune, as in Cebes' table, omnes errorem bibunt, before they come into the world, they are intoxicated by error's cup, from the highest to the lowest have need of physic, and those particular actions in [177]Seneca, where father and son prove one another mad, may be general; Porcius Latro shall plead against us all. For indeed who is not a fool, melancholy, mad?—[178] Qui nil molitur inepte, who is not brain-sick? Folly, melancholy, madness, are but one disease, Delirium is a common name to all. Alexander, Gordonius, Jason Pratensis, Savanarola, Guianerius, Montaltus, confound them as differing secundum magis et minus; so doth David, Psal. xxxvii. 5. “I said unto the fools, deal not so madly,” and 'twas an old Stoical paradox, omnes stultos insanire, [179]all fools are mad, though some madder than others. And who is not a fool, who is free from melancholy? Who is not touched more or less in habit or disposition? If in disposition, “ill dispositions beget habits, if they persevere,” saith [180]Plutarch, habits either are, or turn to diseases. 'Tis the same which Tully maintains in the second of his Tusculans, omnium insipientum animi in morbo sunt, et perturbatorum, fools are sick, and all that are troubled in mind: for what is sickness, but as [181]Gregory Tholosanus defines it, “A dissolution or perturbation of the bodily league, which health combines:” and who is not sick, or ill-disposed? in whom doth not passion, anger, envy, discontent, fear and sorrow reign? Who labours not of this disease? Give me but a little leave, and you shall see by what testimonies, confessions, arguments, I will evince it, that most men are mad, that they had as much need to go a pilgrimage to the Anticyrae (as in [182]Strabo's time they did) as in our days they run to Compostella, our Lady of Sichem, or Lauretta, to seek for help; that it is like to be as prosperous a voyage as that of Guiana, and that there is much more need of hellebore than of tobacco.
That men are so misaffected, melancholy, mad, giddy-headed, hear the testimony of Solomon, Eccl. ii. 12. “And I turned to behold wisdom, madness and folly,” &c. And ver. 23: “All his days are sorrow, his travel grief, and his heart taketh no rest in the night.” So that take melancholy in what sense you will, properly or improperly, in disposition or habit, for pleasure or for pain, dotage, discontent, fear, sorrow, madness, for part, or all, truly, or metaphorically, 'tis all one. Laughter itself is madness according to Solomon, and as St. Paul hath it, “Worldly sorrow brings death.” “The hearts of the sons of men are evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live,” Eccl. ix. 3. “Wise men themselves are no better.” Eccl. i. 18. “In the multitude of wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth wisdom, increaseth sorrow,” chap. ii. 17. He hated life itself, nothing pleased him: he hated his labour, all, as [183]he concludes, is “sorrow, grief, vanity, vexation of spirit.” And though he were the wisest man in the world, sanctuarium sapientiae, and had wisdom in abundance, he will not vindicate himself, or justify his own actions. “Surely I am more foolish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man in me,” Prov. xxx. 2. Be they Solomon's words, or the words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, they are canonical. David, a man after God's own heart, confesseth as much of himself, Psal. xxxvii. 21, 22. “So foolish was I and ignorant, I was even as a beast before thee.” And condemns all for fools, Psal. xciii.; xxxii. 9; xlix. 20. He compares them to “beasts, horses, and mules, in which there is no understanding.” The apostle Paul accuseth himself in like sort, 2 Cor. ix. 21. “I would you would suffer a little my foolishness, I speak foolishly.” “The whole head is sick,” saith Esay, “and the heart is heavy,” cap. i. 5. And makes lighter of them than of oxen and asses, “the ox knows his owner,” &c.: read Deut. xxxii. 6; Jer. iv.; Amos, iii. 1; Ephes. v. 6. “Be not mad, be not deceived, foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?” How often are they branded with this epithet of madness and folly? No word so frequent amongst the fathers of the Church and divines; you may see what an opinion they had of the world, and how they valued men's actions.
I know that we think far otherwise, and hold them most part wise men that are in authority, princes, magistrates, [184]rich men, they are wise men born, all politicians and statesmen must needs be so, for who dare speak against them? And on the other, so corrupt is our judgment, we esteem wise and honest men fools. Which Democritus well signified in an epistle of his to Hippocrates: [185]the “Abderites account virtue madness,” and so do most men living. Shall I tell you the reason of it? [186]Fortune and Virtue, Wisdom and Folly, their seconds, upon a time contended in the Olympics; every man thought that Fortune and Folly would have the worst, and pitied their cases; but it fell out otherwise. Fortune was blind and cared not where she stroke, nor whom, without laws, Audabatarum instar, &c. Folly, rash and inconsiderate, esteemed as little what she said or did. Virtue and Wisdom gave [187]place, were hissed out, and exploded by the common people; Folly and Fortune admired, and so are all their followers ever since: knaves and fools commonly fare and deserve best in worldlings' eyes and opinions. Many good men have no better fate in their ages: Achish, 1 Sam. xxi. 14, held David for a madman. [188]Elisha and the rest were no otherwise esteemed. David was derided of the common people, Ps. ix. 7, “I am become a monster to many.” And generally we are accounted fools for Christ, 1 Cor. xiv. “We fools thought his life madness, and his end without honour,” Wisd. v. 4. Christ and his Apostles were censured in like sort, John x.; Mark iii.; Acts xxvi. And so were all Christians in [189]Pliny's time, fuerunt et alii, similis dementiae, &c. And called not long after, [190]Vesaniae sectatores, eversores hominum, polluti novatores, fanatici, canes, malefici, venefici, Galilaei homunciones, &c. 'Tis an ordinary thing with us, to account honest, devout, orthodox, divine, religious, plain-dealing men, idiots, asses, that cannot, or will not lie and dissemble, shift, flatter, accommodare se ad eum locum ubi nati sunt, make good bargains, supplant, thrive, patronis inservire; solennes ascendendi modos apprehendere, leges, mores, consuetudines recte observare, candide laudare, fortiter defendere, sententias amplecti, dubitare de nullus, credere omnia, accipere omnia, nihil reprehendere, caeteraque quae promotionem ferunt et securitatem, quae sine ambage felicem, reddunt hominem, et vere sapientem apud nos; that cannot temporise as other men do, [191]hand and take bribes, &c. but fear God, and make a conscience of their doings. But the Holy Ghost that knows better how to judge, he calls them fools. “The fool hath said in his heart,” Psal. liii. 1. “And their ways utter their folly,” Psal. xlix. 14. [192]“For what can be more mad, than for a little worldly pleasure to procure unto themselves eternal punishment?” As Gregory and others inculcate unto us.
Yea even all those great philosophers the world hath ever had in admiration, whose works we do so much esteem, that gave precepts of wisdom to others, inventors of Arts and Sciences, Socrates the wisest man of his time by the Oracle of Apollo, whom his two scholars, [193]Plato and [194] Xenophon, so much extol and magnify with those honourable titles, “best and wisest of all mortal men, the happiest, and most just;” and as [195] Alcibiades incomparably commends him; Achilles was a worthy man, but Bracides and others were as worthy as himself; Antenor and Nestor were as good as Pericles, and so of the rest; but none present, before, or after Socrates, nemo veterum neque eorum qui nunc sunt, were ever such, will match, or come near him. Those seven wise men of Greece, those Britain Druids, Indian Brachmanni, Ethiopian Gymnosophist, Magi of the Persians, Apollonius, of whom Philostratus, Non doctus, sed natus sapiens, wise from his cradle, Eoicuras so much admired by his scholar Lucretius:
Or that so much renowned Empedocles,
All those of whom we read such [197]hyperbolical eulogiums, as of Aristotle, that he was wisdom itself in the abstract, [198]a miracle of nature, breathing libraries, as Eunapius of Longinus, lights of nature, giants for wit, quintessence of wit, divine spirits, eagles in the clouds, fallen from heaven, gods, spirits, lamps of the world, dictators, Nulla ferant talem saecla futura virum: monarchs, miracles, superintendents of wit and learning, oceanus, phoenix, atlas, monstrum, portentum hominis, orbis universi musaeum, ultimus humana naturae donatus, naturae maritus,
Yea, but you will infer, that is true of heathens, if they be conferred with Christians, 1 Cor. iii. 19. “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, earthly and devilish,” as James calls it, iii. 15. “They were vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was full of darkness,” Rom. i. 21, 22. “When they professed themselves wise, became fools.” Their witty works are admired here on earth, whilst their souls are tormented in hell fire. In some sense, Christiani Crassiani, Christians are Crassians, and if compared to that wisdom, no better than fools. Quis est sapiens? Solus Deus, [211]Pythagoras replies, “God is only wise,” Rom. xvi. Paul determines “only good,” as Austin well contends, “and no man living can be justified in his sight.” “God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if any did understand,” Psalm liii. 2, 3, but all are corrupt, err. Rom. iii. 12, “None doeth good, no, not one.” Job aggravates this, iv. 18, “Behold he found no steadfastness in his servants, and laid folly upon his angels;” 19. “How much more on them that dwell in houses of clay?” In this sense we are all fools, and the [212]Scripture alone is arx Minervae, we and our writings are shallow and imperfect. But I do not so mean; even in our ordinary dealings we are no better than fools. “All our actions,” as [213]Pliny told Trajan, “upbraid us of folly,” our whole course of life is but matter of laughter: we are not soberly wise; and the world itself, which ought at least to be wise by reason of his antiquity, as [214]Hugo de Prato Florido will have it, “semper stultizat, is every day more foolish than other; the more it is whipped, the worse it is, and as a child will still be crowned with roses and flowers.” We are apish in it, asini bipedes, and every place is full inversorum Apuleiorum of metamorphosed and two-legged asses, inversorum Silenorum, childish, pueri instar bimuli, tremula patris dormientis in ulna. Jovianus Pontanus, Antonio Dial, brings in some laughing at an old man, that by reason of his age was a little fond, but as he admonisheth there, Ne mireris mi hospes de hoc sene, marvel not at him only, for tota haec civitas delirium, all our town dotes in like sort, [215]we are a company of fools. Ask not with him in the poet, [216]Larvae hunc intemperiae insaniaeque agitant senem? What madness ghosts this old man, but what madness ghosts us all? For we are ad unum omnes, all mad, semel insanivimus omnes not once, but alway so, et semel, et simul, et semper, ever and altogether as bad as he; and not senex bis puer, delira anus, but say it of us all, semper pueri, young and old, all dote, as Lactantius proves out of Seneca; and no difference betwixt us and children, saving that, majora ludimus, et grandioribus pupis, they play with babies of clouts and such toys, we sport with greater baubles. We cannot accuse or condemn one another, being faulty ourselves, deliramenta loqueris, you talk idly, or as [217]Mitio upbraided Demea, insanis, auferte, for we are as mad our own selves, and it is hard to say which is the worst. Nay, 'tis universally so, [218]Vitam regit fortuna, non sapientia.
When [219]Socrates had taken great pains to find out a wise man, and to that purpose had consulted with philosophers, poets, artificers, he concludes all men were fools; and though it procured him both anger and much envy, yet in all companies he would openly profess it. When [220] Supputius in Pontanus had travelled all over Europe to confer with a wise man, he returned at last without his errand, and could find none. [221] Cardan concurs with him, “Few there are (for aught I can perceive) well in their wits.” So doth [222]Tully, “I see everything to be done foolishly and unadvisedly.”
[228]Charon in Lucian, as he wittily feigns, was conducted by Mercury to such a place, where he might see all the world at once; after he had sufficiently viewed, and looked about, Mercury would needs know of him what he had observed: He told him that he saw a vast multitude and a promiscuous, their habitations like molehills, the men as emmets, “he could discern cities like so many hives of bees, wherein every bee had a sting, and they did nought else but sting one another, some domineering like hornets bigger than the rest, some like filching wasps, others as drones.” Over their heads were hovering a confused company of perturbations, hope, fear, anger, avarice, ignorance, &c., and a multitude of diseases hanging, which they still pulled on their pates. Some were brawling, some fighting, riding, running, sollicite ambientes, callide litigantes for toys and trifles, and such momentary things, Their towns and provinces mere factions, rich against poor, poor against rich, nobles against artificers, they against nobles, and so the rest. In conclusion, he condemned them all for madmen, fools, idiots, asses, O stulti, quaenam haec est amentia? O fools, O madmen, he exclaims, insana studia, insani labores, &c. Mad endeavours, mad actions, mad, mad, mad, [229]O saeclum insipiens et infacetum, a giddy-headed age. Heraclitus the philosopher, out of a serious meditation of men's lives, fell a weeping, and with continual tears bewailed their misery, madness, and folly. Democritus on the other side, burst out a laughing, their whole life seemed to him so ridiculous, and he was so far carried with this ironical passion, that the citizens of Abdera took him to be mad, and sent therefore ambassadors to Hippocrates, the physician, that he would exercise his skill upon him. But the story is set down at large by Hippocrates, in his epistle to Damogetus, which because it is not impertinent to this discourse, I will insert verbatim almost as it is delivered by Hippocrates himself, with all the circumstances belonging unto it.
When Hippocrates was now come to Abdera, the people of the city came flocking about him, some weeping, some intreating of him, that he would do his best. After some little repast, he went to see Democritus, the people following him, whom he found (as before) in his garden in the suburbs all alone, [230]“sitting upon a stone under a plane tree, without hose or shoes, with a book on his knees, cutting up several beasts, and busy at his study.” The multitude stood gazing round about to see the congress. Hippocrates, after a little pause, saluted him by his name, whom he resaluted, ashamed almost that he could not call him likewise by his, or that he had forgot it. Hippocrates demanded of him what he was doing: he told him that he was [231]“busy in cutting up several beasts, to find out the cause of madness and melancholy.” Hippocrates commended his work, admiring his happiness and leisure. And why, quoth Democritus, have not you that leisure? Because, replied Hippocrates, domestic affairs hinder, necessary to be done for ourselves, neighbours, friends; expenses, diseases, frailties and mortalities which happen; wife, children, servants, and such business which deprive us of our time. At this speech Democritus profusely laughed (his friends and the people standing by, weeping in the mean time, and lamenting his madness). Hippocrates asked the reason why he laughed. He told him, at the vanities and the fopperies of the time, to see men so empty of all virtuous actions, to hunt so far after gold, having no end of ambition; to take such infinite pains for a little glory, and to be favoured of men; to make such deep mines into the earth for gold, and many times to find nothing, with loss of their lives and fortunes. Some to love dogs, others horses, some to desire to be obeyed in many provinces,[232] and yet themselves will know no obedience. [233]Some to love their wives dearly at first, and after a while to forsake and hate them; begetting children, with much care and cost for their education, yet when they grow to man's estate, [234]to despise, neglect, and leave them naked to the world's mercy. [235]Do not these behaviours express their intolerable folly? When men live in peace, they covet war, detesting quietness, [236] deposing kings, and advancing others in their stead, murdering some men to beget children of their wives. How many strange humours are in men! When they are poor and needy, they seek riches, and when they have them, they do not enjoy them, but hide them under ground, or else wastefully spend them. O wise Hippocrates, I laugh at such things being done, but much more when no good comes of them, and when they are done to so ill purpose. There is no truth or justice found amongst them, for they daily plead one against another, [237]the son against the father and the mother, brother against brother, kindred and friends of the same quality; and all this for riches, whereof after death they cannot be possessors. And yet notwithstanding they will defame and kill one another, commit all unlawful actions, contemning God and men, friends and country. They make great account of many senseless things, esteeming them as a great part of their treasure, statues, pictures, and such like movables, dear bought, and so cunningly wrought, as nothing but speech wanteth in them, [238]and yet they hate living persons speaking to them. [239]Others affect difficult things; if they dwell on firm land they will remove to an island, and thence to land again, being no way constant to their desires. They commend courage and strength in wars, and let themselves be conquered by lust and avarice; they are, in brief, as disordered in their minds, as Thersites was in his body. And now, methinks, O most worthy Hippocrates, you should not reprehend my laughing, perceiving so many fooleries in men; [240]for no man will mock his own folly, but that which he seeth in a second, and so they justly mock one another. The drunkard calls him a glutton whom he knows to be sober. Many men love the sea, others husbandry; briefly, they cannot agree in their own trades and professions, much less in their lives and actions.
When Hippocrates heard these words so readily uttered, without premeditation, to declare the world's vanity, full of ridiculous contrariety, he made answer, that necessity compelled men to many such actions, and divers wills ensuing from divine permission, that we might not be idle, being nothing is so odious to them as sloth and negligence. Besides, men cannot foresee future events, in this uncertainty of human affairs; they would not so marry, if they could foretell the causes of their dislike and separation; or parents, if they knew the hour of their children's death, so tenderly provide for them; or an husbandman sow, if he thought there would be no increase; or a merchant adventure to sea, if he foresaw shipwreck; or be a magistrate, if presently to be deposed. Alas, worthy Democritus, every man hopes the best, and to that end he doth it, and therefore no such cause, or ridiculous occasion of laughter.
Democritus hearing this poor excuse, laughed again aloud, perceiving he wholly mistook him, and did not well understand what he had said concerning perturbations and tranquillity of the mind. Insomuch, that if men would govern their actions by discretion and providence, they would not declare themselves fools as now they do, and he should have no cause of laughter; but (quoth he) they swell in this life as if they were immortal, and demigods, for want of understanding. It were enough to make them wise, if they would but consider the mutability of this world, and how it wheels about, nothing being firm and sure. He that is now above, tomorrow is beneath; he that sate on this side today, tomorrow is hurled on the other: and not considering these matters, they fall into many inconveniences and troubles, coveting things of no profit, and thirsting after them, tumbling headlong into many calamities. So that if men would attempt no more than what they can bear, they should lead contented lives, and learning to know themselves, would limit their ambition, [241]they would perceive then that nature hath enough without seeking such superfluities, and unprofitable things, which bring nothing with them but grief and molestation. As a fat body is more subject to diseases, so are rich men to absurdities and fooleries, to many casualties and cross inconveniences. There are many that take no heed what happeneth to others by bad conversation, and therefore overthrow themselves in the same manner through their own fault, not foreseeing dangers manifest. These are things (O more than mad, quoth he) that give me matter of laughter, by suffering the pains of your impieties, as your avarice, envy, malice, enormous villainies, mutinies, unsatiable desires, conspiracies, and other incurable vices; besides your [242]dissimulation and hypocrisy, bearing deadly hatred one to the other, and yet shadowing it with a good face, flying out into all filthy lusts, and transgressions of all laws, both of nature and civility. Many things which they have left off, after a while they fall to again, husbandry, navigation; and leave again, fickle and inconstant as they are. When they are young, they would be old, and old, young. [243] Princes commend a private life; private men itch after honour: a magistrate commends a quiet life; a quiet man would be in his office, and obeyed as he is: and what is the cause of all this, but that they know not themselves? Some delight to destroy, [244]one to build, another to spoil one country to enrich another and himself. [245]In all these things they are like children, in whom is no judgment or counsel and resemble beasts, saving that beasts are better than they, as being contented with nature. [246] When shall you see a lion hide gold in the ground, or a bull contend for better pasture? When a boar is thirsty, he drinks what will serve him, and no more; and when his belly is full, ceaseth to eat: but men are immoderate in both, as in lust—they covet carnal copulation at set times; men always, ruinating thereby the health of their bodies. And doth it not deserve laughter to see an amorous fool torment himself for a wench; weep, howl for a misshapen slut, a dowdy sometimes, that might have his choice of the finest beauties? Is there any remedy for this in physic? I do anatomise and cut up these poor beasts, [247]to see these distempers, vanities, and follies, yet such proof were better made on man's body, if my kind nature would endure it: [248]who from the hour of his birth is most miserable; weak, and sickly; when he sucks he is guided by others, when he is grown great practiseth unhappiness [249]and is sturdy, and when old, a child again, and repenteth him of his life past. And here being interrupted by one that brought books, he fell to it again, that all were mad, careless, stupid. To prove my former speeches, look into courts, or private houses. [250]Judges give judgment according to their own advantage, doing manifest wrong to poor innocents to please others. Notaries alter sentences, and for money lose their deeds. Some make false monies; others counterfeit false weights. Some abuse their parents, yea corrupt their own sisters; others make long libels and pasquils, defaming men of good life, and extol such as are lewd and vicious. Some rob one, some another: [251]magistrates make laws against thieves, and are the veriest thieves themselves. Some kill themselves, others despair, not obtaining their desires. Some dance, sing, laugh, feast and banquet, whilst others sigh, languish, mourn and lament, having neither meat, drink, nor clothes. [252]Some prank up their bodies, and have their minds full of execrable vices. Some trot about [253]to bear false witness, and say anything for money; and though judges know of it, yet for a bribe they wink at it, and suffer false contracts to prevail against equity. Women are all day a dressing, to pleasure other men abroad, and go like sluts at home, not caring to please their own husbands whom they should. Seeing men are so fickle, so sottish, so intemperate, why should not I laugh at those to whom [254]folly seems wisdom, will not be cured, and perceive it not?
It grew late: Hippocrates left him; and no sooner was he come away, but all the citizens came about flocking, to know how he liked him. He told them in brief, that notwithstanding those small neglects of his attire, body, diet, [255]the world had not a wiser, a more learned, a more honest man, and they were much deceived to say that he was mad.
Thus Democritus esteemed of the world in his time, and this was the cause of his laughter: and good cause he had.
Never so much cause of laughter as now, never so many fools and madmen. 'Tis not one [257]Democritus will serve turn to laugh in these days; we have now need of a “Democritus to laugh at Democritus;” one jester to flout at another, one fool to fleer at another: a great stentorian Democritus, as big as that Rhodian Colossus, For now, as [258]Salisburiensis said in his time, totus mundus histrionem agit, the whole world plays the fool; we have a new theatre, a new scene, a new comedy of errors, a new company of personate actors, volupiae sacra (as Calcagninus willingly feigns in his Apologues) are celebrated all the world over, [259]where all the actors were madmen and fools, and every hour changed habits, or took that which came next. He that was a mariner today, is an apothecary tomorrow; a smith one while, a philosopher another, in his volupiae ludis; a king now with his crown, robes, sceptre, attendants, by and by drove a loaded ass before him like a carter, &c. If Democritus were alive now, he should see strange alterations, a new company of counterfeit vizards, whifflers, Cumane asses, maskers, mummers, painted puppets, outsides, fantastic shadows, gulls, monsters, giddy-heads, butterflies. And so many of them are indeed ([260]if all be true that I have read). For when Jupiter and Juno's wedding was solemnised of old, the gods were all invited to the feast, and many noble men besides: Amongst the rest came Crysalus, a Persian prince, bravely attended, rich in golden attires, in gay robes, with a majestical presence, but otherwise an ass. The gods seeing him come in such pomp and state, rose up to give him place, ex habitu hominem metientes; [261]but Jupiter perceiving what he was, a light, fantastic, idle fellow, turned him and his proud followers into butterflies: and so they continue still (for aught I know to the contrary) roving about in pied coats, and are called chrysalides by the wiser sort of men: that is, golden outsides, drones, and flies, and things of no worth. Multitudes of such, &c.
A satirical Roman in his time, thought all vice, folly, and madness were all at full sea, [264]Omne in praecipiti vitium stetit.
[265]Josephus the historian taxeth his countrymen Jews for bragging of their vices, publishing their follies, and that they did contend amongst themselves who should be most notorious in villainies; but we flow higher in madness, far beyond them,
If Democritus were alive now, and should but see the superstition of our age, our [269]religious madness, as [270]Meteran calls it, Religiosam insaniam, so many professed Christians, yet so few imitators of Christ; so much talk of religion, so much science, so little conscience; so much knowledge, so many preachers, so little practice; such variety of sects, such have and hold of all sides, [271]—obvia signis Signa, &c., such absurd and ridiculous traditions and ceremonies: If he should meet a [272] Capuchin, a Franciscan, a Pharisaical Jesuit, a man-serpent, a shave-crowned Monk in his robes, a begging Friar, or, see their three-crowned Sovereign Lord the Pope, poor Peter's successor, servus servorum Dei, to depose kings with his foot, to tread on emperors' necks, make them stand barefoot and barelegged at his gates, hold his bridle and stirrup, &c. (O that Peter and Paul were alive to see this!) If he should observe a [273]prince creep so devoutly to kiss his toe, and those red-cap cardinals, poor parish priests of old, now princes' companions; what would he say? Coelum ipsum petitur stultitia. Had he met some of our devout pilgrims going barefoot to Jerusalem, our lady of Lauretto, Rome, S. Iago, S. Thomas' Shrine, to creep to those counterfeit and maggot-eaten relics; had he been present at a mass, and seen such kissing of paxes, crucifixes, cringes, duckings, their several attires and ceremonies, pictures of saints, [274]indulgences, pardons, vigils, fasting, feasts, crossing, knocking, kneeling at Ave-Marias, bells, with many such; —jucunda rudi spectacula plebi,[275] praying in gibberish, and mumbling of beads. Had he heard an old woman say her prayers in Latin, their sprinkling of holy water, and going a procession,
Their breviaries, bulls, hallowed beans, exorcisms, pictures, curious crosses, fables, and baubles. Had he read the Golden Legend, the Turks' Alcoran, or Jews' Talmud, the Rabbins' Comments, what would he have thought? How dost thou think he might have been affected? Had he more particularly examined a Jesuit's life amongst the rest, he should have seen an hypocrite profess poverty, [277]and yet possess more goods and lands than many princes, to have infinite treasures and revenues; teach others to fast, and play the gluttons themselves; like watermen that row one way and look another. [278]Vow virginity, talk of holiness, and yet indeed a notorious bawd, and famous fornicator, lascivum pecus, a very goat. Monks by profession, [279]such as give over the world, and the vanities of it, and yet a Machiavellian rout [280]interested in all manner of state: holy men, peace-makers, and yet composed of envy, lust, ambition, hatred, and malice; firebrands, adulta patriae pestis, traitors, assassinats, hac itur ad astra, and this is to supererogate, and merit heaven for themselves and others. Had he seen on the adverse side, some of our nice and curious schismatics in another extreme, abhor all ceremonies, and rather lose their lives and livings, than do or admit anything Papists have formerly used, though in things indifferent (they alone are the true Church, sal terrae, cum sint omnium insulsissimi). Formalists, out of fear and base flattery, like so many weather-cocks turn round, a rout of temporisers, ready to embrace and maintain all that is or shall be proposed in hope of preferment: another Epicurean company, lying at lurch as so many vultures, watching for a prey of Church goods, and ready to rise by the downfall of any: as [281]Lucian said in like case, what dost thou think Democritus would have done, had he been spectator of these things?
Or had he but observed the common people follow like so many sheep one of their fellows drawn by the horns over a gap, some for zeal, some for fear, quo se cunque rapit tempestas, to credit all, examine nothing, and yet ready to die before they will adjure any of those ceremonies to which they have been accustomed; others out of hypocrisy frequent sermons, knock their breasts, turn up their eyes, pretend zeal, desire reformation, and yet professed usurers, gripers, monsters of men, harpies, devils in their lives, to express nothing less.
What would he have said to see, hear, and read so many bloody battles, so many thousands slain at once, such streams of blood able to turn mills: unius ob noxam furiasque, or to make sport for princes, without any just cause, [282]“for vain titles” (saith Austin), “precedency, some wench, or such like toy, or out of desire of domineering, vainglory, malice, revenge, folly, madness,” (goodly causes all, ob quas universus orbis bellis et caedibus misceatur,) whilst statesmen themselves in the mean time are secure at home, pampered with all delights and pleasures, take their ease, and follow their lusts, not considering what intolerable misery poor soldiers endure, their often wounds, hunger, thirst, &c., the lamentable cares, torments, calamities, and oppressions that accompany such proceedings, they feel not, take no notice of it. “So wars are begun, by the persuasion of a few debauched, hair-brain, poor, dissolute, hungry captains, parasitical fawners, unquiet hotspurs, restless innovators, green heads, to satisfy one man's private spleen, lust, ambition, avarice,” &c.; tales rapiunt scelerata in praelia causae. Flos hominum, proper men, well proportioned, carefully brought up, able both in body and mind, sound, led like so many [283]beasts to the slaughter in the flower of their years, pride, and full strength, without all remorse and pity, sacrificed to Pluto, killed up as so many sheep, for devils' food, 40,000 at once. At once, said I, that were tolerable, but these wars last always, and for many ages; nothing so familiar as this hacking and hewing, massacres, murders, desolations—ignoto coelum clangore remugit, they care not what mischief they procure, so that they may enrich themselves for the present; they will so long blow the coals of contention, till all the world be consumed with fire. The [284]siege of Troy lasted ten years, eight months, there died 870,000 Grecians, 670,000 Trojans, at the taking of the city, and after were slain 276,000 men, women, and children of all sorts. Caesar killed a million, [285]Mahomet the second Turk, 300,000 persons; Sicinius Dentatus fought in a hundred battles, eight times in single combat he overcame, had forty wounds before, was rewarded with 140 crowns, triumphed nine times for his good service. M. Sergius had 32 wounds; Scaeva, the Centurion, I know not how many; every nation had their Hectors, Scipios, Caesars, and Alexanders! Our [286]Edward the Fourth was in 26 battles afoot: and as they do all, he glories in it, 'tis related to his honour. At the siege of Hierusalem, 1,100,000 died with sword and famine. At the battle of Cannas, 70,000 men were slain, as [287]Polybius records, and as many at Battle Abbey with us; and 'tis no news to fight from sun to sun, as they did, as Constantine and Licinius, &c. At the siege of Ostend (the devil's academy) a poor town in respect, a small fort, but a great grave, 120,000 men lost their lives, besides whole towns, dorps, and hospitals, full of maimed soldiers; there were engines, fireworks, and whatsoever the devil could invent to do mischief with 2,500,000 iron bullets shot of 40 pounds weight, three or four millions of gold consumed. [288]“Who” (saith mine author) “can be sufficiently amazed at their flinty hearts, obstinacy, fury, blindness, who without any likelihood of good success, hazard poor soldiers, and lead them without pity to the slaughter, which may justly be called the rage of furious beasts, that run without reason upon their own deaths:” [289]quis malus genius, quae furia quae pestis, &c.; what plague, what fury brought so devilish, so brutish a thing as war first into men's minds? Who made so soft and peaceable a creature, born to love, mercy, meekness, so to rave, rage like beasts, and run on to their own destruction? how may Nature expostulate with mankind, Ego te divinum animal finxi, &c.? I made thee an harmless, quiet, a divine creature: how may God expostulate, and all good men? yet, horum facta (as [290]one condoles) tantum admirantur, et heroum numero habent: these are the brave spirits, the gallants of the world, these admired alone, triumph alone, have statues, crowns, pyramids, obelisks to their eternal fame, that immortal genius attends on them, hac itur ad astra. When Rhodes was besieged, [291]fossae urbis cadaveribus repletae sunt, the ditches were full of dead carcases: and as when the said Suleiman, great Turk, beleaguered Vienna, they lay level with the top of the walls. This they make a sport of, and will do it to their friends and confederates, against oaths, vows, promises, by treachery or otherwise; [292]—dolus an virtus? quis in hoste requirat? leagues and laws of arms, ([293]silent leges inter arma,) for their advantage, omnia jura, divina, humana, proculcata plerumque sunt; God's and men's laws are trampled under foot, the sword alone determines all; to satisfy their lust and spleen, they care not what they attempt, say, or do, [294]Rara fides, probitasque viris qui castra sequuntur. Nothing so common as to have [295] “father fight against the son, brother against brother, kinsman against kinsman, kingdom against kingdom, province against province, Christians against Christians:” a quibus nec unquam cogitatione fuerunt laesi, of whom they never had offence in thought, word, or deed. Infinite treasures consumed, towns burned, flourishing cities sacked and ruinated, quodque animus meminisse horret, goodly countries depopulated and left desolate, old inhabitants expelled, trade and traffic decayed, maids deflowered, Virgines nondum thalamis jugatae, et comis nondum positis ephaebi; chaste matrons cry out with Andromache, [296]Concubitum mox cogar pati ejus, qui interemit Hectorem, they shall be compelled peradventure to lie with them that erst killed their husbands: to see rich, poor, sick, sound, lords, servants, eodem omnes incommodo macti, consumed all or maimed, &c. Et quicquid gaudens scelere animus audet, et perversa mens, saith Cyprian, and whatsoever torment, misery, mischief, hell itself, the devil, [297] fury and rage can invent to their own ruin and destruction; so abominable a thing is [298]war, as Gerbelius concludes, adeo foeda et abominanda res est bellum, ex quo hominum caedes, vastationes, &c., the scourge of God, cause, effect, fruit and punishment of sin, and not tonsura humani generis as Tertullian calls it, but ruina. Had Democritus been present at the late civil wars in France, those abominable wars—bellaque matribus detestata, [299]“where in less than ten years, ten thousand men were consumed,” saith Collignius, twenty thousand churches overthrown; nay, the whole kingdom subverted (as [300]Richard Dinoth adds). So many myriads of the commons were butchered up, with sword, famine, war, tanto odio utrinque ut barbari ad abhorrendam lanienam obstupescerent, with such feral hatred, the world was amazed at it: or at our late Pharsalian fields in the time of Henry the Sixth, betwixt the houses of Lancaster and York, a hundred thousand men slain, [301]one writes; [302]another, ten thousand families were rooted out, “that no man can but marvel,” saith Comineus, “at that barbarous immanity, feral madness, committed betwixt men of the same nation, language, and religion.” [303]Quis furor, O cives? “Why do the Gentiles so furiously rage,” saith the Prophet David, Psal. ii. 1. But we may ask, why do the Christians so furiously rage? [304]Arma volunt, quare poscunt, rapiuntque juventus? Unfit for Gentiles, much less for us so to tyrannise, as the Spaniard in the West Indies, that killed up in 42 years (if we may believe [305]Bartholomeus a Casa, their own bishop) 12 millions of men, with stupend and exquisite torments; neither should I lie (said he) if I said 50 millions. I omit those French massacres, Sicilian evensongs, [306]the Duke of Alva's tyrannies, our gunpowder machinations, and that fourth fury, as [307]one calls it, the Spanish inquisition, which quite obscures those ten persecutions, [308]———saevit toto Mars impius orbe. Is not this [309]mundus furiosus, a mad world, as he terms it, insanum bellum? are not these mad men, as [310]Scaliger concludes, qui in praelio acerba morte, insaniae, suae memoriam pro perpetuo teste relinquunt posteritati; which leave so frequent battles, as perpetual memorials of their madness to all succeeding ages? Would this, think you, have enforced our Democritus to laughter, or rather made him turn his tune, alter his tone, and weep with [311]Heraclitus, or rather howl, [312]roar, and tear his hair in commiseration, stand amazed; or as the poets feign, that Niobe was for grief quite stupefied, and turned to a stone? I have not yet said the worst, that which is more absurd and [313]mad, in their tumults, seditions, civil and unjust wars, [314]quod stulte sucipitur, impie geritur, misere finitur. Such wars I mean; for all are not to be condemned, as those fantastical Anabaptists vainly conceive. Our Christian tactics are all out as necessary as the Roman acies, or Grecian phalanx, to be a soldier is a most noble and honourable profession (as the world is), not to be spared, they are our best walls and bulwarks, and I do therefore acknowledge that of [315]Tully to be most true, “All our civil affairs, all our studies, all our pleading, industry, and commendation lies under the protection of warlike virtues, and whensoever there is any suspicion of tumult, all our arts cease;” wars are most behoveful, et bellatores agricolis civitati sunt utiliores, as [316]Tyrius defends: and valour is much to be commended in a wise man; but they mistake most part, auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus virtutem vocant, &c. ('Twas Galgacus' observation in Tacitus) they term theft, murder, and rapine, virtue, by a wrong name, rapes, slaughters, massacres, &c. jocus et ludus, are pretty pastimes, as Ludovicus Vives notes. [317]“They commonly call the most hair-brain bloodsuckers, strongest thieves, the most desperate villains, treacherous rogues, inhuman murderers, rash, cruel and dissolute caitiffs, courageous and generous spirits, heroical and worthy captains, [318]brave men at arms, valiant and renowned soldiers, possessed with a brute persuasion of false honour,” as Pontus Huter in his Burgundian history complains. By means of which it comes to pass that daily so many voluntaries offer themselves, leaving their sweet wives, children, friends, for sixpence (if they can get it) a day, prostitute their lives and limbs, desire to enter upon breaches, lie sentinel, perdu, give the first onset, stand in the fore front of the battle, marching bravely on, with a cheerful noise of drums and trumpets, such vigour and alacrity, so many banners streaming in the air, glittering armours, motions of plumes, woods of pikes, and swords, variety of colours, cost and magnificence, as if they went in triumph, now victors to the Capitol, and with such pomp, as when Darius' army marched to meet Alexander at Issus. Void of all fear they run into imminent dangers, cannon's mouth, &c., ut vulneribus suis ferrum hostium hebetent, saith [319]Barletius, to get a name of valour, humour and applause, which lasts not either, for it is but a mere flash this fame, and like a rose, intra diem unum extinguitur, 'tis gone in an instant. Of 15,000 proletaries slain in a battle, scarce fifteen are recorded in history, or one alone, the General perhaps, and after a while his and their names are likewise blotted out, the whole battle itself is forgotten. Those Grecian orators, summa vi ingenii et eloquentiae, set out the renowned overthrows at Thermopylae, Salamis, Marathon, Micale, Mantinea, Cheronaea, Plataea. The Romans record their battle at Cannas, and Pharsalian fields, but they do but record, and we scarce hear of them. And yet this supposed honour, popular applause, desire of immortality by this means, pride and vainglory spur them on many times rashly and unadvisedly, to make away themselves and multitudes of others. Alexander was sorry, because there were no more worlds for him to conquer, he is admired by some for it, animosa vox videtur, et regia, 'twas spoken like a Prince; but as wise [320]Seneca censures him, 'twas vox inquissima et stultissima, 'twas spoken like a Bedlam fool; and that sentence which the same [321]Seneca appropriates to his father Philip and him, I apply to them all, Non minores fuere pestes mortalium quam inundatio, quam conflagratio, quibus, &c. they did as much mischief to mortal men as fire and water, those merciless elements when they rage. [322]Which is yet more to be lamented, they persuade them this hellish course of life is holy, they promise heaven to such as venture their lives bello sacro, and that by these bloody wars, as Persians, Greeks, and Romans of old, as modern Turks do now their commons, to encourage them to fight, ut cadant infeliciter. “If they die in the field, they go directly to heaven, and shall be canonised for saints.” (O diabolical invention!) put in the Chronicles, in perpetuam rei memoriam, to their eternal memory: when as in truth, as [323]some hold, it were much better (since wars are the scourge of God for sin, by which he punisheth mortal men's peevishness and folly) such brutish stories were suppressed, because ad morum institutionem nihil habent, they conduce not at all to manners, or good life. But they will have it thus nevertheless, and so they put note of [324]“divinity upon the most cruel and pernicious plague of human kind,” adore such men with grand titles, degrees, statues, images, [325]honour, applaud, and highly reward them for their good service, no greater glory than to die in the field. So Africanus is extolled by Ennius: Mars, and [326]Hercules, and I know not how many besides of old, were deified; went this way to heaven, that were indeed bloody butchers, wicked destroyers, and troublers of the world, prodigious monsters, hell-hounds, feral plagues, devourers, common executioners of human kind, as Lactantius truly proves, and Cyprian to Donat, such as were desperate in wars, and precipitately made away themselves, (like those Celts in Damascen, with ridiculous valour, ut dedecorosum putarent muro ruenti se subducere, a disgrace to run away for a rotten wall, now ready to fall on their heads,) such as will not rush on a sword's point, or seek to shun a cannon's shot, are base cowards, and no valiant men. By which means, Madet orbis mutuo sanguine, the earth wallows in her own blood,
[327]Savit amor ferri et scelerati insania belli; and for that, which if it be done in private, a man shall be rigorously executed, [328]“and which is no less than murder itself; if the same fact be done in public in wars, it is called manhood, and the party is honoured for it.”
How would our Democritus have been affected to see a wicked caitiff or [335]“fool, a very idiot, a funge, a golden ass, a monster of men, to have many good men, wise, men, learned men to attend upon him with all submission, as an appendix to his riches, for that respect alone, because he hath more wealth and money,” [336]“to honour him with divine titles, and bombast epithets,” to smother him with fumes and eulogies, whom they know to be a dizzard, a fool, a covetous wretch, a beast, &c. “because he is rich?” To see sub exuviis leonis onagrum, a filthy loathsome carcass, a Gorgon's head puffed up by parasites, assume this unto himself, glorious titles, in worth an infant, a Cuman ass, a painted sepulchre, an Egyptian temple? To see a withered face, a diseased, deformed, cankered complexion, a rotten carcass, a viperous mind, and Epicurean soul set out with orient pearls, jewels, diadems, perfumes, curious elaborate works, as proud of his clothes as a child of his new coats; and a goodly person, of an angel-like divine countenance, a saint, an humble mind, a meet spirit clothed in rags, beg, and now ready to be starved? To see a silly contemptible sloven in apparel, ragged in his coat, polite in speech, of a divine spirit, wise? another neat in clothes, spruce, full of courtesy, empty of grace, wit, talk nonsense?
To see so many lawyers, advocates, so many tribunals, so little justice; so many magistrates, so little care of common good; so many laws, yet never more disorders; Tribunal litium segetem, the Tribunal a labyrinth, so many thousand suits in one court sometimes, so violently followed? To see injustissimum saepe juri praesidentem, impium religioni, imperitissimum eruditioni, otiosissimum labori, monstrosum humanitati? to see a lamb [337]executed, a wolf pronounce sentence, latro arraigned, and fur sit on the bench, the judge severely punish others, and do worse himself, [338] cundem furtum facere et punire, [339]rapinam plectere, quum sit ipse raptor? Laws altered, misconstrued, interpreted pro and con, as the [340]judge is made by friends, bribed, or otherwise affected as a nose of wax, good today, none tomorrow; or firm in his opinion, cast in his? Sentence prolonged, changed, ad arbitrium judicis, still the same case, [341]“one thrust out of his inheritance, another falsely put in by favour, false forged deeds or wills.” Incisae leges negliguntur, laws are made and not kept; or if put in execution, [342]they be some silly ones that are punished. As, put case it be fornication, the father will disinherit or abdicate his child, quite cashier him (out, villain, be gone, come no more in my sight); a poor man is miserably tormented with loss of his estate perhaps, goods, fortunes, good name, for ever disgraced, forsaken, and must do penance to the utmost; a mortal sin, and yet make the worst of it, nunquid aliud fecit, saith Tranio in the [343]poet, nisi quod faciunt summis nati generibus? he hath done no more than what gentlemen usually do. [344]Neque novum, neque mirum, neque secus quam alii solent. For in a great person, right worshipful Sir, a right honourable grandee, 'tis not a venial sin, no, not a peccadillo, 'tis no offence at all, a common and ordinary thing, no man takes notice of it; he justifies it in public, and peradventure brags of it,
To see a man turn himself into all shapes like a chameleon, or as Proteus, omnia transformans sese in miracula rerum, to act twenty parts and persons at once, for his advantage, to temporise and vary like Mercury the planet, good with good; bad with bad; having a several face, garb, and character for every one he meets; of all religions, humours, inclinations; to fawn like a spaniel, mentitis et mimicis obsequis; rage like a lion, bark like a cur, fight like a dragon, sting like a serpent, as meek as a lamb, and yet again grin like a tiger, weep like a crocodile, insult over some, and yet others domineer over him, here command, there crouch, tyrannise in one place, be baffled in another, a wise man at home, a fool abroad to make others merry.
To see so much difference betwixt words and deeds, so many parasangs betwixt tongue and heart, men like stage-players act variety of parts, [365]give good precepts to others, soar aloft, whilst they themselves grovel on the ground.
To see a man protest friendship, kiss his hand, [366]quem mallet truncatum videre, [367]smile with an intent to do mischief, or cozen him whom he salutes, [368]magnify his friend unworthy with hyperbolical eulogiums; his enemy albeit a good man, to vilify and disgrace him, yea all his actions, with the utmost that livor and malice can invent.
To see a [369]servant able to buy out his master, him that carries the mace more worth than the magistrate, which Plato, lib. 11, de leg., absolutely forbids, Epictetus abhors. A horse that tills the [370]land fed with chaff, an idle jade have provender in abundance; him that makes shoes go barefoot himself, him that sells meat almost pined; a toiling drudge starve, a drone flourish.
To see men buy smoke for wares, castles built with fools' heads, men like apes follow the fashions in tires, gestures, actions: if the king laugh, all laugh;
To see men wholly led by affection, admired and censured out of opinion without judgment: an inconsiderate multitude, like so many dogs in a village, if one bark all bark without a cause: as fortune's fan turns, if a man be in favour, or commanded by some great one, all the world applauds him; [374]if in disgrace, in an instant all hate him, and as at the sun when he is eclipsed, that erst took no notice, now gaze and stare upon him.
To see a man [375]wear his brains in his belly, his guts in his head, an hundred oaks on his back, to devour a hundred oxen at a meal, nay more, to devour houses and towns, or as those Anthropophagi, [376]to eat one another.
To see a man roll himself up like a snowball, from base beggary to right worshipful and right honourable titles, unjustly to screw himself into honours and offices; another to starve his genius, damn his soul to gather wealth, which he shall not enjoy, which his prodigal son melts and consumes in an instant. [377]
To see the κακοζηλίαν of our times, a man bend all his forces, means, time, fortunes, to be a favorite's favorite's favorite, &c., a parasite's parasite's parasite, that may scorn the servile world as having enough already.
To see an hirsute beggar's brat, that lately fed on scraps, crept and whined, crying to all, and for an old jerkin ran of errands, now ruffle in silk and satin, bravely mounted, jovial and polite, now scorn his old friends and familiars, neglect his kindred, insult over his betters, domineer over all.
To see a scholar crouch and creep to an illiterate peasant for a meal's meat; a scrivener better paid for an obligation; a falconer receive greater wages than a student; a lawyer get more in a day than a philosopher in a year, better reward for an hour, than a scholar for a twelvemonth's study; him that can [378]paint Thais, play on a fiddle, curl hair, &c., sooner get preferment than a philologer or a poet.
To see a fond mother, like Aesop's ape, hug her child to death, a [379] wittol wink at his wife's honesty, and too perspicuous in all other affairs; one stumble at a straw, and leap over a block; rob Peter, and pay Paul; scrape unjust sums with one hand, purchase great manors by corruption, fraud and cozenage, and liberally to distribute to the poor with the other, give a remnant to pious uses, &c. Penny wise, pound foolish; blind men judge of colours; wise men silent, fools talk; [380] find fault with others, and do worse themselves; [381]denounce that in public which he doth in secret; and which Aurelius Victor gives out of Augustus, severely censure that in a third, of which he is most guilty himself.
To see a poor fellow, or an hired servant venture his life for his new master that will scarce give him his wages at year's end; A country colon toil and moil, till and drudge for a prodigal idle drone, that devours all the gain, or lasciviously consumes with fantastical expenses; A noble man in a bravado to encounter death, and for a small flash of honour to cast away himself; A worldling tremble at an executor, and yet not fear hell-fire; To wish and hope for immortality, desire to be happy, and yet by all means avoid death, a necessary passage to bring him to it.
To see a foolhardy fellow like those old Danes, qui decollari malunt quam verberari, die rather than be punished, in a sottish humour embrace death with alacrity, yet [382]scorn to lament his own sins and miseries, or his clearest friends' departures.
To see wise men degraded, fools preferred, one govern towns and cities, and yet a silly woman overrules him at home; [383]Command a province, and yet his own servants or children prescribe laws to him, as Themistocles' son did in Greece; [384]“What I will” (said he) “my mother will, and what my mother will, my father doth.” To see horses ride in a coach, men draw it; dogs devour their masters; towers build masons; children rule; old men go to school; women wear the breeches; [385]sheep demolish towns, devour men, &c. And in a word, the world turned upside downward. O viveret Democritus.
[386]To insist in every particular were one of Hercules' labours, there's so many ridiculous instances, as motes in the sun. Quantum est in rebus inane? (How much vanity there is in things!) And who can speak of all? Crimine ab uno disce omnes, take this for a taste.
But these are obvious to sense, trivial and well known, easy to be discerned. How would Democritus have been moved, had he seen [387]the secrets of their hearts? If every man had a window in his breast, which Momus would have had in Vulcan's man, or that which Tully so much wished it were written in every man's forehead, Quid quisque de republica sentiret, what he thought; or that it could be effected in an instant, which Mercury did by Charon in Lucian, by touching of his eyes, to make him discern semel et simul rumores et susurros.
That which is more to be lamented, they are mad like Seneca's blind woman, and will not acknowledge, or [392]seek for any cure of it, for pauci vident morbum suum, omnes amant. If our leg or arm offend us, we covet by all means possible to redress it; [393]and if we labour of a bodily disease, we send for a physician; but for the diseases of the mind we take no notice of them: [394]Lust harrows us on the one side; envy, anger, ambition on the other. We are torn in pieces by our passions, as so many wild horses, one in disposition, another in habit; one is melancholy, another mad; [395]and which of us all seeks for help, doth acknowledge his error, or knows he is sick? As that stupid fellow put out the candle because the biting fleas should not find him; he shrouds himself in an unknown habit, borrowed titles, because nobody should discern him. Every man thinks with himself, Egomet videor mihi sanus, I am well, I am wise, and laughs at others. And 'tis a general fault amongst them all, that [396] which our forefathers have approved, diet, apparel, opinions, humours, customs, manners, we deride and reject in our time as absurd. Old men account juniors all fools, when they are mere dizzards; and as to sailors, ———terraeque urbesque recedunt——— they move, the land stands still, the world hath much more wit, they dote themselves. Turks deride us, we them; Italians Frenchmen, accounting them light headed fellows, the French scoff again at Italians, and at their several customs; Greeks have condemned all the world but themselves of barbarism, the world as much vilifies them now; we account Germans heavy, dull fellows, explode many of their fashions; they as contemptibly think of us; Spaniards laugh at all, and all again at them. So are we fools and ridiculous, absurd in our actions, carriages, diet, apparel, customs, and consultations; we [397] scoff and point one at another, when as in conclusion all are fools, [398] “and they the veriest asses that hide their ears most.” A private man if he be resolved with himself, or set on an opinion, accounts all idiots and asses that are not affected as he is, [399]———nil rectum, nisi quod placuit sibi, ducit, that are not so minded, [400](quodque volunt homines se bene velle putant,) all fools that think not as he doth: he will not say with Atticus, Suam quisque sponsam, mihi meam, let every man enjoy his own spouse; but his alone is fair, suus amor, &c. and scorns all in respect of himself [401]will imitate none, hear none [402]but himself, as Pliny said, a law and example to himself. And that which Hippocrates, in his epistle to Dionysius, reprehended of old, is verified in our times, Quisque in alio superfluum esse censet, ipse quod non habet nec curat, that which he hath not himself or doth not esteem, he accounts superfluity, an idle quality, a mere foppery in another: like Aesop's fox, when he had lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs. The Chinese say, that we Europeans have one eye, they themselves two, all the world else is blind: (though [403]Scaliger accounts them brutes too, merum pecus,) so thou and thy sectaries are only wise, others indifferent, the rest beside themselves, mere idiots and asses. Thus not acknowledging our own errors and imperfections, we securely deride others, as if we alone were free, and spectators of the rest, accounting it an excellent thing, as indeed it is, Aliena optimum frui insania, to make ourselves merry with other men's obliquities, when as he himself is more faulty than the rest, mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur, he may take himself by the nose for a fool; and which one calls maximum stultitiae specimen, to be ridiculous to others, and not to perceive or take notice of it, as Marsyas was when he contended with Apollo, non intelligens se deridiculo haberi, saith [404] Apuleius; 'tis his own cause, he is a convicted madman, as [405]Austin well infers “in the eyes of wise men and angels he seems like one, that to our thinking walks with his heels upwards.” So thou laughest at me, and I at thee, both at a third; and he returns that of the poet upon us again, [406]Hei mihi, insanire me aiunt, quum ipsi ultro insaniant. We accuse others of madness, of folly, and are the veriest dizzards ourselves. For it is a great sign and property of a fool (which Eccl. x. 3, points at) out of pride and self-conceit to insult, vilify, condemn, censure, and call other men fools (Non videmus manticae quod a tergo est) to tax that in others of which we are most faulty; teach that which we follow not ourselves: For an inconstant man to write of constancy, a profane liver prescribe rules of sanctity and piety, a dizzard himself make a treatise of wisdom, or with Sallust to rail downright at spoilers of countries, and yet in [407]office to be a most grievous poller himself. This argues weakness, and is an evident sign of such parties' indiscretion. [408]Peccat uter nostrum cruce dignius? “Who is the fool now?” Or else peradventure in some places we are all mad for company, and so 'tis not seen, Satietas erroris et dementiae, pariter absurditatem et admirationem tollit. 'Tis with us, as it was of old (in [409]Tully's censure at least) with C. Pimbria in Rome, a bold, hair-brain, mad fellow, and so esteemed of all, such only excepted, that were as mad as himself: now in such a case there is [410]no notice taken of it.
But forasmuch as I undertook at first, that kingdoms, provinces, families, were melancholy as well as private men, I will examine them in particular, and that which I have hitherto dilated at random, in more general terms, I will particularly insist in, prove with more special and evident arguments, testimonies, illustrations, and that in brief. [426]Nunc accipe quare desipiant omnes aeque ac tu. My first argument is borrowed from Solomon, an arrow drawn out of his sententious quiver, Pro. iii. 7, “Be not wise in thine own eyes.” And xxvi. 12, “Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? more hope is of a fool than of him.” Isaiah pronounceth a woe against such men, cap. v. 21, “that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.” For hence we may gather, that it is a great offence, and men are much deceived that think too well of themselves, an especial argument to convince them of folly. Many men (saith [427]Seneca) “had been without question wise, had they not had an opinion that they had attained to perfection of knowledge already, even before they had gone half way,” too forward, too ripe, praeproperi, too quick and ready, [428]cito prudentes, cito pii, cito mariti, cito patres, cito sacerdotes, cito omnis officii capaces et curiosi, they had too good a conceit of themselves, and that marred all; of their worth, valour, skill, art, learning, judgment, eloquence, their good parts; all their geese are swans, and that manifestly proves them to be no better than fools. In former times they had but seven wise men, now you can scarce find so many fools. Thales sent the golden tripos, which the fishermen found, and the oracle commanded to be [429] “given to the wisest, to Bias, Bias to Solon,” &c. If such a thing were now found, we should all fight for it, as the three goddesses did for the golden apple, we are so wise: we have women politicians, children metaphysicians; every silly fellow can square a circle, make perpetual motions, find the philosopher's stone, interpret Apocalypses, make new Theories, a new system of the world, new Logic, new Philosophy, &c. Nostra utique regio, saith [430]Petronius, “our country is so full of deified spirits, divine souls, that you may sooner find a God than a man amongst us,” we think so well of ourselves, and that is an ample testimony of much folly.
My second argument is grounded upon the like place of Scripture, which though before mentioned in effect, yet for some reasons is to be repeated (and by Plato's good leave, I may do it, [431]δίς τὸ καλὸν ρηθέν ὀυδέν βλάπτει) “Fools” (saith David) “by reason of their transgressions.” &c. Psal. cvii. 17. Hence Musculus infers all transgressors must needs be fools. So we read Rom. ii., “Tribulation and anguish on the soul of every man that doeth evil;” but all do evil. And Isaiah, lxv. 14, “My servant shall sing for joy, and [432]ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and vexation of mind.” 'Tis ratified by the common consent of all philosophers. “Dishonesty” (saith Cardan) “is nothing else but folly and madness.” [433] Probus quis nobiscum vivit? Show me an honest man, Nemo malus qui non stultus, 'tis Fabius' aphorism to the same end. If none honest, none wise, then all fools. And well may they be so accounted: for who will account him otherwise, Qui iter adornat in occidentem, quum properaret in orientem? that goes backward all his life, westward, when he is bound to the east? or hold him a wise man (saith [434]Musculus) “that prefers momentary pleasures to eternity, that spends his master's goods in his absence, forthwith to be condemned for it?” Nequicquam sapit qui sibi non sapit, who will say that a sick man is wise, that eats and drinks to overthrow the temperature of his body? Can you account him wise or discreet that would willingly have his health, and yet will do nothing that should procure or continue it? [435]Theodoret, out of Plotinus the Platonist, “holds it a ridiculous thing for a man to live after his own laws, to do that which is offensive to God, and yet to hope that he should save him: and when he voluntarily neglects his own safety, and contemns the means, to think to be delivered by another:” who will say these men are wise?
A third argument may be derived from the precedent, [436]all men are carried away with passion, discontent, lust, pleasures, &c., they generally hate those virtues they should love, and love such vices they should hate. Therefore more than melancholy, quite mad, brute beasts, and void of reason, so Chrysostom contends; “or rather dead and buried alive,” as [437] Philo Judeus concludes it for a certainty, “of all such that are carried away with passions, or labour of any disease of the mind. Where is fear and sorrow,” there [438]Lactantius stiffly maintains, “wisdom cannot dwell,”
[444]Seneca calls that of Epicurus, magnificam vocem, an heroical speech, “A fool still begins to live,” and accounts it a filthy lightness in men, every day to lay new foundations of their life, but who doth otherwise? One travels, another builds; one for this, another for that business, and old folks are as far out as the rest; O dementem senectutem, Tully exclaims. Therefore young, old, middle age, are all stupid, and dote.
[445]Aeneas Sylvius, amongst many other, sets down three special ways to find a fool by. He is a fool that seeks that he cannot find: he is a fool that seeks that, which being found will do him more harm than good: he is a fool, that having variety of ways to bring him to his journey's end, takes that which is worst. If so, methinks most men are fools; examine their courses, and you shall soon perceive what dizzards and mad men the major part are.
Beroaldus will have drunkards, afternoon men, and such as more than ordinarily delight in drink, to be mad. The first pot quencheth thirst, so Panyasis the poet determines in Athenaeus, secunda gratiis, horis et Dyonisio: the second makes merry, the third for pleasure, quarta, ad insaniam, the fourth makes them mad. If this position be true, what a catalogue of mad men shall we have? what shall they be that drink four times four? Nonne supra omnem furorem, supra omnem insanian reddunt insanissimos? I am of his opinion, they are more than mad, much worse than mad.
The [446]Abderites condemned Democritus for a mad man, because he was sometimes sad, and sometimes again profusely merry. Hac Patria (saith Hippocrates) ob risum furere et insanire dicunt, his countrymen hold him mad because he laughs; [447]and therefore “he desires him to advise all his friends at Rhodes, that they do not laugh too much, or be over sad.” Had those Abderites been conversant with us, and but seen what [448] fleering and grinning there is in this age, they would certainly have concluded, we had been all out of our wits.
Aristotle in his Ethics holds felix idemque sapiens, to be wise and happy, are reciprocal terms, bonus idemque sapiens honestus. 'Tis [449] Tully's paradox, “wise men are free, but fools are slaves,” liberty is a power to live according to his own laws, as we will ourselves: who hath this liberty? who is free?
A man is a miracle of himself, but Trismegistus adds, Maximum miraculum homo sapiens, a wise man is a wonder: multi Thirsigeri, pauci Bacchi.
Alexander when he was presented with that rich and costly casket of king Darius, and every man advised him what to put in it, he reserved it to keep Homer's works, as the most precious jewel of human wit, and yet [452] Scaliger upbraids Homer's muse, Nutricem insanae sapientiae, a nursery of madness, [453]impudent as a court lady, that blushes at nothing. Jacobus Mycillus, Gilbertus Cognatus, Erasmus, and almost all posterity admire Lucian's luxuriant wit, yet Scaliger rejects him in his censure, and calls him the Cerberus of the muses. Socrates, whom all the world so much magnified, is by Lactantius and Theodoret condemned for a fool. Plutarch extols Seneca's wit beyond all the Greeks, nulli secundus, yet [454] Seneca saith of himself, “when I would solace myself with a fool, I reflect upon myself, and there I have him.” Cardan, in his Sixteenth Book of Subtleties, reckons up twelve supereminent, acute philosophers, for worth, subtlety, and wisdom: Archimedes, Galen, Vitruvius, Architas Tarentinus, Euclid, Geber, that first inventor of Algebra, Alkindus the Mathematician, both Arabians, with others. But his triumviri terrarum far beyond the rest, are Ptolomaeus, Plotinus, Hippocrates. Scaliger exercitat. 224, scoffs at this censure of his, calls some of them carpenters and mechanicians, he makes Galen fimbriam Hippocratis, a skirt of Hippocrates: and the said [455]Cardan himself elsewhere condemns both Galen and Hippocrates for tediousness, obscurity, confusion. Paracelsus will have them both mere idiots, infants in physic and philosophy. Scaliger and Cardan admire Suisset the Calculator, qui pene modum excessit humani ingenii, and yet [456]Lod. Vives calls them nugas Suisseticas: and Cardan, opposite to himself in another place, contemns those ancients in respect of times present, [457]Majoresque nostros ad presentes collatos juste pueros appellari. In conclusion, the said [458]Cardan and Saint Bernard will admit none into this catalogue of wise men, [459]but only prophets and apostles; how they esteem themselves, you have heard before. We are worldly-wise, admire ourselves, and seek for applause: but hear Saint [460]Bernard, quanto magis foras es sapiens, tanto magis intus stultus efficeris, &c. in omnibus es prudens, circa teipsum insipiens: the more wise thou art to others, the more fool to thyself. I may not deny but that there is some folly approved, a divine fury, a holy madness, even a spiritual drunkenness in the saints of God themselves; sanctum insanium Bernard calls it (though not as blaspheming [461]Vorstius, would infer it as a passion incident to God himself, but) familiar to good men, as that of Paul, 2 Cor. “he was a fool,” &c. and Rom. ix. he wisheth himself to be anathematised for them. Such is that drunkenness which Ficinus speaks of, when the soul is elevated and ravished with a divine taste of that heavenly nectar, which poets deciphered by the sacrifice of Dionysius, and in this sense with the poet, [462]insanire lubet, as Austin exhorts us, ad ebrietatem se quisque paret, let's all be mad and [463]drunk. But we commonly mistake, and go beyond our commission, we reel to the opposite part, [464]we are not capable of it, [465]and as he said of the Greeks, Vos Graeci semper pueri, vos Britanni, Galli, Germani, Itali, &c. you are a company of fools.
Proceed now a partibus ad totum, or from the whole to parts, and you shall find no other issue, the parts shall be sufficiently dilated in this following Preface. The whole must needs follow by a sorites or induction. Every multitude is mad, [466]bellua multorum capitum, (a many-headed beast), precipitate and rash without judgment, stultum animal, a roaring rout. [467]Roger Bacon proves it out of Aristotle, Vulgus dividi in oppositum contra sapientes, quod vulgo videtur verum, falsum est; that which the commonalty accounts true, is most part false, they are still opposite to wise men, but all the world is of this humour (vulgus), and thou thyself art de vulgo, one of the commonalty; and he, and he, and so are all the rest; and therefore, as Phocion concludes, to be approved in nought you say or do, mere idiots and asses. Begin then where you will, go backward or forward, choose out of the whole pack, wink and choose, you shall find them all alike, “never a barrel better herring.”
Copernicus, Atlas his successor, is of opinion, the earth is a planet, moves and shines to others, as the moon doth to us. Digges, Gilbert, Keplerus, Origanus, and others, defend this hypothesis of his in sober sadness, and that the moon is inhabited: if it be so that the earth is a moon, then are we also giddy, vertiginous and lunatic within this sublunary maze.
I could produce such arguments till dark night: if you should hear the rest,
Kingdoms, provinces, and politic bodies are likewise sensible and subject to this disease, as [470]Boterus in his politics hath proved at large. “As in human bodies” (saith he) “there be divers alterations proceeding from humours, so be there many diseases in a commonwealth, which do as diversely happen from several distempers,” as you may easily perceive by their particular symptoms. For where you shall see the people civil, obedient to God and princes, judicious, peaceable and quiet, rich, fortunate, [471]and flourish, to live in peace, in unity and concord, a country well tilled, many fair built and populous cities, ubi incolae nitent as old [472]Cato said, the people are neat, polite and terse, ubi bene, beateque vivunt, which our politicians make the chief end of a commonwealth; and which [473] Aristotle, Polit. lib. 3, cap. 4, calls Commune bonum, Polybius lib. 6, optabilem et selectum statum, that country is free from melancholy; as it was in Italy in the time of Augustus, now in China, now in many other flourishing kingdoms of Europe. But whereas you shall see many discontents, common grievances, complaints, poverty, barbarism, beggary, plagues, wars, rebellions, seditions, mutinies, contentions, idleness, riot, epicurism, the land lie untilled, waste, full of bogs, fens, deserts, &c., cities decayed, base and poor towns, villages depopulated, the people squalid, ugly, uncivil; that kingdom, that country, must needs be discontent, melancholy, hath a sick body, and had need to be reformed.
Now that cannot well be effected, till the causes of these maladies be first removed, which commonly proceed from their own default, or some accidental inconvenience: as to be situated in a bad clime, too far north, sterile, in a barren place, as the desert of Libya, deserts of Arabia, places void of waters, as those of Lop and Belgian in Asia, or in a bad air, as at Alexandretta, Bantam, Pisa, Durrazzo, S. John de Ulloa, &c., or in danger of the sea's continual inundations, as in many places of the Low Countries and elsewhere, or near some bad neighbours, as Hungarians to Turks, Podolians to Tartars, or almost any bordering countries, they live in fear still, and by reason of hostile incursions are oftentimes left desolate. So are cities by reason [474]of wars, fires, plagues, inundations, [475]wild beasts, decay of trades, barred havens, the sea's violence, as Antwerp may witness of late, Syracuse of old, Brundusium in Italy, Rye and Dover with us, and many that at this day suspect the sea's fury and rage, and labour against it as the Venetians to their inestimable charge. But the most frequent maladies are such as proceed from themselves, as first when religion and God's service is neglected, innovated or altered, where they do not fear God, obey their prince, where atheism, epicurism, sacrilege, simony, &c., and all such impieties are freely committed, that country cannot prosper. When Abraham came to Gerar, and saw a bad land, he said, sure the fear of God was not in that place. [476] Cyprian Echovius, a Spanish chorographer, above all other cities of Spain, commends Borcino, “in which there was no beggar, no man poor, &c., but all rich, and in good estate, and he gives the reason, because they were more religious than, their neighbours:” why was Israel so often spoiled by their enemies, led into captivity, &c., but for their idolatry, neglect of God's word, for sacrilege, even for one Achan's fault? And what shall we except that have such multitudes of Achans, church robbers, simoniacal patrons, &c., how can they hope to flourish, that neglect divine duties, that live most part like Epicures?
Other common grievances are generally noxious to a body politic; alteration of laws and customs, breaking privileges, general oppressions, seditions, &c., observed by [477]Aristotle, Bodin, Boterus, Junius, Arniscus, &c. I will only point at some of chiefest. [478]Impotentia gubernandi, ataxia, confusion, ill government, which proceeds from unskilful, slothful, griping, covetous, unjust, rash, or tyrannizing magistrates, when they are fools, idiots, children, proud, wilful, partial, indiscreet, oppressors, giddy heads, tyrants, not able or unfit to manage such offices: [479]many noble cities and flourishing kingdoms by that means are desolate, the whole body groans under such heads, and all the members must needs be disaffected, as at this day those goodly provinces in Asia Minor, &c. groan under the burthen of a Turkish government; and those vast kingdoms of Muscovia, Russia, [480]under a tyrannizing duke. Who ever heard of more civil and rich populous countries than those of “Greece, Asia Minor, abounding with all [481]wealth, multitudes of inhabitants, force, power, splendour and magnificence?” and that miracle of countries, [482]the Holy Land, that in so small a compass of ground could maintain so many towns, cities, produce so many fighting men? Egypt another paradise, now barbarous and desert, and almost waste, by the despotical government of an imperious Turk, intolerabili servitutis jugo premitur ([483]one saith) not only fire and water, goods or lands, sed ipse spiritus ab insolentissimi victoris pendet nutu, such is their slavery, their lives and souls depend upon his insolent will and command. A tyrant that spoils all wheresoever he comes, insomuch that an [484]historian complains, “if an old inhabitant should now see them, he would not know them, if a traveller, or stranger, it would grieve his heart to behold them.” Whereas [485]Aristotle notes, Novae exactiones, nova onera imposita, new burdens and exactions daily come upon them, like those of which Zosimus, lib. 2, so grievous, ut viri uxores, patres filios prostituerent ut exactoribus e questu, &c., they must needs be discontent, hinc civitatum gemitus et ploratus, as [486] Tully holds, hence come those complaints and tears of cities, “poor, miserable, rebellious, and desperate subjects,” as [487]Hippolitus adds; and [488]as a judicious countryman of ours observed not long since, in a survey of that great Duchy of Tuscany, the people lived much grieved and discontent, as appeared by their manifold and manifest complainings in that kind. “That the state was like a sick body which had lately taken physic, whose humours are not yet well settled, and weakened so much by purging, that nothing was left but melancholy.”
Whereas the princes and potentates are immoderate in lust, hypocrites, epicures, of no religion, but in show: Quid hypocrisi fragilius? what so brittle and unsure? what sooner subverts their estates than wandering and raging lusts, on their subjects' wives, daughters? to say no worse. That they should facem praeferre, lead the way to all virtuous actions, are the ringleaders oftentimes of all mischief and dissolute courses, and by that means their countries are plagued, [489]“and they themselves often ruined, banished, or murdered by conspiracy of their subjects, as Sardanapalus was, Dionysius Junior, Heliogabalus, Periander, Pisistratus, Tarquinius, Timocrates, Childericus, Appius Claudius, Andronicus, Galeacius Sforza, Alexander Medices,” &c.
Whereas the princes or great men are malicious, envious, factious, ambitious, emulators, they tear a commonwealth asunder, as so many Guelfs and Gibelines disturb the quietness of it, [490]and with mutual murders let it bleed to death; our histories are too full of such barbarous inhumanities, and the miseries that issue from them.
Whereas they be like so many horseleeches, hungry, griping, corrupt, [491] covetous, avaritice mancipia, ravenous as wolves, for as Tully writes: qui praeest prodest, et qui pecudibus praeest, debet eorum utilitati inservire: or such as prefer their private before the public good. For as [492]he said long since, res privatae publicis semper officere. Or whereas they be illiterate, ignorant, empirics in policy, ubi deest facultas, [493]virtus (Aristot. pol. 5, cap. 8.) et scientia, wise only by inheritance, and in authority by birthright, favour, or for their wealth and titles; there must needs be a fault, [494]a great defect: because as an [495]old philosopher affirms, such men are not always fit. “Of an infinite number, few alone are senators, and of those few, fewer good, and of that small number of honest, good, and noble men, few that are learned, wise, discreet and sufficient, able to discharge such places, it must needs turn to the confusion of a state.”
For as the [496]Princes are, so are the people; Qualis Rex, talis grex: and which [497]Antigonus right well said of old, qui Macedonia regem erudit, omnes etiam subditos erudit, he that teacheth the king of Macedon, teacheth all his subjects, is a true saying still.
Where they be generally riotous and contentious, where there be many discords, many laws, many lawsuits, many lawyers and many physicians, it is a manifest sign of a distempered, melancholy state, as [500]Plato long since maintained: for where such kind of men swarm, they will make more work for themselves, and that body politic diseased, which was otherwise sound. A general mischief in these our times, an insensible plague, and never so many of them: “which are now multiplied” (saith Mat. Geraldus, [501]a lawyer himself,) “as so many locusts, not the parents, but the plagues of the country, and for the most part a supercilious, bad, covetous, litigious generation of men.” [502]Crumenimulga natio &c. A purse-milking nation, a clamorous company, gowned vultures, [503]qui ex injuria vivent et sanguine civium, thieves and seminaries of discord; worse than any pollers by the highway side, auri accipitres, auri exterebronides, pecuniarum hamiolae, quadruplatores, curiae harpagones, fori tintinabula, monstra hominum, mangones, &c. that take upon them to make peace, but are indeed the very disturbers of our peace, a company of irreligious harpies, scraping, griping catchpoles, (I mean our common hungry pettifoggers, [504]rabulas forenses, love and honour in the meantime all good laws, and worthy lawyers, that are so many [505]oracles and pilots of a well-governed commonwealth). Without art, without judgment, that do more harm, as [506]Livy said, quam bella externa, fames, morbive, than sickness, wars, hunger, diseases; “and cause a most incredible destruction of a commonwealth,” saith [507]Sesellius, a famous civilian sometimes in Paris, as ivy doth by an oak, embrace it so long, until it hath got the heart out of it, so do they by such places they inhabit; no counsel at all, no justice, no speech to be had, nisi eum premulseris, he must be fed still, or else he is as mute as a fish, better open an oyster without a knife. Experto crede (saith [508] Salisburiensis) in manus eorum millies incidi, et Charon immitis qui nulli pepercit unquam, his longe clementior est; “I speak out of experience, I have been a thousand times amongst them, and Charon himself is more gentle than they; [509]he is contented with his single pay, but they multiply still, they are never satisfied,” besides they have damnificas linguas, as he terms it, nisi funibus argenteis vincias, they must be fed to say nothing, and [510]get more to hold their peace than we can to say our best. They will speak their clients fair, and invite them to their tables, but as he follows it, [511]“of all injustice there is none so pernicious as that of theirs, which when they deceive most, will seem to be honest men.” They take upon them to be peacemakers, et fovere causas humilium, to help them to their right, patrocinantur afflictis, [512]but all is for their own good, ut loculos pleniorom exhauriant, they plead for poor men gratis, but they are but as a stale to catch others. If there be no jar, [513]they can make a jar, out of the law itself find still some quirk or other, to set them at odds, and continue causes so long, lustra aliquot, I know not how many years before the cause is heard, and when 'tis judged and determined by reason of some tricks and errors, it is as fresh to begin, after twice seven years sometimes, as it was at first; and so they prolong time, delay suits till they have enriched themselves, and beggared their clients. And, as [514]Cato inveighed against Isocrates' scholars, we may justly tax our wrangling lawyers, they do consenescere in litibus, are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their client's causes hereafter, some of them in hell. [515] Simlerus complains amongst the Swissers of the advocates in his time, that when they should make an end, they began controversies, and “protract their causes many years, persuading them their title is good, till their patrimonies be consumed, and that they have spent more in seeking than the thing is worth, or they shall get by the recovery.” So that he that goes to law, as the proverb is, [516]holds a wolf by the ears, or as a sheep in a storm runs for shelter to a brier, if he prosecute his cause he is consumed, if he surcease his suit he loseth all; [517]what difference? They had wont heretofore, saith Austin, to end matters, per communes arbitros; and so in Switzerland (we are informed by [518]Simlerus), “they had some common arbitrators or daysmen in every town, that made a friendly composition betwixt man and man, and he much wonders at their honest simplicity, that could keep peace so well, and end such great causes by that means.” At [519]Fez in Africa, they have neither lawyers nor advocates; but if there be any controversies amongst them, both parties plaintiff and defendant come to their Alfakins or chief judge, “and at once without any farther appeals or pitiful delays, the cause is heard and ended.” Our forefathers, as [520]a worthy chorographer of ours observes, had wont pauculis cruculis aureis, with a few golden crosses, and lines in verse, make all conveyances, assurances. And such was the candour and integrity of succeeding ages, that a deed (as I have oft seen) to convey a whole manor, was implicite contained in some twenty lines or thereabouts; like that scede or Sytala Laconica, so much renowned of old in all contracts, which [521]Tully so earnestly commends to Atticus, Plutarch in his Lysander, Aristotle polit.: Thucydides, lib. 1, [522]Diodorus and Suidus approve and magnify, for that laconic brevity in this kind; and well they might, for, according to [523]Tertullian, certa sunt paucis, there is much more certainty in fewer words. And so was it of old throughout: but now many skins of parchment will scarce serve turn; he that buys and sells a house, must have a house full of writings, there be so many circumstances, so many words, such tautological repetitions of all particulars (to avoid cavillation they say); but we find by our woeful experience, that to subtle wits it is a cause of much more contention and variance, and scarce any conveyance so accurately penned by one, which another will not find a crack in, or cavil at; if any one word be misplaced, any little error, all is disannulled. That which is a law today, is none tomorrow; that which is sound in one man's opinion, is most faulty to another; that in conclusion, here is nothing amongst us but contention and confusion, we bandy one against another. And that which long since [524]Plutarch complained of them in Asia, may be verified in our times. “These men here assembled, come not to sacrifice to their gods, to offer Jupiter their first-fruits, or merriments to Bacchus; but an yearly disease exasperating Asia hath brought them hither, to make an end of their controversies and lawsuits.” 'Tis multitudo perdentium et pereuntium, a destructive rout that seek one another's ruin. Such most part are our ordinary suitors, termers, clients, new stirs every day, mistakes, errors, cavils, and at this present, as I have heard in some one court, I know not how many thousand causes: no person free, no title almost good, with such bitterness in following, so many slights, procrastinations, delays, forgery, such cost (for infinite sums are inconsiderately spent), violence and malice, I know not by whose fault, lawyers, clients, laws, both or all: but as Paul reprehended the [525]Corinthians long since, I may more positively infer now: “There is a fault amongst you, and I speak it to your shame, Is there not a [526]wise man amongst you, to judge between his brethren? but that a brother goes to law with a brother.” And [527]Christ's counsel concerning lawsuits, was never so fit to be inculcated as in this age: [528]“Agree with thine adversary quickly,” &c. Matth. v. 25.
I could repeat many such particular grievances, which must disturb a body politic. To shut up all in brief, where good government is, prudent and wise princes, there all things thrive and prosper, peace and happiness is in that land: where it is otherwise, all things are ugly to behold, incult, barbarous, uncivil, a paradise is turned to a wilderness. This island amongst the rest, our next neighbours the French and Germans, may be a sufficient witness, that in a short time by that prudent policy of the Romans, was brought from barbarism; see but what Caesar reports of us, and Tacitus of those old Germans, they were once as uncivil as they in Virginia, yet by planting of colonies and good laws, they became from barbarous outlaws, [529]to be full of rich and populous cities, as now they are, and most flourishing kingdoms. Even so might Virginia, and those wild Irish have been civilised long since, if that order had been heretofore taken, which now begins, of planting colonies, &c. I have read a [530]discourse, printed anno 1612. “Discovering the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued, or brought under obedience to the crown of England, until the beginning of his Majesty's happy reign.” Yet if his reasons were thoroughly scanned by a judicious politician, I am afraid he would not altogether be approved, but that it would turn to the dishonour of our nation, to suffer it to lie so long waste. Yea, and if some travellers should see (to come nearer home) those rich, united provinces of Holland, Zealand, &c., over against us; those neat cities and populous towns, full of most industrious artificers, [531]so much land recovered from the sea, and so painfully preserved by those artificial inventions, so wonderfully approved, as that of Bemster in Holland, ut nihil huic par aut simile invenias in toto orbe, saith Bertius the geographer, all the world cannot match it, [532]so many navigable channels from place to place, made by men's hands, &c. and on the other side so many thousand acres of our fens lie drowned, our cities thin, and those vile, poor, and ugly to behold in respect of theirs, our trades decayed, our still running rivers stopped, and that beneficial use of transportation, wholly neglected, so many havens void of ships and towns, so many parks and forests for pleasure, barren heaths, so many villages depopulated, &c. I think sure he would find some fault.
I may not deny but that this nation of ours, doth bene audire apud exteros, is a most noble, a most flourishing kingdom, by common consent of all [533]geographers, historians, politicians, 'tis unica velut arx, [534]and which Quintius in Livy said of the inhabitants of Peloponnesus, may be well applied to us, we are testudines testa sua inclusi, like so many tortoises in our shells, safely defended by an angry sea, as a wall on all sides. Our island hath many such honourable eulogiums; and as a learned countryman of ours right well hath it, [535]“Ever since the Normans first coming into England, this country both for military matters, and all other of civility, hath been paralleled with the most flourishing kingdoms of Europe and our Christian world,” a blessed, a rich country, and one of the fortunate isles: and for some things [536]preferred before other countries, for expert seamen, our laborious discoveries, art of navigation, true merchants, they carry the bell away from all other nations, even the Portugals and Hollanders themselves; [537]“without all fear,” saith Boterus, “furrowing the ocean winter and summer, and two of their captains, with no less valour than fortune, have sailed round about the world.” [538] We have besides many particular blessings, which our neighbours want, the Gospel truly preached, church discipline established, long peace and quietness free from exactions, foreign fears, invasions, domestical seditions, well manured, [539]fortified by art, and nature, and now most happy in that fortunate union of England and Scotland, which our forefathers have laboured to effect, and desired to see. But in which we excel all others, a wise, learned, religious king, another Numa, a second Augustus, a true Josiah; most worthy senators, a learned clergy, an obedient commonalty, &c. Yet amongst many roses, some thistles grow, some bad weeds and enormities, which much disturb the peace of this body politic, eclipse the honour and glory of it, fit to be rooted out, and with all speed to be reformed.
The first is idleness, by reason of which we have many swarms of rogues, and beggars, thieves, drunkards, and discontented persons (whom Lycurgus in Plutarch calls morbos reipublicae, the boils of the commonwealth), many poor people in all our towns. Civitates ignobiles, as [540]Polydore calls them, base-built cities, inglorious, poor, small, rare in sight, ruinous, and thin of inhabitants. Our land is fertile we may not deny, full of all good things, and why doth it not then abound with cities, as well as Italy, France, Germany, the Low Countries? because their policy hath been otherwise, and we are not so thrifty, circumspect, industrious. Idleness is the malus genius of our nation. For as [541]Boterus justly argues, fertility of a country is not enough, except art and industry be joined unto it, according to Aristotle, riches are either natural or artificial; natural are good land, fair mines, &c. artificial, are manufactures, coins, &c. Many kingdoms are fertile, but thin of inhabitants, as that Duchy of Piedmont in Italy, which Leander Albertus so much magnifies for corn, wine, fruits, &c., yet nothing near so populous as those which are more barren. [542]“England,” saith he, “London only excepted, hath never a populous city, and yet a fruitful country.” I find 46 cities and walled towns in Alsatia, a small province in Germany, 50 castles, an infinite number of villages, no ground idle, no not rocky places, or tops of hills are untilled, as [543]Munster informeth us. In [544]Greichgea, a small territory on the Necker, 24 Italian miles over, I read of 20 walled towns, innumerable villages, each one containing 150 houses most part, besides castles and noblemen's palaces. I observe in [545]Turinge in Dutchland (twelve miles over by their scale) 12 counties, and in them 144 cities, 2000 villages, 144 towns, 250 castles. In [546]Bavaria 34 cities, 46 towns, &c. [547]Portugallia interamnis, a small plot of ground, hath 1460 parishes, 130 monasteries, 200 bridges. Malta, a barren island, yields 20,000 inhabitants. But of all the rest, I admire Lues Guicciardine's relations of the Low Countries. Holland hath 26 cities, 400 great villages. Zealand 10 cities, 102 parishes. Brabant 26 cities, 102 parishes. Flanders 28 cities, 90 towns, 1154 villages, besides abbeys, castles, &c. The Low Countries generally have three cities at least for one of ours, and those far more populous and rich: and what is the cause, but their industry and excellency in all manner of trades? Their commerce, which is maintained by a multitude of tradesmen, so many excellent channels made by art and opportune havens, to which they build their cities; all which we have in like measure, or at least may have. But their chiefest loadstone which draws all manner of commerce and merchandise, which maintains their present estate, is not fertility of soil, but industry that enricheth them, the gold mines of Peru, or Nova Hispania may not compare with them. They have neither gold nor silver of their own, wine nor oil, or scarce any corn growing in those united provinces, little or no wood, tin, lead, iron, silk, wool, any stuff almost, or metal; and yet Hungary, Transylvania, that brag of their mines, fertile England cannot compare with them. I dare boldly say, that neither France, Tarentum, Apulia, Lombardy, or any part of Italy, Valentia in Spain, or that pleasant Andalusia, with their excellent fruits, wine and oil, two harvests, no not any part of Europe is so flourishing, so rich, so populous, so full of good ships, of well-built cities, so abounding with all things necessary for the use of man. 'Tis our Indies, an epitome of China, and all by reason of their industry, good policy, and commerce. Industry is a loadstone to draw all good things; that alone makes countries flourish, cities populous, [548]and will enforce by reason of much manure, which necessarily follows, a barren soil to be fertile and good, as sheep, saith [549]Dion, mend a bad pasture.
Tell me politicians, why is that fruitful Palestina, noble Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, so much decayed, and (mere carcases now) fallen from that they were? The ground is the same, but the government is altered, the people are grown slothful, idle, their good husbandry, policy, and industry is decayed. Non fatigata aut effaeta, humus, as [550]Columella well informs Sylvinus, sed nostra fit inertia, &c. May a man believe that which Aristotle in his politics, Pausanias, Stephanus, Sophianus, Gerbelius relate of old Greece? I find heretofore 70 cities in Epirus overthrown by Paulus Aemilius, a goodly province in times past, [551]now left desolate of good towns and almost inhabitants. Sixty-two cities in Macedonia in Strabo's time. I find 30 in Laconia, but now scarce so many villages, saith Gerbelius. If any man from Mount Taygetus should view the country round about, and see tot delicias, tot urbes per Peloponesum dispersas, so many delicate and brave built cities with such cost and exquisite cunning, so neatly set out in Peloponnesus, [552]he should perceive them now ruinous and overthrown, burnt, waste, desolate, and laid level with the ground. Incredibile dictu, &c. And as he laments, Quis talia fando Temperet a lachrymis? Quis tam durus aut ferreus, (so he prosecutes it). [553]Who is he that can sufficiently condole and commiserate these ruins? Where are those 4000 cities of Egypt, those 100 cities in Crete? Are they now come to two? What saith Pliny and Aelian of old Italy? There were in former ages 1166 cities: Blondus and Machiavel, both grant them now nothing near so populous, and full of good towns as in the time of Augustus (for now Leander Albertus can find but 300 at most), and if we may give credit to [554]Livy, not then so strong and puissant as of old: “They mustered 70 Legions in former times, which now the known world will scarce yield.” Alexander built 70 cities in a short space for his part, our sultans and Turks demolish twice as many, and leave all desolate. Many will not believe but that our island of Great Britain is now more populous than ever it was; yet let them read Bede, Leland and others, they shall find it most flourished in the Saxon Heptarchy, and in the Conqueror's time was far better inhabited, than at this present. See that Doomsday Book, and show me those thousands of parishes, which are now decayed, cities ruined, villages depopulated, &c. The lesser the territory is, commonly, the richer it is. Parvus sed bene cultus ager. As those Athenian, Lacedaemonian, Arcadian, Aelian, Sycionian, Messenian, &c. commonwealths of Greece make ample proof, as those imperial cities and free states of Germany may witness, those Cantons of Switzers, Rheti, Grisons, Walloons, Territories of Tuscany, Luke and Senes of old, Piedmont, Mantua, Venice in Italy, Ragusa, &c.
That prince therefore as, [555]Boterus adviseth, that will have a rich country, and fair cities, let him get good trades, privileges, painful inhabitants, artificers, and suffer no rude matter unwrought, as tin, iron, wool, lead, &c., to be transported out of his country,—[556]a thing in part seriously attempted amongst us, but not effected. And because industry of men, and multitude of trade so much avails to the ornament and enriching of a kingdom; those ancient [557]Massilians would admit no man into their city that had not some trade. Selym the first Turkish emperor procured a thousand good artificers to be brought from Tauris to Constantinople. The Polanders indented with Henry Duke of Anjou, their new chosen king, to bring with him an hundred families of artificers into Poland. James the first in Scotland (as [558]Buchanan writes) sent for the best artificers he could get in Europe, and gave them great rewards to teach his subjects their several trades. Edward the Third, our most renowned king, to his eternal memory, brought clothing first into this island, transporting some families of artificers from Gaunt hither. How many goodly cities could I reckon up, that thrive wholly by trade, where thousands of inhabitants live singular well by their fingers' ends: As Florence in Italy by making cloth of gold; great Milan by silk, and all curious works; Arras in Artois by those fair hangings; many cities in Spain, many in France, Germany, have none other maintenance, especially those within the land. [559]Mecca, in Arabia Petraea, stands in a most unfruitful country, that wants water, amongst the rocks (as Vertomannus describes it), and yet it is a most elegant and pleasant city, by reason of the traffic of the east and west. Ormus in Persia is a most famous mart-town, hath nought else but the opportunity of the haven to make it flourish. Corinth, a noble city (Lumen Greciae, Tully calls it) the Eye of Greece, by reason of Cenchreas and Lecheus, those excellent ports, drew all that traffic of the Ionian and Aegean seas to it; and yet the country about it was curva et superciliosa, as [560]Strabo terms it, rugged and harsh. We may say the same of Athens, Actium, Thebes, Sparta, and most of those towns in Greece. Nuremberg in Germany is sited in a most barren soil, yet a noble imperial city, by the sole industry of artificers, and cunning trades, they draw the riches of most countries to them, so expert in manufactures, that as Sallust long since gave out of the like, Sedem animae in extremis digitis habent, their soul, or intellectus agens, was placed in their fingers' end; and so we may say of Basil, Spire, Cambray, Frankfurt, &c. It is almost incredible to speak what some write of Mexico and the cities adjoining to it, no place in the world at their first discovery more populous, [561]Mat. Riccius, the Jesuit, and some others, relate of the industry of the Chinese most populous countries, not a beggar or an idle person to be seen, and how by that means they prosper and flourish. We have the same means, able bodies, pliant wits, matter of all sorts, wool, flax, iron, tin, lead, wood, &c., many excellent subjects to work upon, only industry is wanting. We send our best commodities beyond the seas, which they make good use of to their necessities, set themselves a work about, and severally improve, sending the same to us back at dear rates, or else make toys and baubles of the tails of them, which they sell to us again, at as great a reckoning as the whole. In most of our cities, some few excepted, like [562]Spanish loiterers, we live wholly by tippling-inns and alehouses. Malting are their best ploughs, their greatest traffic to sell ale. [563]Meteran and some others object to us, that we are no whit so industrious as the Hollanders: “Manual trades” (saith he) “which are more curious or troublesome, are wholly exercised by strangers: they dwell in a sea full of fish, but they are so idle, they will not catch so much as shall serve their own turns, but buy it of their neighbours.” Tush [564]Mare liberum, they fish under our noses, and sell it to us when they have done, at their own prices.
I am ashamed to hear this objected by strangers, and know not how to answer it.
Amongst our towns, there is only [565]London that bears the face of a city, [566]Epitome Britanniae, a famous emporium, second to none beyond seas, a noble mart: but sola crescit, decrescentibus aliis; and yet, in my slender judgment, defective in many things. The rest ([567]some few excepted) are in mean estate, ruinous most part, poor, and full of beggars, by reason of their decayed trades, neglected or bad policy, idleness of their inhabitants, riot, which had rather beg or loiter, and be ready to starve, than work.
I cannot deny but that something may be said in defence of our cities, [568]that they are not so fair built, (for the sole magnificence of this kingdom (concerning buildings) hath been of old in those Norman castles and religious houses,) so rich, thick sited, populous, as in some other countries; besides the reasons Cardan gives, Subtil. Lib. 11. we want wine and oil, their two harvests, we dwell in a colder air, and for that cause must a little more liberally [569]feed of flesh, as all northern countries do: our provisions will not therefore extend to the maintenance of so many; yet notwithstanding we have matter of all sorts, an open sea for traffic, as well as the rest, goodly havens. And how can we excuse our negligence, our riot, drunkenness, &c., and such enormities that follow it? We have excellent laws enacted, you will say, severe statutes, houses of correction, &c., to small purpose it seems; it is not houses will serve, but cities of correction; [570]our trades generally ought to be reformed, wants supplied. In other countries they have the same grievances, I confess, but that doth not excuse us, [571]wants, defects, enormities, idle drones, tumults, discords, contention, lawsuits, many laws made against them to repress those innumerable brawls and lawsuits, excess in apparel, diet, decay of tillage, depopulations, [572]especially against rogues, beggars, Egyptian vagabonds (so termed at least) which have [573] swarmed all over Germany, France, Italy, Poland, as you may read in [574] Munster, Cranzius, and Aventinus; as those Tartars and Arabians at this day do in the eastern countries: yet such has been the iniquity of all ages, as it seems to small purpose. Nemo in nostra civitate mendicus esto, [575] saith Plato: he will have them purged from a [576]commonwealth, [577]“as a bad humour from the body,” that are like so many ulcers and boils, and must be cured before the melancholy body can be eased.
What Carolus Magnus, the Chinese, the Spaniards, the duke of Saxony and many other states have decreed in this case, read Arniseus, cap. 19; Boterus, libro 8, cap. 2; Osorius de Rubus gest. Eman. lib. 11. When a country is overstocked with people, as a pasture is oft overlaid with cattle, they had wont in former times to disburden themselves, by sending out colonies, or by wars, as those old Romans; or by employing them at home about some public buildings, as bridges, roadways, for which those Romans were famous in this island; as Augustus Caesar did in Rome, the Spaniards in their Indian mines, as at Potosi in Peru, where some 30,000 men are still at work, 6000 furnaces ever boiling, &c. [578]aqueducts, bridges, havens, those stupend works of Trajan, Claudius, at [579]Ostium, Dioclesiani Therma, Fucinus Lacus, that Piraeum in Athens, made by Themistocles, ampitheatrums of curious marble, as at Verona, Civitas Philippi, and Heraclea in Thrace, those Appian and Flaminian ways, prodigious works all may witness; and rather than they should be [580]idle, as those [581] Egyptian Pharaohs, Maris, and Sesostris did, to task their subjects to build unnecessary pyramids, obelisks, labyrinths, channels, lakes, gigantic works all, to divert them from rebellion, riot, drunkenness, [582]Quo scilicet alantur et ne vagando laborare desuescant.
Another eyesore is that want of conduct and navigable rivers, a great blemish as [583]Boterus, [584]Hippolitus a Collibus, and other politicians hold, if it be neglected in a commonwealth. Admirable cost and charge is bestowed in the Low Countries on this behalf, in the duchy of Milan, territory of Padua, in [585]France, Italy, China, and so likewise about corrivations of water to moisten and refresh barren grounds, to drain fens, bogs, and moors. Massinissa made many inward parts of Barbary and Numidia in Africa, before his time incult and horrid, fruitful and bartable by this means. Great industry is generally used all over the eastern countries in this kind, especially in Egypt, about Babylon and Damascus, as Vertomannus and [586]Gotardus Arthus relate; about Barcelona, Segovia, Murcia, and many other places of Spain, Milan in Italy; by reason of which, their soil is much impoverished, and infinite commodities arise to the inhabitants.
The Turks of late attempted to cut that Isthmus betwixt Africa and Asia, which [587]Sesostris and Darius, and some Pharaohs of Egypt had formerly undertaken, but with ill success, as [588]Diodorus Siculus records, and Pliny, for that Red Sea being three [589]cubits higher than Egypt, would have drowned all the country, caepto destiterant, they left off; yet as the same [590]Diodorus writes, Ptolemy renewed the work many years after, and absolved in it a more opportune place.
That Isthmus of Corinth was likewise undertaken to be made navigable by Demetrius, by Julius Caesar, Nero, Domitian, Herodes Atticus, to make a speedy [591]passage, and less dangerous, from the Ionian and Aegean seas; but because it could not be so well effected, the Peloponnesians built a wall like our Picts' wall about Schaenute, where Neptune's temple stood, and in the shortest cut over the Isthmus, of which Diodorus, lib. 11. Herodotus, lib. 8. Uran. Our latter writers call it Hexamilium, which Amurath the Turk demolished, the Venetians, anno 1453, repaired in 15 days with 30,000 men. Some, saith Acosta, would have a passage cut from Panama to Nombre de Dios in America; but Thuanus and Serres the French historians speak of a famous aqueduct in France, intended in Henry the Fourth's time, from the Loire to the Seine, and from Rhodanus to the Loire. The like to which was formerly assayed by Domitian the emperor, [592]from Arar to Moselle, which Cornelius Tacitus speaks of in the 13 of his annals, after by Charles the Great and others. Much cost hath in former times been bestowed in either new making or mending channels of rivers, and their passages, (as Aurelianus did by Tiber to make it navigable to Rome, to convey corn from Egypt to the city, vadum alvei tumentis effodit saith Vopiscus, et Tiberis ripas extruxit he cut fords, made banks, &c.) decayed havens, which Claudius the emperor with infinite pains and charges attempted at Ostia, as I have said, the Venetians at this day to preserve their city; many excellent means to enrich their territories, have been fostered, invented in most provinces of Europe, as planting some Indian plants amongst us, silkworms, [593]the very mulberry leaves in the plains of Granada yield 30,000 crowns per annum to the king of Spain's coffers, besides those many trades and artificers that are busied about them in the kingdom of Granada, Murcia, and all over Spain. In France a great benefit is raised by salt, &c., whether these things might not be as happily attempted with us, and with like success, it may be controverted, silkworms (I mean) vines, fir trees, &c. Cardan exhorts Edward the Sixth to plant olives, and is fully persuaded they would prosper in this island. With us, navigable rivers are most part neglected; our streams are not great, I confess, by reason of the narrowness of the island, yet they run smoothly and even, not headlong, swift, or amongst rocks and shelves, as foaming Rhodanus and Loire in France, Tigris in Mesopotamia, violent Durius in Spain, with cataracts and whirlpools, as the Rhine, and Danubius, about Shaffausen, Lausenburgh, Linz, and Cremmes, to endanger navigators; or broad shallow, as Neckar in the Palatinate, Tibris in Italy; but calm and fair as Arar in France, Hebrus in Macedonia, Eurotas in Laconia, they gently glide along, and might as well be repaired many of them (I mean Wye, Trent, Ouse, Thamisis at Oxford, the defect of which we feel in the mean time) as the river of Lee from Ware to London. B. Atwater of old, or as some will Henry I. [594]made a channel from Trent to Lincoln, navigable; which now, saith Mr. Camden, is decayed, and much mention is made of anchors, and such like monuments found about old [595]Verulamium, good ships have formerly come to Exeter, and many such places, whose channels, havens, ports are now barred and rejected. We contemn this benefit of carriage by waters, and are therefore compelled in the inner parts of this island, because portage is so dear, to eat up our commodities ourselves, and live like so many boars in a sty, for want of vent and utterance.
We have many excellent havens, royal havens, Falmouth, Portsmouth, Milford, &c. equivalent if not to be preferred to that Indian Havana, old Brundusium in Italy, Aulis in Greece, Ambracia in Acarnia, Suda in Crete, which have few ships in them, little or no traffic or trade, which have scarce a village on them, able to bear great cities, sed viderint politici. I could here justly tax many other neglects, abuses, errors, defects among us, and in other countries, depopulations, riot, drunkenness, &c. and many such, quae nunc in aurem susurrare, non libet. But I must take heed, ne quid gravius dicam, that I do not overshoot myself, Sus Minervam, I am forth of my element, as you peradventure suppose; and sometimes veritas odium parit, as he said, “verjuice and oatmeal is good for a parrot.” For as Lucian said of an historian, I say of a politician. He that will freely speak and write, must be for ever no subject, under no prince or law, but lay out the matter truly as it is, not caring what any can, will, like or dislike.
We have good laws, I deny not, to rectify such enormities, and so in all other countries, but it seems not always to good purpose. We had need of some general visitor in our age, that should reform what is amiss; a just army of Rosy-cross men, for they will amend all matters (they say) religion, policy, manners, with arts, sciences, &c. Another Attila, Tamerlane, Hercules, to strive with Achelous, Augeae stabulum purgare, to subdue tyrants, as [596]he did Diomedes and Busiris: to expel thieves, as he did Cacus and Lacinius: to vindicate poor captives, as he did Hesione: to pass the torrid zone, the deserts of Libya, and purge the world of monsters and Centaurs: or another Theban Crates to reform our manners, to compose quarrels and controversies, as in his time he did, and was therefore adored for a god in Athens. “As Hercules [597]purged the world of monsters, and subdued them, so did he fight against envy, lust, anger, avarice, &c. and all those feral vices and monsters of the mind.” It were to be wished we had some such visitor, or if wishing would serve, one had such a ring or rings, as Timolaus desired in [598]Lucian, by virtue of which he should be as strong as 10,000 men, or an army of giants, go invisible, open gates and castle doors, have what treasure he would, transport himself in an instant to what place he desired, alter affections, cure all manner of diseases, that he might range over the world, and reform all distressed states and persons, as he would himself. He might reduce those wandering Tartars in order, that infest China on the one side, Muscovy, Poland, on the other; and tame the vagabond Arabians that rob and spoil those eastern countries, that they should never use more caravans, or janissaries to conduct them. He might root out barbarism out of America, and fully discover Terra Australis Incognita, find out the north-east and north-west passages, drain those mighty Maeotian fens, cut down those vast Hircinian woods, irrigate those barren Arabian deserts, &c. cure us of our epidemical diseases, scorbutum, plica, morbus Neapolitanus, &c. end all our idle controversies, cut off our tumultuous desires, inordinate lusts, root out atheism, impiety, heresy, schism and superstition, which now so crucify the world, catechise gross ignorance, purge Italy of luxury and riot, Spain of superstition and jealousy, Germany of drunkenness, all our northern country of gluttony and intemperance, castigate our hard-hearted parents, masters, tutors; lash disobedient children, negligent servants, correct these spendthrifts and prodigal sons, enforce idle persons to work, drive drunkards off the alehouse, repress thieves, visit corrupt and tyrannizing magistrates, &c. But as L. Licinius taxed Timolaus, you may us. These are vain, absurd and ridiculous wishes not to be hoped: all must be as it is, [599]Bocchalinus may cite commonwealths to come before Apollo, and seek to reform the world itself by commissioners, but there is no remedy, it may not be redressed, desinent homines tum demum stultescere quando esse desinent, so long as they can wag their beards, they will play the knaves and fools.
Because, therefore, it is a thing so difficult, impossible, and far beyond Hercules labours to be performed; let them be rude, stupid, ignorant, incult, lapis super lapidem sedeat, and as the [600]apologist will, resp. tussi, et graveolentia laboret, mundus vitio, let them be barbarous as they are, let them [601]tyrannise, epicurise, oppress, luxuriate, consume themselves with factions, superstitions, lawsuits, wars and contentions, live in riot, poverty, want, misery; rebel, wallow as so many swine in their own dung, with Ulysses' companions, stultos jubeo esse libenter. I will yet, to satisfy and please myself, make an Utopia of mine own, a new Atlantis, a poetical commonwealth of mine own, in which I will freely domineer, build cities, make laws, statutes, as I list myself. And why may I not?—[602]Pictoribus atque poetis, &c. You know what liberty poets ever had, and besides, my predecessor Democritus was a politician, a recorder of Abdera, a law maker as some say; and why may not I presume so much as he did? Howsoever I will adventure. For the site, if you will needs urge me to it, I am not fully resolved, it may be in Terra Australi Incognita, there is room enough (for of my knowledge neither that hungry Spaniard, [603]nor Mercurius Britannicus, have yet discovered half of it) or else one of these floating islands in Mare del Zur, which like the Cyanian isles in the Euxine sea, alter their place, and are accessible only at set times, and to some few persons; or one of the fortunate isles, for who knows yet where, or which they are? there is room enough in the inner parts of America, and northern coasts of Asia. But I will choose a site, whose latitude shall be 45 degrees (I respect not minutes) in the midst of the temperate zone, or perhaps under the equator, that [604]paradise of the world, ubi semper virens laurus, &c. where is a perpetual spring: the longitude for some reasons I will conceal. Yet “be it known to all men by these presents,” that if any honest gentleman will send in so much money, as Cardan allows an astrologer for casting a nativity, he shall be a sharer, I will acquaint him with my project, or if any worthy man will stand for any temporal or spiritual office or dignity, (for as he said of his archbishopric of Utopia, 'tis sanctus ambitus, and not amiss to be sought after,) it shall be freely given without all intercessions, bribes, letters, &c. his own worth shall be the best spokesman; and because we shall admit of no deputies or advowsons, if he be sufficiently qualified, and as able as willing to execute the place himself, be shall have present possession. It shall be divided into 12 or 13 provinces, and those by hills, rivers, roadways, or some more eminent limits exactly bounded. Each province shall have a metropolis, which shall be so placed as a centre almost in a circumference, and the rest at equal distances, some 12 Italian miles asunder, or thereabout, and in them shall be sold all things necessary for the use of man; statis horis et diebus, no market towns, markets or fairs, for they do but beggar cities (no village shall stand above 6, 7, or 8 miles from a city) except those emporiums which are by the sea side, general staples, marts, as Antwerp, Venice, Bergen of old, London, &c. cities most part shall be situated upon navigable rivers or lakes, creeks, havens; and for their form, regular, round, square, or long square, [605]with fair, broad, and straight [606]streets, houses uniform, built of brick and stone, like Bruges, Brussels, Rhegium Lepidi, Berne in Switzerland, Milan, Mantua, Crema, Cambalu in Tartary, described by M. Polus, or that Venetian Palma. I will admit very few or no suburbs, and those of baser building, walls only to keep out man and horse, except it be in some frontier towns, or by the sea side, and those to be fortified [607] after the latest manner of fortification, and situated upon convenient havens, or opportune places. In every so built city, I will have convenient churches, and separate places to bury the dead in, not in churchyards; a citadella (in some, not all) to command it, prisons for offenders, opportune market places of all sorts, for corn, meat, cattle, fuel, fish, commodious courts of justice, public halls for all societies, bourses, meeting places, armouries, [608]in which shall be kept engines for quenching of fire, artillery gardens, public walks, theatres, and spacious fields allotted for all gymnastic sports, and honest recreations, hospitals of all kinds, for children, orphans, old folks, sick men, mad men, soldiers, pest-houses, &c. not built precario, or by gouty benefactors, who, when by fraud and rapine they have extorted all their lives, oppressed whole provinces, societies, &c. give something to pious uses, build a satisfactory alms-house, school or bridge, &c. at their last end, or before perhaps, which is no otherwise than to steal a goose, and stick down a feather, rob a thousand to relieve ten; and those hospitals so built and maintained, not by collections, benevolences, donaries, for a set number, (as in ours,) just so many and no more at such a rate, but for all those who stand in need, be they more or less, and that ex publico aerario, and so still maintained, non nobis solum nati sumus, &c. I will have conduits of sweet and good water, aptly disposed in each town, common [609] granaries, as at Dresden in Misnia, Stetein in Pomerland, Noremberg, &c. Colleges of mathematicians, musicians, and actors, as of old at Labedum in Ionia, [610]alchemists, physicians, artists, and philosophers: that all arts and sciences may sooner be perfected and better learned; and public historiographers, as amongst those ancient [611]Persians, qui in commentarios referebant quae memoratu digna gerebantur, informed and appointed by the state to register all famous acts, and not by each insufficient scribbler, partial or parasitical pedant, as in our times. I will provide public schools of all kinds, singing, dancing, fencing, &c. especially of grammar and languages, not to be taught by those tedious precepts ordinarily used, but by use, example, conversation, [612]as travellers learn abroad, and nurses teach their children: as I will have all such places, so will I ordain [613]public governors, fit officers to each place, treasurers, aediles, quaestors, overseers of pupils, widows' goods, and all public houses, &c. and those once a year to make strict accounts of all receipts, expenses, to avoid confusion, et sic fiet ut non absumant (as Pliny to Trajan,) quad pudeat dicere. They shall be subordinate to those higher officers and governors of each city, which shall not be poor tradesmen, and mean artificers, but noblemen and gentlemen, which shall be tied to residence in those towns they dwell next, at such set times and seasons: for I see no reason (which [614]Hippolitus complains of) “that it should be more dishonourable for noblemen to govern the city than the country, or unseemly to dwell there now, than of old.” [615]I will have no bogs, fens, marshes, vast woods, deserts, heaths, commons, but all enclosed; (yet not depopulated, and therefore take heed you mistake me not) for that which is common, and every man's, is no man's; the richest countries are still enclosed, as Essex, Kent, with us, &c. Spain, Italy; and where enclosures are least in quantity, they are best [616]husbanded, as about Florence in Italy, Damascus in Syria, &c. which are liker gardens than fields. I will not have a barren acre in all my territories, not so much as the tops of mountains: where nature fails, it shall be supplied by art: [617]lakes and rivers shall not be left desolate. All common highways, bridges, banks, corrivations of waters, aqueducts, channels, public works, buildings, &c. out of a [618]common stock, curiously maintained and kept in repair; no depopulations, engrossings, alterations of wood, arable, but by the consent of some supervisors that shall be appointed for that purpose, to see what reformation ought to be had in all places, what is amiss, how to help it, et quid quaeque ferat regio, et quid quaeque recuset, what ground is aptest for wood, what for corn, what for cattle, gardens, orchards, fishponds, &c. with a charitable division in every village, (not one domineering house greedily to swallow up all, which is too common with us) what for lords, [619]what for tenants; and because they shall be better encouraged to improve such lands they hold, manure, plant trees, drain, fence, &c. they shall have long leases, a known rent, and known fine to free them from those intolerable exactions of tyrannizing landlords. These supervisors shall likewise appoint what quantity of land in each manor is fit for the lord's demesnes, [620]what for holding of tenants, how it ought to be husbanded, ut [621]magnetis equis, Minyae gens cognita remis, how to be manured, tilled, rectified, [622]hic segetes veniunt, illic felicius uvae, arborei foetus alibi, atque injussa virescunt Gramina, and what proportion is fit for all callings, because private professors are many times idiots, ill husbands, oppressors, covetous, and know not how to improve their own, or else wholly respect their own, and not public good.
Utopian parity is a kind of government, to be wished for, [623]rather than effected, Respub. Christianopolitana, Campanella's city of the Sun, and that new Atlantis, witty fictions, but mere chimeras; and Plato's community in many things is impious, absurd and ridiculous, it takes away all splendour and magnificence. I will have several orders, degrees of nobility, and those hereditary, not rejecting younger brothers in the mean time, for they shall be sufficiently provided for by pensions, or so qualified, brought up in some honest calling, they shall be able to live of themselves. I will have such a proportion of ground belonging to every barony, he that buys the land shall buy the barony, he that by riot consumes his patrimony, and ancient demesnes, shall forfeit his honours. [624]As some dignities shall be hereditary, so some again by election, or by gift (besides free officers, pensions, annuities,) like our bishoprics, prebends, the Bassa's palaces in Turkey, the [625]procurator's houses and offices in Venice, which, like the golden apple, shall be given to the worthiest, and best deserving both in war and peace, as a reward of their worth and good service, as so many goals for all to aim at, (honos alit artes) and encouragements to others. For I hate these severe, unnatural, harsh, German, French, and Venetian decrees, which exclude plebeians from honours, be they never so wise, rich, virtuous, valiant, and well qualified, they must not be patricians, but keep their own rank, this is naturae bellum inferre, odious to God and men, I abhor it. My form of government shall be monarchical.
Tilianus in Philonius, out of a charitable mind no doubt, wished all his books were gold and silver, jewels and precious stones, [649]to redeem captives, set free prisoners, and relieve all poor distressed souls that wanted means; religiously done. I deny not, but to what purpose? Suppose this were so well done, within a little after, though a man had Croesus' wealth to bestow, there would be as many more. Wherefore I will suffer no [650]beggars, rogues, vagabonds, or idle persons at all, that cannot give an account of their lives how they [651]maintain themselves. If they be impotent, lame, blind, and single, they shall be sufficiently maintained in several hospitals, built for that purpose; if married and infirm, past work, or by inevitable loss, or some such like misfortune cast behind, by distribution of [652]corn, house-rent free, annual pensions or money, they shall be relieved, and highly rewarded for their good service they have formerly done; if able, they shall be enforced to work. [653]“For I see no reason” (as [654]he said) “why an epicure or idle drone, a rich glutton, a usurer, should live at ease, and do nothing, live in honour, in all manner of pleasures, and oppress others, when as in the meantime a poor labourer, a smith, a carpenter, an husbandman that hath spent his time in continual labour, as an ass to carry burdens, to do the commonwealth good, and without whom we cannot live, shall be left in his old age to beg or starve, and lead a miserable life worse than a jument.” As [655]all conditions shall be tied to their task, so none shall be overtired, but have their set times of recreations and holidays, indulgere genio, feasts and merry meetings, even to the meanest artificer, or basest servant, once a week to sing or dance, (though not all at once) or do whatsoever he shall please; like [656]that Saccarum festum amongst the Persians, those Saturnals in Rome, as well as his master. [657]If any be drunk, he shall drink no more wine or strong drink in a twelvemonth after. A bankrupt shall be [658] Catademiatus in Amphitheatro, publicly shamed, and he that cannot pay his debts, if by riot or negligence he have been impoverished, shall be for a twelvemonth imprisoned, if in that space his creditors be not satisfied, [659]he shall be hanged. He [660]that commits sacrilege shall lose his hands; he that bears false witness, or is of perjury convicted, shall have his tongue cut out, except he redeem it with his head. Murder, [661] adultery, shall be punished by death, [662]but not theft, except it be some more grievous offence, or notorious offenders: otherwise they shall be condemned to the galleys, mines, be his slaves whom they have offended, during their lives. I hate all hereditary slaves, and that duram Persarum legem as [663]Brisonius calls it; or as [664]Ammianus, impendio formidatas et abominandas leges, per quas ob noxam unius, omnis propinquitas perit hard law that wife and children, friends and allies, should suffer for the father's offence.
No man shall marry until he [665]be 25, no woman till she be 20, [666] nisi alitur dispensatum fuerit. If one [667]die, the other party shall not marry till six months after; and because many families are compelled to live niggardly, exhaust and undone by great dowers, [668]none shall be given at all, or very little, and that by supervisors rated, they that are foul shall have a greater portion; if fair, none at all, or very little: [669]howsoever not to exceed such a rate as those supervisors shall think fit. And when once they come to those years, poverty shall hinder no man from marriage, or any other respect, [670]but all shall be rather enforced than hindered, [671]except they be [672]dismembered, or grievously deformed, infirm, or visited with some enormous hereditary disease, in body or mind; in such cases upon a great pain, or mulct, [673]man or woman shall not marry, other order shall be taken for them to their content. If people overabound, they shall be eased by [674]colonies.
[675]No man shall wear weapons in any city. The same attire shall be kept, and that proper to several callings, by which they shall be distinguished. [676]Luxus funerum shall be taken away, that intempestive expense moderated, and many others. Brokers, takers of pawns, biting usurers, I will not admit; yet because hic cum hominibus non cum diis agitur, we converse here with men, not with gods, and for the hardness of men's hearts I will tolerate some kind of usury.[677]If we were honest, I confess, si probi essemus, we should have no use of it, but being as it is, we must necessarily admit it. Howsoever most divines contradict it, dicimus inficias, sed vox ea sola reperta est, it must be winked at by politicians. And yet some great doctors approve of it, Calvin, Bucer, Zanchius, P. Martyr, because by so many grand lawyers, decrees of emperors, princes' statutes, customs of commonwealths, churches' approbations it is permitted, &c. I will therefore allow it. But to no private persons, nor to every man that will, to orphans only, maids, widows, or such as by reason of their age, sex, education, ignorance of trading, know not otherwise how to employ it; and those so approved, not to let it out apart, but to bring their money to a [678]common bank which shall be allowed in every city, as in Genoa, Geneva, Nuremberg, Venice, at [679]5, 6, 7, not above 8 per centum, as the supervisors, or aerarii praefecti shall think fit. [680]And as it shall not be lawful for each man to be an usurer that will, so shall it not be lawful for all to take up money at use, not to prodigals and spendthrifts, but to merchants, young tradesmen, such as stand in need, or know honestly how to employ it, whose necessity, cause and condition the said supervisors shall approve of.
I will have no private monopolies, to enrich one man, and beggar a multitude, [681]multiplicity of offices, of supplying by deputies, weights and measures, the same throughout, and those rectified by the Primum mobile and sun's motion, threescore miles to a degree according to observation, 1000 geometrical paces to a mile, five foot to a pace, twelve inches to a foot, &c. and from measures known it is an easy matter to rectify weights, &c. to cast up all, and resolve bodies by algebra, stereometry. I hate wars if they be not ad populi salutem upon urgent occasion, [682]odimus accipitrim, quia semper vivit in armis [683] offensive wars, except the cause be very just, I will not allow of. For I do highly magnify that saying of Hannibal to Scipio, in [684]Livy, “It had been a blessed thing for you and us, if God had given that mind to our predecessors, that you had been content with Italy, we with Africa. For neither Sicily nor Sardinia are worth such cost and pains, so many fleets and armies, or so many famous Captains' lives.” Omnia prius tentanda, fair means shall first be tried. [685]Peragit tranquilla potestas, Quod violenta nequit. I will have them proceed with all moderation: but hear you, Fabius my general, not Minutius, nam [686]qui Consilio nititur plus hostibus nocet, quam qui sini animi ratione, viribus: And in such wars to abstain as much as is possible from [687]depopulations, burning of towns, massacring of infants, &c. For defensive wars, I will have forces still ready at a small warning, by land and sea, a prepared navy, soldiers in procinctu, et quam [688]Bonfinius apud Hungaros suos vult, virgam ferream, and money, which is nerves belli, still in a readiness, and a sufficient revenue, a third part as in old [689]Rome and Egypt, reserved for the commonwealth; to avoid those heavy taxes and impositions, as well to defray this charge of wars, as also all other public defalcations, expenses, fees, pensions, reparations, chaste sports, feasts, donaries, rewards, and entertainments. All things in this nature especially I will have maturely done, and with great [690]deliberation: ne quid [691] temere, ne quid remisse ac timide fiat; Sid quo feror hospes? To prosecute the rest would require a volume. Manum de tabella, I have been over tedious in this subject; I could have here willingly ranged, but these straits wherein I am included will not permit.
From commonwealths and cities, I will descend to families, which have as many corsives and molestations, as frequent discontents as the rest. Great affinity there is betwixt a political and economical body; they differ only in magnitude and proportion of business (so Scaliger [692]writes) as they have both likely the same period, as [693]Bodin and [694]Peucer hold, out of Plato, six or seven hundred years, so many times they have the same means of their vexation and overthrows; as namely, riot, a common ruin of both, riot in building, riot in profuse spending, riot in apparel, &c. be it in what kind soever, it produceth the same effects. A [695]chorographer of ours speaking obiter of ancient families, why they are so frequent in the north, continue so long, are so soon extinguished in the south, and so few, gives no other reason but this, luxus omnia dissipavit, riot hath consumed all, fine clothes and curious buildings came into this island, as he notes in his annals, not so many years since; non sine dispendio hospitalitatis to the decay of hospitality. Howbeit many times that word is mistaken, and under the name of bounty and hospitality, is shrouded riot and prodigality, and that which is commendable in itself well used, hath been mistaken heretofore, is become by his abuse, the bane and utter ruin of many a noble family. For some men live like the rich glutton, consuming themselves and their substance by continual feasting and invitations, with [696]Axilon in Homer, keep open house for all comers, giving entertainment to such as visit them, [697]keeping a table beyond their means, and a company of idle servants (though not so frequent as of old) are blown up on a sudden; and as Actaeon was by his hounds, devoured by their kinsmen, friends, and multitude of followers. [698]It is a wonder that Paulus Jovius relates of our northern countries, what an infinite deal of meat we consume on our tables; that I may truly say, 'tis not bounty, not hospitality, as it is often abused, but riot and excess, gluttony and prodigality; a mere vice; it brings in debt, want, and beggary, hereditary diseases, consumes their fortunes, and overthrows the good temperature of their bodies. To this I might here well add their inordinate expense in building, those fantastical houses, turrets, walks, parks, &c. gaming, excess of pleasure, and that prodigious riot in apparel, by which means they are compelled to break up house, and creep into holes. Sesellius in his commonwealth of [699]France, gives three reasons why the French nobility were so frequently bankrupts: “First, because they had so many lawsuits and contentions one upon another, which were tedious and costly; by which means it came to pass, that commonly lawyers bought them out of their possessions. A second cause was their riot, they lived beyond their means, and were therefore swallowed up by merchants.” (La Nove, a French writer, yields five reasons of his countrymen's poverty, to the same effect almost, and thinks verily if the gentry of France were divided into ten parts, eight of them would be found much impaired, by sales, mortgages, and debts, or wholly sunk in their estates.) “The last was immoderate excess in apparel, which consumed their revenues.” How this concerns and agrees with our present state, look you. But of this elsewhere. As it is in a man's body, if either head, heart, stomach, liver, spleen, or any one part be misaffected, all the rest suffer with it: so is it with this economical body. If the head be naught, a spendthrift, a drunkard, a whoremaster, a gamester, how shall the family live at ease? [700]Ipsa si cupiat solus servare, prorsus, non potest hanc familiam, as Demea said in the comedy, Safety herself cannot save it. A good, honest, painful man many times hath a shrew to his wife, a sickly, dishonest, slothful, foolish, careless woman to his mate, a proud, peevish flirt, a liquorish, prodigal quean, and by that means all goes to ruin: or if they differ in nature, he is thrifty, she spends all, he wise, she sottish and soft; what agreement can there be? what friendship? Like that of the thrush and swallow in Aesop, instead of mutual love, kind compellations, whore and thief is heard, they fling stools at one another's heads. [701]Quae intemperies vexat hanc familiam? All enforced marriages commonly produce such effects, or if on their behalves it be well, as to live and agree lovingly together, they may have disobedient and unruly children, that take ill courses to disquiet them, [702]“their son is a thief, a spendthrift, their daughter a whore;” a step [703]mother, or a daughter-in-law distempers all; [704]or else for want of means, many torturers arise, debts, dues, fees, dowries, jointures, legacies to be paid, annuities issuing out, by means of which, they have not wherewithal to maintain themselves in that pomp as their predecessors have done, bring up or bestow their children to their callings, to their birth and quality, [705]and will not descend to their present fortunes. Oftentimes, too, to aggravate the rest, concur many other inconveniences, unthankful friends, decayed friends, bad neighbours, negligent servants [706]servi furaces, Versipelles, callidi, occlusa sibi mille clavibus reserant, furtimque; raptant, consumunt, liguriunt; casualties, taxes, mulcts, chargeable offices, vain expenses, entertainments, loss of stock, enmities, emulations, frequent invitations, losses, suretyship, sickness, death of friends, and that which is the gulf of all, improvidence, ill husbandry, disorder and confusion, by which means they are drenched on a sudden in their estates, and at unawares precipitated insensibly into an inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, discontent and melancholy itself.
I have done with families, and will now briefly run over some few sorts and conditions of men. The most secure, happy, jovial, and merry in the world's esteem are princes and great men, free from melancholy: but for their cares, miseries, suspicions, jealousies, discontents, folly and madness, I refer you to Xenophon's Tyrannus, where king Hieron discourseth at large with Simonides the poet, of this subject. Of all others they are most troubled with perpetual fears, anxieties, insomuch, that as he said in [707]Valerius, if thou knewest with what cares and miseries this robe were stuffed, thou wouldst not stoop to take it up. Or put case they be secure and free from fears and discontents, yet they are void [708]of reason too oft, and precipitate in their actions, read all our histories, quos de stultis prodidere stulti, Iliades, Aeneides, Annales, and what is the subject?
Next in place, next in miseries and discontents, in all manner of hair-brain actions, are great men, procul a Jove, procul a fulmine, the nearer the worse. If they live in court, they are up and down, ebb and flow with their princes' favours, Ingenium vultu statque caditque suo, now aloft, tomorrow down, as [709]Polybius describes them, “like so many casting counters, now of gold, tomorrow of silver, that vary in worth as the computant will; now they stand for units, tomorrow for thousands; now before all, and anon behind.” Beside, they torment one another with mutual factions, emulations: one is ambitious, another enamoured, a third in debt, a prodigal, overruns his fortunes, a fourth solicitous with cares, gets nothing, &c. But for these men's discontents, anxieties, I refer you to Lucian's Tract, de mercede conductis, [710]Aeneas Sylvius (libidinis et stultitiae servos, he calls them), Agrippa, and many others.
Of philosophers and scholars priscae sapientiae dictatores, I have already spoken in general terms, those superintendents of wit and learning, men above men, those refined men, minions of the muses,
[713]These acute and subtle sophisters, so much honoured, have as much need of hellebore as others.—[714]O medici mediam pertundite venam. Read Lucian's Piscator, and tell how he esteemed them; Agrippa's Tract of the vanity of Sciences; nay read their own works, their absurd tenets, prodigious paradoxes, et risum teneatis amici? You shall find that of Aristotle true, nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae, they have a worm as well as others; you shall find a fantastical strain, a fustian, a bombast, a vainglorious humour, an affected style, &c., like a prominent thread in an uneven woven cloth, run parallel throughout their works. And they that teach wisdom, patience, meekness, are the veriest dizzards, harebrains, and most discontent. [715]“In the multitude of wisdom is grief, and he that increaseth wisdom, increaseth sorrow.” I need not quote mine author; they that laugh and contemn others, condemn the world of folly, deserve to be mocked, are as giddy-headed, and lie as open as any other. [716]Democritus, that common flouter of folly, was ridiculous himself, barking Menippus, scoffing Lucian, satirical Lucilius, Petronius, Varro, Persius, &c., may be censured with the rest, Loripedem rectus derideat, Aethiopem albus. Bale, Erasmus, Hospinian, Vives, Kemnisius, explode as a vast ocean of obs and sols, school divinity. [717]A labyrinth of intricable questions, unprofitable contentions, incredibilem delirationem, one calls it. If school divinity be so censured, subtilis [718]Scotus lima veritatis, Occam irrefragabilis, cujus ingenium vetera omnia ingenia subvertit, &c. Baconthrope, Dr. Resolutus, and Corculum Theolgiae, Thomas himself, Doctor [719]Seraphicus, cui dictavit Angelus, &c. What shall become of humanity? Ars stulta, what can she plead? what can her followers say for themselves? Much learning, [720] cere-diminuit-brum, hath cracked their sconce, and taken such root, that tribus Anticyris caput insanabile, hellebore itself can do no good, nor that renowned [721]lantern of Epictetus, by which if any man studied, he should be as wise as he was. But all will not serve; rhetoricians, in ostentationem loquacitatis multa agitant, out of their volubility of tongue, will talk much to no purpose, orators can persuade other men what they will, quo volunt, unde volunt, move, pacify, &c., but cannot settle their own brains, what saith Tully? Malo indisertam prudentiam, quam loquacem, stultitiam; and as [722]Seneca seconds him, a wise man's oration should not be polite or solicitous. [723]Fabius esteems no better of most of them, either in speech, action, gesture, than as men beside themselves, insanos declamatores; so doth Gregory, Non mihi sapit qui sermone, sed qui factis sapit. Make the best of him, a good orator is a turncoat, an evil man, bonus orator pessimus vir, his tongue is set to sale, he is a mere voice, as [724]he said of a nightingale, dat sine mente sonum, an hyperbolical liar, a flatterer, a parasite, and as [725] Ammianus Marcellinus will, a corrupting cozener, one that doth more mischief by his fair speeches, than he that bribes by money; for a man may with more facility avoid him that circumvents by money, than him that deceives with glozing terms; which made [726]Socrates so much abhor and explode them. [727]Fracastorius, a famous poet, freely grants all poets to be mad; so doth [728]Scaliger; and who doth not? Aut insanit homo, aut versus facit (He's mad or making verses), Hor. Sat. vii. l. 2. Insanire lubet, i. versus componere. Virg. 3 Ecl.; so Servius interprets it, all poets are mad, a company of bitter satirists, detractors, or else parasitical applauders: and what is poetry itself, but as Austin holds, Vinum erroris ab ebriis doctoribus propinatum? You may give that censure of them in general, which Sir Thomas More once did of Germanus Brixius' poems in particular.Budaeus, in an epistle of his to Lupsetus, will have civil law to be the tower of wisdom; another honours physic, the quintessence of nature; a third tumbles them both down, and sets up the flag of his own peculiar science. Your supercilious critics, grammatical triflers, note-makers, curious antiquaries, find out all the ruins of wit, ineptiarum delicias, amongst the rubbish of old writers; [730]Pro stultis habent nisi aliquid sufficiant invenire, quod in aliorum scriptis vertant vitio, all fools with them that cannot find fault; they correct others, and are hot in a cold cause, puzzle themselves to find out how many streets in Rome, houses, gates, towers, Homer's country, Aeneas's mother, Niobe's daughters, an Sappho publica fuerit? ovum [731]prius extiterit an gallina! &c. et alia quae dediscenda essent scire, si scires, as [732]Seneca holds. What clothes the senators did wear in Rome, what shoes, how they sat, where they went to the close-stool, how many dishes in a mess, what sauce, which for the present for an historian to relate, [733]according to Lodovic. Vives, is very ridiculous, is to them most precious elaborate stuff, they admired for it, and as proud, as triumphant in the meantime for this discovery, as if they had won a city, or conquered a province; as rich as if they had found a mine of gold ore. Quosvis auctores absurdis commentis suis percacant et stercorant, one saith, they bewray and daub a company of books and good authors, with their absurd comments, correctorum sterquilinia [734]Scaliger calls them, and show their wit in censuring others, a company of foolish note-makers, humble-bees, dors, or beetles, inter stercora ut plurimum versantur, they rake over all those rubbish and dunghills, and prefer a manuscript many times before the Gospel itself, [735]thesaurum criticum, before any treasure, and with their deleaturs, alii legunt sic, meus codex sic habet, with their postremae editiones, annotations, castigations, &c. make books dear, themselves ridiculous, and do nobody good, yet if any man dare oppose or contradict, they are mad, up in arms on a sudden, how many sheets are written in defence, how bitter invectives, what apologies? [736]Epiphilledes hae sunt ut merae, nugae. But I dare say no more of, for, with, or against them, because I am liable to their lash as well as others. Of these and the rest of our artists and philosophers, I will generally conclude they are a kind of madmen, as [737] Seneca esteems of them, to make doubts and scruples, how to read them truly, to mend old authors, but will not mend their own lives, or teach us ingevia sanare, memoriam officiorum ingerere, ac fidem in rebus humanis retinere, to keep our wits in order, or rectify our manners. Numquid tibi demens videtur, si istis operam impenderit? Is not he mad that draws lines with Archimedes, whilst his house is ransacked, and his city besieged, when the whole world is in combustion, or we whilst our souls are in danger, (mors sequitur, vita fugit) to spend our time in toys, idle questions, and things of no worth?
That [738]lovers are mad, I think no man will deny, Amare simul et sapere, ipsi Jovi non datur, Jupiter himself cannot intend both at once.
Tully, when he was invited to a second marriage, replied, he could not simul amare et sapere be wise and love both together. [740]Est orcus ille, vis est immedicabilis, est rabies insana, love is madness, a hell, an incurable disease; inpotentem et insanam libidinem [741]Seneca calls it, an impotent and raging lust. I shall dilate this subject apart; in the meantime let lovers sigh out the rest.
[742]Nevisanus the lawyer holds it for an axiom, “most women are fools,” [743]consilium foeminis invalidum; Seneca, men, be they young or old; who doubts it, youth is mad as Elius in Tully, Stulti adolescentuli, old age little better, deleri senes, &c. Theophrastes, in the 107th year of his age, [744]said he then began to be to wise, tum sapere coepit, and therefore lamented his departure. If wisdom come so late, where shall we find a wise man? Our old ones dote at threescore-and-ten. I would cite more proofs, and a better author, but for the present, let one fool point at another. [745]Nevisanus hath as hard an opinion of [746]rich men, “wealth and wisdom cannot dwell together,” stultitiam patiuntur opes, [747]and they do commonly [748]infatuare cor hominis, besot men; and as we see it, “fools have fortune:” [749]Sapientia non invenitur in terra suaviter viventium. For beside a natural contempt of learning, which accompanies such kind of men, innate idleness (for they will take no pains), and which [750]Aristotle observes, ubi mens plurima, ibi minima fortuna, ubi plurima fortuna, ibi mens perexigua, great wealth and little wit go commonly together: they have as much brains some of them in their heads as in their heels; besides this inbred neglect of liberal sciences, and all arts, which should excolere mentem, polish the mind, they have most part some gullish humour or other, by which they are led; one is an Epicure, an Atheist, a second a gamester, a third a whoremaster (fit subjects all for a satirist to work upon);
Alexander, a worthy man, but furious in his anger, overtaken in drink: Caesar and Scipio valiant and wise, but vainglorious, ambitious: Vespasian a worthy prince, but covetous: [755]Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; unam virtutem mille vitia comitantur, as Machiavel of Cosmo de Medici, he had two distinct persons in him. I will determine of them all, they are like these double or turning pictures; stand before which you see a fair maid, on the one side an ape, on the other an owl; look upon them at the first sight, all is well, but farther examine, you shall find them wise on the one side, and fools on the other; in some few things praiseworthy, in the rest incomparably faulty. I will say nothing of their diseases, emulations, discontents, wants, and such miseries: let poverty plead the rest in Aristophanes' Plutus.
Covetous men, amongst others, are most mad, [756]they have all the symptoms of melancholy, fear, sadness, suspicion, &c., as shall be proved in its proper place,
And yet methinks prodigals are much madder than they, be of what condition they will, that bear a public or private purse; as a [757]Dutch writer censured Richard the rich duke of Cornwall, suing to be emperor, for his profuse spending, qui effudit pecuniam, ante pedes principium Electorum sicut aquam, that scattered money like water; I do censure them, Stulta Anglia (saith he) quae, tot denariis sponte est privata, stulti principes Alemaniae, qui nobile jus suum pro pecunia vendiderunt; spendthrifts, bribers, and bribe-takers are fools, and so are [758]all they that cannot keep, disburse, or spend their moneys well.
I might say the like of angry, peevish, envious, ambitious; [759] Anticyras melior sorbere meracas; Epicures, Atheists, Schismatics, Heretics; hi omnes habent imaginationem laesam (saith Nymannus) “and their madness shall be evident,” 2 Tim. iii. 9. [760]Fabatus, an Italian, holds seafaring men all mad; “the ship is mad, for it never stands still; the mariners are mad, to expose themselves to such imminent dangers: the waters are raging mad, in perpetual motion: the winds are as mad as the rest, they know not whence they come, whither they would go: and those men are maddest of all that go to sea; for one fool at home, they find forty abroad.” He was a madman that said it, and thou peradventure as mad to read it. [761] Felix Platerus is of opinion all alchemists are mad, out of their wits; [762]Atheneus saith as much of fiddlers, et musarum luscinias, [763] Musicians, omnes tibicines insaniunt, ubi semel efflant, avolat illico mens, in comes music at one ear, out goes wit at another. Proud and vainglorious persons are certainly mad; and so are [764]lascivious; I can feel their pulses beat hither; horn-mad some of them, to let others lie with their wives, and wink at it.
To insist [765]in all particulars, were an Herculean task, to [766]reckon up [767]insanas substructiones, insanos labores, insanum luxum, mad labours, mad books, endeavours, carriages, gross ignorance, ridiculous actions, absurd gestures; insanam gulam, insaniam villarum, insana jurgia, as Tully terms them, madness of villages, stupend structures; as those Egyptian Pyramids, Labyrinths and Sphinxes, which a company of crowned asses, ad ostentationem opum, vainly built, when neither the architect nor king that made them, or to what use and purpose, are yet known: to insist in their hypocrisy, inconstancy, blindness, rashness, dementem temeritatem, fraud, cozenage, malice, anger, impudence, ingratitude, ambition, gross superstition, [768]tempora infecta et adulatione sordida, as in Tiberius' times, such base flattery, stupend, parasitical fawning and colloguing, &c. brawls, conflicts, desires, contentions, it would ask an expert Vesalius to anatomise every member. Shall I say? Jupiter himself, Apollo, Mars, &c. doted; and monster-conquering Hercules that subdued the world, and helped others, could not relieve himself in this, but mad he was at last. And where shall a man walk, converse with whom, in what province, city, and not meet with Signior Deliro, or Hercules Furens, Maenads, and Corybantes? Their speeches say no less. [769]E fungis nati homines, or else they fetched their pedigree from those that were struck by Samson with the jaw-bone of an ass. Or from Deucalion and Pyrrha's stones, for durum genus sumus, [770] marmorei sumus, we are stony-hearted, and savour too much of the stock, as if they had all heard that enchanted horn of Astolpho, that English duke in Ariosto, which never sounded but all his auditors were mad, and for fear ready to make away with themselves; [771]or landed in the mad haven in the Euxine sea of Daphnis insana, which had a secret quality to dementate; they are a company of giddy-heads, afternoon men, it is Midsummer moon still, and the dog-days last all the year long, they are all mad. Whom shall I then except? Ulricus Huttenus [772]nemo, nam, nemo omnibus horis sapit, Nemo nascitur sine vitiis, Crimine Nemo caret, Nemo sorte sua vivit contentus, Nemo in amore sapit, Nemo bonus, Nemo sapiens, Nemo, est ex omni parti beatus, &c. [773]and therefore Nicholas Nemo, or Monsieur Nobody shall go free, Quid valeat nemo, Nemo referre potest? But whom shall I except in the second place? such as are silent, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur; [774]no better way to avoid folly and madness, than by taciturnity. Whom in a third? all senators, magistrates; for all fortunate men are wise, and conquerors valiant, and so are all great men, non est bonum ludere cum diis, they are wise by authority, good by their office and place, his licet impune pessimos esse, (some say) we must not speak of them, neither is it fit; per me sint omnia protinus alba, I will not think amiss of them. Whom next? Stoics? Sapiens Stoicus, and he alone is subject to no perturbations, as [775]Plutarch scoffs at him, “he is not vexed with torments, or burnt with fire, foiled by his adversary, sold of his enemy: though he be wrinkled, sand-blind, toothless, and deformed; yet he is most beautiful, and like a god, a king in conceit, though not worth a groat. He never dotes, never mad, never sad, drunk, because virtue cannot be taken away,” as [776]Zeno holds, “by reason of strong apprehension,” but he was mad to say so. [777]Anticyrae caelo huic est opus aut dolabra, he had need to be bored, and so had all his fellows, as wise as they would seem to be. Chrysippus himself liberally grants them to be fools as well as others, at certain times, upon some occasions, amitti virtutem ait per ebrietatem, aut atribilarium morbum, it may be lost by drunkenness or melancholy, he may be sometimes crazed as well as the rest: [778]ad summum sapiens nisi quum pituita molesta. I should here except some Cynics, Menippus, Diogenes, that Theban Crates; or to descend to these times, that omniscious, only wise fraternity [779]of the Rosicrucians, those great theologues, politicians, philosophers, physicians, philologers, artists, &c. of whom S. Bridget, Albas Joacchimus, Leicenbergius, and such divine spirits have prophesied, and made promise to the world, if at least there be any such (Hen. [780]Neuhusius makes a doubt of it, [781] Valentinus Andreas and others) or an Elias artifex their Theophrastian master; whom though Libavius and many deride and carp at, yet some will have to be “the [782]renewer of all arts and sciences,” reformer of the world, and now living, for so Johannes Montanus Strigoniensis, that great patron of Paracelsus, contends, and certainly avers [783]“a most divine man,” and the quintessence of wisdom wheresoever he is; for he, his fraternity, friends, &c. are all [784]“betrothed to wisdom,” if we may believe their disciples and followers. I must needs except Lipsius and the Pope, and expunge their name out of the catalogue of fools. For besides that parasitical testimony of Dousa,
If any man shall ask in the meantime, who I am that so boldly censure others, tu nullane habes vitia? have I no faults? [793]Yes, more than thou hast, whatsoever thou art. Nos numerus sumus, I confess it again, I am as foolish, as mad as any one.
I do not deny it, demens de populo dematur. My comfort is, I have more fellows, and those of excellent note. And though I be not so right or so discreet as I should be, yet not so mad, so bad neither, as thou perhaps takest me to be.
To conclude, this being granted, that all the world is melancholy, or mad, dotes, and every member of it, I have ended my task, and sufficiently illustrated that which I took upon me to demonstrate at first. At this present I have no more to say; His sanam mentem Democritus, I can but wish myself and them a good physician, and all of us a better mind.
And although for the above-named reasons, I had a just cause to undertake this subject, to point at these particular species of dotage, that so men might acknowledge their imperfections, and seek to reform what is amiss; yet I have a more serious intent at this time; and to omit all impertinent digressions, to say no more of such as are improperly melancholy, or metaphorically mad, lightly mad, or in disposition, as stupid, angry, drunken, silly, sottish, sullen, proud, vainglorious, ridiculous, beastly, peevish, obstinate, impudent, extravagant, dry, doting, dull, desperate, harebrain, &c. mad, frantic, foolish, heteroclites, which no new [795] hospital can hold, no physic help; my purpose and endeavour is, in the following discourse to anatomise this humour of melancholy, through all its parts and species, as it is an habit, or an ordinary disease, and that philosophically, medicinally, to show the causes, symptoms, and several cures of it, that it may be the better avoided. Moved thereunto for the generality of it, and to do good, it being a disease so frequent, as [796] Mercurialis observes, “in these our days; so often happening,” saith [797] Laurentius, “in our miserable times,” as few there are that feel not the smart of it. Of the same mind is Aelian Montaltus, [798]Melancthon, and others; [799]Julius Caesar Claudinus calls it the “fountain of all other diseases, and so common in this crazed age of ours, that scarce one of a thousand is free from it;” and that splenetic hypochondriacal wind especially, which proceeds from the spleen and short ribs. Being then a disease so grievous, so common, I know not wherein to do a more general service, and spend my time better, than to prescribe means how to prevent and cure so universal a malady, an epidemical disease, that so often, so much crucifies the body and mind.
If I have overshot myself in this which hath been hitherto said, or that it is, which I am sure some will object, too fantastical, “too light and comical for a Divine, too satirical for one of my profession,” I will presume to answer with [800]Erasmus, in like case, 'tis not I, but Democritus, Democritus dixit: you must consider what it is to speak in one's own or another's person, an assumed habit and name; a difference betwixt him that affects or acts a prince's, a philosopher's, a magistrate's, a fool's part, and him that is so indeed; and what liberty those old satirists have had; it is a cento collected from others; not I, but they that say it.
Take heed you mistake me not. If I do a little forget myself, I hope you will pardon it. And to say truth, why should any man be offended, or take exceptions at it?
No, I recant, I will not, I care, I fear, I confess my fault, acknowledge a great offence,
If through weakness, folly, passion, [811]discontent, ignorance, I have said amiss, let it be forgotten and forgiven. I acknowledge that of [812] Tacitus to be true, Asperae facetiae, ubi nimis ex vero traxere, acrem sui memoriam relinquunt, a bitter jest leaves a sting behind it: and as an honourable man observes, [813]“They fear a satirist's wit, he their memories.” I may justly suspect the worst; and though I hope I have wronged no man, yet in Medea's words I will crave pardon,
LECTORI MALE FERIATO.
Tu vero cavesis edico quisquis es, ne temere sugilles Auctorem hujusce operis, aut cavillator irrideas. Imo ne vel ex aliorum censura tacite obloquaris (vis dicam verbo) nequid nasutulus inepte improbes, aut falso fingas. Nam si talis revera sit, qualem prae se fert Junior Democritus, seniori Democrito saltem affinis, aut ejus Genium vel tantillum sapiat; actum de te, censorem aeque ac delatorem [817]aget econtra (petulanti splene cum sit) sufflabit te in jocos, comminuet in sales, addo etiam, et deo risui te sacrificabit.
Iterum moneo, ne quid cavillere, ne dum Democritum Juniorem conviciis infames, aut ignominiose vituperes, de te non male sentientem, tu idem audias ab amico cordato, quod olim vulgus Abderitanum ab [818] Hippocrate, concivem bene meritum et popularem suum Democritum, pro insano habens. Ne tu Democrite sapis, stulti autem et insani Abderitae.
TO THE READER AT LEISURE.
Whoever you may be, I caution you against rashly defaming the author of this work, or cavilling in jest against him. Nay, do not silently reproach him in consequence of others' censure, nor employ your wit in foolish disapproval, or false accusation. For, should Democritus Junior prove to be what he professes, even a kinsman of his elder namesake, or be ever so little of the same kidney, it is all over with you: he will become both accuser and judge of you in your spleen, will dissipate you in jests, pulverise you into salt, and sacrifice you, I can promise you, to the God of Mirth.
I further advise you, not to asperse, or calumniate, or slander, Democritus Junior, who possibly does not think ill of you, lest you may hear from some discreet friend, the same remark the people of Abdera did from Hippocrates, of their meritorious and popular fellow-citizen, whom they had looked on as a madman; “It is not that you, Democritus, that art wise, but that the people of Abdera are fools and madmen.” “You have yourself an Abderitian soul;” and having just given you, gentle reader, these few words of admonition, farewell.
A. Sect. 2. Causes of Melancholy are either
♋ Particular symptoms to the three distinct species. Sect. 3. Memb. 2.
Man's Excellency.] Man the most excellent and noble creature of the world, “the principal and mighty work of God, wonder of Nature,” as Zoroaster calls him; audacis naturae miraculum, “the [820]marvel of marvels,” as Plato; “the [821]abridgment and epitome of the world,” as Pliny; microcosmus, a little world, a model of the world, [822]sovereign lord of the earth, viceroy of the world, sole commander and governor of all the creatures in it; to whose empire they are subject in particular, and yield obedience; far surpassing all the rest, not in body only, but in soul; [823]imaginis imago, [824]created to God's own [825]image, to that immortal and incorporeal substance, with all the faculties and powers belonging unto it; was at first pure, divine, perfect, happy, [826] “created after God in true holiness and righteousness;” Deo congruens, free from all manner of infirmities, and put in Paradise, to know God, to praise and glorify him, to do his will, Ut diis consimiles parturiat deos (as an old poet saith) to propagate the church.
Man's Fall and Misery.] But this most noble creature, Heu tristis, et lachrymosa commutatio ([827]one exclaims) O pitiful change! is fallen from that he was, and forfeited his estate, become miserabilis homuncio, a castaway, a caitiff, one of the most miserable creatures of the world, if he be considered in his own nature, an unregenerate man, and so much obscured by his fall that (some few relics excepted) he is inferior to a beast, [828]“Man in honour that understandeth not, is like unto beasts that perish,” so David esteems him: a monster by stupend metamorphoses, [829]a fox, a dog, a hog, what not? Quantum mutatus ab illo? How much altered from that he was; before blessed and happy, now miserable and accursed; [830]“He must eat his meat in sorrow,” subject to death and all manner of infirmities, all kind of calamities.
A Description of Melancholy.] [831]“Great travail is created for all men, and an heavy yoke on the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb, unto that day they return to the mother of all things. Namely, their thoughts, and fear of their hearts, and their imagination of things they wait for, and the day of death. From him that sitteth in the glorious throne, to him that sitteth beneath in the earth and ashes; from him that is clothed in blue silk and weareth a crown, to him that is clothed in simple linen. Wrath, envy, trouble, and unquietness, and fear of death, and rigour, and strife, and such things come to both man and beast, but sevenfold to the ungodly.” All this befalls him in this life, and peradventure eternal misery in the life to come.
Impulsive Cause of Man's Misery and Infirmities.] The impulsive cause of these miseries in man, this privation or destruction of God's image, the cause of death and diseases, of all temporal and eternal punishments, was the sin of our first parent Adam, [832]in eating of the forbidden fruit, by the devil's instigation and allurement. His disobedience, pride, ambition, intemperance, incredulity, curiosity; from whence proceeded original sin, and that general corruption of mankind, as from a fountain, flowed all bad inclinations and actual transgressions which cause our several calamities inflicted upon us for our sins. And this belike is that which our fabulous poets have shadowed unto us in the tale of [833] Pandora's box, which being opened through her curiosity, filled the world full of all manner of diseases. It is not curiosity alone, but those other crying sins of ours, which pull these several plagues and miseries upon our heads. For Ubi peccatum, ibi procella, as [834]Chrysostom well observes. [835]“Fools by reason of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted.” [836]“Fear cometh like sudden desolation, and destruction like a whirlwind, affliction and anguish,” because they did not fear God. [837]“Are you shaken with wars?” as Cyprian well urgeth to Demetrius, “are you molested with dearth and famine? is your health crushed with raging diseases? is mankind generally tormented with epidemical maladies? 'tis all for your sins,” Hag. i. 9, 10; Amos i.; Jer. vii. God is angry, punisheth and threateneth, because of their obstinacy and stubbornness, they will not turn unto him. [838]“If the earth be barren then for want of rain, if dry and squalid, it yield no fruit, if your fountains be dried up, your wine, corn, and oil blasted, if the air be corrupted, and men troubled with diseases, 'tis by reason of their sins:” which like the blood of Abel cry loud to heaven for vengeance, Lam. v. 15. “That we have sinned, therefore our hearts are heavy,” Isa. lix. 11, 12. “We roar like bears, and mourn like doves, and want health, &c. for our sins and trespasses.” But this we cannot endure to hear or to take notice of, Jer. ii. 30. “We are smitten in vain and receive no correction;” and cap. v. 3. “Thou hast stricken them, but they have not sorrowed; they have refused to receive correction; they have not returned. Pestilence he hath sent, but they have not turned to him,” Amos iv. [839]Herod could not abide John Baptist, nor [840]Domitian endure Apollonius to tell the causes of the plague at Ephesus, his injustice, incest, adultery, and the like.
To punish therefore this blindness and obstinacy of ours as a concomitant cause and principal agent, is God's just judgment in bringing these calamities upon us, to chastise us, I say, for our sins, and to satisfy God's wrath. For the law requires obedience or punishment, as you may read at large, Deut. xxviii. 15. “If they will not obey the Lord, and keep his commandments and ordinances, then all these curses shall come upon them.” [841]“Cursed in the town and in the field, &c.” [842]“Cursed in the fruit of the body, &c.” [843]“The Lord shall send thee trouble and shame, because of thy wickedness.” And a little after, [844]“The Lord shall smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with emerods, and scab, and itch, and thou canst not be healed; [845]with madness, blindness, and astonishing of heart.” This Paul seconds, Rom. ii. 9. “Tribulation and anguish on the soul of every man that doeth evil.” Or else these chastisements are inflicted upon us for our humiliation, to exercise and try our patience here in this life to bring us home, to make us to know God ourselves, to inform and teach us wisdom. [846]“Therefore is my people gone into captivity, because they had no knowledge; therefore is the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched out his hand upon them.” He is desirous of our salvation. [847]Nostrae salutis avidus, saith Lemnius, and for that cause pulls us by the ear many times, to put us in mind of our duties: “That they which erred might have understanding, (as Isaiah speaks xxix. 24) and so to be reformed.” [848]“I am afflicted, and at the point of death,” so David confesseth of himself, Psal. lxxxviii. v. 15, v. 9. “Mine eyes are sorrowful through mine affliction:” and that made him turn unto God. Great Alexander in the midst of all his prosperity, by a company of parasites deified, and now made a god, when he saw one of his wounds bleed, remembered that he was but a man, and remitted of his pride. In morbo recolligit se animus,[849]as [850]Pliny well perceived; “In sickness the mind reflects upon itself, with judgment surveys itself, and abhors its former courses;” insomuch that he concludes to his friend Marius,[851] “that it were the period of all philosophy, if we could so continue sound, or perform but a part of that which we promised to do, being sick. Whoso is wise then, will consider these things,” as David did (Psal. cxliv., verse last); and whatsoever fortune befall him, make use of it. If he be in sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity, seriously to recount with himself, why this or that malady, misery, this or that incurable disease is inflicted upon him; it may be for his good, [852]sic expedit as Peter said of his daughter's ague. Bodily sickness is for his soul's health, periisset nisi periisset, had he not been visited, he had utterly perished; for [853]“the Lord correcteth him whom he loveth, even as a father doth his child in whom he delighteth.” If he be safe and sound on the other side, and free from all manner of infirmity; [854]et cui
Yet in the midst of his prosperity, let him remember that caveat of Moses, [855]“Beware that he do not forget the Lord his God;” that he be not puffed up, but acknowledge them to be his good gifts and benefits, and [856]“the more he hath, to be more thankful,” (as Agapetianus adviseth) and use them aright.
Instrumental Causes of our Infirmities.] Now the instrumental causes of these our infirmities, are as diverse as the infirmities themselves; stars, heavens, elements, &c. And all those creatures which God hath made, are armed against sinners. They were indeed once good in themselves, and that they are now many of them pernicious unto us, is not in their nature, but our corruption, which hath caused it. For from the fall of our first parent Adam, they have been changed, the earth accursed, the influence of stars, altered, the four elements, beasts, birds, plants, are now ready to offend us. “The principal things for the use of man, are water, fire, iron, salt, meal, wheat, honey, milk, oil, wine, clothing, good to the godly, to the sinners turned to evil,” Ecclus. xxxix. 26. “Fire, and hail, and famine, and dearth, all these are created for vengeance,” Ecclus. xxxix. 29. The heavens threaten us with their comets, stars, planets, with their great conjunctions, eclipses, oppositions, quartiles, and such unfriendly aspects. The air with his meteors, thunder and lightning, intemperate heat and cold, mighty winds, tempests, unseasonable weather; from which proceed dearth, famine, plague, and all sorts of epidemical diseases, consuming infinite myriads of men. At Cairo in Egypt, every third year, (as it is related by [857]Boterus, and others) 300,000 die of the plague; and 200,000, in Constantinople, every fifth or seventh at the utmost. How doth the earth terrify and oppress us with terrible earthquakes, which are most frequent in [858]China, Japan, and those eastern climes, swallowing up sometimes six cities at once? How doth the water rage with his inundations, irruptions, flinging down towns, cities, villages, bridges, &c. besides shipwrecks; whole islands are sometimes suddenly overwhelmed with all their inhabitants in [859]Zealand, Holland, and many parts of the continent drowned, as the [860]lake Erne in Ireland? [861]Nihilque praeter arcium cadavera patenti cernimus freto. In the fens of Friesland 1230, by reason of tempests, [862]the sea drowned multa hominum millia, et jumenta sine numero, all the country almost, men and cattle in it. How doth the fire rage, that merciless element, consuming in an instant whole cities? What town of any antiquity or note hath not been once, again and again, by the fury of this merciless element, defaced, ruinated, and left desolate? In a word,
To descend to more particulars, how many creatures are at deadly feud with men? Lions, wolves, bears, &c. Some with hoofs, horns, tusks, teeth, nails: How many noxious serpents and venomous creatures, ready to offend us with stings, breath, sight, or quite kill us? How many pernicious fishes, plants, gums, fruits, seeds, flowers, &c. could I reckon up on a sudden, which by their very smell many of them, touch, taste, cause some grievous malady, if not death itself? Some make mention of a thousand several poisons: but these are but trifles in respect. The greatest enemy to man, is man, who by the devil's instigation is still ready to do mischief, his own executioner, a wolf, a devil to himself, and others. [864]We are all brethren in Christ, or at least should be, members of one body, servants of one lord, and yet no fiend can so torment, insult over, tyrannise, vex, as one man doth another. Let me not fall therefore (saith David, when wars, plague, famine were offered) into the hands of men, merciless and wicked men:
We can most part foresee these epidemical diseases, and likely avoid them; Dearths, tempests, plagues, our astrologers foretell us; Earthquakes, inundations, ruins of houses, consuming fires, come by little and little, or make some noise beforehand; but the knaveries, impostures, injuries and villainies of men no art can avoid. We can keep our professed enemies from our cities, by gates, walls and towers, defend ourselves from thieves and robbers by watchfulness and weapons; but this malice of men, and their pernicious endeavours, no caution can divert, no vigilancy foresee, we have so many secret plots and devices to mischief one another.
Sometimes by the devil's help as magicians, [866]witches: sometimes by impostures, mixtures, poisons, stratagems, single combats, wars, we hack and hew, as if we were ad internecionem nati, like Cadmus' soldiers born to consume one another. 'Tis an ordinary thing to read of a hundred and two hundred thousand men slain in a battle. Besides all manner of tortures, brazen bulls, racks, wheels, strappadoes, guns, engines, &c. [867]Ad unum corpus humanum supplicia plura, quam membra: We have invented more torturing instruments, than there be several members in a man's body, as Cyprian well observes. To come nearer yet, our own parents by their offences, indiscretion and intemperance, are our mortal enemies. [868]“The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.” They cause our grief many times, and put upon us hereditary diseases, inevitable infirmities: they torment us, and we are ready to injure our posterity;
What a disease is, almost every physician defines. [877]Fernelius calleth it an “affection of the body contrary to nature.” [878]Fuschius and Crato, “an hindrance, hurt, or alteration of any action of the body, or part of it.” [879]Tholosanus, “a dissolution of that league which is between body and soul, and a perturbation of it; as health the perfection, and makes to the preservation of it.” [880]Labeo in Agellius, “an ill habit of the body, opposite to nature, hindering the use of it.” Others otherwise, all to this effect.
Number of Diseases.] How many diseases there are, is a question not yet determined; [881]Pliny reckons up 300 from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot: elsewhere he saith, morborum infinita multitudo, their number is infinite. Howsoever it was in those times, it boots not; in our days I am sure the number is much augmented:
No man free from some Disease or other.] No man amongst us so sound, of so good a constitution, that hath not some impediment of body or mind. Quisque suos patimur manes, we have all our infirmities, first or last, more or less. There will be peradventure in an age, or one of a thousand, like Zenophilus the musician in [883]Pliny, that may happily live 105 years without any manner of impediment; a Pollio Romulus, that can preserve himself [884]“with wine and oil;” a man as fortunate as Q. Metellus, of whom Valerius so much brags; a man as healthy as Otto Herwardus, a senator of Augsburg in Germany, whom [885]Leovitius the astrologer brings in for an example and instance of certainty in his art; who because he had the significators in his geniture fortunate, and free from the hostile aspects of Saturn and Mars, being a very cold man, [886]“could not remember that ever he was sick.” [887]Paracelsus may brag that he could make a man live 400 years or more, if he might bring him up from his infancy, and diet him as he list; and some physicians hold, that there is no certain period of man's life; but it may still by temperance and physic be prolonged. We find in the meantime, by common experience, that no man can escape, but that of [888]Hesiod is true:
Division of Diseases.] If you require a more exact division of these ordinary diseases which are incident to men, I refer you to physicians; [889]they will tell you of acute and chronic, first and secondary, lethals, salutares, errant, fixed, simple, compound, connexed, or consequent, belonging to parts or the whole, in habit, or in disposition, &c. My division at this time (as most befitting my purpose) shall be into those of the body and mind. For them of the body, a brief catalogue of which Fuschius hath made, Institut. lib. 3, sect. 1, cap. 11. I refer you to the voluminous tomes of Galen, Areteus, Rhasis, Avicenna, Alexander, Paulus Aetius, Gordonerius: and those exact Neoterics, Savanarola, Capivaccius, Donatus Altomarus, Hercules de Saxonia, Mercurialis, Victorius Faventinus, Wecker, Piso, &c., that have methodically and elaborately written of them all. Those of the mind and head I will briefly handle, and apart.
These diseases of the mind, forasmuch as they have their chief seat and organs in the head, which are commonly repeated amongst the diseases of the head which are divers, and vary much according to their site. For in the head, as there be several parts, so there be divers grievances, which according to that division of [890]Heurnius, (which he takes out of Arculanus,) are inward or outward (to omit all others which pertain to eyes and ears, nostrils, gums, teeth, mouth, palate, tongue, weezle, chops, face, &c.) belonging properly to the brain, as baldness, falling of hair, furfur, lice, &c. [891]Inward belonging to the skins next to the brain, called dura and pia mater, as all headaches, &c., or to the ventricles, caules, kells, tunicles, creeks, and parts of it, and their passions, as caro, vertigo, incubus, apoplexy, falling sickness. The diseases of the nerves, cramps, stupor, convulsion, tremor, palsy: or belonging to the excrements of the brain, catarrhs, sneezing, rheums, distillations: or else those that pertain to the substance of the brain itself, in which are conceived frenzy, lethargy, melancholy, madness, weak memory, sopor, or Coma Vigilia et vigil Coma. Out of these again I will single such as properly belong to the phantasy, or imagination, or reason itself, which [892]Laurentius calls the disease of the mind; and Hildesheim, morbos imaginationis, aut rationis laesae, (diseases of the imagination, or of injured reason,) which are three or four in number, frenzy, madness, melancholy, dotage, and their kinds: as hydrophobia, lycanthropia, Chorus sancti viti, morbi daemoniaci, (St. Vitus's dance, possession of devils,) which I will briefly touch and point at, insisting especially in this of melancholy, as more eminent than the rest, and that through all his kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, cures: as Lonicerus hath done de apoplexia, and many other of such particular diseases. Not that I find fault with those which have written of this subject before, as Jason Pratensis, Laurentius, Montaltus, T. Bright, &c., they have done very well in their several kinds and methods; yet that which one omits, another may haply see; that which one contracts, another may enlarge. To conclude with [893]Scribanius, “that which they had neglected, or perfunctorily handled, we may more thoroughly examine; that which is obscurely delivered in them, may be perspicuously dilated and amplified by us:” and so made more familiar and easy for every man's capacity, and the common good, which is the chief end of my discourse.
Delirium, Dotage.] Dotage, fatuity, or folly, is a common name to all the following species, as some will have it. [894]Laurentius and [895] Altomarus comprehended madness, melancholy, and the rest under this name, and call it the summum genus of them all. If it be distinguished from them, it is natural or ingenite, which comes by some defect of the organs, and overmuch brain, as we see in our common fools; and is for the most part intended or remitted in particular men, and thereupon some are wiser than others: or else it is acquisite, an appendix or symptom of some other disease, which comes or goes; or if it continue, a sign of melancholy itself.
Frenzy.] Phrenitis, which the Greeks derive from the word φρην, is a disease of the mind, with a continual madness or dotage, which hath an acute fever annexed, or else an inflammation of the brain, or the membranes or kells of it, with an acute fever, which causeth madness and dotage. It differs from melancholy and madness, because their dotage is without an ague: this continual, with waking, or memory decayed, &c. Melancholy is most part silent, this clamorous; and many such like differences are assigned by physicians.
Madness.] Madness, frenzy, and melancholy are confounded by Celsus, and many writers; others leave out frenzy, and make madness and melancholy but one disease, which [896]Jason Pratensis especially labours, and that they differ only secundam majus or minus, in quantity alone, the one being a degree to the other, and both proceeding from one cause. They differ intenso et remisso gradu, saith [897]Gordonius, as the humour is intended or remitted. Of the same mind is [898]Areteus, Alexander Tertullianus, Guianerius, Savanarola, Heurnius; and Galen himself writes promiscuously of them both by reason of their affinity: but most of our neoterics do handle them apart, whom I will follow in this treatise. Madness is therefore defined to be a vehement dotage; or raving without a fever, far more violent than melancholy, full of anger and clamour, horrible looks, actions, gestures, troubling the patients with far greater vehemency both of body and mind, without all fear and sorrow, with such impetuous force and boldness, that sometimes three or four men cannot hold them. Differing only in this from frenzy, that it is without a fever, and their memory is most part better. It hath the same causes as the other, as choler adust, and blood incensed, brains inflamed, &c. [899]Fracastorius adds, “a due time, and full age” to this definition, to distinguish it from children, and will have it confirmed impotency, to separate it from such as accidentally come and go again, as by taking henbane, nightshade, wine, &c. Of this fury there be divers kinds; [900]ecstasy, which is familiar with some persons, as Cardan saith of himself, he could be in one when he list; in which the Indian priests deliver their oracles, and the witches in Lapland, as Olaus Magnus writeth, l. 3, cap. 18. Extasi omnia praedicere, answer all questions in an ecstasis you will ask; what your friends do, where they are, how they fare, &c. The other species of this fury are enthusiasms, revelations, and visions, so often mentioned by Gregory and Bede in their works; obsession or possession of devils, sibylline prophets, and poetical furies; such as come by eating noxious herbs, tarantulas stinging, &c., which some reduce to this. The most known are these, lycanthropia, hydrophobia, chorus sancti Viti.
Lycanthropia.] Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others lupinam insaniam, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts. [901]Aetius and [902]Paulus call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. Some make a doubt of it whether there be any such disease. [903]Donat ab Altomari saith, that he saw two of them in his time: [904]Wierus tells a story of such a one at Padua 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a wolf. He hath another instance of a Spaniard, who thought himself a bear; [905]Forrestus confirms as much by many examples; one amongst the rest of which he was an eyewitness, at Alcmaer in Holland, a poor husbandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful look. Such belike, or little better, were king Praetus' [906]daughters, that thought themselves kine. And Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel, as some interpreters hold, was only troubled with this kind of madness. This disease perhaps gave occasion to that bold assertion of [907]Pliny, “some men were turned into wolves in his time, and from wolves to men again:” and to that fable of Pausanias, of a man that was ten years a wolf, and afterwards turned to his former shape: to [908]Ovid's tale of Lycaon, &c. He that is desirous to hear of this disease, or more examples, let him read Austin in his 18th book de Civitate Dei, cap. 5. Mizaldus, cent. 5. 77. Sckenkius, lib. 1. Hildesheim, spicel. 2. de Mania. Forrestus lib. 10. de morbis cerebri. Olaus Magnus, Vincentius Bellavicensis, spec. met. lib. 31. c. 122. Pierius, Bodine, Zuinger, Zeilger, Peucer, Wierus, Spranger, &c. This malady, saith Avicenna, troubleth men most in February, and is nowadays frequent in Bohemia and Hungary, according to [909]Heurnius. Scheretzius will have it common in Livonia. They lie hid most part all day, and go abroad in the night, barking, howling, at graves and deserts; [910]“they have usually hollow eyes, scabbed legs and thighs, very dry and pale,” [911]saith Altomarus; he gives a reason there of all the symptoms, and sets down a brief cure of them.
Hydrophobia is a kind of madness, well known in every village, which comes by the biting of a mad dog, or scratching, saith [912]Aurelianus; touching, or smelling alone sometimes as [913]Sckenkius proves, and is incident to many other creatures as well as men: so called because the parties affected cannot endure the sight of water, or any liquor, supposing still they see a mad dog in it. And which is more wonderful; though they be very dry, (as in this malady they are) they will rather die than drink: [914]de Venenis Caelius Aurelianus, an ancient writer, makes a doubt whether this Hydrophobia be a passion of the body or the mind. The part affected is the brain: the cause, poison that comes from the mad dog, which is so hot and dry, that it consumes all the moisture in the body. [915] Hildesheim relates of some that died so mad; and being cut up, had no water, scarce blood, or any moisture left in them. To such as are so affected, the fear of water begins at fourteen days after they are bitten, to some again not till forty or sixty days after: commonly saith Heurnius, they begin to rave, fly water and glasses, to look red, and swell in the face, about twenty days after (if some remedy be not taken in the meantime) to lie awake, to be pensive, sad, to see strange visions, to bark and howl, to fall into a swoon, and oftentimes fits of the falling sickness. [916] Some say, little things like whelps will be seen in their urine. If any of these signs appear, they are past recovery. Many times these symptoms will not appear till six or seven months after, saith [917]Codronchus; and sometimes not till seven or eight years, as Guianerius; twelve as Albertus; six or eight months after, as Galen holds. Baldus the great lawyer died of it: an Augustine friar, and a woman in Delft, that were [918]Forrestus' patients, were miserably consumed with it. The common cure in the country (for such at least as dwell near the seaside) is to duck them over head and ears in sea water; some use charms: every good wife can prescribe medicines. But the best cure to be had in such cases, is from the most approved physicians; they that will read of them, may consult with Dioscorides, lib. 6. c. 37, Heurnius, Hildesheim, Capivaccius, Forrestus, Sckenkius and before all others Codronchus an Italian, who hath lately written two exquisite books on the subject.
Chorus sancti Viti, or St. Vitus's dance; the lascivious dance, [919] Paracelsus calls it, because they that are taken from it, can do nothing but dance till they be dead, or cured. It is so called, for that the parties so troubled were wont to go to St. Vitus for help, and after they had danced there awhile, they were [920]certainly freed. 'Tis strange to hear how long they will dance, and in what manner, over stools, forms, tables; even great bellied women sometimes (and yet never hurt their children) will dance so long that they can stir neither hand nor foot, but seem to be quite dead. One in red clothes they cannot abide. Music above all things they love, and therefore magistrates in Germany will hire musicians to play to them, and some lusty sturdy companions to dance with them. This disease hath been very common in Germany, as appears by those relations of [921]Sckenkius, and Paracelsus in his book of Madness, who brags how many several persons he hath cured of it. Felix Plateras de mentis alienat. cap. 3, reports of a woman in Basil whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind of palsy. Bodine in his 5th book de Repub. cap. 1, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius in his last epistle to Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of it.
The last kind of madness or melancholy, is that demoniacal (if I may so call it) obsession or possession of devils, which Platerus and others would have to be preternatural: stupend things are said of them, their actions, gestures, contortions, fasting, prophesying, speaking languages they were never taught, &c. Many strange stories are related of them, which because some will not allow, (for Deacon and Darrel have written large volumes on this subject pro and con.) I voluntarily omit.
[922]Fuschius, Institut. lib. 3. sec. 1. cap. 11, Felix Plater, [923]Laurentius, add to these another fury that proceeds from love, and another from study, another divine or religious fury; but these more properly belong to melancholy; of all which I will speak [924]apart, intending to write a whole book of them.
Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or habit. In disposition, is that transitory melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causeth anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions, [925]no man living is free, no stoic, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well composed, but more or less, some time or other he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality. [926]“Man that is born of a woman, is of short continuance, and full of trouble.” Zeno, Cato, Socrates himself, whom [927]Aelian so highly commends for a moderate temper, that “nothing could disturb him, but going out, and coming in, still Socrates kept the same serenity of countenance, what misery soever befell him,” (if we may believe Plato his disciple) was much tormented with it. Q. Metellus, in whom [928]Valerius gives instance of all happiness, “the most fortunate man then living, born in that most flourishing city of Rome, of noble parentage, a proper man of person, well qualified, healthful, rich, honourable, a senator, a consul, happy in his wife, happy in his children,” &c. yet this man was not void of melancholy, he had his share of sorrow. [929]Polycrates Samius, that flung his ring into the sea, because he would participate of discontent with others, and had it miraculously restored to him again shortly after, by a fish taken as he angled, was not free from melancholy dispositions. No man can cure himself; the very gods had bitter pangs, and frequent passions, as their own [930]poets put upon them. In general, [931]“as the heaven, so is our life, sometimes fair, sometimes overcast, tempestuous, and serene; as in a rose, flowers and prickles; in the year itself, a temperate summer sometimes, a hard winter, a drought, and then again pleasant showers: so is our life intermixed with joys, hopes, fears, sorrows, calumnies: Invicem cedunt dolor et voluptas,” there is a succession of pleasure and pain.
Before I proceed to define the disease of melancholy, what it is, or to discourse farther of it, I hold it not impertinent to make a brief digression of the anatomy of the body and faculties of the soul, for the better understanding of that which is to follow; because many hard words will often occur, as mirach, hypocondries, emerods, &c., imagination, reason, humours, spirits, vital, natural, animal, nerves, veins, arteries, chylus, pituita; which by the vulgar will not so easily be perceived, what they are, how cited, and to what end they serve. And besides, it may peradventure give occasion to some men to examine more accurately, search further into this most excellent subject, and thereupon with that royal [944]prophet to praise God, (“for a man is fearfully and wonderfully made, and curiously wrought”) that have time and leisure enough, and are sufficiently informed in all other worldly businesses, as to make a good bargain, buy and sell, to keep and make choice of a fair hawk, hound, horse, &c. But for such matters as concern the knowledge of themselves, they are wholly ignorant and careless; they know not what this body and soul are, how combined, of what parts and faculties they consist, or how a man differs from a dog. And what can be more ignominious and filthy (as [945]Melancthon well inveighs) “than for a man not to know the structure and composition of his own body, especially since the knowledge of it tends so much to the preservation, of his health, and information of his manners?” To stir them up therefore to this study, to peruse those elaborate works of [946]Galen, Bauhines, Plater, Vesalius, Falopius, Laurentius, Remelinus, &c., which have written copiously in Latin; or that which some of our industrious countrymen have done in our mother tongue, not long since, as that translation of [947]Columbus and [948] Microcosmographia, in thirteen books, I have made this brief digression. Also because [949]Wecker, [950]Melancthon, [951]Fernelius, [952] Fuschius, and those tedious Tracts de Anima (which have more compendiously handled and written of this matter,) are not at all times ready to be had, to give them some small taste, or notice of the rest, let this epitome suffice.
Of the parts of the body there may be many divisions: the most approved is that of [953]Laurentius, out of Hippocrates: which is, into parts contained, or containing. Contained, are either humours or spirits.
Humours.] A humour is a liquid or fluent part of the body, comprehended in it, for the preservation of it; and is either innate or born with us, or adventitious and acquisite. The radical or innate, is daily supplied by nourishment, which some call cambium, and make those secondary humours of ros and gluten to maintain it: or acquisite, to maintain these four first primary humours, coming and proceeding from the first concoction in the liver, by which means chylus is excluded. Some divide them into profitable and excrementitious. But [954]Crato out of Hippocrates will have all four to be juice, and not excrements, without which no living creature can be sustained: which four, though they be comprehended in the mass of blood, yet they have their several affections, by which they are distinguished from one another, and from those adventitious, peccant, or [955]diseased humours, as Melancthon calls them.
Blood.] Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humour, prepared in the mesaraic veins, and made of the most temperate parts of the chylus in the liver, whose office is to nourish the whole body, to give it strength and colour, being dispersed by the veins through every part of it. And from it spirits are first begotten in the heart, which afterwards by the arteries are communicated to the other parts.
Pituita, or phlegm, is a cold and moist humour, begotten of the colder part of the chylus (or white juice coming out of the meat digested in the stomach,) in the liver; his office is to nourish and moisten the members of the body, which as the tongue are moved, that they be not over dry.
Choler, is hot and dry, bitter, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus, and gathered to the gall: it helps the natural heat and senses, and serves to the expelling of excrements.
Melancholy.] Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, begotten of the more feculent part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen, is a bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones. These four humours have some analogy with the four elements, and to the four ages in man.
Serum, Sweat, Tears.] To these humours you may add serum, which is the matter of urine, and those excrementitious humours of the third concoction, sweat and tears.
Spirits.] Spirit is a most subtle vapour, which is expressed from the blood, and the instrument of the soul, to perform all his actions; a common tie or medium between the body and the soul, as some will have it; or as [956]Paracelsus, a fourth soul of itself. Melancthon holds the fountain of those spirits to be the heart, begotten there; and afterward conveyed to the brain, they take another nature to them. Of these spirits there be three kinds, according to the three principal parts, brain, heart, liver; natural, vital, animal. The natural are begotten in the liver, and thence dispersed through the veins, to perform those natural actions. The vital spirits are made in the heart of the natural, which by the arteries are transported to all the other parts: if the spirits cease, then life ceaseth, as in a syncope or swooning. The animal spirits formed of the vital, brought up to the brain, and diffused by the nerves, to the subordinate members, give sense and motion to them all.
Similar Parts] Containing parts, by reason of their more solid substance, are either homogeneal or heterogeneal, similar or dissimilar; so Aristotle divides them, lib. 1, cap. 1, de Hist. Animal.; Laurentius, cap. 20, lib. 1. Similar, or homogeneal, are such as, if they be divided, are still severed into parts of the same nature, as water into water. Of these some be spermatical, some fleshy or carnal. [957]Spermatical are such as are immediately begotten of the seed, which are bones, gristles, ligaments, membranes, nerves, arteries, veins, skins, fibres or strings, fat.
Bones.] The bones are dry and hard, begotten of the thickest of the seed, to strengthen and sustain other parts: some say there be 304, some 307, or 313 in man's body. They have no nerves in them, and are therefore without sense.
A gristle is a substance softer than bone, and harder than the rest, flexible, and serves to maintain the parts of motion.
Ligaments are they that tie the bones together, and other parts to the bones, with their subserving tendons: membranes' office is to cover the rest.
Nerves, or sinews, are membranes without, and full of marrow within; they proceed from the brain, and carry the animal spirits for sense and motion. Of these some be harder, some softer; the softer serve the senses, and there be seven pair of them. The first be the optic nerves, by which we see; the second move the eyes; the third pair serve for the tongue to taste; the fourth pair for the taste in the palate; the fifth belong to the ears; the sixth pair is most ample, and runs almost over all the bowels; the seventh pair moves the tongue. The harder sinews serve for the motion of the inner parts, proceeding from the marrow in the back, of whom there be thirty combinations, seven of the neck, twelve of the breast, &c.
Arteries.] Arteries are long and hollow, with a double skin to convey the vital spirit; to discern which the better, they say that Vesalius the anatomist was wont to cut up men alive. [958]They arise in the left side of the heart, and are principally two, from which the rest are derived, aorta and venosa: aorta is the root of all the other, which serve the whole body; the other goes to the lungs, to fetch air to refrigerate the heart.
Veins.] Veins are hollow and round, like pipes, arising from the liver, carrying blood and natural spirits; they feed all the parts. Of these there be two chief, Vena porta and Vena cava, from which the rest are corrivated. That Vena porta is a vein coming from the concave of the liver, and receiving those mesaraical veins, by whom he takes the chylus from the stomach and guts, and conveys it to the liver. The other derives blood from the liver to nourish all the other dispersed members. The branches of that Vena porta are the mesaraical and haemorrhoids. The branches of the cava are inward or outward. Inward, seminal or emulgent. Outward, in the head, arms, feet, &c., and have several names.
Fibrae, Fat, Flesh.] Fibrae are strings, white and solid, dispersed through the whole member, and right, oblique, transverse, all which have their several uses. Fat is a similar part, moist, without blood, composed of the most thick and unctuous matter of the blood. The [959]skin covers the rest, and hath cuticulum, or a little skin tinder it. Flesh is soft and ruddy, composed of the congealing of blood, &c.
Dissimilar parts are those which we call organical, or instrumental, and they be inward or outward. The chiefest outward parts are situate forward or backward:—forward, the crown and foretop of the head, skull, face, forehead, temples, chin, eyes, ears, nose, &c., neck, breast, chest, upper and lower part of the belly, hypocondries, navel, groin, flank, &c.; backward, the hinder part of the head, back, shoulders, sides, loins, hipbones, os sacrum, buttocks, &c. Or joints, arms, hands, feet, legs, thighs, knees, &c. Or common to both, which, because they are obvious and well known, I have carelessly repeated, eaque praecipua et grandiora tantum; quod reliquum ex libris de anima qui volet, accipiat.
Inward organical parts, which cannot be seen, are divers in number, and have several names, functions, and divisions; but that of [960]Laurentius is most notable, into noble or ignoble parts. Of the noble there be three principal parts, to which all the rest belong, and whom they serve—brain, heart, liver; according to whose site, three regions, or a threefold division, is made of the whole body. As first of the head, in which the animal organs are contained, and brain itself, which by his nerves give sense and motion to the rest, and is, as it were, a privy counsellor and chancellor to the heart. The second region is the chest, or middle belly, in which the heart as king keeps his court, and by his arteries communicates life to the whole body. The third region is the lower belly, in which the liver resides as a Legat a latere, with the rest of those natural organs, serving for concoction, nourishment, expelling of excrements. This lower region is distinguished from the upper by the midriff, or diaphragma, and is subdivided again by [961]some into three concavities or regions, upper, middle, and lower. The upper of the hypocondries, in whose right side is the liver, the left the spleen; from which is denominated hypochondriacal melancholy. The second of the navel and flanks, divided from the first by the rim. The last of the water course, which is again subdivided into three other parts. The Arabians make two parts of this region, Epigastrium and Hypogastrium, upper or lower. Epigastrium they call Mirach, from whence comes Mirachialis Melancholia, sometimes mentioned of them. Of these several regions I will treat in brief apart; and first of the third region, in which the natural organs are contained.
De Anima.—The Lower Region, Natural Organs.] But you that are readers in the meantime, “Suppose you were now brought into some sacred temple, or majestical palace” (as [962]Melancthon saith), “to behold not the matter only, but the singular art, workmanship, and counsel of this our great Creator. And it is a pleasant and profitable speculation, if it be considered aright.” The parts of this region, which present themselves to your consideration and view, are such as serve to nutrition or generation. Those of nutrition serve to the first or second concoction; as the oesophagus or gullet, which brings meat and drink into the stomach. The ventricle or stomach, which is seated in the midst of that part of the belly beneath the midriff, the kitchen, as it were, of the first concoction, and which turns our meat into chylus. It hath two mouths, one above, another beneath. The upper is sometimes taken for the stomach itself; the lower and nether door (as Wecker calls it) is named Pylorus. This stomach is sustained by a large kell or caul, called omentum; which some will have the same with peritoneum, or rim of the belly. From the stomach to the very fundament are produced the guts, or intestina, which serve a little to alter and distribute the chylus, and convey away the excrements. They are divided into small and great, by reason of their site and substance, slender or thicker: the slender is duodenum, or whole gut, which is next to the stomach, some twelve inches long, saith [963] Fuschius. Jejunum, or empty gut, continuate to the other, which hath many mesaraic veins annexed to it, which take part of the chylus to the liver from it. Ilion the third, which consists of many crinkles, which serves with the rest to receive, keep, and distribute the chylus from the stomach. The thick guts are three, the blind gut, colon, and right gut. The blind is a thick and short gut, having one mouth, in which the ilium and colon meet: it receives the excrements, and conveys them to the colon. This colon hath many windings, that the excrements pass not away too fast: the right gut is straight, and conveys the excrements to the fundament, whose lower part is bound up with certain muscles called sphincters, that the excrements may be the better contained, until such time as a man be willing to go to the stool. In the midst of these guts is situated the mesenterium or midriff, composed of many veins, arteries, and much fat, serving chiefly to sustain the guts. All these parts serve the first concoction. To the second, which is busied either in refining the good nourishment or expelling the bad, is chiefly belonging the liver, like in colour to congealed blood, the shop of blood, situate in the right hypochondry, in figure like to a half-moon, generosum membrum Melancthon styles it, a generous part; it serves to turn the chylus to blood, for the nourishment of the body. The excrements of it are either choleric or watery, which the other subordinate parts convey. The gall placed in the concave of the liver, extracts choler to it: the spleen, melancholy; which is situate on the left side, over against the liver, a spongy matter, that draws this black choler to it by a secret virtue, and feeds upon it, conveying the rest to the bottom of the stomach, to stir up appetite, or else to the guts as an excrement. That watery matter the two kidneys expurgate by those emulgent veins and ureters. The emulgent draw this superfluous moisture from the blood; the two ureters convey it to the bladder, which, by reason of his site in the lower belly, is apt to receive it, having two parts, neck and bottom: the bottom holds the water, the neck is constringed with a muscle, which, as a porter, keeps the water from running out against our will.
Members of generation are common to both sexes, or peculiar to one; which, because they are impertinent to my purpose, I do voluntarily omit.
Middle Region.] Next in order is the middle region, or chest, which comprehends the vital faculties and parts; which (as I have said) is separated from the lower belly by the diaphragma or midriff, which is a skin consisting of many nerves, membranes; and amongst other uses it hath, is the instrument of laughing. There is also a certain thin membrane, full of sinews, which covereth the whole chest within, and is called pleura, the seat of the disease called pleurisy, when it is inflamed; some add a third skin, which is termed mediastinus, which divides the chest into two parts, right and left; of this region the principal part is the heart, which is the seat and fountain of life, of heat, of spirits, of pulse and respiration—the sun of our body, the king and sole commander of it—the seat and organ of all passions and affections. Primum vivens, ultimum moriens, it lives first, dies last in all creatures. Of a pyramidical form, and not much unlike to a pineapple; a part worthy of [964] admiration, that can yield such variety of affections, by whose motion it is dilated or contracted, to stir and command the humours in the body. As in sorrow, melancholy; in anger, choler; in joy, to send the blood outwardly; in sorrow, to call it in; moving the humours, as horses do a chariot. This heart, though it be one sole member, yet it may be divided into two creeks right and left. The right is like the moon increasing, bigger than the other part, and receives blood from vena cava, distributing some of it to the lungs to nourish them; the rest to the left side, to engender spirits. The left creek hath the form of a cone, and is the seat of life, which, as a torch doth oil, draws blood unto it, begetting of it spirits and fire; and as fire in a torch, so are spirits in the blood; and by that great artery called aorta, it sends vital spirits over the body, and takes air from the lungs by that artery which is called venosa; so that both creeks have their vessels, the right two veins, the left two arteries, besides those two common anfractuous ears, which serve them both; the one to hold blood, the other air, for several uses. The lungs is a thin spongy part, like an ox hoof, (saith [965]Fernelius) the town-clerk or crier, ([966]one terms it) the instrument of voice, as an orator to a king; annexed to the heart, to express their thoughts by voice. That it is the instrument of voice, is manifest, in that no creature can speak, or utter any voice, which wanteth these lights. It is, besides, the instrument of respiration, or breathing; and its office is to cool the heart, by sending air unto it, by the venosal artery, which vein comes to the lungs by that aspera arteria which consists of many gristles, membranes, nerves, taking in air at the nose and mouth, and by it likewise exhales the fumes of the heart.
In the upper region serving the animal faculties, the chief organ is the brain, which is a soft, marrowish, and white substance, engendered of the purest part of seed and spirits, included by many skins, and seated within the skull or brain pan; and it is the most noble organ under heaven, the dwelling-house and seat of the soul, the habitation of wisdom, memory, judgment, reason, and in which man is most like unto God; and therefore nature hath covered it with a skull of hard bone, and two skins or membranes, whereof the one is called dura mater, or meninx, the other pia mater. The dura mater is next to the skull, above the other, which includes and protects the brain. When this is taken away, the pia mater is to be seen, a thin membrane, the next and immediate cover of the brain, and not covering only, but entering into it. The brain itself is divided into two parts, the fore and hinder part; the fore part is much bigger than the other, which is called the little brain in respect of it. This fore part hath many concavities distinguished by certain ventricles, which are the receptacles of the spirits, brought hither by the arteries from the heart, and are there refined to a more heavenly nature, to perform the actions of the soul. Of these ventricles there are three—right, left, and middle. The right and left answer to their site, and beget animal spirits; if they be any way hurt, sense and motion ceaseth. These ventricles, moreover, are held to be the seat of the common sense. The middle ventricle is a common concourse and cavity of them both, and hath two passages—the one to receive pituita, and the other extends itself to the fourth creek; in this they place imagination and cogitation, and so the three ventricles of the fore part of the brain are used. The fourth creek behind the head is common to the cerebel or little brain, and marrow of the backbone, the last and most solid of all the rest, which receives the animal spirits from the other ventricles, and conveys them to the marrow in the back, and is the place where they say the memory is seated.
According to [967]Aristotle, the soul is defined to be ἐντελέχεια, perfectio et actus primus corporis organici, vitam habentis in potentia: the perfection or first act of an organical body, having power of life, which most [968]philosophers approve. But many doubts arise about the essence, subject, seat, distinction, and subordinate faculties of it. For the essence and particular knowledge, of all other things it is most hard (be it of man or beast) to discern, as [969]Aristotle himself, [970]Tully, [971]Picus Mirandula, [972]Tolet, and other neoteric philosophers confess:—[973]“We can understand all things by her, but what she is we cannot apprehend.” Some therefore make one soul, divided into three principal faculties; others, three distinct souls. Which question of late hath been much controverted by Picolomineus and Zabarel. [974] Paracelsus will have four souls, adding to the three grand faculties a spiritual soul: which opinion of his, Campanella, in his book de sensu rerum [975]much labours to demonstrate and prove, because carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer; with many such arguments And [976]some again, one soul of all creatures whatsoever, differing only in organs; and that beasts have reason as well as men, though, for some defect of organs, not in such measure. Others make a doubt whether it be all in all, and all in every part; which is amply discussed in Zabarel amongst the rest. The [977]common division of the soul is into three principal faculties—vegetal, sensitive, and rational, which make three distinct kinds of living creatures—vegetal plants, sensible beasts, rational men. How these three principal faculties are distinguished and connected, Humano ingenio inaccessum videtur, is beyond human capacity, as [978] Taurellus, Philip, Flavins, and others suppose. The inferior may be alone, but the superior cannot subsist without the other; so sensible includes vegetal, rational both; which are contained in it (saith Aristotle) ut trigonus in tetragono as a triangle in a quadrangle.
Vegetal Soul.] Vegetal, the first of the three distinct faculties, is defined to be “a substantial act of an organical body, by which it is nourished, augmented, and begets another like unto itself.” In which definition, three several operations are specified—altrix, auctrix, procreatrix; the first is [979]nutrition, whose object is nourishment, meat, drink, and the like; his organ the liver in sensible creatures; in plants, the root or sap. His office is to turn the nutriment into the substance of the body nourished, which he performs by natural heat. This nutritive operation hath four other subordinate functions or powers belonging to it—attraction, retention, digestion, expulsion.
Attraction.] [980]Attraction is a ministering faculty, which, as a loadstone doth iron, draws meat into the stomach, or as a lamp doth oil; and this attractive power is very necessary in plants, which suck up moisture by the root, as, another mouth, into the sap, as a like stomach.
Retention.] Retention keeps it, being attracted unto the stomach, until such time it be concocted; for if it should pass away straight, the body could not be nourished.
Digestion.] Digestion is performed by natural heat; for as the flame of a torch consumes oil, wax, tallow, so doth it alter and digest the nutritive matter. Indigestion is opposite unto it, for want of natural heat. Of this digestion there be three differences—maturation, elixation, assation.
Maturation.] Maturation is especially observed in the fruits of trees; which are then said to be ripe, when the seeds are fit to be sown again. Crudity is opposed to it, which gluttons, epicures, and idle persons are most subject unto, that use no exercise to stir natural heat, or else choke it, as too much wood puts out a fire.
Elixation.] Elixation is the seething of meat in the stomach, by the said natural heat, as meat is boiled in a pot; to which corruption or putrefaction is opposite.
Assation.] Assation is a concoction of the inward moisture by heat; his opposite is semiustulation.
Order of Concoction fourfold.] Besides these three several operations of digestion, there is a fourfold order of concoction:—mastication, or chewing in the mouth; chilification of this so chewed meat in the stomach; the third is in the liver, to turn this chylus into blood, called sanguification; the last is assimilation, which is in every part.
Expulsion.] Expulsion is a power of nutrition, by which it expels all superfluous excrements, and relics of meat and drink, by the guts, bladder, pores; as by purging, vomiting, spitting, sweating, urine, hairs, nails, &c.
Augmentation.] As this nutritive faculty serves to nourish the body, so doth the augmenting faculty (the second operation or power of the vegetal faculty) to the increasing of it in quantity, according to all dimensions, long, broad, thick, and to make it grow till it come to his due proportion and perfect shape; which hath his period of augmentation, as of consumption; and that most certain, as the poet observes:—
Generation.] The last of these vegetal faculties is generation, which begets another by means of seed, like unto itself, to the perpetual preservation of the species. To this faculty they ascribe three subordinate operations:—the first to turn nourishment into seed, &c.
Life and Death concomitants of the Vegetal Faculties.] Necessary concomitants or affections of this vegetal faculty are life and his privation, death. To the preservation of life the natural heat is most requisite, though siccity and humidity, and those first qualities, be not excluded. This heat is likewise in plants, as appears by their increasing, fructifying, &c., though not so easily perceived. In all bodies it must have radical [981]moisture to preserve it, that it be not consumed; to which preservation our clime, country, temperature, and the good or bad use of those six non-natural things avail much. For as this natural heat and moisture decays, so doth our life itself; and if not prevented before by some violent accident, or interrupted through our own default, is in the end dried up by old age, and extinguished by death for want of matter, as a lamp for defect of oil to maintain it.
Next in order is the sensible faculty, which is as far beyond the other in dignity, as a beast is preferred to a plant, having those vegetal powers included in it. 'Tis defined an “Act of an organical body by which it lives, hath sense, appetite, judgment, breath, and motion.” His object in general is a sensible or passible quality, because the sense is affected with it. The general organ is the brain, from which principally the sensible operations are derived. This sensible soul is divided into two parts, apprehending or moving. By the apprehensive power we perceive the species of sensible things present, or absent, and retain them as wax doth the print of a seal. By the moving, the body is outwardly carried from one place to another; or inwardly moved by spirits and pulse. The apprehensive faculty is subdivided into two parts, inward or outward. Outward, as the five senses, of touching, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, to which you may add Scaliger's sixth sense of titillation, if you please; or that of speech, which is the sixth external sense, according to Lullius. Inward are three—common sense, phantasy, memory. Those five outward senses have their object in outward things only, and such as are present, as the eye sees no colour except it be at hand, the ear sound. Three of these senses are of commodity, hearing, sight, and smell; two of necessity, touch, and taste, without which we cannot live. Besides, the sensitive power is active or passive. Active in sight, the eye sees the colour; passive when it is hurt by his object, as the eye by the sunbeams. According to that axiom, visibile forte destruit sensum. [982]Or if the object be not pleasing, as a bad sound to the ear, a stinking smell to the nose, &c.
Sight.] Of these five senses, sight is held to be most precious, and the best, and that by reason of his object, it sees the whole body at once. By it we learn, and discern all things, a sense most excellent for use: to the sight three things are required; the object, the organ, and the medium. The object in general is visible, or that which is to be seen, as colours, and all shining bodies. The medium is the illumination of the air, which comes from [983]light, commonly called diaphanum; for in dark we cannot see. The organ is the eye, and chiefly the apple of it, which by those optic nerves, concurring both in one, conveys the sight to the common sense. Between the organ and object a true distance is required, that it be not too near, or too far off! Many excellent questions appertain to this sense, discussed by philosophers: as whether this sight be caused intra mittendo, vel extra mittendo, &c., by receiving in the visible species, or sending of them out, which [984]Plato, [985]Plutarch, [986]Macrobius, [987]Lactantius and others dispute. And, besides, it is the subject of the perspectives, of which Alhazen the Arabian, Vitellio, Roger Bacon, Baptista Porta, Guidus Ubaldus, Aquilonius, &c., have written whole volumes.
Hearing.] Hearing, a most excellent outward sense, “by which we learn and get knowledge.” His object is sound, or that which is heard; the medium, air; organ, the ear. To the sound, which is a collision of the air, three things are required; a body to strike, as the hand of a musician; the body struck, which must be solid and able to resist; as a bell, lute-string, not wool, or sponge; the medium, the air; which is inward, or outward; the outward being struck or collided by a solid body, still strikes the next air, until it come to that inward natural air, which as an exquisite organ is contained in a little skin formed like a drum-head, and struck upon by certain small instruments like drum-sticks, conveys the sound by a pair of nerves, appropriated to that use, to the common sense, as to a judge of sounds. There is great variety and much delight in them; for the knowledge of which, consult with Boethius and other musicians.
Smelling.] Smelling is an “outward sense, which apprehends by the nostrils drawing in air;” and of all the rest it is the weakest sense in men. The organ in the nose, or two small hollow pieces of flesh a little above it: the medium the air to men, as water to fish: the object, smell, arising from a mixed body resolved, which, whether it be a quality, fume, vapour, or exhalation, I will not now dispute, or of their differences, and how they are caused. This sense is an organ of health, as sight and hearing, saith [988]Agellius, are of discipline; and that by avoiding bad smells, as by choosing good, which do as much alter and affect the body many times, as diet itself.
Taste.] Taste, a necessary sense, “which perceives all savours by the tongue and palate, and that by means of a thin spittle, or watery juice.” His organ is the tongue with his tasting nerves; the medium, a watery juice; the object, taste, or savour, which is a quality in the juice, arising from the mixture of things tasted. Some make eight species or kinds of savour, bitter, sweet, sharp, salt, &c., all which sick men (as in an ague) cannot discern, by reason of their organs misaffected.
Touching.] Touch, the last of the senses, and most ignoble, yet of as great necessity as the other, and of as much pleasure. This sense is exquisite in men, and by his nerves dispersed all over the body, perceives any tactile quality. His organ the nerves; his object those first qualities, hot, dry, moist, cold; and those that follow them, hard, soft, thick, thin, &c. Many delightsome questions are moved by philosophers about these five senses; their organs, objects, mediums, which for brevity I omit.
Common Sense.] Inner senses are three in number, so called, because they be within the brainpan, as common sense, phantasy, memory. Their objects are not only things present, but they perceive the sensible species of things to come, past, absent, such as were before in the sense. This common sense is the judge or moderator of the rest, by whom we discern all differences of objects; for by mine eye I do not know that I see, or by mine ear that I hear, but by my common sense, who judgeth of sounds and colours: they are but the organs to bring the species to be censured; so that all their objects are his, and all their offices are his. The fore part of the brain is his organ or seat.
Phantasy.] Phantasy, or imagination, which some call estimative, or cogitative, (confirmed, saith [989]Fernelius, by frequent meditation,) is an inner sense which doth more fully examine the species perceived by common sense, of things present or absent, and keeps them longer, recalling them to mind again, or making new of his own. In time of sleep this faculty is free, and many times conceive strange, stupend, absurd shapes, as in sick men we commonly observe. His organ is the middle cell of the brain; his objects all the species communicated to him by the common sense, by comparison of which he feigns infinite other unto himself. In melancholy men this faculty is most powerful and strong, and often hurts, producing many monstrous and prodigious things, especially if it be stirred up by some terrible object, presented to it from common sense or memory. In poets and painters imagination forcibly works, as appears by their several fictions, antics, images: as Ovid's house of sleep, Psyche's palace in Apuleius, &c. In men it is subject and governed by reason, or at least should be; but in brutes it hath no superior, and is ratio brutorum, all the reason they have.
Memory.] Memory lays up all the species which the senses have brought in, and records them as a good register, that they may be forthcoming when they are called for by phantasy and reason. His object is the same with phantasy, his seat and organ the back part of the brain.
Affections of the Senses, sleep and waking.] The affections of these senses are sleep and waking, common to all sensible creatures. “Sleep is a rest or binding of the outward senses, and of the common sense, for the preservation of body and soul” (as Scaliger [990]defines it); for when the common sense resteth, the outward senses rest also. The phantasy alone is free, and his commander reason: as appears by those imaginary dreams, which are of divers kinds, natural, divine, demoniacal, &c., which vary according to humours, diet, actions, objects, &c., of which Artemidorus, Cardanus, and Sambucus, with their several interpretators, have written great volumes. This litigation of senses proceeds from an inhibition of spirits, the way being stopped by which they should come; this stopping is caused of vapours arising out of the stomach, filling the nerves, by which the spirits should be conveyed. When these vapours are spent, the passage is open, and the spirits perform their accustomed duties: so that “waking is the action and motion of the senses, which the spirits dispersed over all parts cause.”
Appetite] This moving faculty is the other power of the sensitive soul, which causeth all those inward and outward animal motions in the body. It is divided into two faculties, the power of appetite, and of moving from place to place. This of appetite is threefold, so some will have it; natural, as it signifies any such inclination, as of a stone to fall downward, and such actions as retention, expulsion, which depend not on sense, but are vegetal, as the appetite of meat and drink; hunger and thirst. Sensitive is common to men and brutes. Voluntary, the third, or intellective, which commands the other two in men, and is a curb unto them, or at least should be, but for the most part is captivated and overruled by them; and men are led like beasts by sense, giving reins to their concupiscence and several lusts. For by this appetite the soul is led or inclined to follow that good which the senses shall approve, or avoid that which they hold evil: his object being good or evil, the one he embraceth, the other he rejecteth; according to that aphorism, Omnia appetunt bonum, all things seek their own good, or at least seeming good. This power is inseparable from sense, for where sense is, there are likewise pleasure and pain. His organ is the same with the common sense, and is divided into two powers, or inclinations, concupiscible or irascible: or (as one [991] translates it) coveting, anger invading, or impugning. Concupiscible covets always pleasant and delightsome things, and abhors that which is distasteful, harsh, and unpleasant. Irascible, quasi [992] aversans per iram et odium, as avoiding it with anger and indignation. All affections and perturbations arise out of these two fountains, which, although the stoics make light of, we hold natural, and not to be resisted. The good affections are caused by some object of the same nature; and if present, they procure joy, which dilates the heart, and preserves the body: if absent, they cause hope, love, desire, and concupiscence. The bad are simple or mixed: simple for some bad object present, as sorrow, which contracts the heart, macerates the soul, subverts the good estate of the body, hindering all the operations of it, causing melancholy, and many times death itself; or future, as fear. Out of these two arise those mixed affections and passions of anger, which is a desire of revenge; hatred, which is inveterate anger; zeal, which is offended with him who hurts that he loves; and ἐπικαιρεκακία, a compound affection of joy and hate, when we rejoice at other men's mischief, and are grieved at their prosperity; pride, self-love, emulation, envy, shame, &c., of which elsewhere.
Moving from place to place, is a faculty necessarily following the other. For in vain were it otherwise to desire and to abhor, if we had not likewise power to prosecute or eschew, by moving the body from place to place: by this faculty therefore we locally move the body, or any part of it, and go from one place to another. To the better performance of which, three things are requisite: that which moves; by what it moves; that which is moved. That which moves, is either the efficient cause, or end. The end is the object, which is desired or eschewed; as in a dog to catch a hare, &c. The efficient cause in man is reason, or his subordinate phantasy, which apprehends good or bad objects: in brutes imagination alone, which moves the appetite, the appetite this faculty, which by an admirable league of nature, and by meditation of the spirit, commands the organ by which it moves: and that consists of nerves, muscles, cords, dispersed through the whole body, contracted and relaxed as the spirits will, which move the muscles, or [993]nerves in the midst of them, and draw the cord, and so per consequens the joint, to the place intended. That which is moved, is the body or some member apt to move. The motion of the body is divers, as going, running, leaping, dancing, sitting, and such like, referred to the predicament of situs. Worms creep, birds fly, fishes swim; and so of parts, the chief of which is respiration or breathing, and is thus performed. The outward air is drawn in by the vocal artery, and sent by mediation of the midriff to the lungs, which, dilating themselves as a pair of bellows, reciprocally fetch it in, and send it out to the heart to cool it; and from thence now being hot, convey it again, still taking in fresh. Such a like motion is that of the pulse, of which, because many have written whole books, I will say nothing.
In the precedent subsections I have anatomised those inferior faculties of the soul; the rational remaineth, “a pleasant, but a doubtful subject” (as [994]one terms it), and with the like brevity to be discussed. Many erroneous opinions are about the essence and original of it; whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates; whether it be organical, or inorganical; seated in the brain, heart or blood; mortal or immortal; how it comes into the body. Some hold that it is ex traduce, as Phil. 1. de Anima, Tertullian, Lactantius de opific. Dei, cap. 19. Hugo, lib. de Spiritu et Anima, Vincentius Bellavic. spec. natural. lib. 23. cap. 2. et 11. Hippocrates, Avicenna, and many [995] late writers; that one man begets another, body and soul; or as a candle from a candle, to be produced from the seed: otherwise, say they, a man begets but half a man, and is worse than a beast that begets both matter and form; and, besides, the three faculties of the soul must be together infused, which is most absurd as they hold, because in beasts they are begot, the two inferior I mean, and may not be well separated in men. [996] Galen supposeth the soul crasin esse, to be the temperature itself; Trismegistus, Musaeus, Orpheus, Homer, Pindarus, Phaerecides Syrus, Epictetus, with the Chaldees and Egyptians, affirmed the soul to be immortal, as did those British [997]Druids of old. The [998]Pythagoreans defend Metempsychosis; and Palingenesia, that souls go from one body to another, epota prius Lethes unda, as men into wolves, bears, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in their lives, or participated in conditions:
“Understanding is a power of the soul, [1011]by which we perceive, know, remember, and judge as well singulars, as universals, having certain innate notices or beginnings of arts, a reflecting action, by which it judgeth of his own doings, and examines them.” Out of this definition (besides his chief office, which is to apprehend, judge all that he performs, without the help of any instruments or organs) three differences appear betwixt a man and a beast. As first, the sense only comprehends singularities, the understanding universalities. Secondly, the sense hath no innate notions. Thirdly, brutes cannot reflect upon themselves. Bees indeed make neat and curious works, and many other creatures besides; but when they have done, they cannot judge of them. His object is God, ens, all nature, and whatsoever is to be understood: which successively it apprehends. The object first moving the understanding, is some sensible thing; after by discoursing, the mind finds out the corporeal substance, and from thence the spiritual. His actions (some say) are apprehension, composition, division, discoursing, reasoning, memory, which some include in invention, and judgment. The common divisions are of the understanding, agent, and patient; speculative, and practical; in habit, or in act; simple, or compound. The agent is that which is called the wit of man, acumen or subtlety, sharpness of invention, when he doth invent of himself without a teacher, or learns anew, which abstracts those intelligible species from the phantasy, and transfers them to the passive understanding, [1012] “because there is nothing in the understanding, which was not first in the sense.” That which the imagination hath taken from the sense, this agent judgeth of, whether it be true or false; and being so judged he commits it to the passible to be kept. The agent is a doctor or teacher, the passive a scholar; and his office is to keep and further judge of such things as are committed to his charge; as a bare and rased table at first, capable of all forms and notions. Now these notions are twofold, actions or habits: actions, by which we take notions of, and perceive things; habits, which are durable lights and notions, which we may use when we will. Some reckon up eight kinds of them, sense, experience, intelligence, faith, suspicion, error, opinion, science; to which are added art, prudency, wisdom: as also [1013]synteresis, dictamen rationis, conscience; so that in all there be fourteen species of the understanding, of which some are innate, as the three last mentioned; the other are gotten by doctrine, learning, and use. Plato will have all to be innate: Aristotle reckons up but five intellectual habits; two practical, as prudency, whose end is to practise; to fabricate; wisdom to comprehend the use and experiments of all notions and habits whatsoever. Which division of Aristotle (if it be considered aright) is all one with the precedent; for three being innate, and five acquisite, the rest are improper, imperfect, and in a more strict examination excluded. Of all these I should more amply dilate, but my subject will not permit. Three of them I will only point at, as more necessary to my following discourse.
Synteresis, or the purer part of the conscience, is an innate habit, and doth signify “a conversation of the knowledge of the law of God and Nature, to know good or evil.” And (as our divines hold) it is rather in the understanding than in the will. This makes the major proposition in a practical syllogism. The dictamen rationis is that which doth admonish us to do good or evil, and is the minor in the syllogism. The conscience is that which approves good or evil, justifying or condemning our actions, and is the conclusion of the syllogism: as in that familiar example of Regulus the Roman, taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, and suffered to go to Rome, on that condition he should return again, or pay so much for his ransom. The synteresis proposeth the question; his word, oath, promise, is to be religiously kept, although to his enemy, and that by the law of nature. [1014]“Do not that to another which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.” Dictamen applies it to him, and dictates this or the like: Regulus, thou wouldst not another man should falsify his oath, or break promise with thee: conscience concludes, therefore, Regulus, thou dost well to perform thy promise, and oughtest to keep thine oath. More of this in Religious Melancholy.
Will is the other power of the rational soul, [1015]“which covets or avoids such things as have been before judged and apprehended by the understanding.” If good, it approves; if evil, it abhors it: so that his object is either good or evil. Aristotle calls this our rational appetite; for as, in the sensitive, we are moved to good or bad by our appetite, ruled and directed by sense; so in this we are carried by reason. Besides, the sensitive appetite hath a particular object, good or bad; this an universal, immaterial: that respects only things delectable and pleasant; this honest. Again, they differ in liberty. The sensual appetite seeing an object, if it be a convenient good, cannot but desire it; if evil, avoid it: but this is free in his essence, [1016]“much now depraved, obscured, and fallen from his first perfection; yet in some of his operations still free,” as to go, walk, move at his pleasure, and to choose whether it will do or not do, steal or not steal. Otherwise, in vain were laws, deliberations, exhortations, counsels, precepts, rewards, promises, threats and punishments: and God should be the author of sin. But in [1017] spiritual things we will no good, prone to evil (except we be regenerate, and led by the Spirit), we are egged on by our natural concupiscence, and there is ἀταξία, a confusion in our powers, [1018]“our whole will is averse from God and his law,” not in natural things only, as to eat and drink, lust, to which we are led headlong by our temperature and inordinate appetite,
The actions of the will are velle and nolle, to will and nill: which two words comprehend all, and they are good or bad, accordingly as they are directed, and some of them freely performed by himself; although the stoics absolutely deny it, and will have all things inevitably done by destiny, imposing a fatal necessity upon us, which we may not resist; yet we say that our will is free in respect of us, and things contingent, howsoever in respect of God's determinate counsel, they are inevitable and necessary. Some other actions of the will are performed by the inferior powers, which obey him, as the sensitive and moving appetite; as to open our eyes, to go hither and thither, not to touch a book, to speak fair or foul: but this appetite is many times rebellious in us, and will not be contained within the lists of sobriety and temperance. It was (as I said) once well agreeing with reason, and there was an excellent consent and harmony between them, but that is now dissolved, they often jar, reason is overborne by passion: Fertur equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas, as so many wild horses run away with a chariot, and will not be curbed. We know many times what is good, but will not do it, as she said,
Those natural and vegetal powers are not commanded by will at all; for “who can add one cubit to his stature?” These other may, but are not: and thence come all those headstrong passions, violent perturbations of the mind; and many times vicious habits, customs, feral diseases; because we give so much way to our appetite, and follow our inclination, like so many beasts. The principal habits are two in number, virtue and vice, whose peculiar definitions, descriptions, differences, and kinds, are handled at large in the ethics, and are, indeed, the subject of moral philosophy.
Having thus briefly anatomised the body and soul of man, as a preparative to the rest; I may now freely proceed to treat of my intended object, to most men's capacity; and after many ambages, perspicuously define what this melancholy is, show his name and differences. The name is imposed from the matter, and disease denominated from the material cause: as Bruel observes, Μελανχολία quasi Μελαιναχόλη, from black choler. And whether it be a cause or an effect, a disease or symptom, let Donatus Altomarus and Salvianus decide; I will not contend about it. It hath several descriptions, notations, and definitions. [1024]Fracastorius, in his second book of intellect, calls those melancholy, “whom abundance of that same depraved humour of black choler hath so misaffected, that they become mad thence, and dote in most things, or in all, belonging to election, will, or other manifest operations of the understanding.” [1025] Melanelius out of Galen, Ruffus, Aetius, describe it to be “a bad and peevish disease, which makes men degenerate into beasts:” Galen, “a privation or infection of the middle cell of the head, &c.” defining it from the part affected, which [1026]Hercules de Saxonia approves, lib. 1. cap. 16. calling it “a depravation of the principal function:” Fuschius, lib. 1. cap. 23. Arnoldus Breviar. lib. 1. cap. 18. Guianerius, and others: “By reason of black choler,” Paulus adds. Halyabbas simply calls it a “commotion of the mind.” Aretaeus, [1027]“a perpetual anguish of the soul, fastened on one thing, without an ague;” which definition of his, Mercurialis de affect. cap. lib. 1. cap. 10. taxeth: but Aelianus Montaltus defends, lib. de morb. cap. 1. de Melan. for sufficient and good. The common sort define it to be “a kind of dotage without a fever, having for his ordinary companions, fear and sadness, without any apparent occasion.” So doth Laurentius, cap. 4. Piso. lib. 1. cap. 43. Donatus Altomarus, cap. 7. art. medic. Jacchinus, in com. in lib. 9. Rhasis ad Almansor, cap. 15. Valesius, exerc. 17. Fuschius, institut. 3. sec. 1. c. 11. &c. which common definition, howsoever approved by most, [1028]Hercules de Saxonia will not allow of, nor David Crucius, Theat. morb. Herm. lib. 2. cap. 6. he holds it insufficient: as [1029]rather showing what it is not, than what it is: as omitting the specific difference, the phantasy and brain: but I descend to particulars. The summum genus is “dotage, or anguish of the mind,” saith Aretaeus; “of the principal parts,” Hercules de Saxonia adds, to distinguish it from cramp and palsy, and such diseases as belong to the outward sense and motions [depraved] [1030]to distinguish it from folly and madness (which Montaltus makes angor animi, to separate) in which those functions are not depraved, but rather abolished; [without an ague] is added by all, to sever it from frenzy, and that melancholy which is in a pestilent fever. (Fear and sorrow) make it differ from madness: [without a cause] is lastly inserted, to specify it from all other ordinary passions of [fear and sorrow.] We properly call that dotage, as [1031]Laurentius interprets it, “when some one principal faculty of the mind, as imagination, or reason, is corrupted, as all melancholy persons have.” It is without a fever, because the humour is most part cold and dry, contrary to putrefaction. Fear and sorrow are the true characters and inseparable companions of most melancholy, not all, as Her. de Saxonia, Tract. de posthumo de Melancholia, cap. 2. well excepts; for to some it is most pleasant, as to such as laugh most part; some are bold again, and free from all manner of fear and grief, as hereafter shall be declared.
Some difference I find amongst writers, about the principal part affected in this disease, whether it be the brain, or heart, or some other member. Most are of opinion that it is the brain: for being a kind of dotage, it cannot otherwise be but that the brain must be affected, as a similar part, be it by [1032]consent or essence, not in his ventricles, or any obstructions in them, for then it would be an apoplexy, or epilepsy, as [1033]Laurentius well observes, but in a cold, dry distemperature of it in his substance, which is corrupt and become too cold, or too dry, or else too hot, as in madmen, and such as are inclined to it: and this [1034] Hippocrates confirms, Galen, the Arabians, and most of our new writers. Marcus de Oddis (in a consultation of his, quoted by [1035]Hildesheim) and five others there cited are of the contrary part; because fear and sorrow, which are passions, be seated in the heart. But this objection is sufficiently answered by [1036]Montaltus, who doth not deny that the heart is affected (as [1037]Melanelius proves out of Galen) by reason of his vicinity, and so is the midriff and many other parts. They do compati, and have a fellow feeling by the law of nature: but forasmuch as this malady is caused by precedent imagination, with the appetite, to whom spirits obey, and are subject to those principal parts, the brain must needs primarily be misaffected, as the seat of reason; and then the heart, as the seat of affection. [1038]Capivaccius and Mercurialis have copiously discussed this question, and both conclude the subject is the inner brain, and from thence it is communicated to the heart and other inferior parts, which sympathise and are much troubled, especially when it comes by consent, and is caused by reason of the stomach, or mirach, as the Arabians term it, whole body, liver, or [1039]spleen, which are seldom free, pylorus, mesaraic veins, &c. For our body is like a clock, if one wheel be amiss, all the rest are disordered; the whole fabric suffers: with such admirable art and harmony is a man composed, such excellent proportion, as Ludovicus Vives in his Fable of Man hath elegantly declared.
As many doubts almost arise about the [1040]affection, whether it be imagination or reason alone, or both, Hercules de Saxonia proves it out of Galen, Aetius, and Altomarus, that the sole fault is in [1041]imagination. Bruel is of the same mind: Montaltus in his 2 cap. of Melancholy confutes this tenet of theirs, and illustrates the contrary by many examples: as of him that thought himself a shellfish, of a nun, and of a desperate monk that would not be persuaded but that he was damned; reason was in fault as well as imagination, which did not correct this error: they make away themselves oftentimes, and suppose many absurd and ridiculous things. Why doth not reason detect the fallacy, settle and persuade, if she be free? [1042]Avicenna therefore holds both corrupt, to whom most Arabians subscribe. The same is maintained by [1043]Areteus, [1044]Gorgonius, Guianerius, &c. To end the controversy, no man doubts of imagination, but that it is hurt and misaffected here; for the other I determine with [1045] Albertinus Bottonus, a doctor of Padua, that it is first in “imagination, and afterwards in reason; if the disease be inveterate, or as it is more or less of continuance;” but by accident, as [1046]Herc. de Saxonia adds; “faith, opinion, discourse, ratiocination, are all accidentally depraved by the default of imagination.”
Parties affected.] To the part affected, I may here add the parties, which shall be more opportunely spoken of elsewhere, now only signified. Such as have the moon, Saturn, Mercury misaffected in their genitures, such as live in over cold or over hot climes: such as are born of melancholy parents; as offend in those six non-natural things, are black, or of a high sanguine complexion, [1047]that have little heads, that have a hot heart, moist brain, hot liver and cold stomach, have been long sick: such as are solitary by nature, great students, given to much contemplation, lead a life out of action, are most subject to melancholy. Of sexes both, but men more often; yet [1048]women misaffected are far more violent, and grievously troubled. Of seasons of the year, the autumn is most melancholy. Of peculiar times: old age, from which natural melancholy is almost an inseparable accident; but this artificial malady is more frequent in such as are of a [1049]middle age. Some assign 40 years, Gariopontus 30. Jubertus excepts neither young nor old from this adventitious. Daniel Sennertus involves all of all sorts, out of common experience, [1050]in omnibus omnino corporibus cujuscunque constitutionis dominatar. Aetius and Aretius [1051]ascribe into the number “not only [1052]discontented, passionate, and miserable persons, swarthy, black; but such as are most merry and pleasant, scoffers, and high coloured.” “Generally,” saith Rhasis, [1053]“the finest wits and most generous spirits, are before other obnoxious to it;” I cannot except any complexion, any condition, sex, or age, but [1054]fools and stoics, which, according to [1055]Synesius, are never troubled with any manner of passion, but as Anacreon's cicada, sine sanguine et dolore; similes fere diis sunt. Erasmus vindicates fools from this melancholy catalogue, because they have most part moist brains and light hearts; [1056]they are free from ambition, envy, shame and fear; they are neither troubled in conscience, nor macerated with cares, to which our whole life is most subject.
Of the matter of melancholy, there is much question betwixt Avicen and Galen, as you may read in [1057]Cardan's Contradictions, [1058]Valesius' Controversies, Montanus, Prosper Calenus, Capivaccius, [1059]Bright, [1060]Ficinus, that have written either whole tracts, or copiously of it, in their several treatises of this subject. [1061]“What this humour is, or whence it proceeds, how it is engendered in the body, neither Galen, nor any old writer hath sufficiently discussed,” as Jacchinus thinks: the Neoterics cannot agree. Montanus, in his Consultations, holds melancholy to be material or immaterial: and so doth Arculanus: the material is one of the four humours before mentioned, and natural. The immaterial or adventitious, acquisite, redundant, unnatural, artificial; which [1062] Hercules de Saxonia will have reside in the spirits alone, and to proceed from a “hot, cold, dry, moist distemperature, which, without matter, alter the brain and functions of it.” Paracelsus wholly rejects and derides this division of four humours and complexions, but our Galenists generally approve of it, subscribing to this opinion of Montanus.
This material melancholy is either simple or mixed; offending in quantity or quality, varying according to his place, where it settleth, as brain, spleen, mesaraic veins, heart, womb, and stomach; or differing according to the mixture of those natural humours amongst themselves, or four unnatural adust humours, as they are diversely tempered and mingled. If natural melancholy abound in the body, which is cold and dry, “so that it be more [1063]than the body is well able to bear, it must needs be distempered,” saith Faventius, “and diseased;” and so the other, if it be depraved, whether it arise from that other melancholy of choler adust, or from blood, produceth the like effects, and is, as Montaltus contends, if it come by adustion of humours, most part hot and dry. Some difference I find, whether this melancholy matter may be engendered of all four humours, about the colour and temper of it. Galen holds it may be engendered of three alone, excluding phlegm, or pituita, whose true assertion [1064]Valesius and Menardus stiffly maintain, and so doth [1065]Fuschius, Montaltus, [1066] Montanus. How (say they) can white become black? But Hercules de Saxonia, lib. post. de mela. c. 8, and [1067]Cardan are of the opposite part (it may be engendered of phlegm, etsi raro contingat, though it seldom come to pass), so is [1068]Guianerius and Laurentius, c. 1. with Melanct. in his book de Anima, and Chap. of Humours; he calls it asininam, dull, swinish melancholy, and saith that he was an eyewitness of it: so is [1069]Wecker. From melancholy adust ariseth one kind; from choler another, which is most brutish; another from phlegm, which is dull; and the last from blood, which is best. Of these some are cold and dry, others hot and dry, [1070]varying according to their mixtures, as they are intended, and remitted. And indeed as Rodericus a Fons. cons. 12. l. 1. determines, ichors, and those serous matters being thickened become phlegm, and phlegm degenerates into choler, choler adust becomes aeruginosa melancholia, as vinegar out of purest wine putrified or by exhalation of purer spirits is so made, and becomes sour and sharp; and from the sharpness of this humour proceeds much waking, troublesome thoughts and dreams, &c. so that I conclude as before. If the humour be cold, it is, saith [1071]Faventinus, “a cause of dotage, and produceth milder symptoms: if hot, they are rash, raving mad, or inclining to it.” If the brain be hot, the animal spirits are hot; much madness follows, with violent actions: if cold, fatuity and sottishness, [1072]Capivaccius. [1073]“The colour of this mixture varies likewise according to the mixture, be it hot or cold; 'tis sometimes black, sometimes not,” Altomarus. The same [1074]Melanelius proves out of Galen; and Hippocrates in his Book of Melancholy (if at least it be his), giving instance in a burning coal, “which when it is hot, shines; when it is cold, looks black; and so doth the humour.” This diversity of melancholy matter produceth diversity of effects. If it be within the [1075]body, and not putrified, it causeth black jaundice; if putrified, a quartan ague; if it break out to the skin, leprosy; if to parts, several maladies, as scurvy, &c. If it trouble the mind; as it is diversely mixed, it produceth several kinds of madness and dotage: of which in their place.
When the matter is divers and confused, how should it otherwise be, but that the species should be divers and confused? Many new and old writers have spoken confusedly of it, confounding melancholy and madness, as [1076] Heurnius, Guianerius, Gordonius, Salustius Salvianus, Jason Pratensis, Savanarola, that will have madness no other than melancholy in extent, differing (as I have said) in degrees. Some make two distinct species, as Ruffus Ephesius, an old writer, Constantinus Africanus, Aretaeus, [1077] Aurelianus, [1078]Paulus Aegineta: others acknowledge a multitude of kinds, and leave them indefinite, as Aetius in his Tetrabiblos, [1079]Avicenna, lib. 3. Fen. 1. Tract. 4. cap. 18. Arculanus, cap. 16. in 9. Rasis. Montanus, med. part. 1. [1080]“If natural melancholy be adust, it maketh one kind; if blood, another; if choler, a third, differing from the first; and so many several opinions there are about the kinds, as there be men themselves.” [1081]Hercules de Saxonia sets down two kinds, “material and immaterial; one from spirits alone, the other from humours and spirits.” Savanarola, Rub. 11. Tract. 6. cap. 1. de aegritud. capitis, will have the kinds to be infinite; one from the mirach, called myrachialis of the Arabians; another stomachalis, from the stomach; another from the liver, heart, womb, haemorrhoids, [1082]“one beginning, another consummate.” Melancthon seconds him, [1083]“as the humour is diversely adust and mixed, so are the species divers;” but what these men speak of species I think ought to be understood of symptoms; and so doth [1084] Arculanus interpret himself: infinite species, id est, symptoms; and in that sense, as Jo. Gorrheus acknowledgeth in his medicinal definitions, the species are infinite, but they may be reduced to three kinds by reason of their seat; head, body, and hypochrondries. This threefold division is approved by Hippocrates in his Book of Melancholy, (if it be his, which some suspect) by Galen, lib. 3. de loc. affectis, cap. 6. by Alexander, lib. 1. cap. 16. Rasis, lib. 1. Continent. Tract. 9. lib. 1. cap. 16. Avicenna and most of our new writers. Th. Erastus makes two kinds; one perpetual, which is head melancholy; the other interrupt, which comes and goes by fits, which he subdivides into the other two kinds, so that all comes to the same pass. Some again make four or five kinds, with Rodericus a Castro, de morbis mulier. lib. 2. cap. 3. and Lod. Mercatus, who in his second book de mulier. affect. cap. 4. will have that melancholy of nuns, widows, and more ancient maids, to be a peculiar species of melancholy differing from the rest: some will reduce enthusiasts, ecstatical and demoniacal persons to this rank, adding [1085] love melancholy to the first, and lycanthropia. The most received division is into three kinds. The first proceeds from the sole fault of the brain, and is called head melancholy; the second sympathetically proceeds from the whole body, when the whole temperature is melancholy: the third ariseth from the bowels, liver, spleen, or membrane, called mesenterium, named hypochondriacal or windy melancholy, which [1086]Laurentius subdivides into three parts, from those three members, hepatic, splenetic, mesaraic. Love melancholy, which Avicenna calls ilishi: and Lycanthropia, which he calls cucubuthe, are commonly included in head melancholy; but of this last, which Gerardus de Solo calls amoreus, and most knight melancholy, with that of religious melancholy, virginum et viduarum, maintained by Rod. a Castro and Mercatus, and the other kinds of love melancholy, I will speak of apart by themselves in my third partition. The three precedent species are the subject of my present discourse, which I will anatomise and treat of through all their causes, symptoms, cures, together and apart; that every man that is in any measure affected with this malady, may know how to examine it in himself, and apply remedies unto it.
It is a hard matter, I confess, to distinguish these three species one from the other, to express their several causes, symptoms, cures, being that they are so often confounded amongst themselves, having such affinity, that they can scarce be discerned by the most accurate physicians; and so often intermixed with other diseases, that the best experienced have been plunged. Montanus consil. 26, names a patient that had this disease of melancholy and caninus appetitus both together; and consil. 23, with vertigo, [1087]Julius Caesar Claudinus with stone, gout, jaundice. Trincavellius with an ague, jaundice, caninus appetitus, &c. [1088]Paulus Regoline, a great doctor in his time, consulted in this case, was so confounded with a confusion of symptoms, that he knew not to what kind of melancholy to refer it. [1089]Trincavellius, Fallopius, and Francanzanus, famous doctors in Italy, all three conferred with about one party, at the same time, gave three different opinions. And in another place, Trincavellius being demanded what he thought of a melancholy young man to whom he was sent for, ingenuously confessed that he was indeed melancholy, but he knew not to what kind to reduce it. In his seventeenth consultation there is the like disagreement about a melancholy monk. Those symptoms, which others ascribe to misaffected parts and humours, [1090]Herc. de Saxonia attributes wholly to distempered spirits, and those immaterial, as I have said. Sometimes they cannot well discern this disease from others. In Reinerus Solenander's counsels, (Sect, consil. 5,) he and Dr. Brande both agreed, that the patient's disease was hypochondriacal melancholy. Dr. Matholdus said it was asthma, and nothing else. [1091]Solenander and Guarionius, lately sent for to the melancholy Duke of Cleve, with others, could not define what species it was, or agree amongst themselves. The species are so confounded, as in Caesar Claudinus his forty-fourth consultation for a Polonian Count, in his judgment [1092]“he laboured of head melancholy, and that which proceeds from the whole temperature both at once.” I could give instance of some that have had all three kinds semel et simul, and some successively. So that I conclude of our melancholy species, as [1093]many politicians do of their pure forms of commonwealths, monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, are most famous in contemplation, but in practice they are temperate and usually mixed, (so [1094]Polybius informeth us) as the Lacedaemonian, the Roman of old, German now, and many others. What physicians say of distinct species in their books it much matters not, since that in their patients' bodies they are commonly mixed. In such obscurity, therefore, variety and confused mixture of symptoms, causes, how difficult a thing is it to treat of several kinds apart; to make any certainty or distinction among so many casualties, distractions, when seldom two men shall be like effected per omnia? 'Tis hard, I confess, yet nevertheless I will adventure through the midst of these perplexities, and, led by the clue or thread of the best writers, extricate myself out of a labyrinth of doubts and errors, and so proceed to the causes.
“It is in vain to speak of cures, or think of remedies, until such time as we have considered of the causes,” so [1095]Galen prescribes Glauco: and the common experience of others confirms that those cures must be imperfect, lame, and to no purpose, wherein the causes have not first been searched, as [1096]Prosper Calenius well observes in his tract de atra bile to Cardinal Caesius. Insomuch that [1097]“Fernelius puts a kind of necessity in the knowledge of the causes, and without which it is impossible to cure or prevent any manner of disease.” Empirics may ease, and sometimes help, but not thoroughly root out; sublata causa tollitur effectus as the saying is, if the cause be removed, the effect is likewise vanquished. It is a most difficult thing (I confess) to be able to discern these causes whence they are, and in such [1098]variety to say what the beginning was. [1099]He is happy that can perform it aright. I will adventure to guess as near as I can, and rip them all up, from the first to the last, general and particular, to every species, that so they may the better be described.
General causes, are either supernatural, or natural. “Supernatural are from God and his angels, or by God's permission from the devil” and his ministers. That God himself is a cause for the punishment of sin, and satisfaction of his justice, many examples and testimonies of holy Scriptures make evident unto us, Ps. cvii, 17. “Foolish men are plagued for their offence, and by reason of their wickedness.” Gehazi was stricken with leprosy, 2 Reg. v. 27. Jehoram with dysentery and flux, and great diseases of the bowels, 2 Chron. xxi. 15. David plagued for numbering his people, 1 Par. 21. Sodom and Gomorrah swallowed up. And this disease is peculiarly specified, Psalm cxxvii. 12. “He brought down their heart through heaviness.” Deut. xxviii. 28. “He struck them with madness, blindness, and astonishment of heart.” [1100]“An evil spirit was sent by the Lord upon Saul, to vex him.” [1101]Nebuchadnezzar did eat grass like an ox, and his “heart was made like the beasts of the field.” Heathen stories are full of such punishments. Lycurgus, because he cut down the vines in the country, was by Bacchus driven into madness: so was Pentheus and his mother Agave for neglecting their sacrifice. [1102]Censor Fulvius ran mad for untiling Juno's temple, to cover a new one of his own, which he had dedicated to Fortune, [1103]“and was confounded to death with grief and sorrow of heart.” When Xerxes would have spoiled [1104]Apollo's temple at Delphos of those infinite riches it possessed, a terrible thunder came from heaven and struck four thousand men dead, the rest ran mad. [1105]A little after, the like happened to Brennus, lightning, thunder, earthquakes, upon such a sacrilegious occasion. If we may believe our pontifical writers, they will relate unto us many strange and prodigious punishments in this kind, inflicted by their saints. How [1106]Clodoveus, sometime king of France, the son of Dagobert, lost his wits for uncovering the body of St. Denis: and how a [1107]sacrilegious Frenchman, that would have stolen a silver image of St. John, at Birgburge, became frantic on a sudden, raging, and tyrannising over his own flesh: of a [1108]Lord of Rhadnor, that coming from hunting late at night, put his dogs into St. Avan's church, (Llan Avan they called it) and rising betimes next morning, as hunters use to do, found all his dogs mad, himself being suddenly strucken blind. Of Tyridates an [1109]Armenian king, for violating some holy nuns, that was punished in like sort, with loss of his wits. But poets and papists may go together for fabulous tales; let them free their own credits: howsoever they feign of their Nemesis, and of their saints, or by the devil's means may be deluded; we find it true, that ultor a tergo Deus, [1110]“He is God the avenger,” as David styles him; and that it is our crying sins that pull this and many other maladies on our own heads. That he can by his angels, which are his ministers, strike and heal (saith [1111]Dionysius) whom he will; that he can plague us by his creatures, sun, moon, and stars, which he useth as his instruments, as a husbandman (saith Zanchius) doth a hatchet: hail, snow, winds, &c. [1112]Et conjurati veniunt in classica venti: as in Joshua's time, as in Pharaoh's reign in Egypt; they are but as so many executioners of his justice. He can make the proudest spirits stoop, and cry out with Julian the Apostate, Vicisti Galilaee: or with Apollo's priest in [1113]Chrysostom, O coelum! o terra! unde hostis hic? What an enemy is this? And pray with David, acknowledging his power, “I am weakened and sore broken, I roar for the grief of mine heart, mine heart panteth,” &c. Psalm xxxviii. 8. “O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chastise me in thy wrath,” Psalm xxxviii. 1. “Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken, may rejoice,” Psalm li. 8. and verse 12. “Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and stablish me with thy free spirit.” For these causes belike [1114]Hippocrates would have a physician take special notice whether the disease come not from a divine supernatural cause, or whether it follow the course of nature. But this is farther discussed by Fran. Valesius, de sacr. philos. cap. 8. [1115] Fernelius, and [1116]J. Caesar Claudinus, to whom I refer you, how this place of Hippocrates is to be understood. Paracelsus is of opinion, that such spiritual diseases (for so he calls them) are spiritually to be cured, and not otherwise. Ordinary means in such cases will not avail: Non est reluctandum cum Deo (we must not struggle with God.) When that monster-taming Hercules overcame all in the Olympics, Jupiter at last in an unknown shape wrestled with him; the victory was uncertain, till at length Jupiter descried himself, and Hercules yielded. No striving with supreme powers. Nil juvat immensos Cratero promittere montes, physicians and physic can do no good, [1117]“we must submit ourselves unto the mighty hand of God,” acknowledge our offences, call to him for mercy. If he strike us una eademque manus vulnus opemque feret, as it is with them that are wounded with the spear of Achilles, he alone must help; otherwise our diseases are incurable, and we not to be relieved.
How far the power of spirits and devils doth extend, and whether they can cause this, or any other disease, is a serious question, and worthy to be considered: for the better understanding of which, I will make a brief digression of the nature of spirits. And although the question be very obscure, according to [1118]Postellus, “full of controversy and ambiguity,” beyond the reach of human capacity, fateor excedere vires intentionis meae, saith [1119]Austin, I confess I am not able to understand it, finitum de infinito non potest statuere, we can sooner determine with Tully, de nat. deorum, quid non sint, quam quid sint, our subtle schoolmen, Cardans, Scaligers, profound Thomists, Fracastoriana and Ferneliana acies, are weak, dry, obscure, defective in these mysteries, and all our quickest wits, as an owl's eyes at the sun's light, wax dull, and are not sufficient to apprehend them; yet, as in the rest, I will adventure to say something to this point. In former times, as we read, Acts xxiii., the Sadducees denied that there were any such spirits, devils, or angels. So did Galen the physician, the Peripatetics, even Aristotle himself, as Pomponatius stoutly maintains, and Scaliger in some sort grants. Though Dandinus the Jesuit, com. in lib. 2. de anima, stiffly denies it; substantiae separatae and intelligences, are the same which Christians call angels, and Platonists devils, for they name all the spirits, daemones, be they good or bad angels, as Julius Pollux Onomasticon, lib. 1. cap. 1. observes. Epicures and atheists are of the same mind in general, because they never saw them. Plato, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Jamblichus, Proclus, insisting in the steps of Trismegistus, Pythagoras and Socrates, make no doubt of it: nor Stoics, but that there are such spirits, though much erring from the truth. Concerning the first beginning of them, the [1120]Talmudists say that Adam had a wife called Lilis, before he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils. The Turks' [1121]Alcoran is altogether as absurd and ridiculous in this point: but the Scripture informs us Christians, how Lucifer, the chief of them, with his associates, [1122]fell from heaven for his pride and ambition; created of God, placed in heaven, and sometimes an angel of light, now cast down into the lower aerial sublunary parts, or into hell, “and delivered into chains of darkness (2 Pet. ii. 4.) to be kept unto damnation.”
Nature of Devils.] There is a foolish opinion which some hold, that they are the souls of men departed, good and more noble were deified, the baser grovelled on the ground, or in the lower parts, and were devils, the which with Tertullian, Porphyrius the philosopher, M. Tyrius, ser. 27 maintains. “These spirits,” he [1123]saith, “which we call angels and devils, are nought but souls of men departed, which either through love and pity of their friends yet living, help and assist them, or else persecute their enemies, whom they hated,” as Dido threatened to persecute Aeneas:
Psellus [1125], a Christian, and sometimes tutor (saith Cuspinian) to Michael Parapinatius, Emperor of Greece, a great observer of the nature of devils, holds they are corporeal [1126], and have “aerial bodies, that they are mortal, live and die,” (which Martianus Capella likewise maintains, but our Christian philosophers explode) “that they [1127]are nourished and have excrements, they feel pain if they be hurt” (which Cardan confirms, and Scaliger justly laughs him to scorn for; Si pascantur aere, cur non pugnant ob puriorem aera? &c.) “or stroken:” and if their bodies be cut, with admirable celerity they come together again. Austin, in Gen. lib. iii. lib. arbit., approves as much, mutata casu corpora in deteriorem qualitatem aeris spissioris, so doth Hierome. Comment. in epist. ad Ephes. cap. 3, Origen, Tertullian, Lactantius, and many ancient Fathers of the Church: that in their fall their bodies were changed into a more aerial and gross substance. Bodine, lib. 4, Theatri Naturae and David Crusius, Hermeticae Philosophiae, lib. 1. cap. 4, by several arguments proves angels and spirits to be corporeal: quicquid continetur in loco corporeum est; At spiritus continetur in loco, ergo. [1128]Si spiritus sunt quanti, erunt corporei: At sunt quanti, ergo. sunt finiti, ergo. quanti, &c. Bodine [1129]goes farther yet, and will have these, Animae separatae genii, spirits, angels, devils, and so likewise souls of men departed, if corporeal (which he most eagerly contends) to be of some shape, and that absolutely round, like Sun and Moon, because that is the most perfect form, quae nihil habet asperitatis, nihil angulis incisum, nihil anfractibus involutem, nihil eminens, sed inter corpora perfecta est perfectissimum; [1130]therefore all spirits are corporeal he concludes, and in their proper shapes round. That they can assume other aerial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleasures, appear in what likeness they will themselves, that they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant, and so likewise [1131]transform bodies of others into what shape they please, and with admirable celerity remove them from place to place; (as the Angel did Habakkuk to Daniel, and as Philip the deacon was carried away by the Spirit, when he had baptised the eunuch; so did Pythagoras and Apollonius remove themselves and others, with many such feats) that they can represent castles in the air, palaces, armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange objects to mortal men's eyes, [1132]cause smells, savours, &c., deceive all the senses; most writers of this subject credibly believe; and that they can foretell future events, and do many strange miracles. Juno's image spake to Camillus, and Fortune's statue to the Roman matrons, with many such. Zanchius, Bodine, Spondanus, and others, are of opinion that they cause a true metamorphosis, as Nebuchadnezzar was really translated into a beast, Lot's wife into a pillar of salt; Ulysses' companions into hogs and dogs, by Circe's charms; turn themselves and others, as they do witches into cats, dogs, hares, crows, &c. Strozzius Cicogna hath many examples, lib. iii. omnif. mag. cap. 4 and 5, which he there confutes, as Austin likewise doth, de civ. Dei lib. xviii. That they can be seen when and in what shape, and to whom they will, saith Psellus, Tametsi nil tale viderim, nec optem videre, though he himself never saw them nor desired it; and use sometimes carnal copulation (as elsewhere I shall [1133]prove more at large) with women and men. Many will not believe they can be seen, and if any man shall say, swear, and stiffly maintain, though he be discreet and wise, judicious and learned, that he hath seen them, they account him a timorous fool, a melancholy dizzard, a weak fellow, a dreamer, a sick or a mad man, they contemn him, laugh him to scorn, and yet Marcus of his credit told Psellus that he had often seen them. And Leo Suavius, a Frenchman, c. 8, in Commentar. l. 1. Paracelsi de vita longa, out of some Platonists, will have the air to be as full of them as snow falling in the skies, and that they may be seen, and withal sets down the means how men may see them; Si irreverberatus oculis sole splendente versus caelum continuaverint obtutus, &c., [1134]and saith moreover he tried it, praemissorum feci experimentum, and it was true, that the Platonists said. Paracelsus confesseth that he saw them divers times, and conferred with them, and so doth Alexander ab [1135]Alexandro, “that he so found it by experience, when as before he doubted of it.” Many deny it, saith Lavater, de spectris, part 1. c. 2, and part 2. c. 11, “because they never saw them themselves;” but as he reports at large all over his book, especially c. 19. part 1, they are often seen and heard, and familiarly converse with men, as Lod. Vives assureth us, innumerable records, histories, and testimonies evince in all ages, times, places, and [1136]all travellers besides; in the West Indies and our northern climes, Nihil familiarius quam in agris et urbibus spiritus videre, audire qui vetent, jubeant, &c. Hieronymus vita Pauli, Basil ser. 40, Nicephorus, Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomenus, [1137]Jacobus Boissardus in his tract de spirituum apparitionibus, Petrus Loyerus l. de spectris, Wierus l. 1. have infinite variety of such examples of apparitions of spirits, for him to read that farther doubts, to his ample satisfaction. One alone I will briefly insert. A nobleman in Germany was sent ambassador to the King of Sweden (for his name, the time, and such circumstances, I refer you to Boissardus, mine [1138]Author). After he had done his business, he sailed to Livonia, on set purpose to see those familiar spirits, which are there said to be conversant with men, and do their drudgery works. Amongst other matters, one of them told him where his wife was, in what room, in what clothes, what doing, and brought him a ring from her, which at his return, non sine omnium admiratione, he found to be true; and so believed that ever after, which before he doubted of. Cardan, l. 19. de subtil, relates of his father, Facius Cardan, that after the accustomed solemnities, An. 1491, 13 August, he conjured up seven devils, in Greek apparel, about forty years of age, some ruddy of complexion, and some pale, as he thought; he asked them many questions, and they made ready answer, that they were aerial devils, that they lived and died as men did, save that they were far longer lived (700 or 800 [1139]years); they did as much excel men in dignity as we do juments, and were as far excelled again of those that were above them; our [1140]governors and keepers they are moreover, which [1141]Plato in Critias delivered of old, and subordinate to one another, Ut enim homo homini sic daemon daemoni dominatur, they rule themselves as well as us, and the spirits of the meaner sort had commonly such offices, as we make horse-keepers, neat-herds, and the basest of us, overseers of our cattle; and that we can no more apprehend their natures and functions, than a horse a man's. They knew all things, but might not reveal them to men; and ruled and domineered over us, as we do over our horses; the best kings amongst us, and the most generous spirits, were not comparable to the basest of them. Sometimes they did instruct men, and communicate their skill, reward and cherish, and sometimes, again, terrify and punish, to keep them in awe, as they thought fit, Nihil magis cupientes (saith Lysius, Phis. Stoicorum) quam adorationem hominum. [1142]The same Author, Cardan, in his Hyperchen, out of the doctrine of Stoics, will have some of these genii (for so he calls them) to be [1143]desirous of men's company, very affable and familiar with them, as dogs are; others, again, to abhor as serpents, and care not for them. The same belike Tritemius calls Ignios et sublunares, qui nunquam demergunt ad inferiora, aut vix ullum habent in terris commercium: [1144]“Generally they far excel men in worth, as a man the meanest worm; though some of them are inferior to those of their own rank in worth, as the blackguard in a prince's court, and to men again, as some degenerate, base, rational creatures, are excelled of brute beasts.”
That they are mortal, besides these testimonies of Cardan, Martianus, &c., many other divines and philosophers hold, post prolixum tempus moriuntur omnes; The [1145]Platonists, and some Rabbins, Porphyrius and Plutarch, as appears by that relation of Thamus: [1146]“The great God Pan is dead; Apollo Pythius ceased; and so the rest.” St. Hierome, in the life of Paul the Hermit, tells a story how one of them appeared to St. Anthony in the wilderness, and told him as much. [1147]Paracelsus of our late writers stiffly maintains that they are mortal, live and die as other creatures do. Zozimus, l. 2, farther adds, that religion and policy dies and alters with them. The [1148]Gentiles' gods, he saith, were expelled by Constantine, and together with them. Imperii Romani majestas, et fortuna interiit, et profligata est; The fortune and majesty of the Roman Empire decayed and vanished, as that heathen in [1149]Minutius formerly bragged, when the Jews were overcome by the Romans, the Jew's God was likewise captivated by that of Rome; and Rabsakeh to the Israelites, no God should deliver them out of the hands of the Assyrians. But these paradoxes of their power, corporeity, mortality, taking of shapes, transposing bodies, and carnal copulations, are sufficiently confuted by Zanch. c. 10, l. 4. Pererius in his comment, and Tostatus questions on the 6th of Gen. Th. Aquin., St. Austin, Wierus, Th. Erastus, Delrio, tom. 2, l. 2, quaest. 29; Sebastian Michaelis, c. 2, de spiritibus, D. Reinolds Lect. 47. They may deceive the eyes of men, yet not take true bodies, or make a real metamorphosis; but as Cicogna proves at large, they are [1150]Illusoriae, et praestigiatrices transformationes, omnif. mag. lib. 4. cap. 4, mere illusions and cozenings, like that tale of Pasetis obulus in Suidas, or that of Autolicus, Mercury's son, that dwelt in Parnassus, who got so much treasure by cozenage and stealth. His father Mercury, because he could leave him no wealth, taught him many fine tricks to get means, [1151]for he could drive away men's cattle, and if any pursued him, turn them into what shapes he would, and so did mightily enrich himself, hoc astu maximam praedam est adsecutus. This, no doubt, is as true as the rest; yet thus much in general. Thomas, Durand, and others, grant that they have understanding far beyond men, can probably conjecture and [1152]foretell many things; they can cause and cure most diseases, deceive our senses; they have excellent skill in all Arts and Sciences; and that the most illiterate devil is Quovis homine scientior (more knowing than any man), as [1153]Cicogna maintains out of others. They know the virtues of herbs, plants, stones, minerals, &c.; of all creatures, birds, beasts, the four elements, stars, planets, can aptly apply and make use of them as they see good; perceiving the causes of all meteors, and the like: Dant se coloribus (as [1154] Austin hath it) accommodant se figuris, adhaerent sonis, subjiciunt se odoribus, infundunt se saporibus, omnes sensus etiam ipsam intelligentiam daemones fallunt, they deceive all our senses, even our understanding itself at once. [1155]They can produce miraculous alterations in the air, and most wonderful effects, conquer armies, give victories, help, further, hurt, cross and alter human attempts and projects (Dei permissu) as they see good themselves. [1156]When Charles the Great intended to make a channel betwixt the Rhine and the Danube, look what his workmen did in the day, these spirits flung down in the night, Ut conatu Rex desisteret, pervicere. Such feats can they do. But that which Bodine, l. 4, Theat. nat. thinks (following Tyrius belike, and the Platonists,) they can tell the secrets of a man's heart, aut cogitationes hominum, is most false; his reasons are weak, and sufficiently confuted by Zanch. lib. 4, cap. 9. Hierom. lib. 2, com. in Mat. ad cap. 15, Athanasius quaest. 27, ad Antiochum Principem, and others.
Orders.] As for those orders of good and bad devils, which the Platonists hold, is altogether erroneous, and those Ethnics boni et mali Genii, are to be exploded: these heathen writers agree not in this point among themselves, as Dandinus notes, An sint [1157]mali non conveniunt, some will have all spirits good or bad to us by a mistake, as if an Ox or Horse could discourse, he would say the Butcher was his enemy because he killed him, the grazier his friend because he fed him; a hunter preserves and yet kills his game, and is hated nevertheless of his game; nec piscatorem piscis amare potest, &c. But Jamblichus, Psellus, Plutarch, and most Platonists acknowledge bad, et ab eorum maleficiis cavendum, and we should beware of their wickedness, for they are enemies of mankind, and this Plato learned in Egypt, that they quarrelled with Jupiter, and were driven by him down to hell. [1158]That which [1159]Apuleius, Xenophon, and Plato contend of Socrates Daemonium, is most absurd: That which Plotinus of his, that he had likewise Deum pro Daemonio; and that which Porphyry concludes of them all in general, if they be neglected in their sacrifice they are angry; nay more, as Cardan in his Hipperchen will, they feed on men's souls, Elementa sunt plantis elementum, animalibus plantae, hominibus animalia, erunt et homines aliis, non autem diis, nimis enim remota est eorum natura a nostra, quapropter daemonibus: and so belike that we have so many battles fought in all ages, countries, is to make them a feast, and their sole delight: but to return to that I said before, if displeased they fret and chafe, (for they feed belike on the souls of beasts, as we do on their bodies) and send many plagues amongst us; but if pleased, then they do much good; is as vain as the rest and confuted by Austin, l. 9. c. 8. de Civ. Dei. Euseb. l. 4. praepar. Evang. c. 6. and others. Yet thus much I find, that our schoolmen and other [1160]divines make nine kinds of bad spirits, as Dionysius hath done of angels. In the first rank are those false gods of the gentiles, which were adored heretofore in several idols, and gave oracles at Delphos, and elsewhere; whose prince is Beelzebub. The second rank is of liars and equivocators, as Apollo, Pythius, and the like. The third are those vessels of anger, inventors of all mischief; as that Theutus in Plato; Esay calls them [1161]vessels of fury; their prince is Belial. The fourth are malicious revenging devils; and their prince is Asmodaeus. The fifth kind are cozeners, such as belong to magicians and witches; their prince is Satan. The sixth are those aerial devils that [1162]corrupt the air and cause plagues, thunders, fires, &c.; spoken of in the Apocalypse, and Paul to the Ephesians names them the princes of the air; Meresin is their prince. The seventh is a destroyer, captain of the furies, causing wars, tumults, combustions, uproars, mentioned in the Apocalypse; and called Abaddon. The eighth is that accusing or calumniating devil, whom the Greeks call Διαβολος, that drives men to despair. The ninth are those tempters in several kinds, and their prince is Mammon. Psellus makes six kinds, yet none above the Moon: Wierus in his Pseudo-monarchia Daemonis, out of an old book, makes many more divisions and subordinations, with their several names, numbers, offices, &c., but Gazaeus cited by [1163]Lipsius will have all places full of angels, spirits, and devils, above and beneath the Moon,[1164]ethereal and aerial, which Austin cites out of Varro l. 7. de Civ. Dei, c. 6. “The celestial devils above, and aerial beneath,” or, as some will, gods above, Semi-dei or half gods beneath, Lares, Heroes, Genii, which climb higher, if they lived well, as the Stoics held; but grovel on the ground as they were baser in their lives, nearer to the earth: and are Manes, Lemures, Lamiae, &c. [1165]They will have no place but all full of spirits, devils, or some other inhabitants; Plenum Caelum, aer, aqua terra, et omnia sub terra, saith [1166]Gazaeus; though Anthony Rusca in his book de Inferno, lib. v. cap. 7. would confine them to the middle region, yet they will have them everywhere. “Not so much as a hair-breadth empty in heaven, earth, or waters, above or under the earth.” The air is not so full of flies in summer, as it is at all times of invisible devils: this [1167]Paracelsus stiffly maintains, and that they have every one their several chaos, others will have infinite worlds, and each world his peculiar spirits, gods, angels, and devils to govern and punish it.
[1169]Gregorius Tholsanus makes seven kinds of ethereal spirits or angels, according to the number of the seven planets, Saturnine, Jovial, Martial, of which Cardan discourseth lib. 20. de subtil. he calls them substantias primas, Olympicos daemones Tritemius, qui praesunt Zodiaco, &c., and will have them to be good angels above, devils beneath the Moon, their several names and offices he there sets down, and which Dionysius of Angels, will have several spirits for several countries, men, offices, &c., which live about them, and as so many assisting powers cause their operations, will have in a word, innumerable, as many of them as there be stars in the skies. [1170]Marcilius Ficinus seems to second this opinion, out of Plato, or from himself, I know not, (still ruling their inferiors, as they do those under them again, all subordinate, and the nearest to the earth rule us, whom we subdivide into good and bad angels, call gods or devils, as they help or hurt us, and so adore, love or hate) but it is most likely from Plato, for he relying wholly on Socrates, quem mori potius quam mentiri voluisse scribit, whom he says would rather die than tell a falsehood, out of Socrates' authority alone, made nine kinds of them: which opinion belike Socrates took from Pythagoras, and he from Trismegistus, he from Zoroastes, first God, second idea, 3. Intelligences, 4. Arch-Angels, 5. Angels, 6. Devils, 7. Heroes, 8. Principalities, 9. Princes: of which some were absolutely good, as gods, some bad, some indifferent inter deos et homines, as heroes and daemons, which ruled men, and were called genii, or as [1171]Proclus and Jamblichus will, the middle betwixt God and men. Principalities and princes, which commanded and swayed kings and countries; and had several places in the spheres perhaps, for as every sphere is higher, so hath it more excellent inhabitants: which belike is that Galilaeus a Galileo and Kepler aims at in his nuncio Syderio, when he will have [1172]Saturnine and Jovial inhabitants: and which Tycho Brahe doth in some sort touch or insinuate in one of his epistles: but these things [1173]Zanchius justly explodes, cap. 3. lib. 4. P. Martyr, in 4. Sam. 28.
So that according to these men the number of ethereal spirits must needs be infinite: for if that be true that some of our mathematicians say: if a stone could fall from the starry heaven, or eighth sphere, and should pass every hour an hundred miles, it would be 65 years, or more, before it would come to ground, by reason of the great distance of heaven from earth, which contains as some say 170 millions 800 miles, besides those other heavens, whether they be crystalline or watery which Maginus adds, which peradventure holds as much more, how many such spirits may it contain? And yet for all this [1174]Thomas Albertus, and most hold that there be far more angels than devils.
Sublunary devils, and their kinds.] But be they more or less, Quod supra nos nihil ad nos (what is beyond our comprehension does not concern us). Howsoever as Martianus foolishly supposeth, Aetherii Daemones non curant res humanas, they care not for us, do not attend our actions, or look for us, those ethereal spirits have other worlds to reign in belike or business to follow. We are only now to speak in brief of these sublunary spirits or devils: for the rest, our divines determine that the devil had no power over stars, or heavens; [1175]Carminibus coelo possunt deducere lunam, &C., (by their charms (verses) they can seduce the moon from the heavens). Those are poetical fictions, and that they can [1176]sistere aquam fluviis, et vertere sidera retro, &c., (stop rivers and turn the stars backward in their courses) as Canadia in Horace, 'tis all false. [1177] They are confined until the day of judgment to this sublunary world, and can work no farther than the four elements, and as God permits them. Wherefore of these sublunary devils, though others divide them otherwise according to their several places and offices, Psellus makes six kinds, fiery, aerial, terrestrial, watery, and subterranean devils, besides those fairies, satyrs, nymphs, &c.
Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes, or ignes fatui; which lead men often in flumina aut praecipitia, saith Bodine, lib. 2. Theat. Naturae, fol. 221. Quos inquit arcere si volunt viatores, clara voce Deum appellare aut pronam facie terram contingente adorare oportet, et hoc amuletum majoribus nostris acceptum ferre debemus, &c., (whom if travellers wish to keep off they must pronounce the name of God with a clear voice, or adore him with their faces in contact with the ground, &c.); likewise they counterfeit suns and moons, stars oftentimes, and sit on ship masts: In navigiorum summitatibus visuntur; and are called dioscuri, as Eusebius l. contra Philosophos, c. xlviii. informeth us, out of the authority of Zenophanes; or little clouds, ad motum nescio quem volantes; which never appear, saith Cardan, but they signify some mischief or other to come unto men, though some again will have them to pretend good, and victory to that side they come towards in sea fights, St. Elmo's fires they commonly call them, and they do likely appear after a sea storm; Radzivilius, the Polonian duke, calls this apparition, Sancti Germani sidus; and saith moreover that he saw the same after in a storm, as he was sailing, 1582, from Alexandria to Rhodes. [1178]Our stories are full of such apparitions in all kinds. Some think they keep their residence in that Hecla, a mountain in Iceland, Aetna in Sicily, Lipari, Vesuvius, &c. These devils were worshipped heretofore by that superstitious Pyromanteia [1179]and the like.
Aerial spirits or devils, are such as keep quarter most part in the [1180] air, cause many tempests, thunder, and lightnings, tear oaks, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts, make it rain stones, as in Livy's time, wool, frogs, &c. Counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises, swords, &c., as at Vienna before the coming of the Turks, and many times in Rome, as Scheretzius l. de spect. c. 1. part 1. Lavater de spect. part. 1. c. 17. Julius Obsequens, an old Roman, in his book of prodigies, ab urb. cond. 505. [1181]Machiavel hath illustrated by many examples, and Josephus, in his book de bello Judaico, before the destruction of Jerusalem. All which Guil. Postellus, in his first book, c. 7, de orbis concordia, useth as an effectual argument (as indeed it is) to persuade them that will not believe there be spirits or devils. They cause whirlwinds on a sudden, and tempestuous storms; which though our meteorologists generally refer to natural causes, yet I am of Bodine's mind, Theat. Nat. l. 2. they are more often caused by those aerial devils, in their several quarters; for Tempestatibus se ingerunt, saith [1182] Rich. Argentine; as when a desperate man makes away with himself, which by hanging or drowning they frequently do, as Kommanus observes, de mirac. mort. part. 7, c. 76. tripudium agentes, dancing and rejoicing at the death of a sinner. These can corrupt the air, and cause plagues, sickness, storms, shipwrecks, fires, inundations. At Mons Draconis in Italy, there is a most memorable example in [1183]Jovianus Pontanus: and nothing so familiar (if we may believe those relations of Saxo Grammaticus, Olaus Magnus, Damianus A. Goes) as for witches and sorcerers, in Lapland, Lithuania, and all over Scandia, to sell winds to mariners, and cause tempests, which Marcus Paulus the Venetian relates likewise of the Tartars. These kind of devils are much [1184]delighted in sacrifices (saith Porphyry), held all the world in awe, and had several names, idols, sacrifices, in Rome, Greece, Egypt, and at this day tyrannise over, and deceive those Ethnics and Indians, being adored and worshipped for [1185] gods. For the Gentiles' gods were devils (as [1186]Trismegistus confesseth in his Asclepius), and he himself could make them come to their images by magic spells: and are now as much “respected by our papists” (saith [1187] Pictorius) “under the name of saints.” These are they which Cardan thinks desire so much carnal copulation with witches (Incubi and Succubi), transform bodies, and are so very cold, if they be touched; and that serve magicians. His father had one of them (as he is not ashamed to relate), [1188]an aerial devil, bound to him for twenty and eight years. As Agrippa's dog had a devil tied to his collar; some think that Paracelsus (or else Erastus belies him) had one confined to his sword pummel; others wear them in rings, &c. Jannes and Jambres did many things of old by their help; Simon Magus, Cinops, Apollonius Tianeus, Jamblichus, and Tritemius of late, that showed Maximilian the emperor his wife, after she was dead; Et verrucam in collo ejus (saith [1189]Godolman) so much as the wart in her neck. Delrio, lib. 2. hath divers examples of their feats: Cicogna, lib. 3. cap. 3. and Wierus in his book de praestig. daemonum. Boissardus de magis et veneficis.
Water-devils are those Naiads or water nymphs which have been heretofore conversant about waters and rivers. The water (as Paracelsus thinks) is their chaos, wherein they live; some call them fairies, and say that Habundia is their queen; these cause inundations, many times shipwrecks, and deceive men divers ways, as Succuba, or otherwise, appearing most part (saith Tritemius) in women's shapes. [1190]Paracelsus hath several stories of them that have lived and been married to mortal men, and so continued for certain years with them, and after, upon some dislike, have forsaken them. Such a one as Aegeria, with whom Numa was so familiar, Diana, Ceres, &c. [1191]Olaus Magnus hath a long narration of one Hotherus, a king of Sweden, that having lost his company, as he was hunting one day, met with these water nymphs or fairies, and was feasted by them; and Hector Boethius, or Macbeth, and Banquo, two Scottish lords, that as they were wandering in the woods, had their fortunes told them by three strange women. To these, heretofore, they did use to sacrifice, by that ὑδρομαντέια, or divination by waters.
Terrestrial devils are those [1192]Lares, genii, fauns, satyrs, [1193] wood-nymphs, foliots, fairies, Robin Goodfellows, trulli, &c., which as they are most conversant with men, so they do them most harm. Some think it was they alone that kept the heathen people in awe of old, and had so many idols and temples erected to them. Of this range was Dagon amongst the Philistines, Bel amongst the Babylonians, Astartes amongst the Sidonians, Baal amongst the Samaritans, Isis and Osiris amongst the Egyptians, &c.; some put our [1194]fairies into this rank, which have been in former times adored with much superstition, with sweeping their houses, and setting of a pail of clean water, good victuals, and the like, and then they should not be pinched, but find money in their shoes, and be fortunate in their enterprises. These are they that dance on heaths and greens, as [1195] Lavater thinks with Tritemius, and as [1196]Olaus Magnus adds, leave that green circle, which we commonly find in plain fields, which others hold to proceed from a meteor falling, or some accidental rankness of the ground, so nature sports herself; they are sometimes seen by old women and children. Hierom. Pauli, in his description of the city of Bercino in Spain, relates how they have been familiarly seen near that town, about fountains and hills; Nonnunquam (saith Tritemius) in sua latibula montium simpliciores homines ducant, stupenda mirantibus ostentes miracula, nolarum sonitus, spectacula, &c. [1197]Giraldus Cambrensis gives instance in a monk of Wales that was so deluded. [1198]Paracelsus reckons up many places in Germany, where they do usually walk in little coats, some two feet long. A bigger kind there is of them called with us hobgoblins, and Robin Goodfellows, that would in those superstitious times grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work. They would mend old irons in those Aeolian isles of Lipari, in former ages, and have been often seen and heard. [1199]Tholosanus calls them trullos and Getulos, and saith, that in his days they were common in many places of France. Dithmarus Bleskenius, in his description of Iceland, reports for a certainty, that almost in every family they have yet some such familiar spirits; and Felix Malleolus, in his book de crudel. daemon. affirms as much, that these trolli or telchines are very common in Norway, “and [1200] seen to do drudgery work;” to draw water, saith Wierus, lib. 1. cap. 22, dress meat, or any such thing. Another sort of these there are, which frequent forlorn [1201]houses, which the Italians call foliots, most part innoxious, [1202]Cardan holds; “They will make strange noises in the night, howl sometimes pitifully, and then laugh again, cause great flame and sudden lights, fling stones, rattle chains, shave men, open doors and shut them, fling down platters, stools, chests, sometimes appear in the likeness of hares, crows, black dogs,” &c. of which read [1203]Pet Thyraeus the Jesuit, in his Tract, de locis infestis, part. 1. et cap. 4, who will have them to be devils or the souls of damned men that seek revenge, or else souls out of purgatory that seek ease; for such examples peruse [1204] Sigismundus Scheretzius, lib. de spectris, part 1. c. 1. which he saith he took out of Luther most part; there be many instances. [1205]Plinius Secundus remembers such a house at Athens, which Athenodorus the philosopher hired, which no man durst inhabit for fear of devils. Austin, de Civ. Dei. lib. 22, cap. 1. relates as much of Hesperius the Tribune's house, at Zubeda, near their city of Hippos, vexed with evil spirits, to his great hindrance, Cum afflictione animalium et servorum suorum. Many such instances are to be read in Niderius Formicar, lib. 5. cap. xii. 3. &c. Whether I may call these Zim and Ochim, which Isaiah, cap. xiii. 21. speaks of, I make a doubt. See more of these in the said Scheretz. lib. 1. de spect. cap. 4. he is full of examples. These kind of devils many times appear to men, and affright them out of their wits, sometimes walking at [1206]noonday, sometimes at nights, counterfeiting dead men's ghosts, as that of Caligula, which (saith Suetonius) was seen to walk in Lavinia's garden, where his body was buried, spirits haunted, and the house where he died, [1207]Nulla nox sine terrore transacta, donec incendio consumpta; every night this happened, there was no quietness, till the house was burned. About Hecla, in Iceland, ghosts commonly walk, animas mortuorum simulantes, saith Joh. Anan, lib. 3. de nat. daem. Olaus. lib. 2. cap. 2. Natal Tallopid. lib. de apparit. spir. Kornmannus de mirac. mort. part. 1. cap. 44. such sights are frequently seen circa sepulchra et monasteria, saith Lavat. lib. 1. cap. 19. in monasteries and about churchyards, loca paludinosa, ampla aedificia, solitaria, et caede hominum notata, &c. (marshes, great buildings, solitary places, or remarkable as the scene of some murder.) Thyreus adds, ubi gravius peccatum est commissum, impii, pauperum oppressores et nequiter insignes habitant (where some very heinous crime was committed, there the impious and infamous generally dwell). These spirits often foretell men's deaths by several signs, as knocking, groanings, &c. [1208]though Rich. Argentine, c. 18. de praestigiis daemonum, will ascribe these predictions to good angels, out of the authority of Ficinus and others; prodigia in obitu principum saepius contingunt, &c. (prodigies frequently occur at the deaths of illustrious men), as in the Lateran church in [1209]Rome, the popes' deaths are foretold by Sylvester's tomb. Near Rupes Nova in Finland, in the kingdom of Sweden, there is a lake, in which, before the governor of the castle dies, a spectrum, in the habit of Arion with his harp, appears, and makes excellent music, like those blocks in Cheshire, which (they say) presage death to the master of the family; or that [1210]oak in Lanthadran park in Cornwall, which foreshows as much. Many families in Europe are so put in mind of their last by such predictions, and many men are forewarned (if we may believe Paracelsus) by familiar spirits in divers shapes, as cocks, crows, owls, which often hover about sick men's chambers, vel quia morientium foeditatem sentiunt, as [1211]Baracellus conjectures, et ideo super tectum infirmorum crocitant, because they smell a corse; or for that (as [1212]Bernardinus de Bustis thinketh) God permits the devil to appear in the form of crows, and such like creatures, to scare such as live wickedly here on earth. A little before Tully's death (saith Plutarch) the crows made a mighty noise about him, tumultuose perstrepentes, they pulled the pillow from under his head. Rob. Gaguinus, hist. Franc. lib. 8, telleth such another wonderful story at the death of Johannes de Monteforti, a French lord, anno 1345, tanta corvorum multitudo aedibus morientis insedit, quantam esse in Gallia nemo judicasset (a multitude of crows alighted on the house of the dying man, such as no one imagined existed in France). Such prodigies are very frequent in authors. See more of these in the said Lavater, Thyreus de locis infestis, part 3, cap. 58. Pictorius, Delrio, Cicogna, lib. 3, cap. 9. Necromancers take upon them to raise and lay them at their pleasures: and so likewise, those which Mizaldus calls ambulones, that walk about midnight on great heaths and desert places, which (saith [1213]Lavater) “draw men out of the way, and lead them all night a byway, or quite bar them of their way;” these have several names in several places; we commonly call them Pucks. In the deserts of Lop, in Asia, such illusions of walking spirits are often perceived, as you may read in M. Paulus the Venetian his travels; if one lose his company by chance, these devils will call him by his name, and counterfeit voices of his companions to seduce him. Hieronym. Pauli, in his book of the hills of Spain, relates of a great [1214]mount in Cantabria, where such spectrums are to be seen; Lavater and Cicogna have variety of examples of spirits and walking devils in this kind. Sometimes they sit by the highway side, to give men falls, and make their horses stumble and start as they ride (if you will believe the relation of that holy man Ketellus in [1215]Nubrigensis), that had an especial grace to see devils, Gratiam divinitus collatam, and talk with them, Et impavidus cum spiritibus sermonem miscere, without offence, and if a man curse or spur his horse for stumbling, they do heartily rejoice at it; with many such pretty feats.
Subterranean devils are as common as the rest, and do as much harm. Olaus Magnus, lib. 6, cap. 19, make six kinds of them; some bigger, some less. These (saith [1216]Munster) are commonly seen about mines of metals, and are some of them noxious; some again do no harm. The metal-men in many places account it good luck, a sign of treasure and rich ore when they see them. Georgius Agricola, in his book de subterraneis animantibus, cap. 37, reckons two more notable kinds of them, which he calls [1217]getuli and cobali, both “are clothed after the manner of metal-men, and will many times imitate their works.” Their office, as Pictorius and Paracelsus think, is to keep treasure in the earth, that it be not all at once revealed; and besides, [1218]Cicogna avers that they are the frequent causes of those horrible earthquakes “which often swallow up, not only houses, but whole islands and cities;” in his third book, cap. 11, he gives many instances.
The last are conversant about the centre of the earth to torture the souls of damned men to the day of judgment; their egress and regress some suppose to be about Etna, Lipari, Mons Hecla in Iceland, Vesuvius, Terra del Fuego, &c., because many shrieks and fearful cries are continually heard thereabouts, and familiar apparitions of dead men, ghosts and goblins.
Their Offices, Operations, Study.] Thus the devil reigns, and in a thousand several shapes, “as a roaring lion still seeks whom he may devour,” 1 Pet. v., by sea, land, air, as yet unconfined, though [1219] some will have his proper place the air; all that space between us and the moon for them that transgressed least, and hell for the wickedest of them, Hic velut in carcere ad finem mundi, tunc in locum funestiorum trudendi, as Austin holds de Civit. Dei, c. 22, lib. 14, cap. 3 et 23; but be where he will, he rageth while he may to comfort himself, as [1220] Lactantius thinks, with other men's falls, he labours all he can to bring them into the same pit of perdition with him. For [1221]“men's miseries, calamities, and ruins are the devil's banqueting dishes.” By many temptations and several engines, he seeks to captivate our souls. The Lord of Lies, saith [1222]Austin, “as he was deceived himself, he seeks to deceive others,” the ringleader to all naughtiness, as he did by Eve and Cain, Sodom and Gomorrah, so would he do by all the world. Sometimes he tempts by covetousness, drunkenness, pleasure, pride, &c., errs, dejects, saves, kills, protects, and rides some men, as they do their horses. He studies our overthrow, and generally seeks our destruction; and although he pretend many times human good, and vindicate himself for a god by curing of several diseases, aegris sanitatem, et caecis luminis usum restituendo, as Austin declares, lib. 10, de civit Dei, cap. 6, as Apollo, Aesculapius, Isis, of old have done; divert plagues, assist them in wars, pretend their happiness, yet nihil his impurius, scelestius, nihil humano generi infestius, nothing so impure, nothing so pernicious, as may well appear by their tyrannical and bloody sacrifices of men to Saturn and Moloch, which are still in use among those barbarous Indians, their several deceits and cozenings to keep men in obedience, their false oracles, sacrifices, their superstitious impositions of fasts, penury, &c. Heresies, superstitious observations of meats, times, &c., by which they [1223] crucify the souls of mortal men, as shall be showed in our Treatise of Religious Melancholy. Modico adhuc tempore sinitur malignari, as [1224] Bernard expresseth it, by God's permission he rageth a while, hereafter to be confined to hell and darkness, “which is prepared for him and his angels,” Mat. xxv.
How far their power doth extend it is hard to determine; what the ancients held of their effects, force and operations, I will briefly show you: Plato in Critias, and after him his followers, gave out that these spirits or devils, “were men's governors and keepers, our lords and masters, as we are of our cattle.” [1225]“They govern provinces and kingdoms by oracles, auguries,” dreams, rewards and punishments, prophecies, inspirations, sacrifices, and religious superstitions, varied in as many forms as there be diversity of spirits; they send wars, plagues, peace, sickness, health, dearth, plenty, [1226]Adstantes hic jam nobis, spectantes, et arbitrantes, &c. as appears by those histories of Thucydides, Livius, Dionysius Halicarnassus, with many others that are full of their wonderful stratagems, and were therefore by those Roman and Greek commonwealths adored and worshipped for gods with prayers and sacrifices, &c. [1227]In a word, Nihil magis quaerunt quam metum et admirationem hominum; [1228]and as another hath it, Dici non potest, quam impotenti ardore in homines dominium, et Divinos cultus maligni spiritus affectent. [1229]Tritemius in his book de septem secundis, assigns names to such angels as are governors of particular provinces, by what authority I know not, and gives them several jurisdictions. Asclepiades a Grecian, Rabbi Achiba the Jew, Abraham Avenezra, and Rabbi Azariel, Arabians, (as I find them cited by [1230]Cicogna) farther add, that they are not our governors only, Sed ex eorum concordia et discordia, boni et mali affectus promanant, but as they agree, so do we and our princes, or disagree; stand or fall. Juno was a bitter enemy to Troy, Apollo a good friend, Jupiter indifferent, Aequa Venus Teucris, Pallas iniqua fuit; some are for us still, some against us, Premente Deo, fert Deus alter opem. Religion, policy, public and private quarrels, wars are procured by them, and they are [1231]delighted perhaps to see men fight, as men are with cocks, bulls and dogs, bears, &c., plagues, dearths depend on them, our bene and male esse, and almost all our other peculiar actions, (for as Anthony Rusea contends, lib. 5, cap. 18, every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular, all his life long, which Jamblichus calls daemonem,) preferments, losses, weddings, deaths, rewards and punishments, and as [1232]Proclus will, all offices whatsoever, alii genetricem, alii opificem potestatem habent, &c. and several names they give them according to their offices, as Lares, Indegites, Praestites, &c. When the Arcades in that battle at Cheronae, which was fought against King Philip for the liberty of Greece, had deceitfully carried themselves, long after, in the very same place, Diis Graeciae, ultoribus (saith mine author) they were miserably slain by Metellus the Roman: so likewise, in smaller matters, they will have things fall out, as these boni and mali genii favour or dislike us: Saturni non conveniunt Jovialibus, &c. He that is Saturninus shall never likely be preferred. [1233]That base fellows are often advanced, undeserving Gnathoes, and vicious parasites, whereas discreet, wise, virtuous and worthy men are neglected and unrewarded; they refer to those domineering spirits, or subordinate Genii; as they are inclined, or favour men, so they thrive, are ruled and overcome; for as [1234]Libanius supposeth in our ordinary conflicts and contentions, Genius Genio cedit et obtemperat, one genius yields and is overcome by another. All particular events almost they refer to these private spirits; and (as Paracelsus adds) they direct, teach, inspire, and instruct men. Never was any man extraordinary famous in any art, action, or great commander, that had not familiarem daemonem to inform him, as Numa, Socrates, and many such, as Cardan illustrates, cap. 128, Arcanis prudentiae civilis, [1235] Speciali siquidem gratia, se a Deo donari asserunt magi, a Geniis caelestibus instrui, ab iis doceri. But these are most erroneous paradoxes, ineptae et fabulosae nugae, rejected by our divines and Christian churches. 'Tis true they have, by God's permission, power over us, and we find by experience, that they can [1236]hurt not our fields only, cattle, goods, but our bodies and minds. At Hammel in Saxony, An. 1484. 20 Junii, the devil, in likeness of a pied piper, carried away 130 children that were never after seen. Many times men are [1237]affrighted out of their wits, carried away quite, as Scheretzius illustrates, lib. 1, c. iv., and severally molested by his means, Plotinus the Platonist, lib. 14, advers. Gnos. laughs them to scorn, that hold the devil or spirits can cause any such diseases. Many think he can work upon the body, but not upon the mind. But experience pronounceth otherwise, that he can work both upon body and mind. Tertullian is of this opinion, c. 22. [1238]“That he can cause both sickness and health,” and that secretly. [1239]Taurellus adds “by clancular poisons he can infect the bodies, and hinder the operations of the bowels, though we perceive it not, closely creeping into them,” saith [1240]Lipsius, and so crucify our souls: Et nociva melancholia furiosos efficit. For being a spiritual body, he struggles with our spirits, saith Rogers, and suggests (according to [1241]Cardan, verba sine voce, species sine visu, envy, lust, anger, &c.) as he sees men inclined.
The manner how he performs it, Biarmannus in his Oration against Bodine, sufficiently declares. [1242]“He begins first with the phantasy, and moves that so strongly, that no reason is able to resist.” Now the phantasy he moves by mediation of humours; although many physicians are of opinion, that the devil can alter the mind, and produce this disease of himself. Quibusdam medicorum visum, saith [1243]Avicenna, quod Melancholia contingat a daemonio. Of the same mind is Psellus and Rhasis the Arab. lib. 1. Tract. 9. Cont. [1244]“That this disease proceeds especially from the devil, and from him alone.” Arculanus, cap. 6. in 9. Rhasis, Aelianus Montaltus, in his 9. cap. Daniel Sennertus, lib. 1. part. 2. cap. 11. confirm as much, that the devil can cause this disease; by reason many times that the parties affected prophesy, speak strange language, but non sine interventu humoris, not without the humour, as he interprets himself; no more doth Avicenna, si contingat a daemonio, sufficit nobis ut convertat complexionem ad choleram nigram, et sit causa ejus propinqua cholera nigra; the immediate cause is choler adust, which [1245] Pomponatius likewise labours to make good: Galgerandus of Mantua, a famous physician, so cured a demoniacal woman in his time, that spake all languages, by purging black choler, and thereupon belike this humour of melancholy is called balneum diaboli, the devil's bath; the devil spying his opportunity of such humours drives them many times to despair, fury, rage, &c., mingling himself among these humours. This is that which Tertullian avers, Corporibus infligunt acerbos casus, animaeque repentinos, membra distorquent, occulte repentes, &c. and which Lemnius goes about to prove, Immiscent se mali Genii pravis humoribus, atque atrae, bili, &c. And [1246]Jason Pratensis, “that the devil, being a slender incomprehensible spirit, can easily insinuate and wind himself into human bodies, and cunningly couched in our bowels vitiate our healths, terrify our souls with fearful dreams, and shake our minds with furies.” And in another place, “These unclean spirits settled in our bodies, and now mixed with our melancholy humours, do triumph as it were, and sport themselves as in another heaven.” Thus he argues, and that they go in and out of our bodies, as bees do in a hive, and so provoke and tempt us as they perceive our temperature inclined of itself, and most apt to be deluded. [1247] Agrippa and [1248]Lavater are persuaded, that this humour invites the devil to it, wheresoever it is in extremity, and of all other, melancholy persons are most subject to diabolical temptations and illusions, and most apt to entertain them, and the Devil best able to work upon them. But whether by obsession, or possession, or otherwise, I will not determine; 'tis a difficult question. Delrio the Jesuit, Tom. 3. lib. 6. Springer and his colleague, mall. malef. Pet. Thyreus the Jesuit, lib. de daemoniacis, de locis infestis, de Terrificationibus nocturnis, Hieronymus Mengus Flagel. daem. and others of that rank of pontifical writers, it seems, by their exorcisms and conjurations approve of it, having forged many stories to that purpose. A nun did eat a lettuce [1249]without grace, or signing it with the sign of the cross, and was instantly possessed. Durand. lib. 6. Rationall. c. 86. numb. 8. relates that he saw a wench possessed in Bononia with two devils, by eating an unhallowed pomegranate, as she did afterwards confess, when she was cured by exorcisms. And therefore our Papists do sign themselves so often with the sign of the cross, Ne daemon ingredi ausit, and exorcise all manner of meats, as being unclean or accursed otherwise, as Bellarmine defends. Many such stories I find amongst pontifical writers, to prove their assertions, let them free their own credits; some few I will recite in this kind out of most approved physicians. Cornelius Gemma, lib. 2. de nat. mirac. c. 4. relates of a young maid, called Katherine Gualter, a cooper's daughter, an. 1571. that had such strange passions and convulsions, three men could not sometimes hold her; she purged a live eel, which he saw, a foot and a half long, and touched it himself; but the eel afterwards vanished; she vomited some twenty-four pounds of fulsome stuff of all colours, twice a day for fourteen days; and after that she voided great balls of hair, pieces of wood, pigeon's dung, parchment, goose dung, coals; and after them two pounds of pure blood, and then again coals and stones, or which some had inscriptions bigger than a walnut, some of them pieces of glass, brass, &c. besides paroxysms of laughing, weeping and ecstasies, &c. Et hoc (inquit) cum horore vidi, this I saw with horror. They could do no good on her by physic, but left her to the clergy. Marcellus Donatus, lib. 2. c. 1. de med. mirab. hath such another story of a country fellow, that had four knives in his belly, Instar serrae dentatos, indented like a saw, every one a span long, and a wreath of hair like a globe, with much baggage of like sort, wonderful to behold: how it should come into his guts, he concludes, Certe non alio quam daemonis astutia et dolo, (could assuredly only have been through the artifice of the devil). Langius, Epist. med. lib. 1. Epist. 38. hath many relations to this effect, and so hath Christophorus a Vega: Wierus, Skenkius, Scribanius, all agree that they are done by the subtlety and illusion of the devil. If you shall ask a reason of this, 'tis to exercise our patience; for as [1250]Tertullian holds, Virtus non est virtus, nisi comparem habet aliquem, in quo superando vim suam ostendat 'tis to try us and our faith, 'tis for our offences, and for the punishment of our sins, by God's permission they do it, Carnifices vindictae justae Dei, as [1251]Tolosanus styles them, Executioners of his will; or rather as David, Ps. 78. ver. 49. “He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, indignation, wrath, and vexation, by sending out of evil angels:” so did he afflict Job, Saul, the Lunatics and demoniacal persons whom Christ cured, Mat. iv. 8. Luke iv. 11. Luke xiii. Mark ix. Tobit. viii. 3. &c. This, I say, happeneth for a punishment of sin, for their want of faith, incredulity, weakness, distrust, &c.
You have heard what the devil can do of himself, now you shall hear what he can perform by his instruments, who are many times worse (if it be possible) than he himself, and to satisfy their revenge and lust cause more mischief, Multa enim mala non egisset daemon, nisi provocatus a sagis, as [1252]Erastus thinks; much harm had never been done, had he not been provoked by witches to it. He had not appeared in Samuel's shape, if the Witch of Endor had let him alone; or represented those serpents in Pharaoh's presence, had not the magicians urged him unto it; Nec morbos vel hominibus, vel brutis infligeret (Erastus maintains) si sagae quiescerent; men and cattle might go free, if the witches would let him alone. Many deny witches at all, or if there be any they can do no harm; of this opinion is Wierus, lib. 3. cap. 53. de praestig. daem. Austin Lerchemer a Dutch writer, Biarmanus, Ewichius, Euwaldus, our countryman Scot; with him in Horace,
Natural causes are either primary and universal, or secondary and more particular. Primary causes are the heavens, planets, stars, &c., by their influence (as our astrologers hold) producing this and such like effects. I will not here stand to discuss obiter, whether stars be causes, or signs; or to apologise for judical astrology. If either Sextus Empericus, Picus Mirandula, Sextus ab Heminga, Pererius, Erastus, Chambers, &c., have so far prevailed with any man, that he will attribute no virtue at all to the heavens, or to sun, or moon, more than he doth to their signs at an innkeeper's post, or tradesman's shop, or generally condemn all such astrological aphorisms approved by experience: I refer him to Bellantius, Pirovanus, Marascallerus, Goclenius, Sir Christopher Heidon, &c. If thou shalt ask me what I think, I must answer, nam et doctis hisce erroribus versatus sum, (for I am conversant with these learned errors,) they do incline, but not compel; no necessity at all: [1278]agunt non cogunt: and so gently incline, that a wise man may resist them; sapiens dominabitur astris: they rule us, but God rules them. All this (methinks) [1279]Joh. de Indagine hath comprised in brief, Quaeris a me quantum in nobis operantur astra? &c. “Wilt thou know how far the stars work upon us? I say they do but incline, and that so gently, that if we will be ruled by reason, they have no power over us; but if we follow our own nature, and be led by sense, they do as much in us as in brute beasts, and we are no better.” So that, I hope, I may justly conclude with [1280]Cajetan, Coelum est vehiculum divinae virtutis, &c., that the heaven is God's instrument, by mediation of which he governs and disposeth these elementary bodies; or a great book, whose letters are the stars, (as one calls it,) wherein are written many strange things for such as can read, [1281]“or an excellent harp, made by an eminent workman, on which, he that can but play, will make most admirable music.” But to the purpose.
[1282]Paracelsus is of opinion, “that a physician without the knowledge of stars can neither understand the cause or cure of any disease, either of this or gout, not so much as toothache; except he see the peculiar geniture and scheme of the party effected.” And for this proper malady, he will have the principal and primary cause of it proceed from the heaven, ascribing more to stars than humours, [1283]“and that the constellation alone many times produceth melancholy, all other causes set apart.” He gives instance in lunatic persons, that are deprived of their wits by the moon's motion; and in another place refers all to the ascendant, and will have the true and chief cause of it to be sought from the stars. Neither is it his opinion only, but of many Galenists and philosophers, though they do not so peremptorily maintain as much. “This variety of melancholy symptoms proceeds from the stars,” saith [1284]Melancthon: the most generous melancholy, as that of Augustus, comes from the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Libra: the bad, as that of Catiline's, from the meeting of Saturn and the moon in Scorpio. Jovianus Pontanus, in his tenth book, and thirteenth chapter de rebus coelestibus, discourseth to this purpose at large, Ex atra bile varii generantur morbi, &c., [1285]“many diseases proceed from black choler, as it shall be hot or cold; and though it be cold in its own nature, yet it is apt to be heated, as water may be made to boil, and burn as bad as fire; or made cold as ice: and thence proceed such variety of symptoms, some mad, some solitary, some laugh, some rage,” &c. The cause of all which intemperance he will have chiefly and primarily proceed from the heavens, [1286]“from the position of Mars, Saturn, and Mercury.” His aphorisms be these, [1287]“Mercury in any geniture, if he shall be found in Virgo, or Pisces his opposite sign, and that in the horoscope, irradiated by those quartile aspects of Saturn or Mars, the child shall be mad or melancholy.” Again, [1288]“He that shall have Saturn and Mars, the one culminating, the other in the fourth house, when he shall be born, shall be melancholy, of which he shall be cured in time, if Mercury behold them. [1289]If the moon be in conjunction or opposition at the birth time with the sun, Saturn or Mars, or in a quartile aspect with them,” (e malo coeli loco, Leovitius adds,) “many diseases are signified, especially the head and brain is like to be misaffected with pernicious humours, to be melancholy, lunatic, or mad,” Cardan adds, quarta luna natos, eclipses, earthquakes. Garcaeus and Leovitius will have the chief judgment to be taken from the lord of the geniture, or where there is an aspect between the moon and Mercury, and neither behold the horoscope, or Saturn and Mars shall be lord of the present conjunction or opposition in Sagittarius or Pisces, of the sun or moon, such persons are commonly epileptic, dote, demoniacal, melancholy: but see more of these aphorisms in the above-named Pontanus. Garcaeus, cap. 23. de Jud. genitur. Schoner. lib. 1. cap. 8, which he hath gathered out of [1290]Ptolemy, Albubater, and some other Arabians, Junctine, Ranzovius, Lindhout, Origen, &c. But these men you will reject peradventure, as astrologers, and therefore partial judges; then hear the testimony of physicians, Galenists themselves. [1291]Carto confesseth the influence of stars to have a great hand to this peculiar disease, so doth Jason Pratensis, Lonicerius praefat. de Apoplexia, Ficinus, Fernelius, &c. [1292]P. Cnemander acknowledgeth the stars an universal cause, the particular from parents, and the use of the six non-natural things. Baptista Port. mag. l. 1. c. 10, 12, 15, will have them causes to every particular individium. Instances and examples, to evince the truth of those aphorisms, are common amongst those astrologian treatises. Cardan, in his thirty-seventh geniture, gives instance in Matth. Bolognius. Camerar. hor. natalit. centur. 7. genit. 6. et 7. of Daniel Gare, and others; but see Garcaeus, cap. 33. Luc. Gauricus, Tract. 6. de Azemenis, &c. The time of this melancholy is, when the significators of any geniture are directed according to art, as the hor: moon, hylech, &c. to the hostile beams or terms of &♄ and ♂ especially, or any fixed star of their nature, or if &♄ by his revolution or transitus, shall offend any of those radical promissors in the geniture.
Other signs there are taken from physiognomy, metoposcopy, chiromancy, which because Joh. de Indagine, and Rotman, the landgrave of Hesse his mathematician, not long since in his Chiromancy; Baptista Porta, in his celestial Physiognomy, have proved to hold great affinity with astrology, to satisfy the curious, I am the more willing to insert.
The general notions [1293]physiognomers give, be these; “black colour argues natural melancholy; so doth leanness, hirsuteness, broad veins, much hair on the brows,” saith [1294]Gratanarolus, cap. 7, and a little head, out of Aristotle, high sanguine, red colour, shows head melancholy; they that stutter and are bald, will be soonest melancholy, (as Avicenna supposeth,) by reason of the dryness of their brains; but he that will know more of the several signs of humour and wits out of physiognomy, let him consult with old Adamantus and Polemus, that comment, or rather paraphrase upon Aristotle's Physiognomy, Baptista Porta's four pleasant books, Michael Scot de secretis naturae, John de Indagine, Montaltus, Antony Zara. anat. ingeniorum, sect. 1. memb. 13. et lib. 4.
Chiromancy hath these aphorisms to foretell melancholy, Tasneir. lib. 5. cap. 2, who hath comprehended the sum of John de Indagine: Tricassus, Corvinus, and others in his book, thus hath it; [1295]“The Saturnine line going from the rascetta through the hand, to Saturn's mount, and there intersected by certain little lines, argues melancholy; so if the vital and natural make an acute angle, Aphorism 100. The saturnine, hepatic, and natural lines, making a gross triangle in the hand, argue as much;” which Goclenius, cap. 5. Chiros. repeats verbatim out of him. In general they conclude all, that if Saturn's mount be full of many small lines and intersections, [1296]“such men are most part melancholy, miserable and full of disquietness, care and trouble, continually vexed with anxious and bitter thoughts, always sorrowful, fearful, suspicious; they delight in husbandry, buildings, pools, marshes, springs, woods, walks,” &c. Thaddaeus Haggesius, in his Metoposcopia, hath certain aphorisms derived from Saturn's lines in the forehead, by which he collects a melancholy disposition; and [1297]Baptista Porta makes observations from those other parts of the body, as if a spot be over the spleen; [1298]“or in the nails; if it appear black, it signifieth much care, grief, contention, and melancholy;” the reason he refers to the humours, and gives instance in himself, that for seven years space he had such black spots in his nails, and all that while was in perpetual lawsuits, controversies for his inheritance, fear, loss of honour, banishment, grief, care, &c. and when his miseries ended, the black spots vanished. Cardan, in his book de libris propriis, tells such a story of his own person, that a little before his son's death, he had a black spot, which appeared in one of his nails; and dilated itself as he came nearer to his end. But I am over tedious in these toys, which howsoever, in some men's too severe censures, they may be held absurd and ridiculous, I am the bolder to insert, as not borrowed from circumforanean rogues and gipsies, but out of the writings of worthy philosophers and physicians, yet living some of them, and religious professors in famous universities, who are able to patronise that which they have said, and vindicate themselves from all cavillers and ignorant persons.
Secondary peculiar causes efficient, so called in respect of the other precedent, are either congenitae, internae, innatae, as they term them, inward, innate, inbred; or else outward and adventitious, which happen to us after we are born: congenite or born with us, are either natural, as old age, or praeter naturam (as [1299]Fernelius calls it) that distemperature, which we have from our parent's seed, it being an hereditary disease. The first of these, which is natural to all, and which no man living can avoid, is [1300]old age, which being cold and dry, and of the same quality as melancholy is, must needs cause it, by diminution of spirits and substance, and increasing of adust humours; therefore [1301] Melancthon avers out of Aristotle, as an undoubted truth, Senes plerunque delirasse in senecta, that old men familiarly dote, ob atram bilem, for black choler, which is then superabundant in them: and Rhasis, that Arabian physician, in his Cont. lib. 1. cap. 9, calls it [1302]“a necessary and inseparable accident,” to all old and decrepit persons. After seventy years (as the Psalmist saith) [1303]“all is trouble and sorrow;” and common experience confirms the truth of it in weak and old persons, especially such as have lived in action all their lives, had great employment, much business, much command, and many servants to oversee, and leave off ex abrupto; as [1304]Charles the Fifth did to King Philip, resign up all on a sudden; they are overcome with melancholy in an instant: or if they do continue in such courses, they dote at last, (senex bis puer,) and are not able to manage their estates through common infirmities incident in their age; full of ache, sorrow and grief, children again, dizzards, they carl many times as they sit, and talk to themselves, they are angry, waspish, displeased with every thing, “suspicious of all, wayward, covetous, hard” (saith Tully,) “self-willed, superstitious, self-conceited, braggers and admirers of themselves,” as [1305]Balthazar Castilio hath truly noted of them.[1306]This natural infirmity is most eminent in old women, and such as are poor, solitary, live in most base esteem and beggary, or such as are witches; insomuch that Wierus, Baptista Porta, Ulricus Molitor, Edwicus, do refer all that witches are said to do, to imagination alone, and this humour of melancholy. And whereas it is controverted, whether they can bewitch cattle to death, ride in the air upon a cowl-staff out of a chimney-top, transform themselves into cats, dogs, &c., translate bodies from place to place, meet in companies, and dance, as they do, or have carnal copulation with the devil, they ascribe all to this redundant melancholy, which domineers in them, to [1307] somniferous potions, and natural causes, the devil's policy. Non laedunt omnino (saith Wierus) aut quid mirum faciunt, (de Lamiis, lib. 3. cap. 36), ut putatur, solam vitiatam habent phantasiam; they do no such wonders at all, only their [1308]brains are crazed. [1309]“They think they are witches, and can do hurt, but do not.” But this opinion Bodine, Erastus, Danaeus, Scribanius, Sebastian Michaelis, Campanella de Sensu rerum, lib. 4. cap. 9. [1310]Dandinus the Jesuit, lib. 2. de Animae explode; [1311]Cicogna confutes at large. That witches are melancholy, they deny not, but not out of corrupt phantasy alone, so to delude themselves and others, or to produce such effects.
That other inward inbred cause of Melancholy is our temperature, in whole or part, which we receive from our parents, which [1312]Fernelius calls Praeter naturam, or unnatural, it being an hereditary disease; for as he justifies [1313]Quale parentum maxime patris semen obtigerit, tales evadunt similares spermaticaeque paries, quocunque etiam morbo Pater quum generat tenetur, cum semine transfert, in Prolem; such as the temperature of the father is, such is the son's, and look what disease the father had when he begot him, his son will have after him; [1314]“and is as well inheritor of his infirmities, as of his lands. And where the complexion and constitution of the father is corrupt, there ([1315]saith Roger Bacon) the complexion and constitution of the son must needs be corrupt, and so the corruption is derived from the father to the son.” Now this doth not so much appear in the composition of the body, according to that of Hippocrates, [1316]“in habit, proportion, scars, and other lineaments; but in manners and conditions of the mind,” Et patrum in natos abeunt cum semine mores.
Seleucus had an anchor on his thigh, so had his posterity, as Trogus records, lib. 15. Lepidus, in Pliny l. 7. c. 17, was purblind, so was his son. That famous family of Aenobarbi were known of old, and so surnamed from their red beards; the Austrian lip, and those Indian flat noses are propagated, the Bavarian chin, and goggle eyes amongst the Jews, as [1317] Buxtorfius observes; their voice, pace, gesture, looks, are likewise derived with all the rest of their conditions and infirmities; such a mother, such a daughter; their very [1318]affections Lemnius contends “to follow their seed, and the malice and bad conditions of children are many times wholly to be imputed to their parents;” I need not therefore make any doubt of Melancholy, but that it is an hereditary disease. [1319] Paracelsus in express words affirms it, lib. de morb. amentium to. 4. tr. 1; so doth [1320]Crato in an Epistle of his to Monavius. So doth Bruno Seidelius in his book de morbo incurab. Montaltus proves, cap. 11, out of Hippocrates and Plutarch, that such hereditary dispositions are frequent, et hanc (inquit) fieri reor ob participatam melancholicam intemperantiam (speaking of a patient) I think he became so by participation of Melancholy. Daniel Sennertus, lib. 1. part 2. cap. 9, will have his melancholy constitution derived not only from the father to the son, but to the whole family sometimes; Quandoque totis familiis hereditativam, [1321]Forestus, in his medicinal observations, illustrates this point, with an example of a merchant, his patient, that had this infirmity by inheritance; so doth Rodericus a Fonseca, tom. 1. consul. 69, by an instance of a young man that was so affected ex matre melancholica, had a melancholy mother, et victu melancholico, and bad diet together. Ludovicus Mercatus, a Spanish physician, in that excellent Tract which he hath lately written of hereditary diseases, tom. 2. oper. lib. 5, reckons up leprosy, as those [1322]Galbots in Gascony, hereditary lepers, pox, stone, gout, epilepsy, &c. Amongst the rest, this and madness after a set time comes to many, which he calls a miraculous thing in nature, and sticks for ever to them as an incurable habit. And that which is more to be wondered at, it skips in some families the father, and goes to the son, [1323]“or takes every other, and sometimes every third in a lineal descent, and doth not always produce the same, but some like, and a symbolizing disease.” These secondary causes hence derived, are commonly so powerful, that (as [1324]Wolfius holds) saepe mutant decreta siderum, they do often alter the primary causes, and decrees of the heavens. For these reasons, belike, the Church and commonwealth, human and Divine laws, have conspired to avoid hereditary diseases, forbidding such marriages as are any whit allied; and as Mercatus adviseth all families to take such, si fieri possit quae maxime distant natura, and to make choice of those that are most differing in complexion from them; if they love their own, and respect the common good. And sure, I think, it hath been ordered by God's especial providence, that in all ages there should be (as usually there is) once in [1325]600 years, a transmigration of nations, to amend and purify their blood, as we alter seed upon our land, and that there should be as it were an inundation of those northern Goths and Vandals, and many such like people which came out of that continent of Scandia and Sarmatia (as some suppose) and overran, as a deluge, most part of Europe and Africa, to alter for our good, our complexions, which were much defaced with hereditary infirmities, which by our lust and intemperance we had contracted. A sound generation of strong and able men were sent amongst us, as those northern men usually are, innocuous, free from riot, and free from diseases; to qualify and make us as those poor naked Indians are generally at this day; and those about Brazil (as a late [1326]writer observes), in the Isle of Maragnan, free from all hereditary diseases, or other contagion, whereas without help of physic they live commonly 120 years or more, as in the Orcades and many other places. Such are the common effects of temperance and intemperance, but I will descend to particular, and show by what means, and by whom especially, this infirmity is derived unto us.
Filii ex senibus nati, raro sunt firmi temperamenti, old men's children are seldom of a good temperament, as Scoltzius supposeth, consult. 177, and therefore most apt to this disease; and as [1327]Levinus Lemnius farther adds, old men beget most part wayward, peevish, sad, melancholy sons, and seldom merry. He that begets a child on a full stomach, will either have a sick child, or a crazed son (as [1328]Cardan thinks), contradict. med. lib. 1. contradict. 18, or if the parents be sick, or have any great pain of the head, or megrim, headache, (Hieronymus Wolfius [1329]doth instance in a child of Sebastian Castalio's); if a drunken man get a child, it will never likely have a good brain, as Gellius argues, lib. 12. cap. 1. Ebrii gignunt Ebrios, one drunkard begets another, saith [1330]Plutarch, symp. lib. 1. quest. 5, whose sentence [1331]Lemnius approves, l. 1. c. 4. Alsarius Crutius, Gen. de qui sit med. cent. 3. fol. 182. Macrobius, lib. 1. Avicenna, lib. 3. Fen. 21. Tract 1. cap. 8, and Aristotle himself, sect. 2. prob. 4, foolish, drunken, or hair-brain women, most part bring forth children like unto themselves, morosos et languidos, and so likewise he that lies with a menstruous woman. Intemperantia veneris, quam in nautis praesertim insectatur [1332] Lemnius, qui uxores ineunt, nulla menstrui decursus ratione habita nec observato interlunio, praecipua causa est, noxia, pernitiosa, concubitum hunc exitialem ideo, et pestiferum vocat. [1333]Rodoricus a Castro Lucitanus, detestantur ad unum omnes medici, tum et quarta luna concepti, infelices plerumque et amentes, deliri, stolidi, morbosi, impuri, invalidi, tetra lue sordidi minime vitales, omnibus bonis corporis atque animi destituti: ad laborem nati, si seniores, inquit Eustathius, ut Hercules, et alii. [1334]Judaei maxime insectantur foedum hunc, et immundum apud Christianas Concubitum, ut illicitum abhorrent, et apud suos prohibent; et quod Christiani toties leprosi, amentes, tot morbili, impetigines, alphi, psorae, cutis et faciei decolorationes, tam multi morbi epidemici, acerbi, et venenosi sint, in hunc immundum concubitum rejiciunt, et crudeles in pignora vocant, qui quarta, luna profluente hac mensium illuvie concubitum hunc non perhorrescunt. Damnavit olim divina Lex et morte mulctavit hujusmodi homines, Lev. 18, 20, et inde nati, siqui deformes aut mutili, pater dilapidatus, quod non contineret ab [1335] immunda muliere. Gregorius Magnus, petenti Augustino nunquid apud [1336]Britannos hujusmodi concubitum toleraret, severe prohibuit viris suis tum misceri foeminas in consuetis suis menstruis, &c. I spare to English this which I have said. Another cause some give, inordinate diet, as if a man eat garlic, onions, fast overmuch, study too hard, be over-sorrowful, dull, heavy, dejected in mind, perplexed in his thoughts, fearful, &c., “their children” (saith [1337]Cardan subtil. lib. 18) “will be much subject to madness and melancholy; for if the spirits of the brain be fuzzled, or misaffected by such means, at such a time, their children will be fuzzled in the brain: they will be dull, heavy, timorous, discontented all their lives.” Some are of opinion, and maintain that paradox or problem, that wise men beget commonly fools; Suidas gives instance in Aristarchus the Grammarian, duos reliquit Filios Aristarchum et Aristachorum, ambos stultos; and which [1338]Erasmus urgeth in his Moria, fools beget wise men. Card. subt. l. 12, gives this cause, Quoniam spiritus sapientum ob studium resolvuntur, et in cerebrum feruntur a corde: because their natural spirits are resolved by study, and turned into animal; drawn from the heart, and those other parts to the brain. Lemnius subscribes to that of Cardan, and assigns this reason, Quod persolvant debitum languide, et obscitanter, unde foetus a parentum generositate desciscit: they pay their debt (as Paul calls it) to their wives remissly, by which means their children are weaklings, and many times idiots and fools.
Some other causes are given, which properly pertain, and do proceed from the mother: if she be over-dull, heavy, angry, peevish, discontented, and melancholy, not only at the time of conception, but even all the while she carries the child in her womb (saith Fernelius, path. l. 1, 11) her son will be so likewise affected, and worse, as [1339]Lemnius adds, l. 4. c. 7, if she grieve overmuch, be disquieted, or by any casualty be affrighted and terrified by some fearful object, heard or seen, she endangers her child, and spoils the temperature of it; for the strange imagination of a woman works effectually upon her infant, that as Baptista Porta proves, Physiog. caelestis l. 5. c. 2, she leaves a mark upon it, which is most especially seen in such as prodigiously long for such and such meats, the child will love those meats, saith Fernelius, and be addicted to like humours: [1340]“if a great-bellied woman see a hare, her child will often have a harelip,” as we call it. Garcaeus, de Judiciis geniturarum, cap. 33, hath a memorable example of one Thomas Nickell, born in the city of Brandeburg, 1551, [1341]“that went reeling and staggering all the days of his life, as if he would fall to the ground, because his mother being great with child saw a drunken man reeling in the street.” Such another I find in Martin Wenrichius, com. de ortu monstrorum, c. 17, I saw (saith he) at Wittenberg, in Germany, a citizen that looked like a carcass; I asked him the cause, he replied, [1342]“His mother, when she bore him in her womb, saw a carcass by chance, and was so sore affrighted with it, that ex eo foetus ei assimilatus, from a ghastly impression the child was like it.”
So many several ways are we plagued and punished for our father's defaults; insomuch that as Fernelius truly saith, [1343]“It is the greatest part of our felicity to be well born, and it were happy for human kind, if only such parents as are sound of body and mind should be suffered to marry.” An husbandman will sow none but the best and choicest seed upon his land, he will not rear a bull or a horse, except he be right shapen in all parts, or permit him to cover a mare, except he be well assured of his breed; we make choice of the best rams for our sheep, rear the neatest kine, and keep the best dogs, Quanto id diligentius in procreandis liberis observandum? And how careful then should we be in begetting of our children? In former times some [1344]countries have been so chary in this behalf, so stern, that if a child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made him away; so did the Indians of old by the relation of Curtius, and many other well-governed commonwealths, according to the discipline of those times. Heretofore in Scotland, saith [1345]Hect. Boethius, “if any were visited with the falling sickness, madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was likely to be propagated from the father to the son, he was instantly gelded; a woman kept from all company of men; and if by chance having some such disease, she were found to be with child, she with her brood were buried alive:” and this was done for the common good, lest the whole nation should be injured or corrupted. A severe doom you will say, and not to be used amongst Christians, yet more to be looked into than it is. For now by our too much facility in this kind, in giving way for all to marry that will, too much liberty and indulgence in tolerating all sorts, there is a vast confusion of hereditary diseases, no family secure, no man almost free from some grievous infirmity or other, when no choice is had, but still the eldest must marry, as so many stallions of the race; or if rich, be they fools or dizzards, lame or maimed, unable, intemperate, dissolute, exhaust through riot, as he said, [1346]jura haereditario sapere jubentur; they must be wise and able by inheritance: it comes to pass that our generation is corrupt, we have many weak persons, both in body and mind, many feral diseases raging amongst us, crazed families, parentes, peremptores; our fathers bad, and we are like to be worse.
According to my proposed method, having opened hitherto these secondary causes, which are inbred with us, I must now proceed to the outward and adventitious, which happen unto us after we are born. And those are either evident, remote, or inward, antecedent, and the nearest: continent causes some call them. These outward, remote, precedent causes are subdivided again into necessary and not necessary. Necessary (because we cannot avoid them, but they will alter us, as they are used, or abused) are those six non-natural things, so much spoken of amongst physicians, which are principal causes of this disease. For almost in every consultation, whereas they shall come to speak of the causes, the fault is found, and this most part objected to the patient; Peccavit circa res sex non naturales: he hath still offended in one of those six. Montanus, consil. 22, consulted about a melancholy Jew, gives that sentence, so did Frisemelica in the same place; and in his 244 counsel, censuring a melancholy soldier, assigns that reason of his malady, [1347]“he offended in all those six non-natural things, which were the outward causes, from which came those inward obstructions;” and so in the rest.
These six non-natural things are diet, retention and evacuation, which are more material than the other because they make new matter, or else are conversant in keeping or expelling of it. The other four are air, exercise, sleeping, waking, and perturbations of the mind, which only alter the matter. The first of these is diet, which consists in meat and drink, and causeth melancholy, as it offends in substance, or accidents, that is, quantity, quality, or the like. And well it may be called a material cause, since that, as [1348]Fernelius holds, “it hath such a power in begetting of diseases, and yields the matter and sustenance of them; for neither air, nor perturbations, nor any of those other evident causes take place, or work this effect, except the constitution of body, and preparation of humours, do concur. That a man may say, this diet is the mother of diseases, let the father be what he will, and from this alone, melancholy and frequent other maladies arise.” Many physicians, I confess, have written copious volumes of this one subject, of the nature and qualities of all manner of meats; as namely, Galen, Isaac the Jew, Halyabbas, Avicenna, Mesue, also four Arabians, Gordonius, Villanovanus, Wecker, Johannes Bruerinus, sitologia de Esculentis et Poculentis, Michael Savanarola, Tract 2. c. 8, Anthony Fumanellus, lib. de regimine senum, Curio in his comment on Schola Salerna, Godefridus Steckius arte med., Marcilius Cognatus, Ficinus, Ranzovius, Fonseca, Lessius, Magninus, regim. sanitatis, Frietagius, Hugo Fridevallius, &c., besides many other in [1349]English, and almost every peculiar physician, discourseth at large of all peculiar meats in his chapter of melancholy: yet because these books are not at hand to every man, I will briefly touch what kind of meats engender this humour, through their several species, and which are to be avoided. How they alter and change the matter, spirits first, and after humours, by which we are preserved, and the constitution of our body, Fernelius and others will show you. I hasten to the thing itself: and first of such diet as offends in substance.
Beef.] Beef, a strong and hearty meat (cold in the first degree, dry in the second, saith Gal. l. 3. c. 1. de alim. fac.) is condemned by him and all succeeding Authors, to breed gross melancholy blood: good for such as are sound, and of a strong constitution, for labouring men if ordered aright, corned, young, of an ox (for all gelded meats in every species are held best), or if old, [1350]such as have been tired out with labour, are preferred. Aubanus and Sabellicus commend Portugal beef to be the most savoury, best and easiest of digestion; we commend ours: but all is rejected, and unfit for such as lead a resty life, any ways inclined to melancholy, or dry of complexion: Tales (Galen thinks) de facile melancholicis aegritudinibus capiuntur.
Pork.] Pork, of all meats, is most nutritive in his own nature, [1351] but altogether unfit for such as live at ease, are any ways unsound of body or mind: too moist, full of humours, and therefore noxia delicatis, saith Savanarola, ex earum usu ut dubitetur an febris quartana generetur: naught for queasy stomachs, insomuch that frequent use of it may breed a quartan ague.
Goat.] Savanarola discommends goat's flesh, and so doth [1352]Bruerinus, l. 13. c. 19, calling it a filthy beast, and rammish: and therefore supposeth it will breed rank and filthy substance; yet kid, such as are young and tender, Isaac accepts, Bruerinus and Galen, l. 1. c. 1. de alimentorum facultatibus.
Hart.] Hart and red deer [1353]hath an evil name: it yields gross nutriment: a strong and great grained meat, next unto a horse. Which although some countries eat, as Tartars, and they of China; yet [1354] Galen condemns. Young foals are as commonly eaten in Spain as red deer, and to furnish their navies, about Malaga especially, often used; but such meats ask long baking, or seething, to qualify them, and yet all will not serve.
Venison, Fallow Deer.] All venison is melancholy, and begets bad blood; a pleasant meat: in great esteem with us (for we have more parks in England than there are in all Europe besides) in our solemn feasts. 'Tis somewhat better hunted than otherwise, and well prepared by cookery; but generally bad, and seldom to be used.
Hare.] Hare, a black meat, melancholy, and hard of digestion, it breeds incubus, often eaten, and causeth fearful dreams, so doth all venison, and is condemned by a jury of physicians. Mizaldus and some others say, that hare is a merry meat, and that it will make one fair, as Martial's epigram testifies to Gellia; but this is per accidens, because of the good sport it makes, merry company and good discourse that is commonly at the eating of it, and not otherwise to be understood.
Conies.] [1355]Conies are of the nature of hares. Magninus compares them to beef, pig, and goat, Reg. sanit. part. 3. c. 17; yet young rabbits by all men are approved to be good.
Generally, all such meats as are hard of digestion breed melancholy. Areteus, lib. 7. cap. 5, reckons up heads and feet, [1356]bowels, brains, entrails, marrow, fat, blood, skins, and those inward parts, as heart, lungs, liver, spleen, &c. They are rejected by Isaac, lib. 2. part. 3, Magninus, part. 3. cap. 17, Bruerinus, lib. 12, Savanarola, Rub. 32. Tract. 2.
Milk.] Milk, and all that comes of milk, as butter and cheese, curds, &c., increase melancholy (whey only excepted, which is most wholesome): [1357]some except asses' milk. The rest, to such as are sound, is nutritive and good, especially for young children, but because soon turned to corruption, [1358]not good for those that have unclean stomachs, are subject to headache, or have green wounds, stone, &c. Of all cheeses, I take that kind which we call Banbury cheese to be the best, ex vetustis pessimus, the older, stronger, and harder, the worst, as Langius discourseth in his Epistle to Melancthon, cited by Mizaldus, Isaac, p. 5. Gal. 3. de cibis boni succi. &c.
Fowl.] Amongst fowl, [1359]peacocks and pigeons, all fenny fowl are forbidden, as ducks, geese, swans, herons, cranes, coots, didappers, water-hens, with all those teals, curs, sheldrakes, and peckled fowls, that come hither in winter out of Scandia, Muscovy, Greenland, Friesland, which half the year are covered all over with snow, and frozen up. Though these be fair in feathers, pleasant in taste, and have a good outside, like hypocrites, white in plumes, and soft, their flesh is hard, black, unwholesome, dangerous, melancholy meat; Gravant et putrefaciant stomachum, saith Isaac, part. 5. de vol., their young ones are more tolerable, but young pigeons he quite disapproves.
Fishes.] Rhasis and [1360]Magninus discommend all fish, and say, they breed viscosities, slimy nutriment, little and humorous nourishment. Savanarola adds, cold, moist: and phlegmatic, Isaac; and therefore unwholesome for all cold and melancholy complexions: others make a difference, rejecting only amongst freshwater fish, eel, tench, lamprey, crawfish (which Bright approves, cap. 6), and such as are bred in muddy and standing waters, and have a taste of mud, as Franciscus Bonsuetus poetically defines, Lib. de aquatilibus.
Lampreys, Paulus Jovius, c. 34. de piscibus fluvial., highly magnifies, and saith, None speak against them, but inepti et scrupulosi, some scrupulous persons; but [1361]eels, c. 33, “he abhorreth in all places, at all times, all physicians detest them, especially about the solstice.” Gomesius, lib. 1. c. 22, de sale, doth immoderately extol sea-fish, which others as much vilify, and above the rest, dried, soused, indurate fish, as ling, fumados, red-herrings, sprats, stock-fish, haberdine, poor-John, all shellfish. [1362]Tim. Bright excepts lobster and crab. Messarius commends salmon, which Bruerinus contradicts, lib. 22. c. 17. Magninus rejects conger, sturgeon, turbot, mackerel, skate.
Carp is a fish of which I know not what to determine. Franciscus Bonsuetus accounts it a muddy fish. Hippolitus Salvianus, in his Book de Piscium natura et praeparatione, which was printed at Rome in folio, 1554, with most elegant pictures, esteems carp no better than a slimy watery meat. Paulus Jovius on the other side, disallowing tench, approves of it; so doth Dubravius in his Books of Fishponds. Freitagius [1363]extols it for an excellent wholesome meat, and puts it amongst the fishes of the best rank; and so do most of our country gentlemen, that store their ponds almost with no other fish. But this controversy is easily decided, in my judgment, by Bruerinus, l. 22. c. 13. The difference riseth from the site and nature of pools, [1364]sometimes muddy, sometimes sweet; they are in taste as the place is from whence they be taken. In like manner almost we may conclude of other fresh fish. But see more in Rondoletius, Bellonius, Oribasius, lib. 7. cap. 22, Isaac, l. 1, especially Hippolitus Salvianus, who is instar omnium solus, &c. Howsoever they may be wholesome and approved, much use of them is not good; P. Forestus, in his medicinal observations, [1365]relates, that Carthusian friars, whose living is most part fish, are more subject to melancholy than any other order, and that he found by experience, being sometimes their physician ordinary at Delft, in Holland. He exemplifies it with an instance of one Buscodnese, a Carthusian of a ruddy colour, and well liking, that by solitary living, and fish-eating, became so misaffected.
Herbs.] Amongst herbs to be eaten I find gourds, cucumbers, coleworts, melons, disallowed, but especially cabbage. It causeth troublesome dreams, and sends up black vapours to the brain. Galen, loc. affect. l. 3. c. 6, of all herbs condemns cabbage; and Isaac, lib. 2. c. 1. Animae gravitatem facit, it brings heaviness to the soul. Some are of opinion that all raw herbs and salads breed melancholy blood, except bugloss and lettuce. Crato, consil. 21. lib. 2, speaks against all herbs and worts, except borage, bugloss, fennel, parsley, dill, balm, succory. Magninus, regim. sanitatis, part. 3. cap. 31. Omnes herbae simpliciter malae, via cibi; all herbs are simply evil to feed on (as he thinks). So did that scoffing cook in [1366]Plautus hold:
Our Italians and Spaniards do make a whole dinner of herbs and salads (which our said Plautus calls coenas terrestras, Horace, coenas sine sanguine), by which means, as he follows it,
[1368]They are windy, and not fit therefore to be eaten of all men raw, though qualified with oil, but in broths, or otherwise. See more of these in every [1369]husbandman, and herbalist.
Roots.] Roots, Etsi quorundam gentium opes sint, saith Bruerinus, the wealth of some countries, and sole food, are windy and bad, or troublesome to the head: as onions, garlic, scallions, turnips, carrots, radishes, parsnips: Crato, lib. 2. consil. 11, disallows all roots, though [1370] some approve of parsnips and potatoes. [1371]Magninus is of Crato's opinion, [1372]“They trouble the mind, sending gross fumes to the brain, make men mad,” especially garlic, onions, if a man liberally feed on them a year together. Guianerius, tract. 15. cap. 2, complains of all manner of roots, and so doth Bruerinus, even parsnips themselves, which are the best, Lib. 9. cap. 14.
Fruits.] Pastinacarum usus succos gignit improbos. Crato, consil. 21. lib. 1, utterly forbids all manner of fruits, as pears, apples, plums, cherries, strawberries, nuts, medlars, serves, &c. Sanguinem inficiunt, saith Villanovanus, they infect the blood, and putrefy it, Magninus holds, and must not therefore be taken via cibi, aut quantitate magna, not to make a meal of, or in any great quantity. [1373]Cardan makes that a cause of their continual sickness at Fessa in Africa, “because they live so much on fruits, eating them thrice a day.” Laurentius approves of many fruits, in his Tract of Melancholy, which others disallow, and amongst the rest apples, which some likewise commend, sweetings, pearmains, pippins, as good against melancholy; but to him that is any way inclined to, or touched with this malady, [1374]Nicholas Piso in his Practics, forbids all fruits, as windy, or to be sparingly eaten at least, and not raw. Amongst other fruits, [1375]Bruerinus, out of Galen, excepts grapes and figs, but I find them likewise rejected.
Pulse.] All pulse are naught, beans, peas, vetches, &c., they fill the brain (saith Isaac) with gross fumes, breed black thick blood, and cause troublesome dreams. And therefore, that which Pythagoras said to his scholars of old, may be for ever applied to melancholy men, A fabis abstinete, eat no peas, nor beans; yet to such as will needs eat them, I would give this counsel, to prepare them according to those rules that Arnoldus Villanovanus, and Frietagius prescribe, for eating, and dressing. fruits, herbs, roots, pulse, &c.
Spices.] Spices cause hot and head melancholy, and are for that cause forbidden by our physicians to such men as are inclined to this malady, as pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, mace, dates, &c. honey and sugar. [1376] Some except honey; to those that are cold, it may be tolerable, but [1377] Dulcia se in bilem vertunt, (sweets turn into bile,) they are obstructive. Crato therefore forbids all spice, in a consultation of his, for a melancholy schoolmaster, Omnia aromatica et quicquid sanguinem adurit: so doth Fernelius, consil. 45. Guianerius, tract 15. cap. 2. Mercurialis, cons. 189. To these I may add all sharp and sour things, luscious and over-sweet, or fat, as oil, vinegar, verjuice, mustard, salt; as sweet things are obstructive, so these are corrosive. Gomesius, in his books, de sale, l. 1. c. 21, highly commends salt; so doth Codronchus in his tract, de sale Absynthii, Lemn. l. 3. c. 9. de occult. nat. mir. yet common experience finds salt, and salt-meats, to be great procurers of this disease. And for that cause belike those Egyptian priests abstained from salt, even so much, as in their bread, ut sine perturbatione anima esset, saith mine author, that their souls might be free from perturbations.
Bread.] Bread that is made of baser grain, as peas, beans, oats, rye, or [1378]over-hard baked, crusty, and black, is often spoken against, as causing melancholy juice and wind. Joh. Mayor, in the first book of his History of Scotland, contends much for the wholesomeness of oaten bread: it was objected to him then living at Paris in France, that his countrymen fed on oats, and base grain, as a disgrace; but he doth ingenuously confess, Scotland, Wales, and a third part of England, did most part use that kind of bread, that it was as wholesome as any grain, and yielded as good nourishment. And yet Wecker out of Galen calls it horsemeat, and fitter for juments than men to feed on. But read Galen himself, Lib. 1. De cibis boni et mali succi, more largely discoursing of corn and bread.
Wine.] All black wines, over-hot, compound, strong thick drinks, as Muscadine, Malmsey, Alicant, Rumney, Brownbastard, Metheglen, and the like, of which they have thirty several kinds in Muscovy, all such made drinks are hurtful in this case, to such as are hot, or of a sanguine choleric complexion, young, or inclined to head-melancholy. For many times the drinking of wine alone causeth it. Arculanus, c. 16. in 9. Rhasis, puts in [1379]wine for a great cause, especially if it be immoderately used. Guianerius, tract. 15. c. 2, tells a story of two Dutchmen, to whom he gave entertainment in his house, “that [1380]in one month's space were both melancholy by drinking of wine, one did nought but sing, the other sigh.” Galen, l. de causis morb. c. 3. Matthiolus on Dioscorides, and above all other Andreas Bachius, l. 3. 18, 19, 20, have reckoned upon those inconveniences that come by wine: yet notwithstanding all this, to such as are cold, or sluggish melancholy, a cup of wine is good physic, and so doth Mercurialis grant, consil. 25, in that case, if the temperature be cold, as to most melancholy men it is, wine is much commended, if it be moderately used.
Cider, Perry.] Cider and perry are both cold and windy drinks, and for that cause to be neglected, and so are all those hot spiced strong drinks.
Beer.] Beer, if it be over-new or over-stale, over-strong, or not sodden, smell of the cask, sharp, or sour, is most unwholesome, frets, and galls, &c. Henricus Ayrerus, in a [1381]consultation of his, for one that laboured of hypochondriacal melancholy, discommends beer. So doth [1382] Crato in that excellent counsel of his, Lib. 2. consil. 21, as too windy, because of the hop. But he means belike that thick black Bohemian beer used in some other parts of [1383]Germany.
Waters] Standing waters, thick and ill-coloured, such as come forth of pools, and moats, where hemp hath been steeped, or slimy fishes live, are most unwholesome, putrefied, and full of mites, creepers, slimy, muddy, unclean, corrupt, impure, by reason of the sun's heat, and still-standing; they cause foul distemperatures in the body and mind of man, are unfit to make drink of, to dress meat with, or to be [1386]used about men inwardly or outwardly. They are good for many domestic uses, to wash horses, water cattle, &c., or in time of necessity, but not otherwise. Some are of opinion, that such fat standing waters make the best beer, and that seething doth defecate it, as [1387]Cardan holds, Lib. 13. subtil. “It mends the substance, and savour of it,” but it is a paradox. Such beer may be stronger, but not so wholesome as the other, as [1388]Jobertus truly justifieth out of Galen, Paradox, dec. 1. Paradox 5, that the seething of such impure waters doth not purge or purify them, Pliny, lib. 31. c. 3, is of the same tenet, and P. Crescentius, agricult. lib. 1. et lib. 4. c. 11. et c. 45. Pamphilius Herilachus, l. 4. de not. aquarum, such waters are naught, not to be used, and by the testimony of [1389]Galen, “breed agues, dropsies, pleurisies, splenetic and melancholy passions, hurt the eyes, cause a bad temperature, and ill disposition of the whole body, with bad colour.” This Jobertus stiffly maintains, Paradox, lib. 1. part. 5, that it causeth blear eyes, bad colour, and many loathsome diseases to such as use it: this which they say, stands with good reason; for as geographers relate, the water of Astracan breeds worms in such as drink it. [1390] Axius, or as now called Verduri, the fairest river in Macedonia, makes all cattle black that taste of it. Aleacman now Peleca, another stream in Thessaly, turns cattle most part white, si polui ducas, L. Aubanus Rohemus refers that [1391]struma or poke of the Bavarians and Styrians to the nature of their waters, as [1392]Munster doth that of Valesians in the Alps, and [1393]Bodine supposeth the stuttering of some families in Aquitania, about Labden, to proceed from the same cause, “and that the filth is derived from the water to their bodies.” So that they that use filthy, standing, ill-coloured, thick, muddy water, must needs have muddy, ill-coloured, impure, and infirm bodies. And because the body works upon the mind, they shall have grosser understandings, dull, foggy, melancholy spirits, and be really subject to all manner of infirmities.
To these noxious simples, we may reduce an infinite number of compound, artificial, made dishes, of which our cooks afford us a great variety, as tailors do fashions in our apparel. Such are [1394]puddings stuffed with blood, or otherwise composed; baked, meats, soused indurate meats, fried and broiled buttered meats; condite, powdered, and over-dried, [1395]all cakes, simnels, buns, cracknels made with butter, spice, &c., fritters, pancakes, pies, sausages, and those several sauces, sharp, or over-sweet, of which scientia popinae, as Seneca calls it, hath served those [1396] Apician tricks, and perfumed dishes, which Adrian the sixth Pope so much admired in the accounts of his predecessor Leo Decimus; and which prodigious riot and prodigality have invented in this age. These do generally engender gross humours, fill the stomach with crudities, and all those inward parts with obstructions. Montanus, consil. 22, gives instance, in a melancholy Jew, that by eating such tart sauces, made dishes, and salt meats, with which he was overmuch delighted, became melancholy, and was evil affected. Such examples are familiar and common.
There is not so much harm proceeding from the substance itself of meat, and quality of it, in ill-dressing and preparing, as there is from the quantity, disorder of time and place, unseasonable use of it, [1397] intemperance, overmuch, or overlittle taking of it. A true saying it is, Plures crapula quam gladius. This gluttony kills more than the sword, this omnivorantia et homicida gula, this all-devouring and murdering gut. And that of [1398]Pliny is truer, “Simple diet is the best; heaping up of several meats is pernicious, and sauces worse; many dishes bring many diseases.” [1399]Avicen cries out, “That nothing is worse than to feed on many dishes, or to protract the time of meats longer than ordinary; from thence proceed our infirmities, and 'tis the fountain of all diseases, which arise out of the repugnancy of gross humours.” Thence, saith [1400] Fernelius, come crudities, wind, oppilations, cacochymia, plethora, cachexia, bradiopepsia, [1401]Hinc subitae, mortes, atque intestata senectus, sudden death, &c., and what not.
As a lamp is choked with a multitude of oil, or a little fire with overmuch wood quite extinguished, so is the natural heat with immoderate eating, strangled in the body. Pernitiosa sentina est abdomen insaturabile: one saith, An insatiable paunch is a pernicious sink, and the fountain of all diseases, both of body and mind. [1402]Mercurialis will have it a peculiar cause of this private disease; Solenander, consil. 5. sect. 3, illustrates this of Mercurialis, with an example of one so melancholy, ab intempestivis commessationibus, unseasonable feasting. [1403]Crato confirms as much, in that often cited counsel, 21. lib. 2, putting superfluous eating for a main cause. But what need I seek farther for proofs? Hear [1404]Hippocrates himself, lib. 2. aphor. 10, “Impure bodies the more they are nourished, the more they are hurt, for the nourishment is putrefied with vicious humours.”
And yet for all this harm, which apparently follows surfeiting and drunkenness, see how we luxuriate and rage in this kind; read what Johannes Stuckius hath written lately of this subject, in his great volume De Antiquorum Conviviis, and of our present age; Quam [1405]portentosae coenae, prodigious suppers, [1406]Qui dum invitant ad coenam efferunt ad sepulchrum, what Fagos, Epicures, Apetios, Heliogables, our times afford? Lucullus' ghost walks still, and every man desires to sup in Apollo; Aesop's costly dish is ordinarily served up. [1407]Magis illa juvant, quae pluris emuntur. The dearest cates are best, and 'tis an ordinary thing to bestow twenty or thirty pounds on a dish, some thousand crowns upon a dinner: [1408]Mully-Hamet, king of Fez and Morocco, spent three pounds on the sauce of a capon: it is nothing in our times, we scorn all that is cheap. “We loathe the very [1409]light” (some of us, as Seneca notes) “because it comes free, and we are offended with the sun's heat, and those cool blasts, because we buy them not.” This air we breathe is so common, we care not for it; nothing pleaseth but what is dear. And if we be [1410]witty in anything, it is ad gulam: If we study at all, it is erudito luxu, to please the palate, and to satisfy the gut. “A cook of old was a base knave” (as [1411]Livy complains), “but now a great man in request; cookery is become an art, a noble science: cooks are gentlemen:” Venter Deus: They wear “their brains in their bellies, and their guts in their heads,” as [1412]Agrippa taxed some parasites of his time, rushing on their own destruction, as if a man should run upon the point of a sword, usque dum rumpantur comedunt, “They eat till they burst:” [1413]All day, all night, let the physician say what he will, imminent danger, and feral diseases are now ready to seize upon them, that will eat till they vomit, Edunt ut vomant, vomut ut edant, saith Seneca; which Dion relates of Vitellius, Solo transitu ciborum nutriri judicatus: His meat did pass through and away, or till they burst again. [1414]Strage animantium ventrem onerant, and rake over all the world, as so many [1415]slaves, belly-gods, and land-serpents, Et totus orbis ventri nimis angustus, the whole world cannot satisfy their appetite. [1416]“Sea, land, rivers, lakes, &c., may not give content to their raging guts.” To make up the mess, what immoderate drinking in every place? Senem potum pota trahebat anus, how they flock to the tavern: as if they were fruges consumere nati, born to no other end but to eat and drink, like Offellius Bibulus, that famous Roman parasite, Qui dum vixit, aut bibit aut minxit; as so many casks to hold wine, yea worse than a cask, that mars wine, and itself is not marred by it, yet these are brave men, Silenus Ebrius was no braver. Et quae fuerunt vitia, mores sunt: 'tis now the fashion of our times, an honour: Nunc vero res ista eo rediit (as Chrysost. serm. 30. in v. Ephes. comments) Ut effeminatae ridendaeque ignaviae loco habeatur, nolle inebriari; 'tis now come to that pass that he is no gentleman, a very milk-sop, a clown, of no bringing up, that will not drink; fit for no company; he is your only gallant that plays it off finest, no disparagement now to stagger in the streets, reel, rave, &c., but much to his fame and renown; as in like case Epidicus told Thesprio his fellow-servant, in the [1417]Poet. Aedipol facinus improbum, one urged, the other replied, At jam alii fecere idem, erit illi illa res honori, 'tis now no fault, there be so many brave examples to bear one out; 'tis a credit to have a strong brain, and carry his liquor well; the sole contention who can drink most, and fox his fellow the soonest. 'Tis the summum bonum of our tradesmen, their felicity, life, and soul, Tanta dulcedine affectant, saith Pliny, lib. 14. cap. 12. Ut magna pars non aliud vitae praemium intelligat, their chief comfort, to be merry together in an alehouse or tavern, as our modern Muscovites do in their mead-inns, and Turks in their coffeehouses, which much resemble our taverns; they will labour hard all day long to be drunk at night, and spend totius anni labores, as St. Ambrose adds, in a tippling feast; convert day into night, as Seneca taxes some in his times, Pervertunt officia anoctis et lucis; when we rise, they commonly go to bed, like our antipodes,
Some again are in the other extreme, and draw this mischief on their heads by too ceremonious and strict diet, being over-precise, cockney-like, and curious in their observation of meats, times, as that Medicina statica prescribes, just so many ounces at dinner, which Lessius enjoins, so much at supper, not a little more, nor a little less, of such meat, and at such hours, a diet-drink in the morning, cock-broth, China-broth, at dinner, plum-broth, a chicken, a rabbit, rib of a rack of mutton, wing of a capon, the merry-thought of a hen, &c.; to sounder bodies this is too nice and most absurd. Others offend in overmuch fasting: pining adays, saith [1435] Guianerius, and waking anights, as many Moors and Turks in these our times do. “Anchorites, monks, and the rest of that superstitious rank (as the same Guianerius witnesseth, that he hath often seen to have happened in his time) through immoderate fasting, have been frequently mad.” Of such men belike Hippocrates speaks, l. Aphor. 5, when as he saith, [1436]“they more offend in too sparing diet, and are worse damnified, than they that feed liberally, and are ready to surfeit.”
No rule is so general, which admits not some exception; to this, therefore, which hath been hitherto said, (for I shall otherwise put most men out of commons,) and those inconveniences which proceed from the substance of meats, an intemperate or unseasonable use of them, custom somewhat detracts and qualifies, according to that of Hippocrates, 2 Aphoris. 50. [1437] “Such things as we have been long accustomed to, though they be evil in their own nature, yet they are less offensive.” Otherwise it might well be objected that it were a mere [1438]tyranny to live after those strict rules of physic; for custom [1439]doth alter nature itself, and to such as are used to them it makes bad meats wholesome, and unseasonable times to cause no disorder. Cider and perry are windy drinks, so are all fruits windy in themselves, cold most part, yet in some shires of [1440]England, Normandy in France, Guipuscoa in Spain, 'tis their common drink, and they are no whit offended with it. In Spain, Italy, and Africa, they live most on roots, raw herbs, camel's [1441]milk, and it agrees well with them: which to a stranger will cause much grievance. In Wales, lacticiniis vescuntur, as Humphrey Llwyd confesseth, a Cambro-Briton himself, in his elegant epistle to Abraham Ortelius, they live most on white meats: in Holland on fish, roots, [1442]butter; and so at this day in Greece, as [1443]Bellonius observes, they had much rather feed on fish than flesh. With us, Maxima pars victus in carne consistit, we feed on flesh most part, saith [1444]Polydore Virgil, as all northern countries do; and it would be very offensive to us to live after their diet, or they to live after ours. We drink beer, they wine; they use oil, we butter; we in the north are [1445]great eaters; they most sparing in those hotter countries; and yet they and we following our own customs are well pleased. An Ethiopian of old seeing an European eat bread, wondered, quomodo stercoribus vescentes viverimus, how we could eat such kind of meats: so much differed his countrymen from ours in diet, that as mine [1446]author infers, si quis illorum victum apud nos aemulari vellet; if any man should so feed with us, it would be all one to nourish, as Cicuta, Aconitum, or Hellebore itself. At this day in China the common people live in a manner altogether on roots and herbs, and to the wealthiest, horse, ass, mule, dogs, cat-flesh, is as delightsome as the rest, so [1447]Mat. Riccius the Jesuit relates, who lived many years amongst them. The Tartars eat raw meat, and most commonly [1448]horse-flesh, drink milk and blood, as the nomades of old. Et lac concretum cum sanguine potat equino. They scoff at our Europeans for eating bread, which they call tops of weeds, and horse meat, not fit for men; and yet Scaliger accounts them a sound and witty nation, living a hundred years; even in the civilest country of them they do thus, as Benedict the Jesuit observed in his travels, from the great Mogul's Court by land to Pekin, which Riccius contends to be the same with Cambulu in Cataia. In Scandia their bread is usually dried fish, and so likewise in the Shetland Isles; and their other fare, as in Iceland, saith [1449]Dithmarus Bleskenius, butter, cheese, and fish; their drink water, their lodging on the ground. In America in many places their bread is roots, their meat palmettos, pinas, potatoes, &c., and such fruits. There be of them too that familiarly drink [1450]salt seawater all their lives, eat [1451]raw meat, grass, and that with delight. With some, fish, serpents, spiders: and in divers places they [1452]eat man's flesh, raw and roasted, even the Emperor [1453]Montezuma himself. In some coasts, again, [1454]one tree yields them cocoanuts, meat and drink, fire, fuel, apparel; with his leaves, oil, vinegar, cover for houses, &c., and yet these men going naked, feeding coarse, live commonly a hundred years, are seldom or never sick; all which diet our physicians forbid. In Westphalia they feed most part on fat meats and worts, knuckle deep, and call it [1455]cerebrum Iovis: in the Low Countries with roots, in Italy frogs and snails are used. The Turks, saith Busbequius, delight most in fried meats. In Muscovy, garlic and onions are ordinary meat and sauce, which would be pernicious to such as are unaccustomed to them, delightsome to others; and all is [1456]because they have been brought up unto it. Husbandmen, and such as labour, can eat fat bacon, salt gross meat, hard cheese, &c., (O dura messorum illa), coarse bread at all times, go to bed and labour upon a full stomach, which to some idle persons would be present death, and is against the rules of physic, so that custom is all in all. Our travellers find this by common experience when they come in far countries, and use their diet, they are suddenly offended, [1457]as our Hollanders and Englishmen when they touch upon the coasts of Africa, those Indian capes and islands, are commonly molested with calentures, fluxes, and much distempered by reason of their fruits. [1458]Peregrina, etsi suavia solent vescentibus perturbationes insignes adferre, strange meats, though pleasant, cause notable alterations and distempers. On the other side, use or custom mitigates or makes all good again. Mithridates by often use, which Pliny wonders at, was able to drink poison; and a maid, as Curtius records, sent to Alexander from King Porus, was brought up with poison from her infancy. The Turks, saith Bellonius, lib. 3. c. 15, eat opium familiarly, a dram at once, which we dare not take in grains. [1459]Garcias ab Horto writes of one whom he saw at Goa in the East Indies, that took ten drams of opium in three days; and yet consulto loquebatur, spake understandingly, so much can custom do. [1460] Theophrastus speaks of a shepherd that could eat hellebore in substance. And therefore Cardan concludes out of Galen, Consuetudinem utcunque ferendam, nisi valde malam. Custom is howsoever to be kept, except it be extremely bad: he adviseth all men to keep their old customs, and that by the authority of [1461]Hippocrates himself, Dandum aliquid tempori, aetati regioni, consuetudini, and therefore to [1462]continue as they began, be it diet, bath, exercise, &c., or whatsoever else.
Another exception is delight, or appetite, to such and such meats: though they be hard of digestion, melancholy; yet as Fuchsius excepts, cap. 6. lib. 2. Instit. sect. 2, [1463]“The stomach doth readily digest, and willingly entertain such meats we love most, and are pleasing to us, abhors on the other side such as we distaste.” Which Hippocrates confirms, Aphoris. 2. 38. Some cannot endure cheese, out of a secret antipathy; or to see a roasted duck, which to others is a [1464]delightsome meat.
The last exception is necessity, poverty, want, hunger, which drives men many times to do that which otherwise they are loath, cannot endure, and thankfully to accept of it: as beverage in ships, and in sieges of great cities, to feed on dogs, cats, rats, and men themselves. Three outlaws in [1465]Hector Boethius, being driven to their shifts, did eat raw flesh, and flesh of such fowl as they could catch, in one of the Hebrides for some few months. These things do mitigate or disannul that which hath been said of melancholy meats, and make it more tolerable; but to such as are wealthy, live plenteously, at ease, may take their choice, and refrain if they will, these viands are to be forborne, if they be inclined to, or suspect melancholy, as they tender their healths: Otherwise if they be intemperate, or disordered in their diet, at their peril be it. Qui monet amat, Ave et cave.
Of retention and evacuation, there be divers kinds, which are either concomitant, assisting, or sole causes many times of melancholy. [1466] Galen reduceth defect and abundance to this head; others [1467]“All that is separated, or remains.”
Costiveness.] In the first rank of these, I may well reckon up costiveness, and keeping in of our ordinary excrements, which as it often causeth other diseases, so this of melancholy in particular. [1468]Celsus, lib. 1. cap. 3, saith, “It produceth inflammation of the head, dullness, cloudiness, headache,” &c. Prosper Calenus, lib. de atra bile, will have it distemper not the organ only, [1469]“but the mind itself by troubling of it:” and sometimes it is a sole cause of madness, as you may read in the first book of [1470]Skenkius's Medicinal Observations. A young merchant going to Nordeling fair in Germany, for ten days' space never went to stool; at his return he was [1471]grievously melancholy, thinking that he was robbed, and would not be persuaded but that all his money was gone; his friends thought he had some philtrum given him, but Cnelius, a physician, being sent for, found his [1472]costiveness alone to be the cause, and thereupon gave him a clyster, by which he was speedily recovered. Trincavellius, consult. 35. lib. 1, saith as much of a melancholy lawyer, to whom he administered physic, and Rodericus a Fonseca, consult. 85. tom. 2, [1473]of a patient of his, that for eight days was bound, and therefore melancholy affected. Other retentions and evacuations there are, not simply necessary, but at some times; as Fernelius accounts them, Path. lib. 1. cap. 15, as suppression of haemorrhoids, monthly issues in women, bleeding at nose, immoderate or no use at all of Venus: or any other ordinary issues.
[1474]Detention of haemorrhoids, or monthly issues, Villanovanus Breviar. lib. 1. cap. 18. Arculanus, cap. 16. in 9. Rhasis, Vittorius Faventinus, pract. mag. tract. 2. cap. 15. Bruel, &c. put for ordinary causes. Fuchsius, l. 2. sect. 5. c. 30, goes farther, and saith, [1475]“That many men unseasonably cured of the haemorrhoids have been corrupted with melancholy, seeking to avoid Scylla, they fall into Charybdis.” Galen, l. de hum. commen. 3. ad text. 26, illustrates this by an example of Lucius Martius, whom he cured of madness, contracted by this means: And [1476] Skenkius hath two other instances of two melancholy and mad women, so caused from the suppression of their months. The same may be said of bleeding at the nose, if it be suddenly stopped, and have been formerly used, as [1477]Villanovanus urgeth: And [1478]Fuchsius, lib. 2. sect. 5. cap. 33, stiffly maintains, “That without great danger, such an issue may not be stayed.”
Venus omitted produceth like effects. Mathiolus, epist. 5. l. penult., [1479]“avoucheth of his knowledge, that some through bashfulness abstained from venery, and thereupon became very heavy and dull; and some others that were very timorous, melancholy, and beyond all measure sad.” Oribasius, med. collect. l. 6. c. 37, speaks of some, [1480]“That if they do not use carnal copulation, are continually troubled with heaviness and headache; and some in the same case by intermission of it.” Not use of it hurts many, Arculanus, c. 6. in 9. Rhasis, et Magninus, part. 3. cap. 5, think, because it [1481]“sends up poisoned vapours to the brain and heart.” And so doth Galen himself hold, “That if this natural seed be over-long kept (in some parties) it turns to poison.” Hieronymus Mercurialis, in his chapter of melancholy, cites it for an especial cause of this malady, [1482]priapismus, satyriasis, &c. Haliabbas, 5. Theor. c. 36, reckons up this and many other diseases. Villanovanus Breviar. l. 1. c. 18, saith, “He knew [1483]many monks and widows grievously troubled with melancholy, and that from this sole cause.” [1484]Ludovicus Mercatus, l. 2. de mulierum affect. cap. 4, and Rodericus a Castro, de morbis mulier. l. 2. c. 3, treat largely of this subject, and will have it produce a peculiar kind of melancholy in stale maids, nuns, and widows, Ob suppressionem mensium et venerem omissam, timidae, moestae anxiae, verecundae, suspicioscae, languentes, consilii inopes, cum summa vitae et rerum meliorum desperatione, &c., they are melancholy in the highest degree, and all for want of husbands. Aelianus Montaltus, cap. 37. de melanchol., confirms as much out of Galen; so doth Wierus, Christophorus a Vega de art. med. lib. 3. c. 14, relates many such examples of men and women, that he had seen so melancholy. Felix Plater in the first book of his Observations, [1485]“tells a story of an ancient gentleman in Alsatia, that married a young wife, and was not able to pay his debts in that kind for a long time together, by reason of his several infirmities: but she, because of this inhibition of Venus, fell into a horrible fury, and desired every one that came to see her, by words, looks, and gestures, to have to do with her,” &c. [1486]Bernardus Paternus, a physician, saith, “He knew a good honest godly priest, that because he would neither willingly marry, nor make use of the stews, fell into grievous melancholy fits.” Hildesheim, spicel. 2, hath such another example of an Italian melancholy priest, in a consultation had Anno 1580. Jason Pratensis gives instance in a married man, that from his wife's death abstaining, [1487]“after marriage, became exceedingly melancholy,” Rodericus a Fonseca in a young man so misaffected, Tom. 2. consult. 85. To these you may add, if you please, that conceited tale of a Jew, so visited in like sort, and so cured, out of Poggius Florentinus.
Intemperate Venus is all but as bad in the other extreme. Galen, l. 6. de mortis popular. sect. 5. text. 26, reckons up melancholy amongst those diseases which are [1488]“exasperated by venery:” so doth Avicenna, 2, 3, c. 11. Oribasius, loc. citat. Ficinus, lib. 2. de sanitate tuenda. Marsilius Cognatus, Montaltus, cap. 27. Guianerius, Tract. 3. cap. 2. Magninus, cap. 5. part. 3. [1489]gives the reason, because [1490]“it infrigidates and dries up the body, consumes the spirits; and would therefore have all such as are cold and dry to take heed of and to avoid it as a mortal enemy.” Jacchinus in 9 Rhasis, cap. 15, ascribes the same cause, and instanceth in a patient of his, that married a young wife in a hot summer, [1491]“and so dried himself with chamber-work, that he became in short space from melancholy, mad:” he cured him by moistening remedies. The like example I find in Laelius a Fonte Eugubinus, consult. 129, of a gentleman of Venice, that upon the same occasion was first melancholy, afterwards mad. Read in him the story at large.
Any other evacuation stopped will cause it, as well as these above named, be it bile, [1492]ulcer, issue, &c. Hercules de Saxonia, lib. 1. c. 16, and Gordonius, verify this out of their experience. They saw one wounded in the head who as long as the sore was open, Lucida habuit mentis intervalla, was well; but when it was stopped, Rediit melancholia, his melancholy fit seized on him again.
Artificial evacuations are much like in effect, as hot houses, baths, bloodletting, purging, unseasonably and immoderately used. [1493]Baths dry too much, if used in excess, be they natural or artificial, and offend extreme hot, or cold; [1494]one dries, the other refrigerates overmuch. Montanus, consil. 137, saith, they overheat the liver. Joh. Struthius, Stigmat. artis. l. 4. c. 9, contends, [1495]“that if one stay longer than ordinary at the bath, go in too oft, or at unseasonable times, he putrefies the humours in his body.” To this purpose writes Magninus, l. 3. c. 5. Guianerius, Tract. 15. c. 21, utterly disallows all hot baths in melancholy adust. [1496]“I saw” (saith he) “a man that laboured of the gout, who to be freed of this malady came to the bath, and was instantly cured of his disease, but got another worse, and that was madness.” But this judgment varies as the humour doth, in hot or cold: baths may be good for one melancholy man, bad for another; that which will cure it in this party, may cause it in a second.
Phlebotomy.] Phlebotomy, many times neglected, may do much harm to the body, when there is a manifest redundance of bad humours, and melancholy blood; and when these humours heat and boil, if this be not used in time, the parties affected, so inflamed, are in great danger to be mad; but if it be unadvisedly, importunely, immoderately used, it doth as much harm by refrigerating the body, dulling the spirits, and consuming them: as Joh. [1497]Curio in his 10th chapter well reprehends, such kind of letting blood doth more hurt than good: [1498]“The humours rage much more than they did before, and is so far from avoiding melancholy, that it increaseth it, and weakeneth the sight.” [1499]Prosper Calenus observes as much of all phlebotomy, except they keep a very good diet after it; yea, and as [1500]Leonartis Jacchinus speaks out of his own experience, [1501]“The blood is much blacker to many men after their letting of blood than it was at first.” For this cause belike Salust. Salvinianus, l. 2. c. 1, will admit or hear of no bloodletting at all in this disease, except it be manifest it proceed from blood: he was (it appears) by his own words in that place, master of an hospital of mad men, [1502]“and found by long experience, that this kind of evacuation, either in head, arm, or any other part, did more harm than good.” To this opinion of his, [1503]Felix Plater is quite opposite, “though some wink at, disallow and quite contradict all phlebotomy in melancholy, yet by long experience I have found innumerable so saved, after they had been twenty, nay, sixty times let blood, and to live happily after it. It was an ordinary thing of old, in Galen's time, to take at once from such men six pounds of blood, which now we dare scarce take in ounces: sed viderint medici;” great books are written of this subject.
Purging upward and downward, in abundance of bad humours omitted, may be for the worst; so likewise as in the precedent, if overmuch, too frequent or violent, it [1504]weakeneth their strength, saith Fuchsius, l. 2. sect., 2 c. 17, or if they be strong or able to endure physic, yet it brings them to an ill habit, they make their bodies no better than apothecaries' shops, this and such like infirmities must needs follow.
Air is a cause of great moment, in producing this, or any other disease, being that it is still taken into our bodies by respiration, and our more inner parts. [1505]“If it be impure and foggy, it dejects the spirits, and causeth diseases by infection of the heart,” as Paulus hath it, lib. 1. c. 49. Avicenna, lib. 1. Gal. de san. tuenda. Mercurialis, Montaltus, &c. [1506]Fernelius saith, “A thick air thickeneth the blood and humours.” [1507]Lemnius reckons up two main things most profitable, and most pernicious to our bodies; air and diet: and this peculiar disease, nothing sooner causeth [1508](Jobertus holds) “than the air wherein we breathe and live.” [1509]Such as is the air, such be our spirits; and as our spirits, such are our humours. It offends commonly if it be too [1510]hot and dry, thick, fuliginous, cloudy, blustering, or a tempestuous air. Bodine in his fifth Book, De repub. cap. 1, 5, of his Method of History, proves that hot countries are most troubled with melancholy, and that there are therefore in Spain, Africa, and Asia Minor, great numbers of mad men, insomuch that they are compelled in all cities of note, to build peculiar hospitals for them. Leo [1511]Afer, lib. 3. de Fessa urbe, Ortelius and Zuinger, confirm as much: they are ordinarily so choleric in their speeches, that scarce two words pass without railing or chiding in common talk, and often quarrelling in their streets. [1512]Gordonius will have every man take notice of it: “Note this” (saith he) “that in hot countries it is far more familiar than in cold.” Although this we have now said be not continually so, for as [1513]Acosta truly saith, under the Equator itself, is a most temperate habitation, wholesome air, a paradise of pleasure: the leaves ever green, cooling showers. But it holds in such as are intemperately hot, as [1514]Johannes a Meggen found in Cyprus, others in Malta, Aupulia, and the [1515]Holy Land, where at some seasons of the year is nothing but dust, their rivers dried up, the air scorching hot, and earth inflamed; insomuch that many pilgrims going barefoot for devotion sake, from Joppa to Jerusalem upon the hot sands, often run mad, or else quite overwhelmed with sand, profundis arenis, as in many parts of Africa, Arabia Deserta, Bactriana, now Charassan, when the west wind blows [1516]Involuti arenis transeuntes necantur. [1517]Hercules de Saxonia, a professor in Venice, gives this cause why so many Venetian women are melancholy, Quod diu sub sole degant, they tarry too long in the sun. Montanus, consil. 21, amongst other causes assigns this; Why that Jew his patient was mad, Quod tam multum exposuit se calori et frigori: he exposed himself so much to heat and cold, and for that reason in Venice, there is little stirring in those brick paved streets in summer about noon, they are most part then asleep: as they are likewise in the great Mogol's countries, and all over the East Indies. At Aden in Arabia, as [1518] Lodovicus Vertomannus relates in his travels, they keep their markets in the night, to avoid extremity of heat; and in Ormus, like cattle in a pasture, people of all sorts lie up to the chin in water all day long. At Braga in Portugal; Burgos in Castile; Messina in Sicily, all over Spain and Italy, their streets are most part narrow, to avoid the sunbeams. The Turks wear great turbans ad fugandos solis radios, to refract the sunbeams; and much inconvenience that hot air of Bantam in Java yields to our men, that sojourn there for traffic; where it is so hot, [1519]“that they that are sick of the pox, lie commonly bleaching in the sun, to dry up their sores.” Such a complaint I read of those isles of Cape Verde, fourteen degrees from the Equator, they do male audire: [1520]One calls them the unhealthiest clime of the world, for fluxes, fevers, frenzies, calentures, which commonly seize on seafaring men that touch at them, and all by reason of a hot distemperature of the air. The hardiest men are offended with this heat, and stiffest clowns cannot resist it, as Constantine affirms, Agricult. l. 2. c. 45. They that are naturally born in such air, may not [1521]endure it, as Niger records of some part of Mesopotamia, now called Diarbecha: Quibusdam in locis saevienti aestui adeo subjecta est, ut pleraque animalia fervore solis et coeli extinguantur, 'tis so hot there in some places, that men of the country and cattle are killed with it; and [1522]Adricomius of Arabia Felix, by reason of myrrh, frankincense, and hot spices there growing, the air is so obnoxious to their brains, that the very inhabitants at some times cannot abide it, much less weaklings and strangers. [1523]Amatus Lusitanus, cent. 1. curat. 45, reports of a young maid, that was one Vincent a currier's daughter, some thirteen years of age, that would wash her hair in the heat of the day (in July) and so let it dry in the sun, [1524]“to make it yellow, but by that means tarrying too long in the heat, she inflamed her head, and made herself mad.”
Cold air in the other extreme is almost as bad as hot, and so doth Montaltus esteem of it, c. 11, if it be dry withal. In those northern countries, the people are therefore generally dull, heavy, and many witches, which (as I have before quoted) Saxo Grammaticus, Olaus, Baptista Porta ascribe to melancholy. But these cold climes are more subject to natural melancholy (not this artificial) which is cold and dry: for which cause [1525]Mercurius Britannicus belike puts melancholy men to inhabit just under the Pole. The worst of the three is a [1526]thick, cloudy, misty, foggy air, or such as come from fens, moorish grounds, lakes, muck-hills, draughts, sinks, where any carcasses, or carrion lies, or from whence any stinking fulsome smell comes: Galen, Avicenna, Mercurialis, new and old physicians, hold that such air is unwholesome, and engenders melancholy, plagues, and what not? [1527]Alexandretta, an haven-town in the Mediterranean Sea, Saint John de Ulloa, an haven in Nova-Hispania, are much condemned for a bad air, so are Durazzo in Albania, Lithuania, Ditmarsh, Pomptinae Paludes in Italy, the territories about Pisa, Ferrara, &c. Romney Marsh with us; the Hundreds in Essex, the fens in Lincolnshire. Cardan, de rerum varietate, l. 17, c. 96, finds fault with the sight of those rich, and most populous cities in the Low Countries, as Bruges, Ghent, Amsterdam, Leiden, Utrecht, &c. the air is bad; and so at Stockholm in Sweden; Regium in Italy, Salisbury with us, Hull and Lynn: they may be commodious for navigation, this new kind of fortification, and many other good necessary uses; but are they so wholesome? Old Rome hath descended from the hills to the valley, 'tis the site of most of our new cities, and held best to build in plains, to take the opportunity of rivers. Leander Albertus pleads hard for the air and site of Venice, though the black moorish lands appear at every low water: the sea, fire, and smoke (as he thinks) qualify the air; and [1528]some suppose, that a thick foggy air helps the memory, as in them of Pisa in Italy; and our Camden, out of Plato, commends the site of Cambridge, because it is so near the fens. But let the site of such places be as it may, how can they be excused that have a delicious seat, a pleasant air, and all that nature can afford, and yet through their own nastiness, and sluttishness, immund and sordid manner of life, suffer their air to putrefy, and themselves to be chocked up? Many cities in Turkey do male audire in this kind: Constantinople itself, where commonly carrion lies in the street. Some find the same fault in Spain, even in Madrid, the king's seat, a most excellent air, a pleasant site; but the inhabitants are slovens, and the streets uncleanly kept.
A troublesome tempestuous air is as bad as impure, rough and foul weather, impetuous winds, cloudy dark days, as it is commonly with us, Coelum visu foedum, [1529]Polydore calls it a filthy sky, et in quo facile generantur nubes; as Tully's brother Quintus wrote to him in Rome, being then quaestor in Britain. “In a thick and cloudy air” (saith Lemnius) “men are tetric, sad, and peevish: And if the western winds blow, and that there be a calm, or a fair sunshine day, there is a kind of alacrity in men's minds; it cheers up men and beasts: but if it be a turbulent, rough, cloudy, stormy weather, men are sad, lumpish, and much dejected, angry, waspish, dull, and melancholy.” This was [1530]Virgil's experiment of old,
Nothing so good but it may be abused: nothing better than exercise (if opportunely used) for the preservation of the body: nothing so bad if it be unseasonable. violent, or overmuch. Fernelius out of Galen, Path. lib. 1. c. 16, saith, [1535]“That much exercise and weariness consumes the spirits and substance, refrigerates the body; and such humours which Nature would have otherwise concocted and expelled, it stirs up and makes them rage: which being so enraged, diversely affect and trouble the body and mind.” So doth it, if it be unseasonably used, upon a full stomach, or when the body is full of crudities, which Fuchsius so much inveighs against, lib. 2. instit. sec. 2. c. 4, giving that for a cause, why schoolboys in Germany are so often scabbed, because they use exercise presently after meats. [1536]Bayerus puts in a caveat against such exercise, because “it [1537]corrupts the meat in the stomach, and carries the same juice raw, and as yet undigested, into the veins” (saith Lemnius), “which there putrefies and confounds the animal spirits.” Crato, consil. 21. l. 2, [1538]protests against all such exercise after meat, as being the greatest enemy to concoction that may be, and cause of corruption of humours, which produce this, and many other diseases. Not without good reason then doth Salust. Salvianus, l. 2. c. 1, and Leonartus Jacchinus, in 9. Rhasis, Mercurialis, Arcubanus, and many other, set down [1539]immoderate exercise as a most forcible cause of melancholy.
Opposite to exercise is idleness (the badge of gentry) or want of exercise, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, and a sole cause of this and many other maladies, the devil's cushion, as [1540]Gualter calls it, his pillow and chief reposal. “For the mind can never rest, but still meditates on one thing or other, except it be occupied about some honest business, of his own accord it rusheth into melancholy.” [1541]“As too much and violent exercise offends on the one side, so doth an idle life on the other” (saith Crato), “it fills the body full of phlegm, gross humours, and all manner of obstructions, rheums, catarrhs,” &c. Rhasis, cont. lib. 1. tract. 9, accounts of it as the greatest cause of melancholy. [1542]“I have often seen” (saith he) “that idleness begets this humour more than anything else.” Montaltus, c. 1, seconds him out of his experience, [1543]“They that are idle are far more subject to melancholy than such as are conversant or employed about any office or business.” [1544]Plutarch reckons up idleness for a sole cause of the sickness of the soul: “There are they” (saith he) “troubled in mind, that have no other cause but this.” Homer, Iliad. 1, brings in Achilles eating of his own heart in his idleness, because he might not fight. Mercurialis, consil. 86, for a melancholy young man urgeth, [1545]it as a chief cause; why was he melancholy? because idle. Nothing begets it sooner, increaseth and continueth it oftener than idleness.[1546]A disease familiar to all idle persons, an inseparable companion to such as live at ease, Pingui otio desidiose agentes, a life out of action, and have no calling or ordinary employment to busy themselves about, that have small occasions; and though they have, such is their laziness, dullness, they will not compose themselves to do aught; they cannot abide work, though it be necessary; easy as to dress themselves, write a letter, or the like; yet as he that is benumbed with cold sits still shaking, that might relieve himself with a little exercise or stirring, do they complain, but will not use the facile and ready means to do themselves good; and so are still tormented with melancholy. Especially if they have been formerly brought up to business, or to keep much company, and upon a sudden come to lead a sedentary life; it crucifies their souls, and seizeth on them in an instant; for whilst they are any ways employed, in action, discourse, about any business, sport or recreation, or in company to their liking, they are very well; but if alone or idle, tormented instantly again; one day's solitariness, one hour's sometimes, doth them more harm, than a week's physic, labour, and company can do good. Melancholy seizeth on them forthwith being alone, and is such a torture, that as wise Seneca well saith, Malo mihi male quam molliter esse, I had rather be sick than idle. This idleness is either of body or mind. That of body is nothing but a kind of benumbing laziness, intermitting exercise, which, if we may believe [1547]Fernelius, “causeth crudities, obstructions, excremental humours, quencheth the natural heat, dulls the spirits, and makes them unapt to do any thing whatsoever.”
Cousin german to idleness, and a concomitant cause, which goes hand in hand with it, is [1558]nimia solitudo, too much solitariness, by the testimony of all physicians, cause and symptom both; but as it is here put for a cause, it is either coact, enforced, or else voluntary. Enforced solitariness is commonly seen in students, monks, friars, anchorites, that by their order and course of life must abandon all company, society of other men, and betake themselves to a private cell: Otio superstitioso seclusi, as Bale and Hospinian well term it, such as are the Carthusians of our time, that eat no flesh (by their order), keep perpetual silence, never go abroad. Such as live in prison, or some desert place, and cannot have company, as many of our country gentlemen do in solitary houses, they must either be alone without companions, or live beyond their means, and entertain all comers as so many hosts, or else converse with their servants and hinds, such as are unequal, inferior to them, and of a contrary disposition: or else as some do, to avoid solitariness, spend their time with lewd fellows in taverns, and in alehouses, and thence addict themselves to some unlawful disports, or dissolute courses. Divers again are cast upon this rock of solitariness for want of means, or out of a strong apprehension of some infirmity, disgrace, or through bashfulness, rudeness, simplicity, they cannot apply themselves to others' company. Nullum solum infelici gratius solitudine, ubi nullus sit qui miseriam exprobret; this enforced solitariness takes place, and produceth his effect soonest in such as have spent their time jovially, peradventure in all honest recreations, in good company, in some great family or populous city, and are upon a sudden confined to a desert country cottage far off, restrained of their liberty, and barred from their ordinary associates; solitariness is very irksome to such, most tedious, and a sudden cause of great inconvenience.
Voluntary solitariness is that which is familiar with melancholy, and gently brings on like a Siren, a shoeing-horn, or some sphinx to this irrevocable gulf, [1559]a primary cause, Piso calls it; most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook side, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect them most; amabilis insania, et mentis gratissimus error: a most incomparable delight it is so to melancholise, and build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose and strongly imagine they represent, or that they see acted or done: Blandae quidem ab initio, saith Lemnius, to conceive and meditate of such pleasant things, sometimes, [1560]“present, past, or to come,” as Rhasis speaks. So delightsome these toys are at first, they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years alone in such contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which are like unto dreams, and they will hardly be drawn from them, or willingly interrupt, so pleasant their vain conceits are, that they hinder their ordinary tasks and necessary business, they cannot address themselves to them, or almost to any study or employment, these fantastical and bewitching thoughts so covertly, so feelingly, so urgently, so continually set upon, creep in, insinuate, possess, overcome, distract, and detain them, they cannot, I say, go about their more necessary business, stave off or extricate themselves, but are ever musing, melancholising, and carried along, as he (they say) that is led round about a heath with a Puck in the night, they run earnestly on in this labyrinth of anxious and solicitous melancholy meditations, and cannot well or willingly refrain, or easily leave off, winding and unwinding themselves, as so many clocks, and still pleasing their humours, until at last the scene is turned upon a sudden, by some bad object, and they being now habituated to such vain meditations and solitary places, can endure no company, can ruminate of nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of life surprise them in a moment, and they can think of nothing else, continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal object to their minds, which now by no means, no labour, no persuasions they can avoid, haeret lateri lethalis arundo, (the arrow of death still remains in the side), they may not be rid of it, [1561]they cannot resist. I may not deny but that there is some profitable meditation, contemplation, and kind of solitariness to be embraced, which the fathers so highly commended, [1562] Hierom, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Austin, in whole tracts, which Petrarch, Erasmus, Stella, and others, so much magnify in their books; a paradise, a heaven on earth, if it be used aright, good for the body, and better for the soul: as many of those old monks used it, to divine contemplations, as Simulus, a courtier in Adrian's time, Diocletian the emperor, retired themselves, &c., in that sense, Vatia solus scit vivere, Vatia lives alone, which the Romans were wont to say, when they commended a country life. Or to the bettering of their knowledge, as Democritus, Cleanthes, and those excellent philosophers have ever done, to sequester themselves from the tumultuous world, or as in Pliny's villa Laurentana, Tully's Tusculan, Jovius' study, that they might better vacare studiis et Deo, serve God, and follow their studies. Methinks, therefore, our too zealous innovators were not so well advised in that general subversion of abbeys and religious houses, promiscuously to fling down all; they might have taken away those gross abuses crept in amongst them, rectified such inconveniences, and not so far to have raved and raged against those fair buildings, and everlasting monuments of our forefathers' devotion, consecrated to pious uses; some monasteries and collegiate cells might have been well spared, and their revenues otherwise employed, here and there one, in good towns or cities at least, for men and women of all sorts and conditions to live in, to sequester themselves from the cares and tumults of the world, that were not desirous, or fit to marry; or otherwise willing to be troubled with common affairs, and know not well where to bestow themselves, to live apart in, for more conveniency, good education, better company sake, to follow their studies (I say), to the perfection of arts and sciences, common good, and as some truly devoted monks of old had done, freely and truly to serve God. For these men are neither solitary, nor idle, as the poet made answer to the husbandman in Aesop, that objected idleness to him; he was never so idle as in his company; or that Scipio Africanus in [1563]Tully, Nunquam minus solus, quam cum solus; nunquam minus otiosus, quam quum esset otiosus; never less solitary, than when he was alone, never more busy, than when he seemed to be most idle. It is reported by Plato in his dialogue de Amore, in that prodigious commendation of Socrates, how a deep meditation coming into Socrates' mind by chance, he stood still musing, eodem vestigio cogitabundus, from morning to noon, and when as then he had not yet finished his meditation, perstabat cogitans, he so continued till the evening, the soldiers (for he then followed the camp) observed him with admiration, and on set purpose watched all night, but he persevered immovable ad exhortim solis, till the sun rose in the morning, and then saluting the sun, went his ways. In what humour constant Socrates did thus, I know not, or how he might be affected, but this would be pernicious to another man; what intricate business might so really possess him, I cannot easily guess; but this is otiosum otium, it is far otherwise with these men, according to Seneca, Omnia nobis mala solitudo persuadet; this solitude undoeth us, pugnat cum vita sociali; 'tis a destructive solitariness. These men are devils alone, as the saying is, Homo solus aut Deus, aut Daemon: a man alone, is either a saint or a devil, mens ejus aut languescit, aut tumescit; and [1564]Vae soli in this sense, woe be to him that is so alone. These wretches do frequently degenerate from men, and of sociable creatures become beasts, monsters, inhumane, ugly to behold, Misanthropi; they do even loathe themselves, and hate the company of men, as so many Timons, Nebuchadnezzars, by too much indulging to these pleasing humours, and through their own default. So that which Mercurialis, consil. 11, sometimes expostulated with his melancholy patient, may be justly applied to every solitary and idle person in particular. [1565]Natura de te videtur conqueri posse, &c. “Nature may justly complain of thee, that whereas she gave thee a good wholesome temperature, a sound body, and God hath given thee so divine and excellent a soul, so many good parts, and profitable gifts, thou hast not only contemned and rejected, but hast corrupted them, polluted them, overthrown their temperature, and perverted those gifts with riot, idleness, solitariness, and many other ways, thou art a traitor to God and nature, an enemy to thyself and to the world.” Perditio tua ex te; thou hast lost thyself wilfully, cast away thyself, “thou thyself art the efficient cause of thine own misery, by not resisting such vain cogitations, but giving way unto them.”
What I have formerly said of exercise, I may now repeat of sleep. Nothing better than moderate sleep, nothing worse than it, if it be in extremes, or unseasonably used. It is a received opinion, that a melancholy man cannot sleep overmuch; Somnus supra modum prodest, as an only antidote, and nothing offends them more, or causeth this malady sooner, than waking, yet in some cases sleep may do more harm than good, in that phlegmatic, swinish, cold, and sluggish melancholy which Melancthon speaks of, that thinks of waters, sighing most part, &c. [1566]It dulls the spirits, if overmuch, and senses; fills the head full of gross humours; causeth distillations, rheums, great store of excrements in the brain, and all the other parts, as [1567]Fuchsius speaks of them, that sleep like so many dormice. Or if it be used in the daytime, upon a full stomach, the body ill-composed to rest, or after hard meats, it increaseth fearful dreams, incubus, night walking, crying out, and much unquietness; such sleep prepares the body, as [1568]one observes, “to many perilous diseases.” But, as I have said, waking overmuch, is both a symptom, and an ordinary cause. “It causeth dryness of the brain, frenzy, dotage, and makes the body dry, lean, hard, and ugly to behold,” as [1569]Lemnius hath it. “The temperature of the brain is corrupted by it, the humours adust, the eyes made to sink into the head, choler increased, and the whole body inflamed:” and, as may be added out of Galen, 3. de sanitate tuendo, Avicenna 3. 1. [1570]“It overthrows the natural heat, it causeth crudities, hurts, concoction,” and what not? Not without good cause therefore Crato, consil. 21. lib. 2; Hildesheim, spicel. 2. de delir. et Mania, Jacchinus, Arculanus on Rhasis, Guianerius and Mercurialis, reckon up this overmuch waking as a principal cause.
As that gymnosophist in [1571]Plutarch made answer to Alexander (demanding which spake best), Every one of his fellows did speak better than the other: so may I say of these causes; to him that shall require which is the greatest, every one is more grievous than other, and this of passion the greatest of all. A most frequent and ordinary cause of melancholy, [1572] fulmen perturbationum (Picolomineus calls it) this thunder and lightning of perturbation, which causeth such violent and speedy alterations in this our microcosm, and many times subverts the good estate and temperature of it. For as the body works upon the mind by his bad humours, troubling the spirits, sending gross fumes into the brain, and so per consequens disturbing the soul, and all the faculties of it,
How these passions produce this effect, [1595]Agrippa hath handled at large, Occult. Philos. l. 11. c. 63. Cardan, l. 14. subtil. Lemnius, l. 1. c. 12, de occult. nat. mir. et lib. 1. cap. 16. Suarez, Met. disput. 18. sect. 1. art. 25. T. Bright, cap. 12. of his Melancholy Treatise. Wright the Jesuit, in his Book of the Passions of the Mind, &c. Thus in brief, to our imagination cometh by the outward sense or memory, some object to be known (residing in the foremost part of the brain), which he misconceiving or amplifying presently communicates to the heart, the seat of all affections. The pure spirits forthwith flock from the brain to the heart, by certain secret channels, and signify what good or bad object was presented; [1596]which immediately bends itself to prosecute, or avoid it; and withal, draweth with it other humours to help it: so in pleasure, concur great store of purer spirits; in sadness, much melancholy blood; in ire, choler. If the imagination be very apprehensive, intent, and violent, it sends great store of spirits to, or from the heart, and makes a deeper impression, and greater tumult, as the humours in the body be likewise prepared, and the temperature itself ill or well disposed, the passions are longer and stronger; so that the first step and fountain of all our grievances in this kind, is [1597]laesa imaginatio, which misinforming the heart, causeth all these distemperatures, alteration and confusion of spirits and humours. By means of which, so disturbed, concoction is hindered, and the principal parts are much debilitated; as [1598]Dr. Navarra well declared, being consulted by Montanus about a melancholy Jew. The spirits so confounded, the nourishment must needs be abated, bad humours increased, crudities and thick spirits engendered with melancholy blood. The other parts cannot perform their functions, having the spirits drawn from them by vehement passion, but fail in sense and motion; so we look upon a thing, and see it not; hear, and observe not; which otherwise would much affect us, had we been free. I may therefore conclude with [1599]Arnoldus, Maxima vis est phantasiae, et huic uni fere, non autem corporis intemperiei, omnis melancholiae causa est ascribenda: “Great is the force of imagination, and much more ought the cause of melancholy to be ascribed to this alone, than to the distemperature of the body.” Of which imagination, because it hath so great a stroke in producing this malady, and is so powerful of itself, it will not be improper to my discourse, to make a brief digression, and speak of the force of it, and how it causeth this alteration. Which manner of digression, howsoever some dislike, as frivolous and impertinent, yet I am of [1600]Beroaldus's opinion, “Such digressions do mightily delight and refresh a weary reader, they are like sauce to a bad stomach, and I do therefore most willingly use them.”
What imagination is, I have sufficiently declared in my digression of the anatomy of the soul. I will only now point at the wonderful effects and power of it; which, as it is eminent in all, so most especially it rageth in melancholy persons, in keeping the species of objects so long, mistaking, amplifying them by continual and [1601]strong meditation, until at length it produceth in some parties real effects, causeth this, and many other maladies. And although this phantasy of ours be a subordinate faculty to reason, and should be ruled by it, yet in many men, through inward or outward distemperatures, defect of organs, which are unapt, or otherwise contaminated, it is likewise unapt, or hindered, and hurt. This we see verified in sleepers, which by reason of humours and concourse of vapours troubling the phantasy, imagine many times absurd and prodigious things, and in such as are troubled with incubus, or witch-ridden (as we call it), if they lie on their backs, they suppose an old woman rides, and sits so hard upon them, that they are almost stifled for want of breath; when there is nothing offends, but a concourse of bad humours, which trouble the phantasy. This is likewise evident in such as walk in the night in their sleep, and do strange feats: [1602]these vapours move the phantasy, the phantasy the appetite, which moving the animal spirits causeth the body to walk up and down as if they were awake. Fracast. l. 3. de intellect, refers all ecstasies to this force of imagination, such as lie whole days together in a trance: as that priest whom [1603]Celsus speaks of, that could separate himself from his senses when he list, and lie like a dead man, void of life and sense. Cardan brags of himself, that he could do as much, and that when he list. Many times such men when they come to themselves, tell strange things of heaven and hell, what visions they have seen; as that St. Owen, in Matthew Paris, that went into St. Patrick's purgatory, and the monk of Evesham in the same author. Those common apparitions in Bede and Gregory, Saint Bridget's revelations, Wier. l. 3. de lamiis, c. 11. Caesar Vanninus, in his Dialogues, &c. reduceth (as I have formerly said), with all those tales of witches' progresses, dancing, riding, transformations, operations, &c. to the force of [1604] imagination, and the [1605]devil's illusions. The like effects almost are to be seen in such as are awake: how many chimeras, antics, golden mountains and castles in the air do they build unto themselves? I appeal to painters, mechanicians, mathematicians. Some ascribe all vices to a false and corrupt imagination, anger, revenge, lust, ambition, covetousness, which prefers falsehood before that which is right and good, deluding the soul with false shows and suppositions. [1606]Bernardus Penottus will have heresy and superstition to proceed from this fountain; as he falsely imagineth, so he believeth; and as he conceiveth of it, so it must be, and it shall be, contra gentes, he will have it so. But most especially in passions and affections, it shows strange and evident effects: what will not a fearful man conceive in the dark? What strange forms of bugbears, devils, witches, goblins? Lavater imputes the greatest cause of spectrums, and the like apparitions, to fear, which above all other passions begets the strongest imagination (saith [1607]Wierus), and so likewise love, sorrow, joy, &c. Some die suddenly, as she that saw her son come from the battle at Cannae, &c. Jacob the patriarch, by force of imagination, made speckled lambs, laying speckled rods before his sheep. Persina, that Ethiopian queen in Heliodorus, by seeing the picture of Persius and Andromeda, instead of a blackamoor, was brought to bed of a fair white child. In imitation of whom belike, a hard-favoured fellow in Greece, because he and his wife were both deformed, to get a good brood of children, Elegantissimas imagines in thalamo collocavit, &c. hung the fairest pictures he could buy for money in his chamber, “That his wife by frequent sight of them, might conceive and bear such children.” And if we may believe Bale, one of Pope Nicholas the Third's concubines by seeing of [1608]a bear was brought to bed of a monster. “If a woman” (saith [1609] Lemnius), “at the time of her conception think of another man present or absent, the child will be like him.” Great-bellied women, when they long, yield us prodigious examples in this kind, as moles, warts, scars, harelips, monsters, especially caused in their children by force of a depraved phantasy in them: Ipsam speciem quam animo effigiat, faetui inducit: She imprints that stamp upon her child which she [1610]conceives unto herself. And therefore Lodovicus Vives, lib. 2. de Christ, faem., gives a special caution to great-bellied women, [1611]“that they do not admit such absurd conceits and cogitations, but by all means avoid those horrible objects, heard or seen, or filthy spectacles.” Some will laugh, weep, sigh, groan, blush, tremble, sweat, at such things as are suggested unto them by their imagination. Avicenna speaks of one that could cast himself into a palsy when he list; and some can imitate the tunes of birds and beasts that they can hardly be discerned: Dagebertus' and Saint Francis' scars and wounds, like those of Christ's (if at the least any such were), [1612]Agrippa supposeth to have happened by force of imagination: that some are turned to wolves, from men to women, and women again to men (which is constantly believed) to the same imagination; or from men to asses, dogs, or any other shapes. [1613]Wierus ascribes all those famous transformations to imagination; that in hydrophobia they seem to see the picture of a dog, still in their water, [1614]that melancholy men and sick men conceive so many fantastical visions, apparitions to themselves, and have such absurd apparitions, as that they are kings, lords, cocks, bears, apes, owls; that they are heavy, light, transparent, great and little, senseless and dead (as shall be showed more at large, in our [1615] sections of symptoms), can be imputed to nought else, but to a corrupt, false, and violent imagination. It works not in sick and melancholy men only, but even most forcibly sometimes in such as are sound: it makes them suddenly sick, and [1616]alters their temperature in an instant. And sometimes a strong conceit or apprehension, as [1617]Valesius proves, will take away diseases: in both kinds it will produce real effects. Men, if they see but another man tremble, giddy or sick of some fearful disease, their apprehension and fear is so strong in this kind, that they will have the same disease. Or if by some soothsayer, wiseman, fortune-teller, or physician, they be told they shall have such a disease, they will so seriously apprehend it, that they will instantly labour of it. A thing familiar in China (saith Riccius the Jesuit), [1618]“If it be told them they shall be sick on such a day, when that day comes they will surely be sick, and will be so terribly afflicted, that sometimes they die upon it.” Dr. Cotta in his discovery of ignorant practitioners of physic, cap. 8, hath two strange stories to this purpose, what fancy is able to do. The one of a parson's wife in Northamptonshire, An. 1607, that coming to a physician, and told by him that she was troubled with the sciatica, as he conjectured (a disease she was free from), the same night after her return, upon his words, fell into a grievous fit of a sciatica: and such another example he hath of another good wife, that was so troubled with the cramp, after the same manner she came by it, because her physician did but name it. Sometimes death itself is caused by force of phantasy. I have heard of one that coming by chance in company of him that was thought to be sick of the plague (which was not so) fell down suddenly dead. Another was sick of the plague with conceit. One seeing his fellow let blood falls down in a swoon. Another (saith [1619]Cardan out of Aristotle), fell down dead (which is familiar to women at any ghastly sight), seeing but a man hanged. A Jew in France (saith [1620]Lodovicus Vives), came by chance over a dangerous passage or plank, that lay over a brook in the dark, without harm, the next day perceiving what danger he was in, fell down dead. Many will not believe such stories to be true, but laugh commonly, and deride when they hear of them; but let these men consider with themselves, as [1621]Peter Byarus illustrates it, If they were set to walk upon a plank on high, they would be giddy, upon which they dare securely walk upon the ground. Many (saith Agrippa), [1622]“strong-hearted men otherwise, tremble at such sights, dazzle, and are sick, if they look but down from a high place, and what moves them but conceit?” As some are so molested by phantasy; so some again, by fancy alone, and a good conceit, are as easily recovered. We see commonly the toothache, gout, falling-sickness, biting of a mad dog, and many such maladies cured by spells, words, characters, and charms, and many green wounds by that now so much used Unguentum Armarium, magnetically cured, which Crollius and Goclenius in a book of late hath defended, Libavius in a just tract as stiffly contradicts, and most men controvert. All the world knows there is no virtue in such charms or cures, but a strong conceit and opinion alone, as [1623]Pomponatius holds, “which forceth a motion of the humours, spirits, and blood, which takes away the cause of the malady from the parts affected.” The like we may say of our magical effects, superstitious cures, and such as are done by mountebanks and wizards. “As by wicked incredulity many men are hurt” (so saith [1624]Wierus of charms, spells, &c.), “we find in our experience, by the same means many are relieved.” An empiric oftentimes, and a silly chirurgeon, doth more strange cures than a rational physician. Nymannus gives a reason, because the patient puts his confidence in him, [1625] which Avicenna “prefers before art, precepts, and all remedies whatsoever.” 'Tis opinion alone (saith [1626]Cardan), that makes or mars physicians, and he doth the best cures, according to Hippocrates, in whom most trust. So diversely doth this phantasy of ours affect, turn, and wind, so imperiously command our bodies, which as another [1627]“Proteus, or a chameleon, can take all shapes; and is of such force (as Ficinus adds), that it can work upon others, as well as ourselves.” How can otherwise blear eyes in one man cause the like affection in another? Why doth one man's yawning [1628]make another yawn? One man's pissing provoke a second many times to do the like? Why doth scraping of trenchers offend a third, or hacking of files? Why doth a carcass bleed when the murderer is brought before it, some weeks after the murder hath been done? Why do witches and old women fascinate and bewitch children: but as Wierus, Paracelsus, Cardan, Mizaldus, Valleriola, Caesar Vanninus, Campanella, and many philosophers think, the forcible imagination of the one party moves and alters the spirits of the other. Nay more, they can cause and cure not only diseases, maladies, and several infirmities, by this means, as Avicenna, de anim. l. 4. sect. 4, supposeth in parties remote, but move bodies from their places, cause thunder, lightning, tempests, which opinion Alkindus, Paracelsus, and some others, approve of. So that I may certainly conclude this strong conceit or imagination is astrum hominis, and the rudder of this our ship, which reason should steer, but, overborne by phantasy, cannot manage, and so suffers itself, and this whole vessel of ours to be overruled, and often overturned. Read more of this in Wierus, l. 3. de Lamiis, c. 8, 9, 10. Franciscus Valesius, med. controv. l. 5. cont. 6. Marcellus Donatus, l. 2. c. 1. de hist. med. mirabil. Levinus Lemnius, de occult. nat. mir. l. 1. c. 12. Cardan, l. 18. de rerum var. Corn. Agrippa, de occult. plilos. cap. 64, 65. Camerarius, 1 cent. cap. 54. horarum subcis. Nymannus, morat. de Imag. Laurentius, and him that is instar omnium, Fienus, a famous physician of Antwerp, that wrote three books de viribus imaginationis. I have thus far digressed, because this imagination is the medium deferens of passions, by whose means they work and produce many times prodigious effects: and as the phantasy is more or less intended or remitted, and their humours disposed, so do perturbations move, more or less, and take deeper impression.
Perturbations and passions, which trouble the phantasy, though they dwell between the confines of sense and reason, yet they rather follow sense than reason, because they are drowned in corporeal organs of sense. They are commonly [1629]reduced into two inclinations, irascible and concupiscible. The Thomists subdivide them into eleven, six in the coveting, and five in the invading. Aristotle reduceth all to pleasure and pain, Plato to love and hatred, [1630]Vives to good and bad. If good, it is present, and then we absolutely joy and love; or to come, and then we desire and hope for it. If evil, we absolute hate it; if present, it is by sorrow; if to come fear. These four passions [1631]Bernard compares “to the wheels of a chariot, by which we are carried in this world.” All other passions are subordinate unto these four, or six, as some will: love, joy, desire, hatred, sorrow, fear; the rest, as anger, envy, emulation, pride, jealousy, anxiety, mercy, shame, discontent, despair, ambition, avarice, &c., are reducible unto the first; and if they be immoderate, they [1632]consume the spirits, and melancholy is especially caused by them. Some few discreet men there are, that can govern themselves, and curb in these inordinate affections, by religion, philosophy, and such divine precepts, of meekness, patience, and the like; but most part for want of government, out of indiscretion, ignorance, they suffer themselves wholly to be led by sense, and are so far from repressing rebellious inclinations, that they give all encouragement unto them, leaving the reins, and using all provocations to further them: bad by nature, worse by art, discipline, [1633]custom, education, and a perverse will of their own, they follow on, wheresoever their unbridled affections will transport them, and do more out of custom, self-will, than out of reason. Contumax voluntas, as Melancthon calls it, malum facit: this stubborn will of ours perverts judgment, which sees and knows what should and ought to be done, and yet will not do it. Mancipia gulae, slaves to their several lusts and appetite, they precipitate and plunge [1634]themselves into a labyrinth of cares, blinded with lust, blinded with ambition; [1635]“They seek that at God's hands which they may give unto themselves, if they could but refrain from those cares and perturbations, wherewith they continually macerate their minds.” But giving way to these violent passions of fear, grief, shame, revenge, hatred, malice, &c., they are torn in pieces, as Actaeon was with his dogs, and [1636]crucify their own souls.
Sorrow. Insanus dolor.] In this catalogue of passions, which so much torment the soul of man, and cause this malady, (for I will briefly speak of them all, and in their order,) the first place in this irascible appetite, may justly be challenged by sorrow. An inseparable companion, [1637]“The mother and daughter of melancholy, her epitome, symptom, and chief cause:” as Hippocrates hath it, they beget one another, and tread in a ring, for sorrow is both cause and symptom of this disease. How it is a symptom shall be shown in its place. That it is a cause all the world acknowledgeth, Dolor nonnullis insaniae causa fuit, et aliorum morborum insanabilium, saith Plutarch to Apollonius; a cause of madness, a cause of many other diseases, a sole cause of this mischief, [1638]Lemnius calls it. So doth Rhasis, cont. l. 1. tract. 9. Guianerius, Tract. 15. c. 5, And if it take root once, it ends in despair, as [1639]Felix Plater observes, and as in [1640]Cebes' table, may well be coupled with it. [1641]Chrysostom, in his seventeenth epistle to Olympia, describes it to be “a cruel torture of the soul, a most inexplicable grief, poisoned worm, consuming body and soul, and gnawing the very heart, a perpetual executioner, continual night, profound darkness, a whirlwind, a tempest, an ague not appearing, heating worse than any fire, and a battle that hath no end. It crucifies worse than any tyrant; no torture, no strappado, no bodily punishment is like unto it.” 'Tis the eagle without question which the poets feigned to gnaw [1642]Prometheus' heart, and “no heaviness is like unto the heaviness of the heart,” Eccles. xxv. 15, 16. [1643]“Every perturbation is a misery, but grief a cruel torment,” a domineering passion: as in old Rome, when the Dictator was created, all inferior magistracies ceased; when grief appears, all other passions vanish. “It dries up the bones,” saith Solomon, cap. 17. Prov., makes them hollow-eyed, pale, and lean, furrow-faced, to have dead looks, wrinkled brows, shrivelled cheeks, dry bodies, and quite perverts their temperature that are misaffected with it. As Eleonara, that exiled mournful duchess (in our [1644]English Ovid), laments to her noble husband Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
Cousin german to sorrow, is fear, or rather a sister, fidus Achates, and continual companion, an assistant and a principal agent in procuring of this mischief; a cause and symptom as the other. In a word, as [1657] Virgil of the Harpies, I may justly say of them both,
Shame and disgrace cause most violent passions and bitter pangs. Ob pudorem et dedecus publicum, ob errorum commissum saepe moventur generosi animi (Felix Plater, lib. 3. de alienat mentis.) Generous minds are often moved with shame, to despair for some public disgrace. And he, saith Philo, lib. 2. de provid. dei, [1673]“that subjects himself to fear, grief, ambition, shame, is not happy, but altogether miserable, tortured with continual labour, care, and misery.” It is as forcible a batterer as any of the rest: [1674]“Many men neglect the tumults of the world, and care not for glory, and yet they are afraid of infamy, repulse, disgrace,” (Tul. offic. l. 1,) “they can severely contemn pleasure, bear grief indifferently, but they are quite [1675]battered and broken, with reproach and obloquy:” (siquidem vita et fama pari passu ambulant) and are so dejected many times for some public injury, disgrace, as a box on the ear by their inferior, to be overcome of their adversary, foiled in the field, to be out in a speech, some foul fact committed or disclosed, &c. that they dare not come abroad all their lives after, but melancholise in corners, and keep in holes. The most generous spirits are most subject to it; Spiritus altos frangit et generosos: Hieronymus. Aristotle, because he could not understand the motion of Euripus, for grief and shame drowned himself: Caelius Rodigimus antiquar. lec. lib. 29. cap. 8. Homerus pudore consumptus, was swallowed up with this passion of shame [1676] “because he could not unfold the fisherman's riddle.” Sophocles killed himself, [1677]“for that a tragedy of his was hissed off the stage:” Valer. max. lib. 9. cap. 12. Lucretia stabbed herself, and so did [1678]Cleopatra, “when she saw that she was reserved for a triumph, to avoid the infamy.” Antonius the Roman, [1679]“after he was overcome of his enemy, for three days' space sat solitary in the fore-part of the ship, abstaining from all company, even of Cleopatra herself, and afterwards for very shame butchered himself,” Plutarch, vita ejus. Apollonius Rhodius [1680]“wilfully banished himself, forsaking his country, and all his dear friends, because he was out in reciting his poems,” Plinius, lib. 7. cap. 23. Ajax ran mad, because his arms were adjudged to Ulysses. In China 'tis an ordinary thing for such as are excluded in those famous trials of theirs, or should take degrees, for shame and grief to lose their wits, [1681]Mat Riccius expedit. ad Sinas, l. 3. c. 9. Hostratus the friar took that book which Reuclin had writ against him, under the name of Epist. obscurorum virorum, so to heart, that for shame and grief he made away with himself, [1682]Jovius in elogiis. A grave and learned minister, and an ordinary preacher at Alcmar in Holland, was (one day as he walked in the fields for his recreation) suddenly taken with a lax or looseness, and thereupon compelled to retire to the next ditch; but being [1683]surprised at unawares, by some gentlewomen of his parish wandering that way, was so abashed, that he did never after show his head in public, or come into the pulpit, but pined away with melancholy: (Pet. Forestus med. observat. lib. 10. observat. 12.) So shame amongst other passions can play his prize.
I know there be many base, impudent, brazenfaced rogues, that will [1684] Nulla pallescere culpa, be moved with nothing, take no infamy or disgrace to heart, laugh at all; let them be proved perjured, stigmatised, convict rogues, thieves, traitors, lose their ears, be whipped, branded, carted, pointed at, hissed, reviled, and derided with [1685]Ballio the Bawd in Plautus, they rejoice at it, Cantores probos; “babe and Bombax,” what care they? We have too many such in our times,
Envy and malice are two links of this chain, and both, as Guianerius, Tract. 15. cap. 2, proves out of Galen, 3 Aphorism, com. 22, [1688] “cause this malady by themselves, especially if their bodies be otherwise disposed to melancholy.” 'Tis Valescus de Taranta, and Felix Platerus' observation, [1689]“Envy so gnaws many men's hearts, that they become altogether melancholy.” And therefore belike Solomon, Prov. xiv. 13, calls it, “the rotting of the bones,” Cyprian, vulnus occultum;
Out of this root of envy [1711]spring those feral branches of faction, hatred, livor, emulation, which cause the like grievances, and are, serrae animae, the saws of the soul, [1712]consternationis pleni affectus, affections full of desperate amazement; or as Cyprian describes emulation, it is [1713]“a moth of the soul, a consumption, to make another man's happiness his misery, to torture, crucify, and execute himself, to eat his own heart. Meat and drink can do such men no good, they do always grieve, sigh, and groan, day and night without intermission, their breast is torn asunder:” and a little after, [1714]“Whomsoever he is whom thou dost emulate and envy, he may avoid thee, but thou canst neither avoid him nor thyself; wheresoever thou art he is with thee, thine enemy is ever in thy breast, thy destruction is within thee, thou art a captive, bound hand and foot, as long as thou art malicious and envious, and canst not be comforted. It was the devil's overthrow;” and whensoever thou art thoroughly affected with this passion, it will be thine. Yet no perturbation so frequent, no passion so common.
Every society, corporation, and private family is full of it, it takes hold almost of all sorts of men, from the prince to the ploughman, even amongst gossips it is to be seen, scarce three in a company but there is siding, faction, emulation, between two of them, some simultas, jar, private grudge, heart-burning in the midst of them. Scarce two gentlemen dwell together in the country, (if they be not near kin or linked in marriage) but there is emulation betwixt them and their servants, some quarrel or some grudge betwixt their wives or children, friends and followers, some contention about wealth, gentry, precedency, &c., by means of which, like the frog in [1716]Aesop, “that would swell till she was as big as an ox, burst herself at last;” they will stretch beyond their fortunes, callings, and strive so long that they consume their substance in lawsuits, or otherwise in hospitality, feasting, fine clothes, to get a few bombast titles, for ambitiosa paupertate laboramus omnes, to outbrave one another, they will tire their bodies, macerate their souls, and through contentions or mutual invitations beggar themselves. Scarce two great scholars in an age, but with bitter invectives they fall foul one on the other, and their adherents; Scotists, Thomists, Reals, Nominals, Plato and Aristotle, Galenists and Paracelsians, &c., it holds in all professions.
Honest [1717]emulation in studies, in all callings is not to be disliked, 'tis ingeniorum cos, as one calls it, the whetstone of wit, the nurse of wit and valour, and those noble Romans out of this spirit did brave exploits. There is a modest ambition, as Themistocles was roused up with the glory of Miltiades; Achilles' trophies moved Alexander,
Anger, a perturbation, which carries the spirits outwards, preparing the body to melancholy, and madness itself: Ira furor brevis est, “anger is temporary madness;” and as [1728]Picolomineus accounts it, one of the three most violent passions. [1729]Areteus sets it down for an especial cause (so doth Seneca, ep. 18. l. 1,) of this malady. [1730]Magninus gives the reason, Ex frequenti ira supra modum calefiunt; it overheats their bodies, and if it be too frequent, it breaks out into manifest madness, saith St. Ambrose. 'Tis a known saying, Furor fit Iaesa saepius palienlia, the most patient spirit that is, if he be often provoked, will be incensed to madness; it will make a devil of a saint: and therefore Basil (belike) in his Homily de Ira, calls it tenebras rationis, morbum animae, et daemonem pessimum; the darkening of our understanding, and a bad angel. [1731]Lucian, in Abdicato, tom. 1, will have this passion to work this effect, especially in old men and women. “Anger and calumny” (saith he) “trouble them at first, and after a while break out into madness: many things cause fury in women, especially if they love or hate overmuch, or envy, be much grieved or angry; these things by little and little lead them on to this malady.” From a disposition they proceed to an habit, for there is no difference between a mad man, and an angry man, in the time of his fit; anger, as Lactantius describes it, L. de Ira Dei, ad Donatum, c. 5, is [1732]saeva animi tempestas, &c., a cruel tempest of the mind; “making his eye sparkle fire, and stare, teeth gnash in his head, his tongue stutter, his face pale, or red, and what more filthy imitation can be of a mad man?”
Discontents, cares, crosses, miseries, or whatsoever it is, that shall cause any molestation of spirits, grief, anguish, and perplexity, may well be reduced to this head, (preposterously placed here in some men's judgments they may seem,) yet in that Aristotle in his [1741]Rhetoric defines these cares, as he doth envy, emulation, &c. still by grief, I think I may well rank them in this irascible row; being that they are as the rest, both causes and symptoms of this disease, producing the like inconveniences, and are most part accompanied with anguish and pain. The common etymology will evince it, Cura quasi cor uro, Dementes curae, insomnes curae, damnosae curae, tristes, mordaces, carnifices, &c. biting, eating, gnawing, cruel, bitter, sick, sad, unquiet, pale, tetric, miserable, intolerable cares, as the poets [1742]call them, worldly cares, and are as many in number as the sea sands. [1743]Galen, Fernelius, Felix Plater, Valescus de Taranta, &c., reckon afflictions, miseries, even all these contentions, and vexations of the mind, as principal causes, in that they take away sleep, hinder concoction, dry up the body, and consume the substance of it. They are not so many in number, but their causes be as divers, and not one of a thousand free from them, or that can vindicate himself, whom that Ate dea,
Homer's Goddess Ate hath not involved into this discontented [1745]rank, or plagued with some misery or other. Hyginus, fab. 220, to this purpose hath a pleasant tale. Dame Cura by chance went over a brook, and taking up some of the dirty slime, made an image of it; Jupiter eftsoons coming by, put life to it, but Cura and Jupiter could not agree what name to give him, or who should own him; the matter was referred to Saturn as judge; he gave this arbitrement: his name shall be Homo ab humo, Cura eum possideat quamdiu vivat, Care shall have him whilst he lives, Jupiter his soul, and Tellus his body when he dies. But to leave tales. A general cause, a continuate cause, an inseparable accident, to all men, is discontent, care, misery; were there no other particular affliction (which who is free from?) to molest a man in this life, the very cogitation of that common misery were enough to macerate, and make him weary of his life; to think that he can never be secure, but still in danger, sorrow, grief, and persecution. For to begin at the hour of his birth, as [1746]Pliny doth elegantly describe it, “he is born naked, and falls [1747]a whining at the very first: he is swaddled, and bound up like a prisoner, cannot help himself, and so he continues to his life's end.” Cujusque ferae pabulum, saith [1748]Seneca, impatient of heat and cold, impatient of labour, impatient of idleness, exposed to fortune's contumelies. To a naked mariner Lucretius compares him, cast on shore by shipwreck, cold and comfortless in an unknown land: [1749]no estate, age, sex, can secure himself from this common misery. “A man that is born of a woman is of short continuance, and full of trouble,” Job xiv. 1, 22. “And while his flesh is upon him he shall be sorrowful, and while his soul is in him it shall mourn. All his days are sorrow and his travels griefs: his heart also taketh not rest in the night.” Eccles. ii. 23, and ii. 11. “All that is in it is sorrow and vexation of spirit. [1750]Ingress, progress, regress, egress, much alike: blindness seizeth on us in the beginning, labour in the middle, grief in the end, error in all. What day ariseth to us without some grief, care, or anguish? Or what so secure and pleasing a morning have we seen, that hath not been overcast before the evening?” One is miserable, another ridiculous, a third odious. One complains of this grievance, another of that. Aliquando nervi, aliquando pedes vexant, (Seneca) nunc distillatio, nunc epatis morbus; nunc deest, nunc superest sanguis: now the head aches, then the feet, now the lungs, then the liver, &c. Huic sensus exuberat, sed est pudori degener sanguis, &c. He is rich, but base born; he is noble, but poor; a third hath means, but he wants health peradventure, or wit to manage his estate; children vex one, wife a second, &c. Nemo facile cum conditione sua concordat, no man is pleased with his fortune, a pound of sorrow is familiarly mixed with a dram of content, little or no joy, little comfort, but [1751]everywhere danger, contention, anxiety, in all places: go where thou wilt, and thou shalt find discontents, cares, woes, complaints, sickness, diseases, encumbrances, exclamations: “If thou look into the market, there” (saith [1752] Chrysostom) “is brawling and contention; if to the court, there knavery and flattery, &c.; if to a private man's house, there's cark and care, heaviness,” &c. As he said of old,
If this be not a sufficient proof of their discontent and misery, examine every condition and calling apart. Kings, princes, monarchs, and magistrates seem to be most happy, but look into their estate, you shall [1786]find them to be most encumbered with cares, in perpetual fear, agony, suspicion, jealousy: that, as [1787]he said of a crown, if they knew but the discontents that accompany it, they would not stoop to take it up. Quem mihi regent dabis (saith Chrysostom) non curis plenum? What king canst thou show me, not full of cares? [1788]“Look not on his crown, but consider his afflictions; attend not his number of servants, but multitude of crosses.” Nihil aliud potestas culminis, quam tempestas mentis, as Gregory seconds him; sovereignty is a tempest of the soul: Sylla like they have brave titles, but terrible fits: splendorem titulo, cruciatum animo: which made [1789]Demosthenes vow, si vel ad tribunal, vel ad interitum duceretur: if to be a judge, or to be condemned, were put to his choice, he would be condemned. Rich men are in the same predicament; what their pains are, stulti nesciunt, ipsi sentiunt: they feel, fools perceive not, as I shall prove elsewhere, and their wealth is brittle, like children's rattles: they come and go, there is no certainty in them: those whom they elevate, they do as suddenly depress, and leave in a vale of misery. The middle sort of men are as so many asses to bear burdens; or if they be free, and live at ease, they spend themselves, and consume their bodies and fortunes with luxury and riot, contention, emulation, &c. The poor I reserve for another [1790]place and their discontents.
For particular professions, I hold as of the rest, there's no content or security in any; on what course will you pitch, how resolve? to be a divine, 'tis contemptible in the world's esteem; to be a lawyer, 'tis to be a wrangler; to be a physician, [1791]pudet lotii, 'tis loathed; a philosopher, a madman; an alchemist, a beggar; a poet, esurit, an hungry jack; a musician, a player; a schoolmaster, a drudge; an husbandman, an emmet; a merchant, his gains are uncertain; a mechanician, base; a chirurgeon, fulsome; a tradesman, a [1792]liar; a tailor, a thief; a serving-man, a slave; a soldier, a butcher; a smith, or a metalman, the pot's never from his nose; a courtier a parasite, as he could find no tree in the wood to hang himself; I can show no state of life to give content. The like you may say of all ages; children live in a perpetual slavery, still under that tyrannical government of masters; young men, and of riper years, subject to labour, and a thousand cares of the world, to treachery, falsehood, and cozenage,
These concupiscible and irascible appetites are as the two twists of a rope, mutually mixed one with the other, and both twining about the heart: both good, as Austin, holds, l. 14. c. 9. de civ. Dei, [1802]“if they be moderate; both pernicious if they be exorbitant.” This concupiscible appetite, howsoever it may seem to carry with it a show of pleasure and delight, and our concupiscences most part affect us with content and a pleasing object, yet if they be in extremes, they rack and wring us on the other side. A true saying it is, “Desire hath no rest;” is infinite in itself, endless; and as [1803]one calls it, a perpetual rack, [1804]or horse-mill, according to Austin, still going round as in a ring. They are not so continual, as divers, felicius atomos denumerare possem, saith [1805]Bernard, quam motus cordis; nunc haec, nunc illa cogito, you may as well reckon up the motes in the sun as them. [1806]“It extends itself to everything,” as Guianerius will have it, “that is superfluously sought after:”' or to any [1807]fervent desire, as Fernelius interprets it; be it in what kind soever, it tortures if immoderate, and is (according to [1808] Plater and others) an especial cause of melancholy. Multuosis concupiscentiis dilaniantur cogitationes meae, [1809]Austin confessed, that he was torn a pieces with his manifold desires: and so doth [1810] Bernard complain, “that he could not rest for them a minute of an hour: this I would have, and that, and then I desire to be such and such.” 'Tis a hard matter therefore to confine them, being they are so various and many, impossible to apprehend all. I will only insist upon some few of the chief, and most noxious in their kind, as that exorbitant appetite and desire of honour, which we commonly call ambition; love of money, which is covetousness, and that greedy desire of gain: self-love, pride, and inordinate desire of vainglory or applause, love of study in excess; love of women (which will require a just volume of itself), of the other I will briefly speak, and in their order.
Ambition, a proud covetousness, or a dry thirst of honour, a great torture of the mind, composed of envy, pride, and covetousness, a gallant madness, one [1811]defines it a pleasant poison, Ambrose, “a canker of the soul, an hidden plague:” [1812]Bernard, “a secret poison, the father of livor, and mother of hypocrisy, the moth of holiness, and cause of madness, crucifying and disquieting all that it takes hold of.” [1813]Seneca calls it, rem solicitam, timidam, vanam, ventosam, a windy thing, a vain, solicitous, and fearful thing. For commonly they that, like Sisyphus, roll this restless stone of ambition, are in a perpetual agony, still [1814] perplexed, semper taciti, tritesque recedunt (Lucretius), doubtful, timorous, suspicious, loath to offend in word or deed, still cogging and colloguing, embracing, capping, cringing, applauding, flattering, fleering, visiting, waiting at men's doors, with all affability, counterfeit honesty and humility. [1815]If that will not serve, if once this humour (as [1816]Cyprian describes it) possess his thirsty soul, ambitionis salsugo ubi bibulam animam possidet, by hook and by crook he will obtain it, “and from his hole he will climb to all honours and offices, if it be possible for him to get up, flattering one, bribing another, he will leave no means unessay'd to win all.” [1817]It is a wonder to see how slavishly these kind of men subject themselves, when they are about a suit, to every inferior person; what pains they will take, run, ride, cast, plot, countermine, protest and swear, vow, promise, what labours undergo, early up, down late; how obsequious and affable they are, how popular and courteous, how they grin and fleer upon every man they meet; with what feasting and inviting, how they spend themselves and their fortunes, in seeking that many times, which they had much better be without; as [1818]Cyneas the orator told Pyrrhus: with what waking nights, painful hours, anxious thoughts, and bitterness of mind, inter spemque metumque, distracted and tired, they consume the interim of their time. There can be no greater plague for the present. If they do obtain their suit, which with such cost and solicitude they have sought, they are not so freed, their anxiety is anew to begin, for they are never satisfied, nihil aliud nisi imperium spirant, their thoughts, actions, endeavours are all for sovereignty and honour, like [1819]Lues Sforza that huffing Duke of Milan, “a man of singular wisdom, but profound ambition, born to his own, and to the destruction of Italy,” though it be to their own ruin, and friends' undoing, they will contend, they may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so [1820]Budaeus compares them; [1821]they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top. A knight would be a baronet, and then a lord, and then a viscount, and then an earl, &c.; a doctor, a dean, and then a bishop; from tribune to praetor; from bailiff to major; first this office, and then that; as Pyrrhus in [1822]Plutarch, they will first have Greece, then Africa, and then Asia, and swell with Aesop's frog so long, till in the end they burst, or come down with Sejanus, ad Gemonias scalas, and break their own necks; or as Evangelus the piper in Lucian, that blew his pipe so long, till he fell down dead. If he chance to miss, and have a canvass, he is in a hell on the other side; so dejected, that he is ready to hang himself, turn heretic, Turk, or traitor in an instant. Enraged against his enemies, he rails, swears, fights, slanders, detracts, envies, murders: and for his own part, si appetitum explere non potest, furore corripitur; if he cannot satisfy his desire (as [1823]Bodine writes) he runs mad. So that both ways, hit or miss, he is distracted so long as his ambition lasts, he can look for no other but anxiety and care, discontent and grief in the meantime, [1824]madness itself, or violent death in the end. The event of this is common to be seen in populous cities, or in princes' courts, for a courtier's life (as Budaeus describes it) “is a [1825]gallimaufry of ambition, lust, fraud, imposture, dissimulation, detraction, envy, pride; [1826]the court, a common conventicle of flatterers, time-servers, politicians,” &c.; or as [1827] Anthony Perez will, “the suburbs of hell itself.” If you will see such discontented persons, there you shall likely find them. [1828]And which he observed of the markets of old Rome,
Plutarch, in his [1829]book whether the diseases of the body be more grievous than those of the soul, is of opinion, “if you will examine all the causes of our miseries in this life, you shall find them most part to have had their beginning from stubborn anger, that furious desire of contention, or some unjust or immoderate affection, as covetousness, &c.” From whence “are wars and contentions amongst you?” [1830]St. James asks: I will add usury, fraud, rapine, simony, oppression, lying, swearing, bearing false witness, &c. are they not from this fountain of covetousness, that greediness in getting, tenacity in keeping, sordidity in spending; that they are so wicked, [1831]“unjust against God, their neighbour, themselves;” all comes hence. “The desire of money is the root of all evil, and they that lust after it, pierce themselves through with many sorrows,” 1 Tim. vi. 10. Hippocrates therefore in his Epistle to Crateva, an herbalist, gives him this good counsel, that if it were possible, [1832] “amongst other herbs, he should cut up that weed of covetousness by the roots, that there be no remainder left, and then know this for a certainty, that together with their bodies, thou mayst quickly cure all the diseases of their minds.” For it is indeed the pattern, image, epitome of all melancholy, the fountain of many miseries, much discontented care and woe; this “inordinate, or immoderate desire of gain, to get or keep money,” as [1833]Bonaventure defines it: or, as Austin describes it, a madness of the soul, Gregory a torture; Chrysostom, an insatiable drunkenness; Cyprian, blindness, speciosum supplicium, a plague subverting kingdoms, families, an [1834]incurable disease; Budaeus, an ill habit, [1835]“yielding to no remedies:” neither Aesculapius nor Plutus can cure them: a continual plague, saith Solomon, and vexation of spirit, another hell. I know there be some of opinion, that covetous men are happy, and worldly, wise, that there is more pleasure in getting of wealth than in spending, and no delight in the world like unto it. 'Twas [1836]Bias' problem of old, “With what art thou not weary? with getting money. What is most delectable? to gain.” What is it, trow you, that makes a poor man labour all his lifetime, carry such great burdens, fare so hardly, macerate himself, and endure so much misery, undergo such base offices with so great patience, to rise up early, and lie down late, if there were not an extraordinary delight in getting and keeping of money? What makes a merchant that hath no need, satis superque domi, to range all over the world, through all those intemperate [1837]Zones of heat and cold; voluntarily to venture his life, and be content with such miserable famine, nasty usage, in a stinking ship; if there were not a pleasure and hope to get money, which doth season the rest, and mitigate his indefatigable pains? What makes them go into the bowels of the earth, an hundred fathom deep, endangering their dearest lives, enduring damps and filthy smells, when they have enough already, if they could be content, and no such cause to labour, but an extraordinary delight they take in riches. This may seem plausible at first show, a popular and strong argument; but let him that so thinks, consider better of it, and he shall soon perceive, that it is far otherwise than he supposeth; it may be haply pleasing at the first, as most part all melancholy is. For such men likely have some lucida intervalla, pleasant symptoms intermixed; but you must note that of [1838]Chrysostom, “'Tis one thing to be rich, another to be covetous:” generally they are all fools, dizzards, madmen, [1839]miserable wretches, living besides themselves, sine arte fruendi, in perpetual slavery, fear, suspicion, sorrow, and discontent, plus aloes quam mellis habent; and are indeed, “rather possessed by their money, than possessors:” as [1840]Cyprian hath it, mancipati pecuniis; bound prentice to their goods, as [1841]Pliny; or as Chrysostom, servi divitiarum, slaves and drudges to their substance; and we may conclude of them all, as [1842]Valerius doth of Ptolomaeus king of Cyprus, “He was in title a king of that island, but in his mind, a miserable drudge of money:”
It is a wonder to see, how many poor, distressed, miserable wretches, one shall meet almost in every path and street, begging for an alms, that have been well descended, and sometimes in flourishing estate, now ragged, tattered, and ready to be starved, lingering out a painful life, in discontent and grief of body and mind, and all through immoderate lust, gaming, pleasure and riot. 'Tis the common end of all sensual epicures and brutish prodigals, that are stupefied and carried away headlong with their several pleasures and lusts. Cebes in his table, St. Ambrose in his second book of Abel and Cain, and amongst the rest Lucian in his tract de Mercede conductis, hath excellent well deciphered such men's proceedings in his picture of Opulentia, whom he feigns to dwell on the top of a high mount, much sought after by many suitors; at their first coming they are generally entertained by pleasure and dalliance, and have all the content that possibly may be given, so long as their money lasts: but when their means fail, they are contemptibly thrust out at a back door, headlong, and there left to shame, reproach, despair. And he at first that had so many attendants, parasites, and followers, young and lusty, richly arrayed, and all the dainty fare that might be had, with all kind of welcome and good respect, is now upon a sudden stripped of all, [1866]pale, naked, old, diseased and forsaken, cursing his stars, and ready to strangle himself; having no other company but repentance, sorrow, grief, derision, beggary, and contempt, which are his daily attendants to his life's end. As the [1867]prodigal son had exquisite music, merry company, dainty fare at first; but a sorrowful reckoning in the end; so have all such vain delights and their followers. [1868]Tristes voluptatum exitus, et quisquis voluptatum suarum reminisci volet, intelliget, as bitter as gall and wormwood is their last; grief of mind, madness itself. The ordinary rocks upon which such men do impinge and precipitate themselves, are cards, dice, hawks, and hounds, Insanum venandi studium, one calls it, insanae substructiones: their mad structures, disports, plays, &c., when they are unseasonably used, imprudently handled, and beyond their fortunes. Some men are consumed by mad fantastical buildings, by making galleries, cloisters, terraces, walks, orchards, gardens, pools, rillets, bowers, and such like places of pleasure; Inutiles domos, [1869]Xenophon calls them, which howsoever they be delightsome things in themselves, and acceptable to all beholders, an ornament, and benefiting some great men: yet unprofitable to others, and the sole overthrow of their estates. Forestus in his observations hath an example of such a one that became melancholy upon the like occasion, having consumed his substance in an unprofitable building, which would afterward yield him no advantage. Others, I say, are [1870] overthrown by those mad sports of hawking and hunting; honest recreations, and fit for some great men, but not for every base inferior person; whilst they will maintain their falconers, dogs, and hunting nags, their wealth, saith [1871]Salmutze, “runs away with hounds, and their fortunes fly away with hawks.” They persecute beasts so long, till in the end they themselves degenerate into beasts, as [1872]Agrippa taxeth them, [1873]Actaeon like, for as he was eaten to death by his own dogs, so do they devour themselves and their patrimonies, in such idle and unnecessary disports, neglecting in the mean time their more necessary business, and to follow their vocations. Over-mad too sometimes are our great men in delighting, and doting too much on it. [1874]“When they drive poor husbandmen from their tillage,” as [1875]Sarisburiensis objects, Polycrat. l. 1. c. 4, “fling down country farms, and whole towns, to make parks, and forests, starving men to feed beasts, and [1876]punishing in the mean time such a man that shall molest their game, more severely than him that is otherwise a common hacker, or a notorious thief.” But great men are some ways to be excused, the meaner sort have no evasion why they should not be counted mad. Poggius the Florentine tells a merry story to this purpose, condemning the folly and impertinent business of such kind of persons. A physician of Milan, saith he, that cured mad men, had a pit of water in his house, in which he kept his patients, some up to the knees, some to the girdle, some to the chin, pro modo insaniae, as they were more or less affected. One of them by chance, that was well recovered, stood in the door, and seeing a gallant ride by with a hawk on his fist, well mounted, with his spaniels after him, would needs know to what use all this preparation served; he made answer to kill certain fowls; the patient demanded again, what his fowl might be worth which he killed in a year; he replied 5 or 10 crowns; and when he urged him farther what his dogs, horse, and hawks stood him in, he told him 400 crowns; with that the patient bad be gone, as he loved his life and welfare, for if our master come and find thee here, he will put thee in the pit amongst mad men up to the chin: taxing the madness and folly of such vain men that spend themselves in those idle sports, neglecting their business and necessary affairs. Leo Decimus, that hunting pope, is much discommended by [1877]Jovius in his life, for his immoderate desire of hawking and hunting, in so much that (as he saith) he would sometimes live about Ostia weeks and months together, leave suitors [1878]unrespected, bulls and pardons unsigned, to his own prejudice, and many private men's loss. [1879]“And if he had been by chance crossed in his sport, or his game not so good, he was so impatient, that he would revile and miscall many times men of great worth with most bitter taunts, look so sour, be so angry and waspish, so grieved and molested, that it is incredible to relate it.” But if he had good sport, and been well pleased, on the other side, incredibili munificentia, with unspeakable bounty and munificence he would reward all his fellow hunters, and deny nothing to any suitor when he was in that mood. To say truth, 'tis the common humour of all gamesters, as Galataeus observes, if they win, no men living are so jovial and merry, but [1880]if they lose, though it be but a trifle, two or three games at tables, or a dealing at cards for two pence a game, they are so choleric and testy that no man may speak with them, and break many times into violent passions, oaths, imprecations, and unbeseeming speeches, little differing from mad men for the time. Generally of all gamesters and gaming, if it be excessive, thus much we may conclude, that whether they win or lose for the present, their winnings are not Munera fortunae, sed insidiae as that wise Seneca determines, not fortune's gifts, but baits, the common catastrophe is [1881]beggary, [1882]Ut pestis vitam, sic adimit alea pecuniam, as the plague takes away life, doth gaming goods, for [1883] omnes nudi, inopes et egeni;
I may not here omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; they go commonly together.
That other madness is on women, Apostatare facit cor, saith the wise man, [1900]Atque homini cerebrum minuit. Pleasant at first she is, like Dioscorides Rhododaphne, that fair plant to the eye, but poison to the taste, the rest as bitter as wormwood in the end (Prov. v. 4.) and sharp as a two-edged sword, (vii. 27.) “Her house is the way to hell, and goes down to the chambers of death.” What more sorrowful can be said? they are miserable in this life, mad, beasts, led like [1901]“oxen to the slaughter:” and that which is worse, whoremasters and drunkards shall be judged, amittunt gratiam, saith Austin, perdunt gloriam, incurrunt damnationem aeternam. They lose grace and glory;
Self-love, pride, and vainglory, [1903]caecus amor sui, which Chrysostom calls one of the devil's three great nets; [1904]“Bernard, an arrow which pierceth the soul through, and slays it; a sly, insensible enemy, not perceived,” are main causes. Where neither anger, lust, covetousness, fear, sorrow, &c., nor any other perturbation can lay hold; this will slyly and insensibly pervert us, Quem non gula vicit, Philautia, superavit, (saith Cyprian) whom surfeiting could not overtake, self-love hath overcome. [1905]“He hath scorned all money, bribes, gifts, upright otherwise and sincere, hath inserted himself to no fond imagination, and sustained all those tyrannical concupiscences of the body, hath lost all his honour, captivated by vainglory.” Chrysostom, sup. Io. Tu sola animum mentemque peruris, gloria. A great assault and cause of our present malady, although we do most part neglect, take no notice of it, yet this is a violent batterer of our souls, causeth melancholy and dotage. This pleasing humour; this soft and whispering popular air, Amabilis insania; this delectable frenzy, most irrefragable passion, Mentis gratissimus error, this acceptable disease, which so sweetly sets upon us, ravisheth our senses, lulls our souls asleep, puffs up our hearts as so many bladders, and that without all feeling, [1906]insomuch as “those that are misaffected with it, never so much as once perceive it, or think of any cure.” We commonly love him best in this [1907]malady, that doth us most harm, and are very willing to be hurt; adulationibus nostris libentur facemus (saith [1908] Jerome) we love him, we love him for it: [1909]O Bonciari suave, suave fuit a te tali haec tribui; 'Twas sweet to hear it. And as [1910]Pliny doth ingenuously confess to his dear friend Augurinus, “all thy writings are most acceptable, but those especially that speak of us.” Again, a little after to Maximus, [1911]“I cannot express how pleasing it is to me to hear myself commended.” Though we smile to ourselves, at least ironically, when parasites bedaub us with false encomiums, as many princes cannot choose but do, Quum tale quid nihil intra se repererint, when they know they come as far short, as a mouse to an elephant, of any such virtues; yet it doth us good. Though we seem many times to be angry, [1912] “and blush at our own praises, yet our souls inwardly rejoice, it puffs us up;” 'tis fallax suavitas, blandus daemon, “makes us swell beyond our bounds, and forget ourselves.” Her two daughters are lightness of mind, immoderate joy and pride, not excluding those other concomitant vices, which [1913]Iodocus Lorichius reckons up; bragging, hypocrisy, peevishness, and curiosity.
Now the common cause of this mischief, ariseth from ourselves or others, [1914]we are active and passive. It proceeds inwardly from ourselves, as we are active causes, from an overweening conceit we have of our good parts, own worth, (which indeed is no worth) our bounty, favour, grace, valour, strength, wealth, patience, meekness, hospitality, beauty, temperance, gentry, knowledge, wit, science, art, learning, our [1915] excellent gifts and fortunes, for which, Narcissus-like, we admire, flatter, and applaud ourselves, and think all the world esteems so of us; and as deformed women easily believe those that tell them they be fair, we are too credulous of our own good parts and praises, too well persuaded of ourselves. We brag and venditate our [1916]own works, and scorn all others in respect of us; Inflati scientia, (saith Paul) our wisdom, [1917]our learning, all our geese are swans, and we as basely esteem and vilify other men's, as we do over-highly prize and value our own. We will not suffer them to be in secundis, no, not in tertiis; what, Mecum confertur Ulysses? they are Mures, Muscae, culices prae se, nits and flies compared to his inexorable and supercilious, eminent and arrogant worship: though indeed they be far before him. Only wise, only rich, only fortunate, valorous, and fair, puffed up with this tympany of self-conceit; [1918]as that proud Pharisee, they are not (as they suppose) “like other men,” of a purer and more precious metal: [1919]Soli rei gerendi sunt efficaces, which that wise Periander held of such: [1920]meditantur omne qui prius negotium, &c. Novi quendam (saith [1921]Erasmus) I knew one so arrogant that he thought himself inferior to no man living, like [1922]Callisthenes the philosopher, that neither held Alexander's acts, or any other subject worthy of his pen, such was his insolency; or Seleucus king of Syria, who thought none fit to contend with him but the Romans. [1923]Eos solos dignos ratus quibuscum de imperio certaret. That which Tully writ to Atticus long since, is still in force. [1924]“There was never yet true poet nor orator, that thought any other better than himself.” And such for the most part are your princes, potentates, great philosophers, historiographers, authors of sects or heresies, and all our great scholars, as [1925]Hierom defines; “a natural philosopher is a glorious creature, and a very slave of rumour, fame, and popular opinion,” and though they write de contemptu gloriae, yet as he observes, they will put their names to their books. Vobis et famae, me semper dedi, saith Trebellius Pollio, I have wholly consecrated myself to you and fame. “'Tis all my desire, night and day, 'tis all my study to raise my name.” Proud [1926]Pliny seconds him; Quamquam O! &c. and that vainglorious [1927]orator is not ashamed to confess in an Epistle of his to Marcus Lecceius, Ardeo incredibili cupididate, &c. “I burn with an incredible desire to have my [1928]name registered in thy book.” Out of this fountain proceed all those cracks and brags,—[1929]speramus carmina fingi Posse linenda cedro, et leni servanda cupresso—[1930]Non usitata nec tenui ferar penna.—nec in terra morabor longius. Nil parvum aut humili modo, nil mortale loquor. Dicar qua violens obstrepit Ausidus.—Exegi monumentum aere perennius. Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis, &c. cum venit ille dies, &c. parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum. (This of Ovid I have paraphrased in English.)
Another kind of mad men there is opposite to these, that are insensibly mad, and know not of it, such as contemn all praise and glory, think themselves most free, when as indeed they are most mad: calcant sed alio fastu: a company of cynics, such as are monks, hermits, anchorites, that contemn the world, contemn themselves, contemn all titles, honours, offices: and yet in that contempt are more proud than any man living whatsoever. They are proud in humility, proud in that they are not proud, saepe homo de vanae gloriae contemptu, vanius gloriatur, as Austin hath it, confess. lib. 10, cap. 38, like Diogenes, intus gloriantur, they brag inwardly, and feed themselves fat with a self-conceit of sanctity, which is no better than hypocrisy. They go in sheep's russet, many great men that might maintain themselves in cloth of gold, and seem to be dejected, humble by their outward carriage, when as inwardly they are swollen full of pride, arrogancy, and self-conceit. And therefore Seneca adviseth his friend Lucilius, [1945]“in his attire and gesture, outward actions, especially to avoid all such things as are more notable in themselves: as a rugged attire, hirsute head, horrid beard, contempt of money, coarse lodging, and whatsoever leads to fame that opposite way.”
All this madness yet proceeds from ourselves, the main engine which batters us is from others, we are merely passive in this business: from a company of parasites and flatterers, that with immoderate praise, and bombast epithets, glossing titles, false eulogiums, so bedaub and applaud, gild over many a silly and undeserving man, that they clap him quite out of his wits. Res imprimis violenta est, as Hierom notes, this common applause is a most violent thing, laudum placenta, a drum, fife, and trumpet cannot so animate; that fattens men, erects and dejects them in an instant. [1946] Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum. It makes them fat and lean, as frost doth conies. [1947]“And who is that mortal man that can so contain himself, that if he be immoderately commended and applauded, will not be moved?” Let him be what he will, those parasites will overturn him: if he be a king, he is one of the nine worthies, more than a man, a god forthwith,—[1948]edictum Domini Deique nostri: and they will sacrifice unto him,
Leonartus Fuchsius Instit. lib. iii. sect. 1. cap. 1. Felix Plater, lib. iii. de mentis alienat. Herc. de Saxonia, Tract. post. de melanch. cap. 3, speak of a [1970]peculiar fury, which comes by overmuch study. Fernelius, lib. 1, cap. 18, [1971]puts study, contemplation, and continual meditation, as an especial cause of madness: and in his 86 consul. cites the same words. Jo. Arculanus, in lib. 9, Rhasis ad Alnansorem, cap. 16, amongst other causes reckons up studium vehemens: so doth Levinus Lemnius, lib. de occul. nat. mirac. lib. 1, cap. 16. [1972]“Many men” (saith he) “come to this malady by continual [1973]study, and night-waking, and of all other men, scholars are most subject to it:” and such Rhasis adds, [1974]“that have commonly the finest wits.” Cont. lib. 1, tract. 9, Marsilius Ficinus, de sanit. tuenda, lib. 1. cap. 7, puts melancholy amongst one of those five principal plagues of students, 'tis a common Maul unto them all, and almost in some measure an inseparable companion. Varro belike for that cause calls Tristes Philosophos et severos, severe, sad, dry, tetric, are common epithets to scholars: and [1975]Patritius therefore, in the institution of princes, would not have them to be great students. For (as Machiavel holds) study weakens their bodies, dulls the spirits, abates their strength and courage; and good scholars are never good soldiers, which a certain Goth well perceived, for when his countrymen came into Greece, and would have burned all their books, he cried out against it, by no means they should do it, [1976] “leave them that plague, which in time will consume all their vigour, and martial spirits.” The [1977]Turks abdicated Cornutus the next heir from the empire, because he was so much given to his book: and 'tis the common tenet of the world, that learning dulls and diminisheth the spirits, and so per consequens produceth melancholy.
Two main reasons may be given of it, why students should be more subject to this malady than others. The one is, they live a sedentary, solitary life, sibi et musis, free from bodily exercise, and those ordinary disports which other men use: and many times if discontent and idleness concur with it, which is too frequent, they are precipitated into this gulf on a sudden: but the common cause is overmuch study; too much learning (as [1978]Festus told Paul) hath made thee mad; 'tis that other extreme which effects it. So did Trincavelius, lib. 1, consil. 12 and 13, find by his experience, in two of his patients, a young baron, and another that contracted this malady by too vehement study. So Forestus, observat. l. 10, observ. 13, in a young divine in Louvain, that was mad, and said [1979]“he had a Bible in his head:” Marsilius Ficinus de sanit. tuend. lib. 1, cap. 1, 3, 4, and lib. 2, cap. 16, gives many reasons, [1980] “why students dote more often than others.” The first is their negligence; [1981]“other men look to their tools, a painter will wash his pencils, a smith will look to his hammer, anvil, forge; a husbandman will mend his plough-irons, and grind his hatchet if it be dull; a falconer or huntsman will have an especial care of his hawks, hounds, horses, dogs, &c.; a musician will string and unstring his lute, &c.; only scholars neglect that instrument, their brain and spirits (I mean) which they daily use, and by which they range overall the world, which by much study is consumed.” Vide (saith Lucian) ne funiculum nimis intendendo aliquando abrumpas: “See thou twist not the rope so hard, till at length it [1982]break.” Facinus in his fourth chap. gives some other reasons; Saturn and Mercury, the patrons of learning, they are both dry planets: and Origanus assigns the same cause, why Mercurialists are so poor, and most part beggars; for that their president Mercury had no better fortune himself. The destinies of old put poverty upon him as a punishment; since when, poetry and beggary are Gemelli, twin-born brats, inseparable companions;
Now because they are commonly subject to such hazards and inconveniences as dotage, madness, simplicity, &c. Jo. Voschius would have good scholars to be highly rewarded, and had in some extraordinary respect above other men, “to have greater [2000]privileges than the rest, that adventure themselves and abbreviate their lives for the public good.” But our patrons of learning are so far nowadays from respecting the muses, and giving that honour to scholars, or reward which they deserve, and are allowed by those indulgent privileges of many noble princes, that after all their pains taken in the universities, cost and charge, expenses, irksome hours, laborious tasks, wearisome days, dangers, hazards, (barred interim from all pleasures which other men have, mewed up like hawks all their lives) if they chance to wade through them, they shall in the end be rejected, contemned, and which is their greatest misery, driven to their shifts, exposed to want, poverty, and beggary. Their familiar attendants are,
If there were nothing else to trouble them, the conceit of this alone were enough to make them all melancholy. Most other trades and professions, after some seven years' apprenticeship, are enabled by their craft to live of themselves. A merchant adventures his goods at sea, and though his hazard be great, yet if one ship return of four, he likely makes a saving voyage. An husbandman's gains are almost certain; quibus ipse Jupiter nocere non potest (whom Jove himself can't harm) ('tis [2002]Cato's hyperbole, a great husband himself); only scholars methinks are most uncertain, unrespected, subject to all casualties, and hazards. For first, not one of a many proves to be a scholar, all are not capable and docile, [2003]ex omniligno non fit Mercurius: we can make majors and officers every year, but not scholars: kings can invest knights and barons, as Sigismund the emperor confessed; universities can give degrees; and Tu quod es, e populo quilibet esse potest; but he nor they, nor all the world, can give learning, make philosophers, artists, orators, poets; we can soon say, as Seneca well notes, O virum bonum, o divitem, point at a rich man, a good, a happy man, a prosperous man, sumptuose vestitum, Calamistratum, bene olentem, magno temporis impendio constat haec laudatio, o virum literarum, but 'tis not so easily performed to find out a learned man. Learning is not so quickly got, though they may be willing to take pains, to that end sufficiently informed, and liberally maintained by their patrons and parents, yet few can compass it. Or if they be docile, yet all men's wills are not answerable to their wits, they can apprehend, but will not take pains; they are either seduced by bad companions, vel in puellam impingunt, vel in poculum (they fall in with women or wine) and so spend their time to their friends' grief and their own undoings. Or put case they be studious, industrious, of ripe wits, and perhaps good capacities, then how many diseases of body and mind must they encounter? No labour in the world like unto study. It may be, their temperature will not endure it, but striving to be excellent to know all, they lose health, wealth, wit, life and all. Let him yet happily escape all these hazards, aereis intestinis with a body of brass, and is now consummate and ripe, he hath profited in his studies, and proceeded with all applause: after many expenses, he is fit for preferment, where shall he have it? he is as far to seek it as he was (after twenty years' standing) at the first day of his coming to the University. For what course shall he take, being now capable and ready? The most parable and easy, and about which many are employed, is to teach a school, turn lecturer or curate, and for that he shall have falconer's wages, ten pound per annum, and his diet, or some small stipend, so long as he can please his patron or the parish; if they approve him not (for usually they do but a year or two) as inconstant, as [2004]they that cried “Hosanna” one day, and “Crucify him” the other; serving-man-like, he must go look a new master; if they do, what is his reward?
Although many times, for aught I can see, these men fail as often as the rest in their projects, and are as usually frustrate of their hopes. For let him be a doctor of the law, an excellent civilian of good worth, where shall he practise and expatiate? Their fields are so scant, the civil law with us so contracted with prohibitions, so few causes, by reason of those all-devouring municipal laws, quibus nihil illiteratius, saith [2024] Erasmus, an illiterate and a barbarous study, (for though they be never so well learned in it, I can hardly vouchsafe them the name of scholars, except they be otherwise qualified) and so few courts are left to that profession, such slender offices, and those commonly to be compassed at such dear rates, that I know not how an ingenious man should thrive amongst them. Now for physicians, there are in every village so many mountebanks, empirics, quacksalvers, Paracelsians, as they call themselves, Caucifici et sanicidae so [2025]Clenard terms them, wizards, alchemists, poor vicars, cast apothecaries, physicians' men, barbers, and good wives, professing great skill, that I make great doubt how they shall be maintained, or who shall be their patients. Besides, there are so many of both sorts, and some of them such harpies, so covetous, so clamorous, so impudent; and as [2026]he said, litigious idiots,
Last of all to come to our divines, the most noble profession and worthy of double honour, but of all others the most distressed and miserable. If you will not believe me, hear a brief of it, as it was not many years since publicly preached at Paul's cross, [2029]by a grave minister then, and now a reverend bishop of this land: “We that are bred up in learning, and destinated by our parents to this end, we suffer our childhood in the grammar-school, which Austin calls magnam tyrannidem, et grave malum, and compares it to the torments of martyrdom; when we come to the university, if we live of the college allowance, as Phalaris objected to the Leontines, παν τῶν ἐνδεῖς πλὴν λιμοὺ καὶ φόβου, needy of all things but hunger and fear, or if we be maintained but partly by our parents' cost, do expend in unnecessary maintenance, books and degrees, before we come to any perfection, five hundred pounds, or a thousand marks. If by this price of the expense of time, our bodies and spirits, our substance and patrimonies, we cannot purchase those small rewards, which are ours by law, and the right of inheritance, a poor parsonage, or a vicarage of 50l. per annum, but we must pay to the patron for the lease of a life (a spent and out-worn life) either in annual pension, or above the rate of a copyhold, and that with the hazard and loss of our souls, by simony and perjury, and the forfeiture of all our spiritual preferments, in esse and posse, both present and to come. What father after a while will be so improvident to bring up his son to his great charge, to this necessary beggary? What Christian will be so irreligious, to bring up his son in that course of life, which by all probability and necessity, cogit ad turpia, enforcing to sin, will entangle him in simony and perjury, when as the poet said, Invitatus ad haec aliquis de ponte negabit: a beggar's brat taken from the bridge where he sits a begging, if he knew the inconvenience, had cause to refuse it.” This being thus, have not we fished fair all this while, that are initiate divines, to find no better fruits of our labours, [2030] hoc est cur palles, cur quis non prandeat hoc est? do we macerate ourselves for this? Is it for this we rise so early all the year long? [2031]“Leaping” (as he saith) “out of our beds, when we hear the bell ring, as if we had heard a thunderclap.” If this be all the respect, reward and honour we shall have, [2032]frange leves calamos, et scinde Thalia libellos: let us give over our books, and betake ourselves to some other course of life; to what end should we study? [2033]Quid me litterulas stulti docuere parentes, what did our parents mean to make us scholars, to be as far to seek of preferment after twenty years' study, as we were at first: why do we take such pains? Quid tantum insanis juvat impallescere chartis? If there be no more hope of reward, no better encouragement, I say again, Frange leves calamos, et scinde Thalia libellos; let's turn soldiers, sell our books, and buy swords, guns, and pikes, or stop bottles with them, turn our philosopher's gowns, as Cleanthes once did, into millers' coats, leave all and rather betake ourselves to any other course of life, than to continue longer in this misery. [2034]Praestat dentiscalpia radere, quam literariis monumentis magnatum favorem emendicare.
Yea, but methinks I hear some man except at these words, that though this be true which I have said of the estate of scholars, and especially of divines, that it is miserable and distressed at this time, that the church suffers shipwreck of her goods, and that they have just cause to complain; there is a fault, but whence proceeds it? If the cause were justly examined, it would be retorted upon ourselves, if we were cited at that tribunal of truth, we should be found guilty, and not able to excuse it That there is a fault among us, I confess, and were there not a buyer, there would not be a seller; but to him that will consider better of it, it will more than manifestly appear, that the fountain of these miseries proceeds from these griping patrons. In accusing them, I do not altogether excuse us; both are faulty, they and we: yet in my judgment, theirs is the greater fault, more apparent causes and much to be condemned. For my part, if it be not with me as I would, or as it should, I do ascribe the cause, as [2035]Cardan did in the like case; meo infortunio potius quam illorum sceleri, to [2036]mine own infelicity rather than their naughtiness: although I have been baffled in my time by some of them, and have as just cause to complain as another: or rather indeed to mine own negligence; for I was ever like that Alexander in [2037]Plutarch, Crassus his tutor in philosophy, who, though he lived many years familiarly with rich Crassus, was even as poor when from, (which many wondered at) as when he came first to him; he never asked, the other never gave him anything; when he travelled with Crassus he borrowed a hat of him, at his return restored it again. I have had some such noble friends' acquaintance and scholars, but most part (common courtesies and ordinary respects excepted) they and I parted as we met, they gave me as much as I requested, and that was—And as Alexander ab Alexandro Genial. dier. l. 6. c. 16. made answer to Hieronymus Massainus, that wondered, quum plures ignavos et ignobiles ad dignitates et sacerdotia promotos quotidie videret, when other men rose, still he was in the same state, eodem tenore et fortuna cui mercedem laborum studiorumque deberi putaret, whom he thought to deserve as well as the rest. He made answer, that he was content with his present estate, was not ambitious, and although objurgabundus suam segnitiem accusaret, cum obscurae sortis homines ad sacerdotia et pontificatus evectos, &c., he chid him for his backwardness, yet he was still the same: and for my part (though I be not worthy perhaps to carry Alexander's books) yet by some overweening and well-wishing friends, the like speeches have been used to me; but I replied still with Alexander, that I had enough, and more peradventure than I deserved; and with Libanius Sophista, that rather chose (when honours and offices by the emperor were offered unto him) to be talis Sophista, quam tails Magistratus. I had as lief be still Democritus junior, and privus privatus, si mihi jam daretur optio, quam talis fortasse Doctor, talis Dominus.—Sed quorsum haec? For the rest 'tis on both sides facinus detestandum, to buy and sell livings, to detain from the church, that which God's and men's laws have bestowed on it; but in them most, and that from the covetousness and ignorance of such as are interested in this business; I name covetousness in the first place, as the root of all these mischiefs, which, Achan-like, compels them to commit sacrilege, and to make simoniacal compacts, (and what not) to their own ends, [2038]that kindles God's wrath, brings a plague, vengeance, and a heavy visitation upon themselves and others. Some out of that insatiable desire of filthy lucre, to be enriched, care not how they come by it per fas et nefas, hook or crook, so they have it. And others when they have with riot and prodigality embezzled their estates, to recover themselves, make a prey of the church, robbing it, as [2039]Julian the apostate did, spoil parsons of their revenues (in keeping half back, [2040]as a great man amongst us observes:) “and that maintenance on which they should live:” by means whereof, barbarism is increased, and a great decay of Christian professors: for who will apply himself to these divine studies, his son, or friend, when after great pains taken, they shall have nothing whereupon to live? But with what event do they these things?
A second cause is ignorance, and from thence contempt, successit odium in literas ab ignorantia vulgi; which [2051]Junius well perceived: this hatred and contempt of learning proceeds out of [2052]ignorance; as they are themselves barbarous, idiots, dull, illiterate, and proud, so they esteem of others. Sint Mecaenates, non deerunt Flacce Marones: Let there be bountiful patrons, and there will be painful scholars in all sciences. But when they contemn learning, and think themselves sufficiently qualified, if they can write and read, scramble at a piece of evidence, or have so much Latin as that emperor had, [2053]qui nescit dissimulare, nescit vivere, they are unfit to do their country service, to perform or undertake any action or employment, which may tend to the good of a commonwealth, except it be to fight, or to do country justice, with common sense, which every yeoman can likewise do. And so they bring up their children, rude as they are themselves, unqualified, untaught, uncivil most part. [2054]Quis e nostra juventute legitime instituitur literis? Quis oratores aut Philosophos tangit? quis historiam legit, illam rerum agendarum quasi animam? praecipitant parentes vota sua, &c. 'twas Lipsius' complaint to his illiterate countrymen, it may be ours. Now shall these men judge of a scholar's worth, that have no worth, that know not what belongs to a student's labours, that cannot distinguish between a true scholar and a drone? or him that by reason of a voluble tongue, a strong voice, a pleasing tone, and some trivially polyanthean helps, steals and gleans a few notes from other men's harvests, and so makes a fairer show, than he that is truly learned indeed: that thinks it no more to preach, than to speak, [2055]“or to run away with an empty cart;” as a grave man said: and thereupon vilify us, and our pains; scorn us, and all learning. [2056] Because they are rich, and have other means to live, they think it concerns them not to know, or to trouble themselves with it; a fitter task for younger brothers, or poor men's sons, to be pen and inkhorn men, pedantical slaves, and no whit beseeming the calling of a gentleman, as Frenchmen and Germans commonly do, neglect therefore all human learning, what have they to do with it? Let mariners learn astronomy; merchants, factors study arithmetic; surveyors get them geometry; spectacle-makers optics; land-leapers geography; town-clerks rhetoric, what should he do with a spade, that hath no ground to dig; or they with learning, that have no use of it? thus they reason, and are not ashamed to let mariners, apprentices, and the basest servants, be better qualified than themselves. In former times, kings, princes, and emperors, were the only scholars, excellent in all faculties. Julius Caesar mended the year, and writ his own Commentaries,
those days are gone; Et spes, et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantum: [2070] as he said of old, we may truly say now, he is our amulet, our [2071]sun, our sole comfort and refuge, our Ptolemy, our common Maecenas, Jacobus munificus, Jacobus pacificus, mysta Musarum, Rex Platonicus: Grande decus, columenque nostrum: a famous scholar himself, and the sole patron, pillar, and sustainer of learning: but his worth in this kind is so well known, that as Paterculus of Cato, Jam ipsum laudare nefas sit: and which [2072] Pliny to Trajan. Seria te carmina, honorque aeternus annalium, non haec brevis et pudenda praedicatio colet. But he is now gone, the sun of ours set, and yet no night follows, Sol occubuit, nox nulla sequuta est. We have such another in his room, [2073]aureus alter. Avulsus, simili frondescit virga metallo, and long may he reign and flourish amongst us.
Let me not be malicious, and lie against my genius, I may not deny, but that we have a sprinkling of our gentry, here and there one, excellently well learned, like those Fuggeri in Germany; Dubartus, Du Plessis, Sadael, in France; Picus Mirandula, Schottus, Barotius, in Italy; Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. But they are but few in respect of the multitude, the major part (and some again excepted, that are indifferent) are wholly bent for hawks and hounds, and carried away many times with intemperate lust, gaming and drinking. If they read a book at any time (si quod est interim otii a venatu, poculis, alea, scortis) 'tis an English Chronicle, St. Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c., a play-book, or some pamphlet of news, and that at such seasons only, when they cannot stir abroad, to drive away time, [2074]their sole discourse is dogs, hawks, horses, and what news? If some one have been a traveller in Italy, or as far as the emperor's court, wintered in Orleans, and can court his mistress in broken French, wear his clothes neatly in the newest fashion, sing some choice outlandish tunes, discourse of lords, ladies, towns, palaces, and cities, he is complete and to be admired: [2075]otherwise he and they are much at one; no difference between the master and the man, but worshipful titles; wink and choose betwixt him that sits down (clothes excepted) and him that holds the trencher behind him: yet these men must be our patrons, our governors too sometimes, statesmen, magistrates, noble, great, and wise by inheritance.
Mistake me not (I say again) Vos o Patritius sanguis, you that are worthy senators, gentlemen, I honour your names and persons, and with all submissiveness, prostrate myself to your censure and service. There are amongst you, I do ingenuously confess, many well-deserving patrons, and true patriots, of my knowledge, besides many hundreds which I never saw, no doubt, or heard of, pillars of our commonwealth, [2076]whose worth, bounty, learning, forwardness, true zeal in religion, and good esteem of all scholars, ought to be consecrated to all posterity; but of your rank, there are a debauched, corrupt, covetous, illiterate crew again, no better than stocks, merum pecus (testor Deum, non mihi videri dignos ingenui hominis appellatione) barbarous Thracians, et quis ille thrax qui hoc neget? a sordid, profane, pernicious company, irreligious, impudent and stupid, I know not what epithets to give them, enemies to learning, confounders of the church, and the ruin of a commonwealth; patrons they are by right of inheritance, and put in trust freely to dispose of such livings to the church's good; but (hard taskmasters they prove) they take away their straw, and compel them to make their number of brick: they commonly respect their own ends, commodity is the steer of all their actions, and him they present in conclusion, as a man of greatest gifts, that will give most; no penny, [2077]no paternoster, as the saying is. Nisi preces auro fulcias, amplius irritas: ut Cerberus offa, their attendants and officers must be bribed, feed, and made, as Cerberus is with a sop by him that goes to hell. It was an old saying, Omnia Romae venalia (all things are venal at Rome,) 'tis a rag of Popery, which will never be rooted out, there is no hope, no good to be done without money. A clerk may offer himself, approve his [2078]worth, learning, honesty, religion, zeal, they will commend him for it; but [2079]probitas laudatur et alget. If he be a man of extraordinary parts, they will flock afar off to hear him, as they did in Apuleius, to see Psyche: multi mortales confluebant ad videndum saeculi decus, speculum gloriosum, laudatur ab omnibus, spectatur ob omnibus, nec quisquam non rex, non regius, cupidus ejus nuptiarium petitor accedit; mirantur quidem divinam formam omnes, sed ut simulacrum fabre politum mirantur; many mortal men came to see fair Psyche the glory of her age, they did admire her, commend, desire her for her divine beauty, and gaze upon her; but as on a picture; none would marry her, quod indotato, fair Psyche had no money. [2080]So they do by learning;
Nos interim quod, attinet (nec enim immunes ab hac noxa sumus) idem realus manet, idem nobis, et si non multo gravius, crimen objici potest: nostra enim culpa sit, nostra incuria, nostra avaritia, quod tam frequentes, foedaeque fiant in Ecclesia nundinationes, (templum est vaenale, deusque) tot sordes invehantur, tanta grassetur impietas, tanta nequitia, tam insanus miseriarum Euripus, et turbarum aestuarium, nostro inquam, omnium (Academicorum imprimis) vitio sit. Quod tot Resp. malis afficiatur, a nobis seminarium; ultro malum hoc accersimus, et quavis contumelia, quavis interim miseria digni, qui pro virili non occurrimus. Quid enim fieri posse speramus, quum tot indies sine delectu pauperes alumni, terrae filii, et cujuscunque ordinis homunciones ad gradus certatim admittantur? qui si definitionem, distinctionemque unam aut alteram memoriter edidicerint, et pro more tot annos in dialectica posuerint, non refert quo profectu, quales demum sint, idiotae, nugatores, otiatores, aleatores, compotores, indigni, libidinis voluptatumque administri, “Sponsi Penelopes, nebulones, Alcinoique,” modo tot annos in academia insumpserint, et se pro togatis venditarint; lucri causa, et amicorum intercessu praesentantur; addo etiam et magnificis nonnunquam elogiis morum et scientiae; et jam valedicturi testimonialibus hisce litteris, amplissime conscriptis in eorum gratiam honorantur, abiis, qui fidei suae et existimationis jacturam proculdubio faciunt. “Doctores enim et professores” (quod ait [2088]ille) “id unum curant, ut ex professionibus frequentibus, et tumultuariis potius quam legitimis, commoda sua promoverant, et ex dispendio publico suum faciant incrementum.” Id solum in votis habent annui plerumque magistratus, ut ab incipientium numero [2089]pecunias emungant, nec multum interest qui sint, literatores an literati, modo pingues, nitidi, ad aspectum speciosi, et quod verbo dicam, pecuniosi sint. [2090]Philosophastri licentiantur in artibus, artem qui non habent, [2091]“Eosque sapientes esse jubent, qui nulla praediti sunt sapientia, et nihil ad gradum praeterquam velle adferunt.” Theologastri (solvant modo) satis superque docti, per omnes honorum gradus evehuntur et ascendunt. Atque hinc fit quod tam viles scurrae, tot passim idiotae, literarum crepusculo positi, larvae pastorum, circumforanei, vagi, barbi, fungi, crassi, asini, merum pecus in sacrosanctos theologiae aditus, illotis pedibus irrumpant, praeter inverecundam frontem adferentes nihil, vulgares quasdam quisquilias, et scholarium quaedam nugamenta, indigna quae vel recipiantur in triviis. Hoc illud indignum genus hominum et famelicum, indigum, vagum, ventris mancipium, ad stivam potius relegandum, ad haras aptius quam ad aras, quod divinas hasce literas turpiter prostituit; hi sunt qui pulpita complent, in aedes nobilium irrepunt, et quum reliquis vitae destituantur subsidiis, ob corporis et animi egestatem, aliarum in repub. partium minime capaces sint; ad sacram hanc anchoram confugiunt, sacerdotium quovis modo captantes, non ex sinceritate, quod [2092]Paulus ait, “sed cauponantes verbum Dei.” Ne quis interim viris bonis detractum quid putet, quos habet ecclesia Anglicana quamplurimos, eggregie doctos, illustres, intactae famae, homines, et plures forsan quam quaevis Europae provincia; ne quis a florentisimis Academiis, quae viros undiquaque doctissimos, omni virtutum genere suspiciendos, abunde producunt. Et multo plures utraque habitura, multo splendidior futura, si non hae sordes splendidum lumen ejus obfuscarent, obstaret corruptio, et cauponantes quaedam harpyae, proletariique bonum hoc nobis non inviderent. Nemo enim tam caeca mente, qui non hoc ipsum videat: nemo tam stolido ingenio, qui non intelligat; tam pertinaci judicio, qui non agnoscat, ab his idiotis circumforaneis, sacram pollui Theologiam, ac caelestes Musas quasi prophanum quiddam prostitui. “Viles animae et effrontes” (sic enim Lutherus [2093] alicubi vocat) “lucelli causa, ut muscae ad mulctra, ad nobilium et heroum mensas advolant, in spem sacerdotii,” cujuslibet honoris, officii, in quamvis aulam, urbem se ingerunt, ad quodvis se ministerium componunt.— “Ut nervis alienis mobile lignum—Ducitur”—Hor. Lib. II. Sat. 7. [2094] “offam sequentes, psittacorum more, in praedae spem quidvis effutiunt:” obsecundantes Parasiti [2095](Erasmus ait) “quidvis docent, dicunt, scribunt, suadent, et contra conscientiam probant, non ut salutarem reddant gregem, sed ut magnificam sibi parent fortunam.” [2096]“Opiniones quasvis et decreta contra verbum Dei astruunt, ne non offendant patronum, sed ut retineant favorem procerum, et populi plausum, sibique ipsis opes accumulent.” Eo etenim plerunque animo ad Theologiam accedunt, non ut rem divinam, sed ut suam facient; non ad Ecclesiae bonum promovendum, sed expilandum; quaerentes, quod Paulus ait, “non quae Jesu Christi, sed quae sua,” non domini thesaurum, sed ut sibi, suisque thesaurizent. Nec tantum iis, qui vilirrie fortunae, et abjectae, sortis sunt, hoc in usu est: sed et medios, summos elatos, ne dicam Episcopos, hoc malum invasit. [2097] “Dicite pontifices, in sacris quid facit aurum?” [2098]“summos saepe viros transversos agit avaritia,” et qui reliquis morum probitate praelucerent; hi facem praeferunt ad Simoniam, et in corruptionis hunc scopulum impingentes, non tondent pecus, sed deglubunt, et quocunque se conferunt, expilant, exhauriunt, abradunt, magnum famae suae, si non animae naufragium facientes; ut non ab infimis ad summos, sed a summis ad infimos malum promanasse videatur, et illud verum sit quod ille olim lusit, “emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest. Simoniacus enim” (quod cum Leone dicam) “gratiam non accepit, si non accipit, non habet, et si non habet, nec gratus potest esse;” tantum enim absunt istorum nonnulli, qui ad clavum sedent a promovendo reliquos, ut penitus impediant, probe sibi conscii, quibus artibus illic pervenerint. [2099]“Nam qui ob literas emersisse illos credat, desipit; qui vero ingenii, eruditionis, experientiae, probitatis, pietatis, et Musarum id esse pretium putat” (quod olim revera fuit, hodie promittitur) “planissime insanit.” Utcunque vel undecunque malum hoc originem ducat, non ultra quaeram, ex his primordiis caepit vitiorum colluvies, omnis calamitas, omne miseriarum agmen in Ecclesiam invehitur. Hinc tam frequens simonia, hinc ortae querelae, fraudes, imposturae, ab hoc fonte se derivarunt omnes nequitiae. Ne quid obiter dicam de ambitione, adulatione plusquam aulica, ne tristi domicaenio laborent, de luxu, de foedo nonnunquam vitae exemplo, quo nonnullos offendunt, de compotatione Sybaritica, &c. hinc ille squalor academicus, “tristes hac tempestate Camenae,” quum quivis homunculus artium ignarus, hic artibus assurgat, hunc in modum promoveatur et ditescat, ambitiosis appellationibus insignis, et multis dignitatibus augustus vulgi oculos perstringat, bene se habeat, et grandia gradiens majestatem quandam ac amplitudinem prae se ferens, miramque sollicitudinem, barba reverendus, toga nitidus, purpura coruscus, supellectilis splendore, et famulorum numero maxime conspicuus. “Quales statuae” (quod ait [2100]ille) “quae sacris in aedibus columnis imponuntur, velut oneri cedentes videntur, ac si insudarent, quum revera sensu sint carentes, et nihil saxeam adjuvent firmitatem:” atlantes videri volunt, quum sint statuae lapideae, umbratiles revera homunciones, fungi, forsan et bardi, nihil a saxo differentes. Quum interim docti viri, et vilae sanctioris ornamentis praediti, qui aestum diei sustinent, his iniqua sorte serviant, minimo forsan salario contenti, puris nominibus nuncupati, humiles, obscuri, multoque digniores licet, egentes, inhonorati vitam privam privatam agant, tenuique sepulti sacerdotio, vel in collegiis suis in aeternum incarcerati, inglorie delitescant. Sed nolo diutius hanc movere sentinam, hinc illae lachrymae, lugubris musarum habitus, [2101]hinc ipsa religio (quod cum Secellio dicam) “in ludibrium et contemptum adducitur,” abjectum sacerdotium (atque haec ubi fiunt, ausim dicere, et pulidum [2102] putidi dicterium de clero usurpare) “putidum vulgus,” inops, rude, sordidum, melancholicum, miserum, despicabile, contemnendum.[2103]
Of those remote, outward, ambient, necessary causes, I have sufficiently discoursed in the precedent member, the non-necessary follow; of which, saith [2104]Fuchsius, no art can be made, by reason of their uncertainty, casualty, and multitude; so called “not necessary” because according to [2105]Fernelius, “they may be avoided, and used without necessity.” Many of these accidental causes, which I shall entreat of here, might have well been reduced to the former, because they cannot be avoided, but fatally happen to us, though accidentally, and unawares, at some time or other; the rest are contingent and inevitable, and more properly inserted in this rank of causes. To reckon up all is a thing impossible; of some therefore most remarkable of these contingent causes which produce melancholy, I will briefly speak and in their order.
From a child's nativity, the first ill accident that can likely befall him in this kind is a bad nurse, by whose means alone he may be tainted with this [2106]malady from his cradle, Aulus Gellius l. 12. c. 1. brings in Phavorinus, that eloquent philosopher, proving this at large, [2107] “that there is the same virtue and property in the milk as in the seed, and not in men alone, but in all other creatures; he gives instance in a kid and lamb, if either of them suck of the other's milk, the lamb of the goat's, or the kid of the ewe's, the wool of the one will be hard, and the hair of the other soft.” Giraldus Cambrensis Itinerar. Cambriae, l. 1. c. 2. confirms this by a notable example which happened in his time. A sow-pig by chance sucked a brach, and when she was grown [2108]“would miraculously hunt all manner of deer, and that as well, or rather better, than any ordinary hound.” His conclusion is, [2109]“that men and beasts participate of her nature and conditions by whose milk they are fed.” Phavorinus urges it farther, and demonstrates it more evidently, that if a nurse be [2110]“misshapen, unchaste, dishonest, impudent, [2111]cruel, or the like, the child that sucks upon her breast will be so too;” all other affections of the mind and diseases are almost engrafted, as it were, and imprinted into the temperature of the infant, by the nurse's milk; as pox, leprosy, melancholy, &c. Cato for some such reason would make his servants' children suck upon his wife's breast, because by that means they would love him and his the better, and in all likelihood agree with them. A more evident example that the minds are altered by milk cannot be given, than that of [2112]Dion, which he relates of Caligula's cruelty; it could neither be imputed to father nor mother, but to his cruel nurse alone, that anointed her paps with blood still when he sucked, which made him such a murderer, and to express her cruelty to a hair: and that of Tiberius, who was a common drunkard, because his nurse was such a one. Et si delira fuerit ([2113]one observes) infantulum delirum faciet, if she be a fool or dolt, the child she nurseth will take after her, or otherwise be misaffected; which Franciscus Barbarus l. 2. c. ult. de re uxoria proves at full, and Ant. Guivarra, lib. 2. de Marco Aurelio: the child will surely participate. For bodily sickness there is no doubt to be made. Titus, Vespasian's son, was therefore sickly, because the nurse was so, Lampridius. And if we may believe physicians, many times children catch the pox from a bad nurse, Botaldus cap. 61. de lue vener. Besides evil attendance, negligence, and many gross inconveniences, which are incident to nurses, much danger may so come to the child. [2114]For these causes Aristotle Polit. lib. 7. c. 17. Phavorinus and Marcus Aurelius would not have a child put to nurse at all, but every mother to bring up her own, of what condition soever she be; for a sound and able mother to put out her child to nurse, is naturae intemperies, so [2115]Guatso calls it, 'tis fit therefore she should be nurse herself; the mother will be more careful, loving, and attendant, than any servile woman, or such hired creatures; this all the world acknowledgeth, convenientissimum est (as Rod. a Castro de nat. mulierum. lib. 4. c. 12. in many words confesseth) matrem ipsam lactare infantem, “It is most fit that the mother should suckle her own infant”—who denies that it should be so?—and which some women most curiously observe; amongst the rest, [2116]that queen of France, a Spaniard by birth, that was so precise and zealous in this behalf, that when in her absence a strange nurse had suckled her child, she was never quiet till she had made the infant vomit it up again. But she was too jealous. If it be so, as many times it is, they must be put forth, the mother be not fit or well able to be a nurse, I would then advise such mothers, as [2117]Plutarch doth in his book de liberis educandis and [2118]S. Hierom, li. 2. epist. 27. Laetae de institut. fil. Magninus part 2. Reg. sanit. cap. 7. and the said Rodericus, that they make choice of a sound woman, of a good complexion, honest, free from bodily diseases, if it be possible, all passions and perturbations of the mind, as sorrow, fear, grief, [2119]folly, melancholy. For such passions corrupt the milk, and alter the temperature of the child, which now being [2120] Udum et molle lutum, “a moist and soft clay,” is easily seasoned and perverted. And if such a nurse may be found out, that will be diligent and careful withal, let Phavorinus and M. Aurelius plead how they can against it, I had rather accept of her in some cases than the mother herself, and which Bonacialus the physician, Nic. Biesius the politician, lib. 4. de repub. cap. 8. approves, [2121]“Some nurses are much to be preferred to some mothers.” For why may not the mother be naught, a peevish drunken flirt, a waspish choleric slut, a crazed piece, a fool (as many mothers are), unsound as soon as the nurse? There is more choice of nurses than mothers; and therefore except the mother be most virtuous, staid, a woman of excellent good parts, and of a sound complexion, I would have all children in such cases committed to discreet strangers. And 'tis the only way; as by marriage they are engrafted to other families to alter the breed, or if anything be amiss in the mother, as Ludovicus Mercatus contends, Tom. 2. lib. de morb. haered. to prevent diseases and future maladies, to correct and qualify the child's ill-disposed temperature, which he had from his parents. This is an excellent remedy, if good choice be made of such a nurse.
Education, of these accidental causes of melancholy, may justly challenge the next place, for if a man escape a bad nurse, he may be undone by evil bringing up. [2122]Jason Pratensis puts this of education for a principal cause; bad parents, stepmothers, tutors, masters, teachers, too rigorous, too severe, too remiss or indulgent on the other side, are often fountains and furtherers of this disease. Parents and such as have the tuition and oversight of children, offend many times in that they are too stern, always threatening, chiding, brawling, whipping, or striking; by means of which their poor children are so disheartened and cowed, that they never after have any courage, a merry hour in their lives, or take pleasure in anything. There is a great moderation to be had in such things, as matters of so great moment to the making or marring of a child. Some fright their children with beggars, bugbears, and hobgoblins, if they cry, or be otherwise unruly: but they are much to blame in it, many times, saith Lavater, de spectris, part. 1, cap. 5. ex metu in morbos graves incidunt et noctu dormientes clamant, for fear they fall into many diseases, and cry out in their sleep, and are much the worse for it all their lives: these things ought not at all, or to be sparingly done, and upon just occasion. Tyrannical, impatient, hair-brain schoolmasters, aridi magistri, so [2123]Fabius terms them, Ajaces flagelliferi, are in this kind as bad as hangmen and executioners, they make many children endure a martyrdom all the while they are at school, with bad diet, if they board in their houses, too much severity and ill-usage, they quite pervert their temperature of body and mind: still chiding, railing, frowning, lashing, tasking, keeping, that they are fracti animis, moped many times, weary of their lives, [2124]nimia severitate deficiunt et desperant, and think no slavery in the world (as once I did myself) like to that of a grammar scholar. Praeceptorum ineptiis discruciantur ingenia puerorum, [2125] saith Erasmus, they tremble at his voice, looks, coming in. St. Austin, in the first book of his confess. et 4 ca. calls this schooling meliculosam necessitatem, and elsewhere a martyrdom, and confesseth of himself, how cruelly he was tortured in mind for learning Greek, nulla verba noveram, et saevis terroribus et poenis, ut nossem, instabatur mihi vehementer, I know nothing, and with cruel terrors and punishment I was daily compelled. [2126]Beza complains in like case of a rigorous schoolmaster in Paris, that made him by his continual thunder and threats once in a mind to drown himself, had he not met by the way with an uncle of his that vindicated him from that misery for the time, by taking him to his house. Trincavellius, lib. 1. consil. 16. had a patient nineteen years of age, extremely melancholy, ob nimium studium, Tarvitii et praeceptoris minas, by reason of overmuch study, and his [2127]tutor's threats. Many masters are hard-hearted, and bitter to their servants, and by that means do so deject, with terrible speeches and hard usage so crucify them, that they become desperate, and can never be recalled.
Others again, in that opposite extreme, do as great harm by their too much remissness, they give them no bringing up, no calling to busy themselves about, or to live in, teach them no trade, or set them in any good course; by means of which their servants, children, scholars, are carried away with that stream of drunkenness, idleness, gaming, and many such irregular courses, that in the end they rue it, curse their parents, and mischief themselves. Too much indulgence causeth the like, [2128]inepta patris lenitas et facilitas prava, when as Mitio-like, with too much liberty and too great allowance, they feed their children's humours, let them revel, wench, riot, swagger, and do what they will themselves, and then punish them with a noise of musicians;
Tully, in the fourth of his Tusculans, distinguishes these terrors which arise from the apprehension of some terrible object heard or seen, from other fears, and so doth Patritius lib. 5. Tit. 4. de regis institut. Of all fears they are most pernicious and violent, and so suddenly alter the whole temperature of the body, move the soul and spirits, strike such a deep impression, that the parties can never be recovered, causing more grievous and fiercer melancholy, as Felix Plater, c. 3. de mentis alienat. [2136]speaks out of his experience, than any inward cause whatsoever: “and imprints itself so forcibly in the spirits, brain, humours, that if all the mass of blood were let out of the body, it could hardly be extracted. This horrible kind of melancholy” (for so he terms it) “had been often brought before him, and troubles and affrights commonly men and women, young and old of all sorts.” [2137]Hercules de Saxonia calls this kind of melancholy (ab agitatione spirituum) by a peculiar name, it comes from the agitation, motion, contraction, dilatation of spirits, not from any distemperature of humours, and produceth strong effects. This terror is most usually caused, as [2138]Plutarch will have, “from some imminent danger, when a terrible object is at hand,” heard, seen, or conceived, [2139]“truly appearing, or in a [2140]dream:” and many times the more sudden the accident, it is the more violent.
It is an old saying, [2161]“A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword:” and many men are as much galled with a calumny, a scurrilous and bitter jest, a libel, a pasquil, satire, apologue, epigram, stage-play or the like, as with any misfortune whatsoever. Princes and potentates, that are otherwise happy, and have all at command, secure and free, quibus potentia sceleris impunitatem fecit, are grievously vexed with these pasquilling libels, and satires: they fear a railing [2162]Aretine, more than an enemy in the field, which made most princes of his time (as some relate) “allow him a liberal pension, that he should not tax them in his satires.” [2163]The Gods had their Momus, Homer his Zoilus, Achilles his Thersites, Philip his Demades: the Caesars themselves in Rome were commonly taunted. There was never wanting a Petronius, a Lucian in those times, nor will be a Rabelais, an Euphormio, a Boccalinus in ours. Adrian the sixth pope [2164]was so highly offended, and grievously vexed with pasquillers at Rome, he gave command that his statue should be demolished and burned, the ashes flung into the river Tiber, and had done it forthwith, had not Ludovicus Suessanus, a facete companion, dissuaded him to the contrary, by telling him, that pasquil's ashes would turn to frogs in the bottom of the river, and croak worse and louder than before,—genus irritabile vatum, and therefore [2165]Socrates in Plato adviseth all his friends, “that respect their credits, to stand in awe of poets, for they are terrible fellows, can praise and dispraise as they see cause.” Hinc quam sit calamus saevior ense patet. The prophet David complains, Psalm cxxiii. 4. “that his soul was full of the mocking of the wealthy, and of the despitefulness of the proud,” and Psalm lv. 4. “for the voice of the wicked, &c., and their hate: his heart trembled within him, and the terrors of death came upon him; fear and horrible fear,” &c., and Psal. lxix. 20. “Rebuke hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness.” Who hath not like cause to complain, and is not so troubled, that shall fall into the mouths of such men? for many are of so [2166]petulant a spleen; and have that figure Sarcasmus so often in their mouths, so bitter, so foolish, as [2167]Balthazar Castilio notes of them, that “they cannot speak, but they must bite;” they had rather lose a friend than a jest; and what company soever they come in, they will be scoffing, insulting over their inferiors, especially over such as any way depend upon them, humouring, misusing, or putting gulleries on some or other till they have made by their humouring or gulling [2168]ex stulto insanum, a mope or a noddy, and all to make themselves merry:
Such scurrilous jests, flouts, and sarcasms, therefore, ought not at all to be used; especially to our betters, to those that are in misery, or any way distressed: for to such, aerumnarum incrementa sunt, they multiply grief, and as [2178]he perceived, In multis pudor, in multis iracundia, &c., many are ashamed, many vexed, angered, and there is no greater cause or furtherer of melancholy. Martin Cromerus, in the Sixth book of his history, hath a pretty story to this purpose, of Vladislaus, the second king of Poland, and Peter Dunnius, earl of Shrine; they had been hunting late, and were enforced to lodge in a poor cottage. When they went to bed, Vladislaus told the earl in jest, that his wife lay softer with the abbot of Shrine; he not able to contain, replied, Et tua cum Dabesso, and yours with Dabessus, a gallant young gentleman in the court, whom Christina the queen loved. Tetigit id dictum Principis animum, these words of his so galled the prince, that he was long after tristis et cogitabundus, very sad and melancholy for many months; but they were the earl's utter undoing: for when Christina heard of it, she persecuted him to death. Sophia the empress, Justinian's wife, broke a bitter jest upon Narsetes the eunuch, a famous captain then disquieted for an overthrow which he lately had: that he was fitter for a distaff and to keep women company, than to wield a sword, or to be general of an army: but it cost her dear, for he so far distasted it, that he went forthwith to the adverse part, much troubled in his thoughts, caused the Lombards to rebel, and thence procured many miseries to the commonwealth. Tiberius the emperor withheld a legacy from the people of Rome, which his predecessor Augustus had lately given, and perceiving a fellow round a dead corse in the ear, would needs know wherefore he did so; the fellow replied, that he wished the departed soul to signify to Augustus, the commons of Rome were yet unpaid: for this bitter jest the emperor caused him forthwith to be slain, and carry the news himself. For this reason, all those that otherwise approve of jests in some cases, and facete companions, (as who doth not?) let them laugh and be merry, rumpantur et illa Codro, 'tis laudable and fit, those yet will by no means admit them in their companies, that are any way inclined to this malady: non jocandum cum iis qui miseri sunt, et aerumnosi, no jesting with a discontented person. 'Tis Castilio's caveat, [2179]Jo. Pontanus, and [2180]Galateus, and every good man's.
To this catalogue of causes, I may well annex loss of liberty, servitude, or imprisonment, which to some persons is as great a torture as any of the rest. Though they have all things convenient, sumptuous houses to their use, fair walks and gardens, delicious bowers, galleries, good fare and diet, and all things correspondent, yet they are not content, because they are confined, may not come and go at their pleasure, have and do what they will, but live [2187]aliena quadra, at another man's table and command. As it is [2188]in meats so it is in all other things, places, societies, sports; let them be never so pleasant, commodious, wholesome, so good; yet omnium rerum est satietas, there is a loathing satiety of all things. The children of Israel were tired with manna, it is irksome to them so to live, as to a bird in his cage, or a dog in his kennel, they are weary of it. They are happy, it is true, and have all things, to another man's judgment, that heart can wish, or that they themselves can desire, bona si sua norint: yet they loathe it, and are tired with the present: Est natura hominum novitatis avida; men's nature is still desirous of news, variety, delights; and our wandering affections are so irregular in this kind, that they must change, though it must be to the worst. Bachelors must be married, and married men would be bachelors; they do not love their own wives, though otherwise fair, wise, virtuous, and well qualified, because they are theirs; our present estate is still the worst, we cannot endure one course of life long, et quod modo voverat, odit, one calling long, esse in honore juvat, mox displicet; one place long, [2189]Romae Tibur amo, ventosus Tybure Romam, that which we earnestly sought, we now contemn. Hoc quosdam agit ad mortem, (saith [2190]Seneca) quod proposita saepe mutando in eadem revolvuntur, et non relinquunt novitati locum: Fastidio caepit esse vita, et ipsus mundus, et subit illud rapidissimarum deliciarum, Quousque eadem? this alone kills many a man, that they are tied to the same still, as a horse in a mill, a dog in a wheel, they run round, without alteration or news, their life groweth odious, the world loathsome, and that which crosseth their furious delights, what? still the same? Marcus Aurelius and Solomon, that had experience of all worldly delights and pleasure, confessed as much of themselves; what they most desired, was tedious at last, and that their lust could never be satisfied, all was vanity and affliction of mind.
Now if it be death itself, another hell, to be glutted with one kind of sport, dieted with one dish, tied to one place; though they have all things otherwise as they can desire, and are in heaven to another man's opinion, what misery and discontent shall they have, that live in slavery, or in prison itself? Quod tristius morte, in servitute vivendum, as Hermolaus told Alexander in [2191]Curtius, worse than death is bondage: [2192]hoc animo scito omnes fortes, ut mortem servituti anteponant, All brave men at arms (Tully holds) are so affected. [2193]Equidem ego is sum, qui servitutem extremum omnium malorum esse arbitror: I am he (saith Boterus) that account servitude the extremity of misery. And what calamity do they endure, that live with those hard taskmasters, in gold mines (like those 30,000 [2194]Indian slaves at Potosi, in Peru), tin-mines, lead-mines, stone-quarries, coal-pits, like so many mouldwarps under ground, condemned to the galleys, to perpetual drudgery, hunger, thirst, and stripes, without all hope of delivery? How are those women in Turkey affected, that most part of the year come not abroad; those Italian and Spanish dames, that are mewed up like hawks, and locked up by their jealous husbands? how tedious is it to them that live in stoves and caves half a year together? as in Iceland, Muscovy, or under the [2195]pole itself, where they have six months' perpetual night. Nay, what misery and discontent do they endure, that are in prison? They want all those six non-natural things at once, good air, good diet, exercise, company, sleep, rest, ease, &c., that are bound in chains all day long, suffer hunger, and (as [2196]Lucian describes it) “must abide that filthy stink, and rattling of chains, howlings, pitiful outcries, that prisoners usually make; these things are not only troublesome, but intolerable.” They lie nastily among toads and frogs in a dark dungeon, in their own dung, in pain of body, in pain of soul, as Joseph did, Psal. cv. 18, “they hurt his feet in the stocks, the iron entered his soul.” They live solitary, alone, sequestered from all company but heart-eating melancholy; and for want of meat, must eat that bread of affliction, prey upon themselves. Well might [2197]Arculanus put long imprisonment for a cause, especially to such as have lived jovially, in all sensuality and lust, upon a sudden are estranged and debarred from all manner of pleasures: as were Huniades, Edward, and Richard II., Valerian the Emperor, Bajazet the Turk. If it be irksome to miss our ordinary companions and repast for once a day, or an hour, what shall it be to lose them for ever? If it be so great a delight to live at liberty, and to enjoy that variety of objects the world affords; what misery and discontent must it needs bring to him, that shall now be cast headlong into that Spanish inquisition, to fall from heaven to hell, to be cubbed up upon a sudden, how shall he be perplexed, what shall become of him? [2198] Robert Duke of Normandy being imprisoned by his youngest brother Henry I., ab illo die inconsolabili dolore in carcere contabuit, saith Matthew Paris, from that day forward pined away with grief. [2199]Jugurtha that generous captain, “brought to Rome in triumph, and after imprisoned, through anguish of his soul, and melancholy, died.” [2200]Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, the second man from King Stephen (he that built that famous castle of [2201]Devizes in Wiltshire,) was so tortured in prison with hunger, and all those calamities accompanying such men, [2202]ut vivere noluerit, mori nescierit, he would not live, and could not die, between fear of death, and torments of life. Francis King of France was taken prisoner by Charles V., ad mortem fere melancholicus, saith Guicciardini, melancholy almost to death, and that in an instant. But this is as clear as the sun, and needs no further illustration.
Poverty and want are so violent oppugners, so unwelcome guests, so much abhorred of all men, that I may not omit to speak of them apart. Poverty, although (if considered aright, to a wise, understanding, truly regenerate, and contented man) it be donum Dei, a blessed estate, the way to heaven, as [2203]Chrysostom calls it, God's gift, the mother of modesty, and much to be preferred before riches (as shall be shown in his [2204]place), yet as it is esteemed in the world's censure, it is a most odious calling, vile and base, a severe torture, summum scelus, a most intolerable burden; we [2205]shun it all, cane pejus et angue (worse than a dog or a snake), we abhor the name of it, [2206]Paupertas fugitur, totoque arcessitur orbe, as being the fountain of all other miseries, cares, woes, labours, and grievances whatsoever. To avoid which, we will take any pains,—extremos currit mercator ad Indos, we will leave no haven, no coast, no creek of the world unsearched, though it be to the hazard of our lives, we will dive to the bottom of the sea, to the bowels of the earth, [2207]five, six, seven, eight, nine hundred fathom deep, through all five zones, and both extremes of heat and cold: we will turn parasites and slaves, prostitute ourselves, swear and lie, damn our bodies and souls, forsake God, abjure religion, steal, rob, murder, rather than endure this insufferable yoke of poverty, which doth so tyrannise, crucify, and generally depress us.
For look into the world, and you shall see men most part esteemed according to their means, and happy as they are rich: [2208]Ubique tanti quisque quantum habuit fuit. If he be likely to thrive, and in the way of preferment, who but he? In the vulgar opinion, if a man be wealthy, no matter how he gets it, of what parentage, how qualified, how virtuously endowed, or villainously inclined; let him be a bawd, a gripe, an usurer, a villain, a pagan, a barbarian, a wretch, [2209]Lucian's tyrant, “on whom you may look with less security than on the sun;” so that he be rich (and liberal withal) he shall be honoured, admired, adored, reverenced, and highly [2210]magnified. “The rich is had in reputation because of his goods,” Eccl. x. 31. He shall be befriended: “for riches gather many friends,” Prov. xix. 4,—multos numerabit amicos, all [2211]happiness ebbs and flows with his money. He shall be accounted a gracious lord, a Mecaenas, a benefactor, a wise, discreet, a proper, a valiant, a fortunate man, of a generous spirit, Pullus Jovis, et gallinae, filius albae: a hopeful, a good man, a virtuous, honest man. Quando ego ie Junonium puerum, et matris partum vere aureum, as [2212]Tully said of Octavianus, while he was adopted Caesar, and an heir [2213]apparent of so great a monarchy, he was a golden child. All [2214]honour, offices, applause, grand titles, and turgent epithets are put upon him, omnes omnia bona dicere; all men's eyes are upon him, God bless his good worship, his honour; [2215]every man speaks well of him, every man presents him, seeks and sues to him for his love, favour, and protection, to serve him, belong unto him, every man riseth to him, as to Themistocles in the Olympics, if he speak, as of Herod, Vox Dei, non hominis, the voice of God, not of man. All the graces, Veneres, pleasures, elegances attend him, [2216] golden fortune accompanies and lodgeth with him; and as to those Roman emperors, is placed in his chamber.
But on the contrary, if he be poor, Prov. xv. 15, “all his days are miserable,” he is under hatches, dejected, rejected and forsaken, poor in purse, poor in spirit; [2238]prout res nobis fluit, ita et animus se habet; [2239]money gives life and soul. Though he be honest, wise, learned, well-deserving, noble by birth, and of excellent good parts; yet in that he is poor, unlikely to rise, come to honour, office, or good means, he is contemned, neglected, frustra sapit, inter literas esurit, amicus molestus. [2240]“If he speak, what babbler is this?” Ecclus, his nobility without wealth, is [2241]projecta vilior alga, and he not esteemed: nos viles pulli nati infelicibus ovis, if once poor, we are metamorphosed in an instant, base slaves, villains, and vile drudges; [2242]for to be poor, is to be a knave, a fool, a wretch, a wicked, an odious fellow, a common eyesore, say poor and say all; they are born to labour, to misery, to carry burdens like juments, pistum stercus comedere with Ulysses' companions, and as Chremilus objected in Aristophanes, [2243] salem lingere, lick salt, to empty jakes, fay channels, [2244]carry out dirt and dunghills, sweep chimneys, rub horse-heels, &c. I say nothing of Turks, galley-slaves, which are bought [2245]and sold like juments, or those African Negroes, or poor [2246]Indian drudges, qui indies hinc inde deferendis oneribus occumbunt, nam quod apud nos boves et asini vehunt, trahunt, &c. [2247]Id omne misellis Indis, they are ugly to behold, and though erst spruce, now rusty and squalid, because poor, [2248]immundas fortunas aquum est squalorem sequi, it is ordinarily so. [2249]“Others eat to live, but they live to drudge,” [2250]servilis et misera gens nihil recusare audet, a servile generation, that dare refuse no task.—[2251]Heus tu Dromo, cape hoc flabellum, ventulum hinc facito dum lavamus, sirrah blow wind upon us while we wash, and bid your fellow get him up betimes in the morning, be it fair or foul, he shall run fifty miles afoot tomorrow, to carry me a letter to my mistress, Socia ad pistrinam, Socia shall tarry at home and grind malt all day long, Tristan thresh. Thus are they commanded, being indeed some of them as so many footstools for rich men to tread on, blocks for them to get on horseback, or as [2252]“walls for them to piss on.” They are commonly such people, rude, silly, superstitious idiots, nasty, unclean, lousy, poor, dejected, slavishly humble: and as [2253]Leo Afer observes of the commonalty of Africa, natura viliores sunt, nec apud suos duces majore in precio quam si canes essent: [2254]base by nature, and no more esteemed than dogs, miseram, laboriosam, calamitosam vitam agunt, et inopem, infelicem, rudiores asinis, ut e brutis plane natos dicas: no learning, no knowledge, no civility, scarce common, sense, nought but barbarism amongst them, belluino more vivunt, neque calceos gestant, neque vestes, like rogues and vagabonds, they go barefooted and barelegged, the soles of their feet being as hard as horse-hoofs, as [2255]Radzivilus observed at Damietta in Egypt, leading a laborious, miserable, wretched, unhappy life, [2256]“like beasts and juments, if not worse:” (for a [2257]Spaniard in Incatan, sold three Indian boys for a cheese, and a hundred Negro slaves for a horse) their discourse is scurrility, their summum bonum, a pot of ale. There is not any slavery which these villains will not undergo, inter illos plerique latrinas evacuant, alii culinariam curant, alii stabularios agunt, urinatores et id genus similia exercent, &c. like those people that dwell in the [2258]Alps, chimney-sweepers, jakes-farmers, dirt-daubers, vagrant rogues, they labour hard some, and yet cannot get clothes to put on, or bread to eat. For what can filthy poverty give else, but [2259]beggary, fulsome nastiness, squalor, contempt, drudgery, labour, ugliness, hunger and thirst; pediculorum, et pulicum numerum? as [2260] he well followed it in Aristophanes, fleas and lice, pro pallio vestem laceram, et pro pulvinari lapidem bene magnum ad caput, rags for his raiment, and a stone for his pillow, pro cathedra, ruptae caput urnae, he sits in a broken pitcher, or on a block for a chair, et malvae, ramos pro panibus comedit, he drinks water, and lives on wort leaves, pulse, like a hog, or scraps like a dog, ut nunc nobis vita afficitur, quis non putabit insaniam esse, infelicitatemque? as Chremilus concludes his speech, as we poor men live nowadays, who will not take our life to be [2261] infelicity, misery, and madness?
If they be of little better condition than those base villains, hunger-starved beggars, wandering rogues, those ordinary slaves, and day-labouring drudges; yet they are commonly so preyed upon by [2262] polling officers for breaking the laws, by their tyrannising landlords, so flayed and fleeced by perpetual [2263]exactions, that though they do drudge, fare hard, and starve their genius, they cannot live in [2264]some countries; but what they have is instantly taken from them, the very care they take to live, to be drudges, to maintain their poor families, their trouble and anxiety “takes away their sleep,” Sirac. xxxi. 1, it makes them weary of their lives: when they have taken all pains, done their utmost and honest endeavours, if they be cast behind by sickness, or overtaken with years, no man pities them, hard-hearted and merciless, uncharitable as they are, they leave them so distressed, to beg, steal, murmur, and [2265] rebel, or else starve. The feeling and fear of this misery compelled those old Romans, whom Menenius Agrippa pacified, to resist their governors: outlaws, and rebels in most places, to take up seditious arms, and in all ages hath caused uproars, murmurings, seditions, rebellions, thefts, murders, mutinies, jars and contentions in every commonwealth: grudging, repining, complaining, discontent in each private family, because they want means to live according to their callings, bring up their children, it breaks their hearts, they cannot do as they would. No greater misery than for a lord to have a knight's living, a gentleman a yeoman's, not to be able to live as his birth and place require. Poverty and want are generally corrosives to all kinds of men, especially to such as have been in good and flourishing estate, are suddenly distressed, [2266]nobly born, liberally brought up, and, by some disaster and casualty miserably dejected. For the rest, as they have base fortunes, so have they base minds correspondent, like beetles, e stercore orti, e stercore victus, in stercore delicium, as they were obscurely born and bred, so they delight in obscenity; they are not thoroughly touched with it. Angustas animas angusto in pectore versant. [2267]Yet, that which is no small cause of their torments, if once they come to be in distress, they are forsaken of their fellows, most part neglected, and left unto themselves; as poor [2268]Terence in Rome was by Scipio, Laelius, and Furius, his great and noble friends.
In this labyrinth of accidental causes, the farther I wander, the more intricate I find the passage, multae ambages, and new causes as so many by-paths offer themselves to be discussed: to search out all, were an Herculean work, and fitter for Theseus: I will follow mine intended thread; and point only at some few of the chiefest.
Death of Friends.] Amongst which, loss and death of friends may challenge a first place, multi tristantur, as [2313]Vives well observes, post delicias, convivia, dies festos, many are melancholy after a feast, holiday, merry meeting, or some pleasing sport, if they be solitary by chance, left alone to themselves, without employment, sport, or want their ordinary companions, some at the departure of friends only whom they shall shortly see again, weep and howl, and look after them as a cow lows after her calf, or a child takes on that goes to school after holidays. Ut me levarat tuus adventus, sic discessus afflixit, (which [2314]Tully writ to Atticus) thy coming was not so welcome to me, as thy departure was harsh. Montanus, consil. 132. makes mention of a country woman that parting with her friends and native place, became grievously melancholy for many years; and Trallianus of another, so caused for the absence of her husband: which is an ordinary passion amongst our good wives, if their husband tarry out a day longer than his appointed time, or break his hour, they take on presently with sighs and tears, he is either robbed, or dead, some mischance or other is surely befallen him, they cannot eat, drink, sleep, or be quiet in mind, till they see him again. If parting of friends, absence alone can work such violent effects, what shall death do, when they must eternally be separated, never in this world to meet again? This is so grievous a torment for the time, that it takes away their appetite, desire of life, extinguisheth all delights, it causeth deep sighs and groans, tears, exclamations,
There is another sorrow, which arises from the loss of temporal goods and fortunes, which equally afflicts, and may go hand in hand with the preceding; loss of time, loss of honour, office, of good name, of labour, frustrate hopes, will much torment; but in my judgment, there is no torture like unto it, or that sooner procureth this malady and mischief:
Next to sorrow still I may annex such accidents as procure fear; for besides those terrors which I have [2348]before touched, and many other fears (which are infinite) there is a superstitious fear, one of the three great causes of fear in Aristotle, commonly caused by prodigies and dismal accidents, which much trouble many of us, (Nescio quid animus mihi praesagit mali.) As if a hare cross the way at our going forth, or a mouse gnaw our clothes: if they bleed three drops at nose, the salt falls towards them, a black spot appear in their nails, &c., with many such, which Delrio Tom. 2. l. 3. sect. 4. Austin Niphus in his book de Auguriis. Polydore Virg. l. 3. de Prodigas. Sarisburiensis Polycrat. l. 1. c. 13. discuss at large. They are so much affected, that with the very strength of imagination, fear, and the devil's craft, [2349]“they pull those misfortunes they suspect, upon their own heads, and that which they fear, shall come upon them,” as Solomon fortelleth, Prov. x. 24. and Isaiah denounceth, lxvi. 4. which if [2350]“they could neglect and contemn, would not come to pass,” Eorum vires nostra resident opinione, ut morbi gravitas ?grotantium cogitatione, they are intended and remitted, as our opinion is fixed, more or less. N. N. dat poenas, saith [2351]Crato of such a one, utinam non attraheret: he is punished, and is the cause of it [2352] himself:
[2353]Dum fata fugimus fata stulti incurrimus, the thing that I feared, saith Job, is fallen upon me.
As much we may say of them that are troubled with their fortunes; or ill destinies foreseen: multos angit praecientia malorum: The foreknowledge of what shall come to pass, crucifies many men: foretold by astrologers, or wizards, iratum ob coelum, be it ill accident, or death itself: which often falls out by God's permission; quia daemonem timent (saith Chrysostom) Deus ideo permittit accidere. Severus, Adrian, Domitian, can testify as much, of whose fear and suspicion, Sueton, Herodian, and the rest of those writers, tell strange stories in this behalf. [2354]Montanus consil. 31. hath one example of a young man, exceeding melancholy upon this occasion. Such fears have still tormented mortal men in all ages, by reason of those lying oracles, and juggling priests. [2355]There was a fountain in Greece, near Ceres' temple in Achaia, where the event of such diseases was to be known; “A glass let down by a thread,” &c. Amongst those Cyanean rocks at the springs of Lycia, was the oracle of Thrixeus Apollo, “where all fortunes were foretold, sickness, health, or what they would besides:” so common people have been always deluded with future events. At this day, Metus futurorum maxime torquet Sinas, this foolish fear, mightily crucifies them in China: as [2356]Matthew Riccius the Jesuit informeth us, in his commentaries of those countries, of all nations they are most superstitious, and much tormented in this kind, attributing so much to their divinators, ut ipse metus fidem faciat, that fear itself and conceit, cause it to [2357]fall out: If he foretell sickness such a day, that very time they will be sick, vi metus afflicti in aegritudinem cadunt; and many times die as it is foretold. A true saying, Timor mortis, morte pejor, the fear of death is worse than death itself, and the memory of that sad hour, to some fortunate and rich men, “is as bitter as gall,” Eccl. xli. 1. Inquietam nobis vitam facit mortis metus, a worse plague cannot happen to a man, than to be so troubled in his mind; 'tis triste divortium, a heavy separation, to leave their goods, with so much labour got, pleasures of the world, which they have so deliciously enjoyed, friends and companions whom they so dearly loved, all at once. Axicchus the philosopher was bold and courageous all his life, and gave good precepts de contemnenda morte, and against the vanity of the world, to others; but being now ready to die himself, he was mightily dejected, hac luce privabor? his orbabor bonis?[2358]he lamented like a child, &c. And though Socrates himself was there to comfort him, ubi pristina virtutum jactatio O Axioche? “where is all your boasted virtue now, my friend?” yet he was very timorous and impatient of death, much troubled in his mind, Imbellis pavor et impatientia, &c. “O Clotho,” Megapetus the tyrant in Lucian exclaims, now ready to depart, “let me live a while longer. [2359]I will give thee a thousand talents of gold, and two boles besides, which I took from Cleocritus, worth a hundred talents apiece.” “Woe's me,” [2360] saith another, “what goodly manors shall I leave! what fertile fields! what a fine house! what pretty children! how many servants! who shall gather my grapes, my corn? Must I now die so well settled? Leave all, so richly and well provided? Woe's me, what shall I do?” [2361]Animula vagula, blandula, qua nunc abibis in loca?
To these tortures of fear and sorrow, may well be annexed curiosity, that irksome, that tyrannising care, nimia solicitudo, [2362]“superfluous industry about unprofitable things, and their qualities,” as Thomas defines it: an itching humour or a kind of longing to see that which is not to be seen, to do that which ought not to be done, to know that [2363]secret which should not be known, to eat of the forbidden fruit. We commonly molest and tire ourselves about things unfit and unnecessary, as Martha troubled herself to little purpose. Be it in religion, humanity, magic, philosophy, policy, any action or study, 'tis a needless trouble, a mere torment. For what else is school divinity, how many doth it puzzle? what fruitless questions about the Trinity, resurrection, election, predestination, reprobation, hell-fire, &c., how many shall be saved, damned? What else is all superstition, but an endless observation of idle ceremonies, traditions? What is most of our philosophy but a labyrinth of opinions, idle questions, propositions, metaphysical terms? Socrates, therefore, held all philosophers, cavillers, and mad men, circa subtilia Cavillatores pro insanis habuit, palam eos arguens, saith [2364]Eusebius, because they commonly sought after such things quae nec percipi a nobis neque comprehendi posset, or put case they did understand, yet they were altogether unprofitable. For what matter is it for us to know how high the Pleiades are, how far distant Perseus and Cassiopeia from us, how deep the sea, &c., we are neither wiser, as he follows it, nor modester, nor better, nor richer, nor stronger for the knowledge of it. Quod supra nos nihil ad, nos, I may say the same of those genethliacal studies, what is astrology but vain elections, predictions? all magic, but a troublesome error, a pernicious foppery? physic, but intricate rules and prescriptions? philology, but vain criticisms? logic, needless sophisms? metaphysics themselves, but intricate subtleties, and fruitless abstractions? alchemy, but a bundle of errors? to what end are such great tomes? why do we spend so many years in their studies? Much better to know nothing at all, as those barbarous Indians are wholly ignorant, than as some of us, to be so sore vexed about unprofitable toys: stultus labor est ineptiarum, to build a house without pins, make a rope of sand, to what end? cui bono? He studies on, but as the boy told St. Austin, when I have laved the sea dry, thou shalt understand the mystery of the Trinity. He makes observations, keeps times and seasons; and as [2365]Conradus the emperor would not touch his new bride, till an astrologer had told him a masculine hour, but with what success? He travels into Europe, Africa, Asia, searcheth every creek, sea, city, mountain, gulf, to what end? See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all. An alchemist spends his fortunes to find out the philosopher's stone forsooth, cure all diseases, make men long-lived, victorious, fortunate, invisible, and beggars himself, misled by those seducing impostors (which he shall never attain) to make gold; an antiquary consumes his treasure and time to scrape up a company of old coins, statues, rules, edicts, manuscripts, &c., he must know what was done of old in Athens, Rome, what lodging, diet, houses they had, and have all the present news at first, though never so remote, before all others, what projects, counsels, consultations, &c., quid Juno in aurem insusurret Jovi, what's now decreed in France, what in Italy: who was he, whence comes he, which way, whither goes he, &c. Aristotle must find out the motion of Euripus; Pliny must needs see Vesuvius, but how sped they? One loseth goods, another his life; Pyrrhus will conquer Africa first, and then Asia: he will be a sole monarch, a second immortal, a third rich; a fourth commands. [2366] Turbine magno spes solicitae in urbibus errant; we run, ride, take indefatigable pains, all up early, down late, striving to get that which we had better be without, (Ardelion's busybodies as we are) it were much fitter for us to be quiet, sit still, and take our ease. His sole study is for words, that they be—Lepidae lexeis compostae, ut tesserulae omnes, not a syllable misplaced, to set out a stramineous subject: as thine is about apparel, to follow the fashion, to be terse and polite, 'tis thy sole business: both with like profit. His only delight is building, he spends himself to get curious pictures, intricate models and plots, another is wholly ceremonious about titles, degrees, inscriptions: a third is over-solicitous about his diet, he must have such and such exquisite sauces, meat so dressed, so far-fetched, peregrini aeris volucres, so cooked, &c., something to provoke thirst, something anon to quench his thirst. Thus he redeems his appetite with extraordinary charge to his purse, is seldom pleased with any meal, whilst a trivial stomach useth all with delight and is never offended. Another must have roses in winter, alieni temporis flores, snow-water in summer, fruits before they can be or are usually ripe, artificial gardens and fishponds on the tops of houses, all things opposite to the vulgar sort, intricate and rare, or else they are nothing worth. So busy, nice, curious wits, make that insupportable in all vocations, trades, actions, employments, which to duller apprehensions is not offensive, earnestly seeking that which others so scornfully neglect. Thus through our foolish curiosity do we macerate ourselves, tire our souls, and run headlong, through our indiscretion, perverse will, and want of government, into many needless cares, and troubles, vain expenses, tedious journeys, painful hours; and when all is done, quorsum haec? cui bono? to what end?
Unfortunate marriage.] Amongst these passions and irksome accidents, unfortunate marriage may be ranked: a condition of life appointed by God himself in Paradise, an honourable and happy estate, and as great a felicity as can befall a man in this world, [2368]if the parties can agree as they ought, and live as [2369]Seneca lived with his Paulina; but if they be unequally matched, or at discord, a greater misery cannot be expected, to have a scold, a slut, a harlot, a fool, a fury or a fiend, there can be no such plague. Eccles. xxvi. 14, “He that hath her is as if he held a scorpion, &c.” xxvi. 25, “a wicked wife makes a sorry countenance, a heavy heart, and he had rather dwell with a lion than keep house with such a wife.” Her [2370]properties Jovianus Pontanus hath described at large, Ant. dial. Tom. 2, under the name of Euphorbia. Or if they be not equal in years, the like mischief happens. Cecilius in Agellius lib. 2. cap. 23, complains much of an old wife, dum ejus morti inhio, egomet mortuus vivo inter vivos, whilst I gape after her death, I live a dead man amongst the living, or if they dislike upon any occasion,
Unkind, unnatural friends, evil neighbours, bad servants, debts and debates, &c., 'twas Chilon's sentence, comes aeris alieni et litis est miseria, misery and usury do commonly together; suretyship is the bane of many families, Sponde, praesto noxa est: “he shall be sore vexed that is surety for a stranger,” Prov. xi. 15, “and he that hateth suretyship is sure.” Contention, brawling, lawsuits, falling out of neighbours and friends.—discordia demens (Virg. Aen. 6,) are equal to the first, grieve many a man, and vex his soul. Nihil sane miserabilius eorum mentibus, (as [2375]Boter holds) “nothing so miserable as such men, full of cares, griefs, anxieties, as if they were stabbed with a sharp sword, fear, suspicion, desperation, sorrow, are their ordinary companions.” Our Welshmen are noted by some of their [2376]own writers, to consume one another in this kind; but whosoever they are that use it, these are their common symptoms, especially if they be convict or overcome, [2377]cast in a suit. Arius put out of a bishopric by Eustathius, turned heretic, and lived after discontented all his life. [2378]Every repulse is of like nature; heu quanta de spe decidi! Disgrace, infamy, detraction, will almost effect as much, and that a long time after. Hipponax, a satirical poet, so vilified and lashed two painters in his iambics, ut ambo laqueo se suffocarent, [2379]Pliny saith, both hanged themselves. All oppositions, dangers, perplexities, discontents, [2380]to live in any suspense, are of the same rank: potes hoc sub casu ducere somnos? Who can be secure in such cases? Ill-bestowed benefits, ingratitude, unthankful friends, much disquiet and molest some. Unkind speeches trouble as many; uncivil carriage or dogged answers, weak women above the rest, if they proceed from their surly husbands, are as bitter as gall, and not to be digested. A glassman's wife in Basil became melancholy because her husband said he would marry again if she died. “No cut to unkindness,” as the saying is, a frown and hard speech, ill respect, a browbeating, or bad look, especially to courtiers, or such as attend upon great persons, is present death: Ingenium vultu statque caditque suo, they ebb and flow with their masters' favours. Some persons are at their wits' ends, if by chance they overshoot themselves, in their ordinary speeches, or actions, which may after turn to their disadvantage or disgrace, or have any secret disclosed. Ronseus epist. miscel. 2, reports of a gentlewoman 25 years old, that falling foul with one of her gossips, was upbraided with a secret infirmity (no matter what) in public, and so much grieved with it, that she did thereupon solitudines quaerere omnes ab se ablegare, ac tandem in gravissimam incidens melancholiam, contabescere, forsake all company, quite moped, and in a melancholy humour pine away. Others are as much tortured to see themselves rejected, contemned, scorned, disabled, defamed, detracted, undervalued, or [2381]“left behind their fellows.” Lucian brings in Aetamacles, a philosopher in his Lapith. convivio, much discontented that he was not invited amongst the rest, expostulating the matter, in a long epistle, with Aristenetus their host. Praetextatus, a robed gentleman in Plutarch, would not sit down at a feast, because he might not sit highest, but went his ways all in a chafe. We see the common quarrelings, that are ordinary with us, for taking of the wall, precedency, and the like, which though toys in themselves, and things of no moment, yet they cause many distempers, much heart-burning amongst us. Nothing pierceth deeper than a contempt or disgrace, [2382]especially if they be generous spirits, scarce anything affects them more than to be despised or vilified. Crato, consil. 16, l. 2, exemplifies it, and common experience confirms it. Of the same nature is oppression, Ecclus. 77, “surely oppression makes a man mad,” loss of liberty, which made Brutus venture his life, Cato kill himself, and [2383]Tully complain, Omnem hilaritatem in perpetuum amisi, mine heart's broken, I shall never look up, or be merry again, [2384]haec jactura intolerabilis, to some parties 'tis a most intolerable loss. Banishment a great misery, as Tyrteus describes it in an epigram of his,
Many men catch this malady by eating certain meats, herbs, roots, at unawares; as henbane, nightshade, cicuta, mandrakes, &c. [2392]A company of young men at Agrigentum in Sicily, came into a tavern; where after they had freely taken their liquor, whether it were the wine itself, or something mixed with it 'tis not yet known, [2393]but upon a sudden they began to be so troubled in their brains, and their phantasy so crazed, that they thought they were in a ship at sea, and now ready to be cast away by reason of a tempest. Wherefore to avoid shipwreck and present drowning, they flung all the goods in the house out at the windows into the street, or into the sea, as they supposed; thus they continued mad a pretty season, and being brought before the magistrate to give an account of this their fact, they told him (not yet recovered of their madness) that what was done they did for fear of death, and to avoid imminent danger: the spectators were all amazed at this their stupidity, and gazed on them still, whilst one of the ancientest of the company, in a grave tone, excused himself to the magistrate upon his knees, O viri Tritones, ego in imo jacui, I beseech your deities, &c. for I was in the bottom of the ship all the while: another besought them as so many sea gods to be good unto them, and if ever he and his fellows came to land again, [2394]he would build an altar to their service. The magistrate could not sufficiently laugh at this their madness, bid them sleep it out, and so went his ways. Many such accidents frequently happen, upon these unknown occasions. Some are so caused by philters, wandering in the sun, biting of a mad dog, a blow on the head, stinging with that kind of spider called tarantula, an ordinary thing if we may believe Skeuck. l. 6. de Venenis, in Calabria and Apulia in Italy, Cardan, subtil. l. 9. Scaliger exercitat. 185. Their symptoms are merrily described by Jovianus Pontanus, Ant. dial. how they dance altogether, and are cured by music. [2395]Cardan speaks of certain stones, if they be carried about one, which will cause melancholy and madness; he calls them unhappy, as an [2396]adamant, selenites, &c. “which dry up the body, increase cares, diminish sleep:” Ctesias in Persicis, makes mention of a well in those parts, of which if any man drink, [2397]“he is mad for 24 hours.” Some lose their wits by terrible objects (as elsewhere I have more [2398]copiously dilated) and life itself many times, as Hippolitus affrighted by Neptune's seahorses, Athemas by Juno's furies: but these relations are common in all writers.
As a purlieu hunter, I have hitherto beaten about the circuit of the forest of this microcosm, and followed only those outward adventitious causes. I will now break into the inner rooms, and rip up the antecedent immediate causes which are there to be found. For as the distraction of the mind, amongst other outward causes and perturbations, alters the temperature of the body, so the distraction and distemper of the body will cause a distemperature of the soul, and 'tis hard to decide which of these two do more harm to the other. Plato, Cyprian, and some others, as I have formerly said, lay the greatest fault upon the soul, excusing the body; others again accusing the body, excuse the soul, as a principal agent. Their reasons are, because [2401]“the manners do follow the temperature of the body,” as Galen proves in his book of that subject, Prosper Calenius de Atra bile, Jason Pratensis c. de Mania, Lemnius l. 4. c. 16. and many others. And that which Gualter hath commented, hom. 10. in epist. Johannis, is most true, concupiscence and originals in, inclinations, and bad humours, are [2402]radical in every one of us, causing these perturbations, affections, and several distempers, offering many times violence unto the soul. “Every man is tempted by his own concupiscence (James i. 14), the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, and rebelleth against the spirit,” as our [2403]apostle teacheth us: that methinks the soul hath the better plea against the body, which so forcibly inclines us, that we cannot resist, Nec nos obniti contra, nec tendere tantum sufficimus. How the body being material, worketh upon the immaterial soul, by mediation of humours and spirits, which participate of both, and ill-disposed organs, Cornelius Agrippa hath discoursed lib. 1. de occult. Philos. cap. 63, 64, 65. Levinus Lemnius lib. 1. de occult. nat. mir. cap. 12. et 16. et 21. institut. ad opt. vit. Perkins lib. 1. Cases of Cons. cap. 12. T. Bright c. 10, 11, 12. “in his treatise of melancholy,” for as, [2404] anger, fear, sorrow, obtrectation, emulation, &c. si mentis intimos recessus occuparint, saith [2405]Lemnius, corpori quoque infesta sunt, et illi teterrimos morbos inferunt, cause grievous diseases in the body, so bodily diseases affect the soul by consent. Now the chiefest causes proceed from the [2406]heart, humours, spirits: as they are purer, or impurer, so is the mind, and equally suffers, as a lute out of tune, if one string or one organ be distempered, all the rest miscarry, [2407]corpus onustum hesternis vitiis, animum quoque praegravat una. The body is domicilium animae, her house, abode, and stay; and as a torch gives a better light, a sweeter smell, according to the matter it is made of; so doth our soul perform all her actions, better or worse, as her organs are disposed; or as wine savours of the cask wherein it is kept; the soul receives a tincture from the body, through which it works. We see this in old men, children, Europeans; Asians, hot and cold climes; sanguine are merry, melancholy sad, phlegmatic dull, by reason of abundance of those humours, and they cannot resist such passions which are inflicted by them. For in this infirmity of human nature, as Melancthon declares, the understanding is so tied to, and captivated by his inferior senses, that without their help he cannot exercise his functions, and the will being weakened, hath but a small power to restrain those outward parts, but suffers herself to be overruled by them; that I must needs conclude with Lemnius, spiritus et humores maximum nocumentum obtinent, spirits and humours do most harm in [2408]troubling the soul. How should a man choose but be choleric and angry, that hath his body so clogged with abundance of gross humours? or melancholy, that is so inwardly disposed? That thence comes then this malady, madness, apoplexies, lethargies, &c. it may not be denied.
Now this body of ours is most part distempered by some precedent diseases, which molest his inward organs and instruments, and so per consequens cause melancholy, according to the consent of the most approved physicians. [2409]“This humour” (as Avicenna l. 3. Fen. 1. Tract. 4. c. 18. Arnoldus breviar. l. 1. c. 18. Jacchinus comment. in 9 Rhasis, c. 15. Montaltus, c. 10. Nicholas Piso c. de Melan. &c. suppose) “is begotten by the distemperature of some inward part, innate, or left after some inflammation, or else included in the blood after an [2410]ague, or some other malignant disease.” This opinion of theirs concurs with that of Galen, l. 3. c. 6. de locis affect. Guianerius gives an instance in one so caused by a quartan ague, and Montanus consil. 32. in a young man of twenty-eight years of age, so distempered after a quartan, which had molested him five years together; Hildesheim spicel. 2. de Mania, relates of a Dutch baron, grievously tormented with melancholy after a long [2411]ague: Galen, l. de atra bile, c. 4. puts the plague a cause. Botaldus in his book de lue vener. c. 2. the French pox for a cause, others, frenzy, epilepsy, apoplexy, because those diseases do often degenerate into this. Of suppression of haemorrhoids, haemorrhagia, or bleeding at the nose, menstruous retentions, (although they deserve a larger explication, as being the sole cause of a proper kind of melancholy, in more ancient maids, nuns and widows, handled apart by Rodericus a Castro, and Mercatus, as I have elsewhere signified,) or any other evacuation stopped, I have already spoken. Only this I will add, that this melancholy which shall be caused by such infirmities, deserves to be pitied of all men, and to be respected with a more tender compassion, according to Laurentius, as coming from a more inevitable cause.
There is almost no part of the body, which being distempered, doth not cause this malady, as the brain and his parts, heart, liver, spleen, stomach, matrix or womb, pylorus, mirach, mesentery, hypochondries, mesaraic veins; and in a word, saith [2412]Arculanus, “there is no part which causeth not melancholy, either because it is adust, or doth not expel the superfluity of the nutriment.” Savanarola Pract. major. rubric. 11. Tract. 6. cap. 1. is of the same opinion, that melancholy is engendered in each particular part, and [2413]Crato in consil. 17. lib. 2. Gordonius, who is instar omnium, lib. med. partic. 2. cap. 19. confirms as much, putting the [2414]“matter of melancholy, sometimes in the stomach, liver, heart, brain, spleen, mirach, hypochondries, when as the melancholy humour resides there, or the liver is not well cleansed from melancholy blood.”
The brain is a familiar and frequent cause, too hot, or too cold, [2415] “through adust blood so caused,” as Mercurialis will have it, “within or without the head,” the brain itself being distempered. Those are most apt to this disease, [2416]“that have a hot heart and moist brain,” which Montaltus cap. 11. de Melanch. approves out of Halyabbas, Rhasis, and Avicenna. Mercurialis consil. 11. assigns the coldness of the brain a cause, and Salustius Salvianus med. lect. l. 2. c. 1. [2417]will have it “arise from a cold and dry distemperature of the brain.” Piso, Benedictus Victorius Faventinus, will have it proceed from a [2418]“hot distemperature of the brain;” and [2419]Montaltus cap. 10. from the brain's heat, scorching the blood. The brain is still distempered by himself, or by consent: by himself or his proper affection, as Faventinus calls it, [2420]“or by vapours which arise from the other parts, and fume up into the head, altering the animal facilities.”
Hildesheim spicel. 2. de Mania, thinks it may be caused from a [2421] “distemperature of the heart; sometimes hot; sometimes cold.” A hot liver, and a cold stomach, are put for usual causes of melancholy: Mercurialis consil. 11. et consil. 6. consil. 86. assigns a hot liver and cold stomach for ordinary causes. [2422]Monavius, in an epistle of his to Crato in Scoltzius, is of opinion, that hypochondriacal melancholy may proceed from a cold liver; the question is there discussed. Most agree that a hot liver is in fault; [2423]“the liver is the shop of humours, and especially causeth melancholy by his hot and dry distemperature.” [2424]“The stomach and mesaraic veins do often concur, by reason of their obstructions, and thence their heat cannot be avoided, and many times the matter is so adust and inflamed in those parts, that it degenerates into hypochondriacal melancholy.” Guianerius c. 2. Tract. 15. holds the mesaraic veins to be a sufficient [2425]cause alone. The spleen concurs to this malady, by all their consents, and suppression of haemorrhoids, dum non expurget alter a causa lien, saith Montaltus, if it be [2426]“too cold and dry, and do not purge the other parts as it ought,” consil. 23. Montanus puts the [2427] “spleen stopped” for a great cause. [2428]Christophorus a Vega reports of his knowledge, that he hath known melancholy caused from putrefied blood in those seed-veins and womb; [2429]“Arculanus, from that menstruous blood turned into melancholy, and seed too long detained (as I have already declared) by putrefaction or adustion.”
The mesenterium, or midriff, diaphragma, is a cause which the [2430]Greeks called φρένας: because by his inflammation, the mind is much troubled with convulsions and dotage. All these, most part, offend by inflammation, corrupting humours and spirits, in this non-natural melancholy: for from these are engendered fuliginous and black spirits. And for that reason [2431]Montaltus cap. 10. de causis melan. will have “the efficient cause of melancholy to be hot and dry, not a cold and dry distemperature, as some hold, from the heat of the brain, roasting the blood, immoderate heat of the liver and bowels, and inflammation of the pylorus. And so much the rather, because that,” as Galen holds, “all spices inflame the blood, solitariness, waking, agues, study, meditation, all which heat: and therefore he concludes that this distemperature causing adventitious melancholy is not cold and dry, but hot and dry.” But of this I have sufficiently treated in the matter of melancholy, and hold that this may be true in non-natural melancholy, which produceth madness, but not in that natural, which is more cold, and being immoderate, produceth a gentle dotage. [2432]Which opinion Geraldus de Solo maintains in his comment upon Rhasis.
After a tedious discourse of the general causes of melancholy, I am now returned at last to treat in brief of the three particular species, and such causes as properly appertain unto them. Although these causes promiscuously concur to each and every particular kind, and commonly produce their effects in that part which is most ill-disposed, and least able to resist, and so cause all three species, yet many of them are proper to some one kind, and seldom found in the rest. As for example, head-melancholy is commonly caused by a cold or hot distemperature of the brain, according to Laurentius cap. 5 de melan. but as [2433]Hercules de Saxonia contends, from that agitation or distemperature of the animal spirits alone. Salust. Salvianus, before mentioned, lib. 2. cap. 3. de re med. will have it proceed from cold: but that I take of natural melancholy, such as are fools and dote: for as Galen writes lib. 4. de puls. 8. and Avicenna, [2434]“a cold and moist brain is an inseparable companion of folly.” But this adventitious melancholy which is here meant, is caused of a hot and dry distemperature, as [2435]Damascen the Arabian lib. 3. cap. 22. thinks, and most writers: Altomarus and Piso call it [2436]“an innate burning intemperateness, turning blood and choler into melancholy.” Both these opinions may stand good, as Bruel maintains, and Capivaccius, si cerebrum sit calidius, [2437]“if the brain be hot, the animal spirits will be hot, and thence comes madness; if cold, folly.” David Crusius Theat. morb. Hermet. lib. 2. cap. 6. de atra bile, grants melancholy to be a disease of an inflamed brain, but cold notwithstanding of itself: calida per accidens, frigida per se, hot by accident only; I am of Capivaccius' mind for my part. Now this humour, according to Salvianus, is sometimes in the substance of the brain, sometimes contained in the membranes and tunicles that cover the brain, sometimes in the passages of the ventricles of the brain, or veins of those ventricles. It follows many times [2438]“frenzy, long diseases, agues, long abode in hot places, or under the sun, a blow on the head,” as Rhasis informeth us: Piso adds solitariness, waking, inflammations of the head, proceeding most part [2439]from much use of spices, hot wines, hot meats: all which Montanus reckons up consil. 22. for a melancholy Jew; and Heurnius repeats cap. 12. de Mania: hot baths, garlic, onions, saith Guianerius, bad air, corrupt, much [2440]waking, &c., retention of seed or abundance, stopping of haemorrhagia, the midriff misaffected; and according to Trallianus l. 1. 16. immoderate cares, troubles, griefs, discontent, study, meditation, and, in a word, the abuse of all those six non-natural things. Hercules de Saxonia, cap. 16. lib. 1. will have it caused from a [2441]cautery, or boil dried up, or an issue. Amatus Lusitanus cent. 2. cura. 67. gives instance in a fellow that had a hole in his arm, [2442]“after that was healed, ran mad, and when the wound was open, he was cured again.” Trincavellius consil. 13. lib. 1. hath an example of a melancholy man so caused by overmuch continuance in the sun, frequent use of venery, and immoderate exercise: and in his cons. 49. lib. 3. from a [2443]headpiece overheated, which caused head-melancholy. Prosper Calenus brings in Cardinal Caesius for a pattern of such as are so melancholy by long study; but examples are infinite.
In repeating of these causes, I must crambem bis coctam apponere, say that again which I have formerly said, in applying them to their proper species. Hypochondriacal or flatuous melancholy, is that which the Arabians call mirachial, and is in my judgment the most grievous and frequent, though Bruel and Laurentius make it least dangerous, and not so hard to be known or cured. His causes are inward or outward. Inward from divers parts or organs, as midriff, spleen, stomach, liver, pylorus, womb, diaphragma, mesaraic veins, stopping of issues, &c. Montaltus cap. 15. out of Galen recites, [2444]“heat and obstruction of those mesaraic veins, as an immediate cause, by which means the passage of the chilus to the liver is detained, stopped or corrupted, and turned into rumbling and wind.” Montanus, consil. 233, hath an evident demonstration, Trincavelius another, lib. 1, cap. 1, and Plater a third, observat. lib. 1, for a doctor of the law visited with this infirmity, from the said obstruction and heat of these mesaraic veins, and bowels; quoniam inter ventriculum et jecur venae effervescunt, the veins are inflamed about the liver and stomach. Sometimes those other parts are together misaffected; and concur to the production of this malady: a hot liver and cold stomach, or cold belly: look for instances in Hollerius, Victor Trincavelius, consil. 35, l. 3, Hildesheim Spicel. 2, fol. 132, Solenander consil. 9, pro cive Lugdunensi, Montanus consil. 229, for the Earl of Montfort in Germany, 1549, and Frisimelica in the 233 consultation of the said Montanus. I. Caesar Claudinus gives instance of a cold stomach and over-hot liver, almost in every consultation, con. 89, for a certain count; and con. 106, for a Polonian baron, by reason of heat the blood is inflamed, and gross vapours sent to the heart and brain. Mercurialis subscribes to them, cons. 89, [2445]“the stomach being misaffected,” which he calls the king of the belly, because if he be distempered, all the rest suffer with him, as being deprived of their nutriment, or fed with bad nourishment, by means of which come crudities, obstructions, wind, rumbling, griping, &c. Hercules de Saxonia, besides heat, will have the weakness of the liver and his obstruction a cause, facultatem debilem jecinoris, which he calls the mineral of melancholy. Laurentius assigns this reason, because the liver over-hot draws the meat undigested out of the stomach, and burneth the humours. Montanus, cons. 244, proves that sometimes a cold liver may be a cause. Laurentius c. 12, Trincavelius lib. 12, consil., and Gualter Bruel, seems to lay the greatest fault upon the spleen, that doth not his duty in purging the liver as he ought, being too great, or too little, in drawing too much blood sometimes to it, and not expelling it, as P. Cnemiandrus in a [2446]consultation of his noted tumorem lienis, he names it, and the fountain of melancholy. Diocles supposed the ground of this kind of melancholy to proceed from the inflammation of the pylorus, which is the nether mouth of the ventricle. Others assign the mesenterium or midriff distempered by heat, the womb misaffected, stopping of haemorrhoids, with many such. All which Laurentius, cap. 12, reduceth to three, mesentery, liver, and spleen, from whence he denominates hepatic, splenetic, and mesaraic melancholy. Outward causes, are bad diet, care, griefs, discontents, and in a word all those six non-natural things, as Montanus found by his experience, consil. 244. Solenander consil. 9, for a citizen of Lyons, in France, gives his reader to understand, that he knew this mischief procured by a medicine of cantharides, which an unskilful physician ministered his patient to drink ad venerem excitandam. But most commonly fear, grief, and some sudden commotion, or perturbation of the mind, begin it, in such bodies especially as are ill-disposed. Melancthon, tract. 14, cap. 2, de anima, will have it as common to men, as the mother to women, upon some grievous trouble, dislike, passion, or discontent. For as Camerarius records in his life, Melancthon himself was much troubled with it, and therefore could speak out of experience. Montanus, consil. 22, pro delirante Judaeo, confirms it, [2447]grievous symptoms of the mind brought him to it. Randolotius relates of himself, that being one day very intent to write out a physician's notes, molested by an occasion, he fell into a hypochondriacal fit, to avoid which he drank the decoction of wormwood, and was freed. [2448]Melancthon “(being the disease is so troublesome and frequent) holds it a most necessary and profitable study, for every man to know the accidents of it, and a dangerous thing to be ignorant,” and would therefore have all men in some sort to understand the causes, symptoms, and cures of it.
As before, the cause of this kind of melancholy is inward or outward. Inward, [2449]“when the liver is apt to engender such a humour, or the spleen weak by nature, and not able to discharge his office.” A melancholy temperature, retention of haemorrhoids, monthly issues, bleeding at nose, long diseases, agues, and all those six non-natural things increase it. But especially [2450]bad diet, as Piso thinks, pulse, salt meat, shellfish, cheese, black wine, &c. Mercurialis out of Averroes and Avicenna condemns all herbs: Galen, lib. 3, de loc. affect. cap. 7, especially cabbage. So likewise fear, sorrow, discontents, &c., but of these before. And thus in brief you have had the general and particular causes of melancholy.
Now go and brag of thy present happiness, whosoever thou art, brag of thy temperature, of thy good parts, insult, triumph, and boast; thou seest in what a brittle state thou art, how soon thou mayst be dejected, how many several ways, by bad diet, bad air, a small loss, a little sorrow or discontent, an ague, &c.; how many sudden accidents may procure thy ruin, what a small tenure of happiness thou hast in this life, how weak and silly a creature thou art. “Humble thyself, therefore, under the mighty hand of God,” 1 Peter, v. 6, know thyself, acknowledge thy present misery, and make right use of it. Qui stat videat ne cadat. Thou dost now flourish, and hast bona animi, corporis, et fortunae, goods of body, mind, and fortune, nescis quid serus secum vesper ferat, thou knowest not what storms and tempests the late evening may bring with it. Be not secure then, “be sober and watch,” [2451]fortunam reverenter habe, if fortunate and rich; if sick and poor, moderate thyself. I have said.
Parrhasius, a painter of Athens, amongst those Olynthian captives Philip of Macedon brought home to sell, [2452]bought one very old man; and when he had him at Athens, put him to extreme torture and torment, the better by his example to express the pains and passions of his Prometheus, whom he was then about to paint. I need not be so barbarous, inhuman, curious, or cruel, for this purpose to torture any poor melancholy man, their symptoms are plain, obvious and familiar, there needs no such accurate observation or far-fetched object, they delineate themselves, they voluntarily betray themselves, they are too frequent in all places, I meet them still as I go, they cannot conceal it, their grievances are too well known, I need not seek far to describe them.
Symptoms therefore are either [2453]universal or particular, saith Gordonius, lib. med. cap. 19, part. 2, to persons, to species; “some signs are secret, some manifest, some in the body, some in the mind, and diversely vary, according to the inward or outward causes,” Capivaccius: or from stars, according to Jovianus Pontanus, de reb. caelest. lib. 10, cap. 13, and celestial influences, or from the humours diversely mixed, Ficinus, lib. 1, cap. 4, de sanit. tuenda: as they are hot, cold, natural, unnatural, intended, or remitted, so will Aetius have melancholica deliria multiformia, diversity of melancholy signs. Laurentius ascribes them to their several temperatures, delights, natures, inclinations, continuance of time, as they are simple or mixed with other diseases, as the causes are divers, so must the signs be, almost infinite, Altomarus cap. 7, art. med. And as wine produceth divers effects, or that herb Tortocolla in [2454]Laurentius, “which makes some laugh, some weep, some sleep, some dance, some sing, some howl, some drink, &c.” so doth this our melancholy humour work several signs in several parties.
But to confine them, these general symptoms may be reduced to those of the body or the mind. Those usual signs appearing in the bodies of such as are melancholy, be these cold and dry, or they are hot and dry, as the humour is more or less adust. From [2455]these first qualities arise many other second, as that of [2456]colour, black, swarthy, pale, ruddy, &c., some are impense rubri, as Montaltus cap. 16 observes out of Galen, lib. 3, de locis affectis, very red and high coloured. Hippocrates in his book [2457]de insania et melan. reckons up these signs, that they are [2458] “lean, withered, hollow-eyed, look old, wrinkled, harsh, much troubled with wind, and a griping in their bellies, or bellyache, belch often, dry bellies and hard, dejected looks, flaggy beards, singing of the ears, vertigo, light-headed, little or no sleep, and that interrupt, terrible and fearful dreams,” [2459]Anna soror, quae, me suspensam insomnia terrent? The same symptoms are repeated by Melanelius in his book of melancholy collected out of Galen, Ruffus, Aetius, by Rhasis, Gordonius, and all the juniors, [2460]“continual, sharp, and stinking belchings, as if their meat in their stomachs were putrefied, or that they had eaten fish, dry bellies, absurd and interrupt dreams, and many fantastical visions about their eyes, vertiginous, apt to tremble, and prone to venery.” [2461]Some add palpitation of the heart, cold sweat, as usual symptoms, and a leaping in many parts of the body, saltum in multis corporis partibus, a kind of itching, saith Laurentius, on the superficies of the skin, like a flea-biting sometimes. [2462]Montaltus cap. 21. puts fixed eyes and much twinkling of their eyes for a sign, and so doth Avicenna, oculos habentes palpitantes, trauli, vehementer rubicundi, &c., lib. 3. Fen. 1. Tract. 4. cap. 18. They stut most part, which he took out of Hippocrates' aphorisms. [2463]Rhasis makes “headache and a binding heaviness for a principal token, much leaping of wind about the skin, as well as stutting, or tripping in speech, &c., hollow eyes, gross veins, and broad lips.” To some too, if they be far gone, mimical gestures are too familiar, laughing, grinning, fleering, murmuring, talking to themselves, with strange mouths and faces, inarticulate voices, exclamations, &c. And although they be commonly lean, hirsute, uncheerful in countenance, withered, and not so pleasant to behold, by reason of those continual fears, griefs, and vexations, dull, heavy, lazy, restless, unapt to go about any business; yet their memories are most part good, they have happy wits, and excellent apprehensions. Their hot and dry brains make them they cannot sleep, Ingentes habent et crebras vigilias (Arteus) mighty and often watchings, sometimes waking for a month, a year together. [2464]Hercules de Saxonia faithfully averreth, that he hath heard his mother swear, she slept not for seven months together: Trincavelius, Tom. 2. cons. 16. speaks of one that waked 50 days, and Skenkius hath examples of two years, and all without offence. In natural actions their appetite is greater than their concoction, multa appetunt pauca digerunt as Rhasis hath it, they covet to eat, but cannot digest. And although they [2465]“do eat much, yet they are lean, ill-liking,” saith Areteus, “withered and hard, much troubled with costiveness,” crudities, oppilations, spitting, belching, &c. Their pulse is rare and slow, except it be of the [2466]Carotides, which is very strong; but that varies according to their intended passions or perturbations, as Struthius hath proved at large, Spigmaticae. artis l. 4. c. 13. To say truth, in such chronic diseases the pulse is not much to be respected, there being so much superstition in it, as [2467]Crato notes, and so many differences in Galen, that he dares say they may not be observed, or understood of any man.
Their urine is most part pale, and low coloured, urina pauca acris, biliosa (Areteus), not much in quantity; but this, in my judgment, is all out as uncertain as the other, varying so often according to several persons, habits, and other occasions not to be respected in chronic diseases. [2468]“Their melancholy excrements in some very much, in others little, as the spleen plays his part,” and thence proceeds wind, palpitation of the heart, short breath, plenty of humidity in the stomach, heaviness of heart and heartache, and intolerable stupidity and dullness of spirits. Their excrements or stool hard, black to some and little. If the heart, brain, liver, spleen, be misaffected, as usually they are, many inconveniences proceed from them, many diseases accompany, as incubus, [2469]apoplexy, epilepsy, vertigo, those frequent wakings and terrible dreams, [2470]intempestive laughing, weeping, sighing, sobbing, bashfulness, blushing, trembling, sweating, swooning, &c. [2471]All their senses are troubled, they think they see, hear, smell, and touch that which they do not, as shall be proved in the following discourse.
Fear.] Arculanus in 9. Rhasis ad Almansor. cap. 16. will have these symptoms to be infinite, as indeed they are, varying according to the parties, “for scarce is there one of a thousand that dotes alike,” [2472] Laurentius c. 16. Some few of greater note I will point at; and amongst the rest, fear and sorrow, which as they are frequent causes, so if they persevere long, according to Hippocrates [2473]and Galen's aphorisms, they are most assured signs, inseparable companions, and characters of melancholy; of present melancholy and habituated, saith Montaltus cap. 11. and common to them all, as the said Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and all Neoterics hold. But as hounds many times run away with a false cry, never perceiving themselves to be at a fault, so do they. For Diocles of old, (whom Galen confutes,) and amongst the juniors, [2474]Hercules de Saxonia, with Lod. Mercatus cap. 17. l. 1. de melan., takes just exceptions, at this aphorism of Hippocrates, 'tis not always true, or so generally to be understood, “fear and sorrow are no common symptoms to all melancholy; upon more serious consideration, I find some” (saith he) “that are not so at all. Some indeed are sad, and not fearful; some fearful and not sad; some neither fearful nor sad; some both.” Four kinds he excepts, fanatical persons, such as were Cassandra, Nanto, Nicostrata, Mopsus, Proteus, the sibyls, whom [2475]Aristotle confesseth to have been deeply melancholy. Baptista Porta seconds him, Physiog. lib. 1, cap. 8, they were atra bile perciti: demoniacal persons, and such as speak strange languages, are of this rank: some poets, such as laugh always, and think themselves kings, cardinals, &c., sanguine they are, pleasantly disposed most part, and so continue. [2476]Baptista Portia confines fear and sorrow to them that are cold; but lovers, Sibyls, enthusiasts, he wholly excludes. So that I think I may truly conclude, they are not always sad and fearful, but usually so: and that [2477]without a cause, timent de non timendis, (Gordonius,) quaeque momenti non sunt, “although not all alike” (saith Altomarus), [2478]“yet all likely fear,” [2479]“some with an extraordinary and a mighty fear,” Areteus. [2480]“Many fear death, and yet in a contrary humour, make away themselves,” Galen, lib. 3. de loc. affec. cap. 7. Some are afraid that heaven will fall on their heads: some they are damned, or shall be. [2481]“They are troubled with scruples of consciences, distrusting God's mercies, think they shall go certainly to hell, the devil will have them, and make great lamentation,” Jason Pratensis. Fear of devils, death, that they shall be so sick, of some such or such disease, ready to tremble at every object, they shall die themselves forthwith, or that some of their dear friends or near allies are certainly dead; imminent danger, loss, disgrace still torment others, &c.; that they are all glass, and therefore will suffer no man to come near them: that they are all cork, as light as feathers; others as heavy as lead; some are afraid their heads will fall off their shoulders, that they have frogs in their bellies, &c. [2482]Montanus consil. 23, speaks of one “that durst not walk alone from home, for fear he should swoon or die.” A second [2483]“fears every man he meets will rob him, quarrel with him, or kill him.” A third dares not venture to walk alone, for fear he should meet the devil, a thief, be sick; fears all old women as witches, and every black dog or cat he sees he suspecteth to be a devil, every person comes near him is maleficiated, every creature, all intend to hurt him, seek his ruin; another dares not go over a bridge, come near a pool, rock, steep hill, lie in a chamber where cross beams are, for fear he be tempted to hang, drown, or precipitate himself. If he be in a silent auditory, as at a sermon, he is afraid he shall speak aloud at unawares, something indecent, unfit to be said. If he be locked in a close room, he is afraid of being stifled for want of air, and still carries biscuit, aquavitae, or some strong waters about him, for fear of deliquiums, or being sick; or if he be in a throng, middle of a church, multitude, where he may not well get out, though he sit at ease, he is so misaffected. He will freely promise, undertake any business beforehand, but when it comes to be performed, he dare not adventure, but fears an infinite number of dangers, disasters, &c. Some are [2484] “afraid to be burned, or that the [2485]ground will sink under them, or [2486]swallow them quick, or that the king will call them in question for some fact they never did (Rhasis cont.) and that they shall surely be executed.” The terror of such a death troubles them, and they fear as much and are equally tormented in mind, [2487]“as they that have committed a murder, and are pensive without a cause, as if they were now presently to be put to death.” Plater, cap. 3. de mentis alienat. They are afraid of some loss, danger, that they shall surely lose their lives, goods, and all they have, but why they know not. Trincavelius, consil. 13. lib. 1. had a patient that would needs make away himself, for fear of being hanged, and could not be persuaded for three years together, but that he had killed a man. Plater, observat. lib. 1. hath two other examples of such as feared to be executed without a cause. If they come in a place where a robbery, theft, or any such offence hath been done, they presently fear they are suspected, and many times betray themselves without a cause. Lewis XI., the French king, suspected every man a traitor that came about him, durst trust no officer. Alii formidolosi omnium, alii quorundam (Fracatorius lib. 2. de Intellect.) [2488]“some fear all alike, some certain men, and cannot endure their companies, are sick in them, or if they be from home.” Some suspect [2489]treason still, others “are afraid of their [2490]dearest and nearest friends.” (Melanelius e Galeno, Ruffo, Aetio,) and dare not be alone in the dark for fear of hobgoblins and devils: he suspects everything he hears or sees to be a devil, or enchanted, and imagineth a thousand chimeras and visions, which to his thinking he certainly sees, bugbears, talks with black men, ghosts, goblins, &c., [2491]Omnes se terrent aurae, sonus excitat omnis. Another through bashfulness, suspicion, and timorousness will not be seen abroad, [2492]“loves darkness as life, and cannot endure the light,” or to sit in lightsome places, his hat still in his eyes, he will neither see nor be seen by his goodwill, Hippocrates, lib. de Insania et Melancholia. He dare not come in company for fear he should be misused, disgraced, overshoot himself in gesture or speeches, or be sick; he thinks every man observes him, aims at him, derides him, owes him malice. Most part [2493]“they are afraid they are bewitched, possessed, or poisoned by their enemies, and sometimes they suspect their nearest friends: he thinks something speaks or talks within him, and he belcheth of the poison.” Christophorus a Vega, lib. 2. cap. 1. had a patient so troubled, that by no persuasion or physic he could be reclaimed. Some are afraid that they shall have every fearful disease they see others have, hear of, or read, and dare not therefore hear or read of any such subject, no not of melancholy itself, lest by applying to themselves that which they hear or read, they should aggravate and increase it. If they see one possessed, bewitched, an epileptic paroxysm, a man shaking with the palsy, or giddy-headed, reeling or standing in a dangerous place, &c., for many days after it runs in their minds, they are afraid they shall be so too, they are in like danger, as Perkins c. 12. sc. 12. well observes in his Cases of Conscience and many times by violence of imagination they produce it. They cannot endure to see any terrible object, as a monster, a man executed, a carcase, hear the devil named, or any tragical relation seen, but they quake for fear, Hecatas somniare sibi videntur (Lucian) they dream of hobgoblins, and may not get it out of their minds a long time after: they apply (as I have said) all they hear, see, read, to themselves; as [2494]Felix Plater notes of some young physicians, that study to cure diseases, catch them themselves, will be sick, and appropriate all symptoms they find related of others, to their own persons. And therefore (quod iterum moneo, licet nauseam paret lectori, malo decem potius verba, decies repetita licet abundare, quam unum desiderari) I would advise him that is actually melancholy not to read this tract of Symptoms, lest he disquiet or make himself for a time worse, and more melancholy than he was before. Generally of them all take this, de inanibus semper conqueruntur et timent, saith Aretius; they complain of toys, and fear [2495]without a cause, and still think their melancholy to be most grievous, none so bad as they are, though it be nothing in respect, yet never any man sure was so troubled, or in this sort. As really tormented and perplexed, in as great an agony for toys and trifles (such things as they will after laugh at themselves) as if they were most material and essential matters indeed, worthy to be feared, and will not be satisfied. Pacify them for one, they are instantly troubled with some other fear; always afraid of something which they foolishly imagine or conceive to themselves, which never peradventure was, never can be, never likely will be; troubled in mind upon every small occasion, unquiet, still complaining, grieving, vexing, suspecting, grudging, discontent, and cannot be freed so long as melancholy continues. Or if their minds be more quiet for the present, and they free from foreign fears, outward accidents, yet their bodies are out of tune, they suspect some part or other to be amiss, now their head aches, heart, stomach, spleen, &c. is misaffected, they shall surely have this or that disease; still troubled in body, mind, or both, and through wind, corrupt fantasy, some accidental distemper, continually molested. Yet for all this, as [2496]Jacchinus notes, “in all other things they are wise, staid, discreet, and do nothing unbeseeming their dignity, person, or place, this foolish, ridiculous, and childish fear excepted;” which so much, so continually tortures and crucifies their souls, like a barking dog that always bawls, but seldom bites, this fear ever molesteth, and so long as melancholy lasteth, cannot be avoided.
Sorrow is that other character, and inseparable companion, as individual as Saint Cosmus and Damian, fidus Achates, as all writers witness, a common symptom, a continual, and still without any evident cause, [2497]moerent omnes, et si roges eos reddere causam, non possunt: grieving still, but why they cannot tell: Agelasti, moesti, cogitabundi, they look as if they had newly come forth of Trophonius' den. And though they laugh many times, and seem to be extraordinary merry (as they will by fits), yet extreme lumpish again in an instant, dull and heavy, semel et simul, merry and sad, but most part sad: [2498]Si qua placent, abeunt; inimica tenacius haerent: sorrow sticks by them still continually, gnawing as the vulture did [2499]Titius' bowels, and they cannot avoid it. No sooner are their eyes open, but after terrible and troublesome dreams their heavy hearts begin to sigh: they are still fretting, chafing, sighing, grieving, complaining, finding faults, repining, grudging, weeping, Heautontimorumenoi, vexing themselves, [2500]disquieted in mind, with restless, unquiet thoughts, discontent, either for their own, other men's or public affairs, such as concern them not; things past, present, or to come, the remembrance of some disgrace, loss, injury, abuses, &c. troubles them now being idle afresh, as if it were new done; they are afflicted otherwise for some danger, loss, want, shame, misery, that will certainly come, as they suspect and mistrust. Lugubris Ate frowns upon them, insomuch that Areteus well calls it angorem animi, a vexation of the mind, a perpetual agony. They can hardly be pleased, or eased, though in other men's opinion most happy, go, tarry, run, ride, [2501]—post equitem sedet atra cura: they cannot avoid this feral plague, let them come in what company they will, [2502]haeret leteri lethalis arundo, as to a deer that is struck, whether he run, go, rest with the herd, or alone, this grief remains: irresolution, inconstancy, vanity of mind, their fear, torture, care, jealousy, suspicion, &c., continues, and they cannot be relieved. So [2503]he complained in the poet,
Taedium vitae.] Hence it proceeds many times, that they are weary of their lives, and feral thoughts to offer violence to their own persons come into their minds, taedium vitae is a common symptom, tarda fluunt, ingrataque tempora, they are soon tired with all things; they will now tarry, now be gone; now in bed they will rise, now up, then go to bed, now pleased, then again displeased; now they like, by and by dislike all, weary of all, sequitur nunc vivendi, nunc moriendi cupido, saith Aurelianus, lib. 1. cap. 6, but most part [2504]vitam damnant, discontent, disquieted, perplexed upon every light, or no occasion, object: often tempted, I say, to make away themselves: [2505]Vivere nolunt, mori nesciunt: they cannot die, they will not live: they complain, weep, lament, and think they lead a most miserable life, never was any man so bad, or so before, every poor man they see is most fortunate in respect of them, every beggar that comes to the door is happier than they are, they could be contented to change lives with them, especially if they be alone, idle, and parted from their ordinary company, molested, displeased, or provoked: grief, fear, agony, discontent, wearisomeness, laziness, suspicion, or some such passion forcibly seizeth on them. Yet by and by when they come in company again, which they like, or be pleased, suam sententiam rursus damnant, et vitae solatia delectantur, as Octavius Horatianus observes, lib. 2. cap. 5, they condemn their former mislike, and are well pleased to live. And so they continue, till with some fresh discontent they be molested again, and then they are weary of their lives, weary of all, they will die, and show rather a necessity to live, than a desire. Claudius the emperor, as [2506] Sueton describes him, had a spice of this disease, for when he was tormented with the pain of his stomach, he had a conceit to make away himself. Julius Caesar Claudinus, consil. 84. had a Polonian to his patient, so affected, that through [2507]fear and sorrow, with which he was still disquieted, hated his own life, wished for death every moment, and to be freed of his misery. Mercurialis another, and another that was often minded to despatch himself, and so continued for many years.
Suspicion, Jealousy.] Suspicion, and jealousy, are general symptoms: they are commonly distrustful, apt to mistake, and amplify, facile irascibiles, [2508]testy, pettish, peevish, and ready to snarl upon every [2509]small occasion, cum amicissimis, and without a cause, datum vel non datum, it will be scandalum acceptum. If they speak in jest, he takes it in good earnest. If they be not saluted, invited, consulted with, called to counsel, &c., or that any respect, small compliment, or ceremony be omitted, they think themselves neglected, and contemned; for a time that tortures them. If two talk together, discourse, whisper, jest, or tell a tale in general, he thinks presently they mean him, applies all to himself, de se putat omnia dici. Or if they talk with him, he is ready to misconstrue every word they speak, and interpret it to the worst; he cannot endure any man to look steadily on him, speak to him almost, laugh, jest, or be familiar, or hem, or point, cough, or spit, or make a noise sometimes, &c. [2510]He thinks they laugh or point at him, or do it in disgrace of him, circumvent him, contemn him; every man looks at him, he is pale, red, sweats for fear and anger, lest somebody should observe him. He works upon it, and long after this false conceit of an abuse troubles him. Montanus consil. 22. gives instance in a melancholy Jew, that was Iracundior Adria, so waspish and suspicious, tam facile iratus, that no man could tell how to carry himself in his company.
Inconstancy.] Inconstant they are in all their actions, vertiginous, restless, unapt to resolve of any business, they will and will not, persuaded to and fro upon every small occasion, or word spoken: and yet if once they be resolved, obstinate, hard to be reconciled. If they abhor, dislike, or distaste, once settled, though to the better by odds, by no counsel, or persuasion, to be removed. Yet in most things wavering, irresolute, unable to deliberate, through fear, faciunt, et mox facti poenitent (Areteus) avari, et paulo post prodigi. Now prodigal, and then covetous, they do, and by-and-by repent them of that which they have done, so that both ways they are troubled, whether they do or do not, want or have, hit or miss, disquieted of all hands, soon weary, and still seeking change, restless, I say, fickle, fugitive, they may not abide to tarry in one place long.
Passionate.] Extreme passionate, Quicquid volunt valde volunt; and what they desire, they do most furiously seek; anxious ever, and very solicitous, distrustful, and timorous, envious, malicious, profuse one while, sparing another, but most part covetous, muttering, repining, discontent, and still complaining, grudging, peevish, injuriarum tenaces, prone to revenge, soon troubled, and most violent in all their imaginations, not affable in speech, or apt to vulgar compliment, but surly, dull, sad, austere; cogitabundi still, very intent, and as [2513] Albertus Durer paints melancholy, like a sad woman leaning on her arm with fixed looks, neglected habit, &c., held therefore by some proud, soft, sottish, or half-mad, as the Abderites esteemed of Democritus: and yet of a deep reach, excellent apprehension, judicious, wise, and witty: for I am of that [2514]nobleman's mind, “Melancholy advanceth men's conceits, more than any humour whatsoever,” improves their meditations more than any strong drink or sack. They are of profound judgment in some things, although in others non recte judicant inquieti, saith Fracastorius, lib. 2. de Intell. And as Arculanus, c. 16. in 9. Rhasis, terms it, Judicium plerumque perversum, corrupti, cum judicant honesta inhonesta, et amicitiam habent pro inimicitia: they count honesty dishonesty, friends as enemies, they will abuse their best friends, and dare not offend their enemies. Cowards most part et ad inferendam injuriam timidissimi, saith Cardan, lib. 8. cap. 4. de rerum varietate: loath to offend, and if they chance to overshoot themselves in word or deed: or any small business or circumstance be omitted, forgotten, they are miserably tormented, and frame a thousand dangers and inconveniences to themselves, ex musca elephantem, if once they conceit it: overjoyed with every good rumour, tale, or prosperous event, transported beyond themselves: with every small cross again, bad news, misconceived injury, loss, danger, afflicted beyond measure, in great agony, perplexed, dejected, astonished, impatient, utterly undone: fearful, suspicious of all. Yet again, many of them desperate harebrains, rash, careless, fit to be assassinates, as being void of all fear and sorrow, according to [2515]Hercules de Saxonia, “Most audacious, and such as dare walk alone in the night, through deserts and dangerous places, fearing none.”
Amorous.] “They are prone to love,” and [2516]easy to be taken; Propensi ad amorem et excandescentiam (Montaltus cap. 21.) quickly enamoured, and dote upon all, love one dearly, till they see another, and then dote on her, Et hanc, et hanc, et illam, et omnes, the present moves most, and the last commonly they love best. Yet some again Anterotes, cannot endure the sight of a woman, abhor the sex, as that same melancholy [2517]duke of Muscovy, that was instantly sick, if he came but in sight of them; and that [2518]Anchorite, that fell into a cold palsy, when a woman was brought before him.
Humorous.] Humorous they are beyond all measure, sometimes profusely laughing, extraordinarily merry, and then again weeping without a cause, (which is familiar with many gentlewomen,) groaning, sighing, pensive, sad, almost distracted, multa absurda fingunt, et a ratione aliena (saith [2519]Frambesarius), they feign many absurdities, vain, void of reason: one supposeth himself to be a dog, cock, bear, horse, glass, butter, &c. He is a giant, a dwarf, as strong as an hundred men, a lord, duke, prince, &c. And if he be told he hath a stinking breath, a great nose, that he is sick, or inclined to such or such a disease, he believes it eftsoons, and peradventure by force of imagination will work it out. Many of them are immovable, and fixed in their conceits, others vary upon every object, heard or seen. If they see a stage-play, they run upon that a week after; if they hear music, or see dancing, they have nought but bagpipes in their brain: if they see a combat, they are all for arms. [2520]If abused, an abuse troubles them long after; if crossed, that cross, &c. Restless in their thoughts and actions, continually meditating, Velut aegri somnia, vanae finguntur species; more like dreams, than men awake, they fain a company of antic, fantastical conceits, they have most frivolous thoughts, impossible to be effected; and sometimes think verily they hear and see present before their eyes such phantasms or goblins, they fear, suspect, or conceive, they still talk with, and follow them. In fine, cogitationes somniantibus similes, id vigilant, quod alii somniant cogitabundi, still, saith Avicenna, they wake, as others dream, and such for the most part are their imaginations and conceits, [2521]absurd, vain, foolish toys, yet they are [2522]most curious and solicitous, continual, et supra modum, Rhasis cont. lib. 1. cap. 9. praemeditantur de aliqua re. As serious in a toy, as if it were a most necessary business, of great moment, importance, and still, still, still thinking of it: saeviunt in se, macerating themselves. Though they do talk with you, and seem to be otherwise employed, and to your thinking very intent and busy, still that toy runs in their mind, that fear, that suspicion, that abuse, that jealousy, that agony, that vexation, that cross, that castle in the air, that crotchet, that whimsy, that fiction, that pleasant waking dream, whatsoever it is. Nec interrogant (saith [2523]Fracastorius) nec interrogatis recte respondent. They do not much heed what you say, their mind is on another matter; ask what you will, they do not attend, or much intend that business they are about, but forget themselves what they are saying, doing, or should otherwise say or do, whither they are going, distracted with their own melancholy thoughts. One laughs upon a sudden, another smiles to himself, a third frowns, calls, his lips go still, he acts with his hand as he walks, &c. 'Tis proper to all melancholy men, saith [2524]Mercurialis, con. 11. “What conceit they have once entertained, to be most intent, violent, and continually about it.” Invitas occurrit, do what they may they cannot be rid of it, against their wills they must think of it a thousand times over, Perpetuo molestantur nec oblivisci possunt, they are continually troubled with it, in company, out of company; at meat, at exercise, at all times and places, [2525]non desinunt ea, quae, minime volunt, cogitare, if it be offensive especially, they cannot forget it, they may not rest or sleep for it, but still tormenting themselves, Sysiphi saxum volvunt sibi ipsis, as [2526]Brunner observes, Perpetua calamitas et miserabile flagellum.
Bashfulness.] [2527]Crato, [2528]Laurentius, and Fernelius, put bashfulness for an ordinary symptom, sabrusticus pudor, or vitiosus pudor, is a thing which much haunts and torments them. If they have been misused, derided, disgraced, chidden, &c., or by any perturbation of mind, misaffected, it so far troubles them, that they become quite moped many times, and so disheartened, dejected, they dare not come abroad, into strange companies especially, or manage their ordinary affairs, so childish, timorous, and bashful, they can look no man in the face; some are more disquieted in this kind, some less, longer some, others shorter, by fits, &c., though some on the other side (according to [2529]Fracastorius) be inverecundi et pertinaces, impudent and peevish. But most part they are very shamefaced, and that makes them with Pet. Blesensis, Christopher Urswick, and many such, to refuse honours, offices, and preferments, which sometimes fall into their mouths, they cannot speak, or put forth themselves as others can, timor hos, pudor impedit illos, timorousness and bashfulness hinder their proceedings, they are contented with their present estate, unwilling to undertake any office, and therefore never likely to rise. For that cause they seldom visit their friends, except some familiars: pauciloqui, of few words, and oftentimes wholly silent. [2530] Frambeserius, a Frenchman, had two such patients, omnino taciturnos, their friends could not get them to speak: Rodericus a Fonseca consult. tom. 2. 85. consil. gives instance in a young man, of twenty-seven years of age, that was frequently silent, bashful, moped, solitary, that would not eat his meat, or sleep, and yet again by fits apt to be angry, &c.
Solitariness.] Most part they are, as Plater notes, desides, taciturni, aegre impulsi, nec nisi coacti procedunt, &c. they will scarce be compelled to do that which concerns them, though it be for their good, so diffident, so dull, of small or no compliment, unsociable, hard to be acquainted with, especially of strangers; they had rather write their minds than speak, and above all things love solitariness. Ob voluptatem, an ob timorem soli sunt? Are they so solitary for pleasure (one asks,) or pain? for both; yet I rather think for fear and sorrow, &c.
Some men have peculiar symptoms, according to their temperament and crisis, which they had from the stars and those celestial influences, variety of wits and dispositions, as Anthony Zara contends, Anat. ingen. sect. 1. memb. 11, 12, 13, 14. plurimum irritant influentiae, caelestes, unde cientur animi aegritudines et morbi corporum. [2538]One saith, diverse diseases of the body and mind proceed from their influences, [2539]as I have already proved out of Ptolemy, Pontanus, Lemnius, Cardan, and others as they are principal significators of manners, diseases, mutually irradiated, or lords of the geniture, &c. Ptolomeus in his centiloquy, Hermes, or whosoever else the author of that tract, attributes all these symptoms, which are in melancholy men, to celestial influences: which opinion Mercurialis de affect, lib. cap. 10. rejects; but, as I say, [2540]Jovianus Pontanus and others stiffly defend. That some are solitary, dull, heavy, churlish; some again blithe, buxom, light, and merry, they ascribe wholly to the stars. As if Saturn be predominant in his nativity, and cause melancholy in his temperature, then [2541]he shall be very austere, sullen, churlish, black of colour, profound in his cogitations, full of cares, miseries, and discontents, sad and fearful, always silent, solitary, still delighting in husbandry, in woods, orchards, gardens, rivers, ponds, pools, dark walks and close: Cogitationes sunt velle aedificare, velle arbores plantare, agros colere, &c. To catch birds, fishes, &c. still contriving and musing of such matters. If Jupiter domineers, they are more ambitious, still meditating of kingdoms, magistracies, offices, honours, or that they are princes, potentates, and how they would carry themselves, &c. If Mars, they are all for wars, brave combats, monomachies, testy, choleric, harebrain, rash, furious, and violent in their actions. They will feign themselves victors, commanders, are passionate and satirical in their speeches, great braggers, ruddy of colour. And though they be poor in show, vile and base, yet like Telephus and Peleus in the [2542]poet, Ampullas jactant et sesquipedalia verba, “forget their swelling and gigantic words,” their mouths are full of myriads, and tetrarchs at their tongues' end. If the sun, they will be lords, emperors, in conceit at least, and monarchs, give offices, honours, &c. If Venus, they are still courting of their mistresses, and most apt to love, amorously given, they seem to hear music, plays, see fine pictures, dancers, merriments, and the like. Ever in love, and dote on all they see. Mercurialists are solitary, much in contemplation, subtle, poets, philosophers, and musing most part about such matters. If the moon have a hand, they are all for peregrinations, sea voyages, much affected with travels, to discourse, read, meditate of such things; wandering in their thoughts, diverse, much delighting in waters, to fish, fowl, &c.
But the most immediate symptoms proceed from the temperature itself, and the organical parts, as head, liver, spleen, mesaraic veins, heart, womb, stomach, &c., and most especially from distemperature of spirits (which, as [2543]Hercules de Saxonia contends, are wholly immaterial), or from the four humours in those seats, whether they be hot or cold, natural, unnatural, innate or adventitious, intended or remitted, simple or mixed, their diverse mixtures, and several adustions, combinations, which may be as diversely varied, as those [2544]four first qualities in [2545] Clavius, and produce as many several symptoms and monstrous fictions as wine doth effect, which as Andreas Bachius observes, lib. 3. de vino, cap. 20. are infinite. Of greater note be these.
If it be natural melancholy, as Lod. Mercatus, lib. 1. cap. 17. de melan. T. Bright. c. 16. hath largely described, either of the spleen, or of the veins, faulty by excess of quantity, or thickness of substance, it is a cold and dry humour, as Montanus affirms, consil. 26 the parties are sad, timorous and fearful. Prosper Calenus, in his book de atra bile, will have them to be more stupid than ordinary, cold, heavy, solitary, sluggish. Si multam atram bilem et frigidam habent. Hercules de Saxonia, c. 19. l. 7. [2546]“holds these that are naturally melancholy, to be of a leaden colour or black,” and so doth Guianerius, c. 3. tract. 15. and such as think themselves dead many times, or that they see, talk with black men, dead men, spirits and goblins frequently, if it be in excess. These symptoms vary according to the mixture of those four humours adust, which is unnatural melancholy. For as Trallianus hath written, cap. 16. l. 7. [2547]“There is not one cause of this melancholy, nor one humour which begets, but divers diversely intermixed, from whence proceeds this variety of symptoms:” and those varying again as they are hot or cold. [2548]“Cold melancholy” (saith Benedic. Vittorius Faventinus pract. mag.) “is a cause of dotage, and more mild symptoms, if hot or more adust, of more violent passions, and furies.” Fracastorius, l. 2. de intellect. will have us to consider well of it, [2549]“with what kind of melancholy every one is troubled, for it much avails to know it; one is enraged by fervent heat, another is possessed by sad and cold; one is fearful, shamefaced; the other impudent and bold;” as Ajax, Arma rapit superosque furens inpraelia poscit: quite mad or tending to madness. Nunc hos, nunc impetit illos. Bellerophon on the other side, solis errat male sanus in agris, wanders alone in the woods; one despairs, weeps, and is weary of his life, another laughs, &c. All which variety is produced from the several degrees of heat and cold, which [2550]Hercules de Saxonia will have wholly proceed from the distemperature of spirits alone, animal especially, and those immaterial, the next and immediate causes of melancholy, as they are hot, cold, dry, moist, and from their agitation proceeds that diversity of symptoms, which he reckons up, in the [2551]thirteenth chap. of his Tract of Melancholy, and that largely through every part. Others will have them come from the diverse adustion of the four humours, which in this unnatural melancholy, by corruption of blood, adust choler, or melancholy natural, [2552]“by excessive distemper of heat turned, in comparison of the natural, into a sharp lye by force of adustion, cause, according to the diversity of their matter, diverse and strange symptoms,” which T. Bright reckons up in his following chapter. So doth [2553]Arculanus, according to the four principal humours adust, and many others.
For example, if it proceed from phlegm, (which is seldom and not so frequently as the rest) [2554]it stirs up dull symptoms, and a kind of stupidity, or impassionate hurt: they are sleepy, saith [2555]Savanarola, dull, slow, cold, blockish, ass-like, Asininam melancholiam, [2556] Melancthon calls it, “they are much given to weeping, and delight in waters, ponds, pools, rivers, fishing, fowling, &c.” (Arnoldus breviar. 1. cap. 18.) They are [2557]pale of colour, slothful, apt to sleep, heavy; [2558]much troubled with headache, continual meditation, and muttering to themselves; they dream of waters, [2559]that they are in danger of drowning, and fear such things, Rhasis. They are fatter than others that are melancholy, of a muddy complexion, apter to spit, [2560] sleep, more troubled with rheum than the rest, and have their eyes still fixed on the ground. Such a patient had Hercules de Saxonia, a widow in Venice, that was fat and very sleepy still; Christophorus a Vega another affected in the same sort. If it be inveterate or violent, the symptoms are more evident, they plainly denote and are ridiculous to others, in all their gestures, actions, speeches; imagining impossibilities, as he in Christophorus a Vega, that thought he was a tun of wine, [2561]and that Siennois, that resolved within himself not to piss, for fear he should drown all the town.
If it proceed from blood adust, or that there be a mixture of blood in it, [2562]“such are commonly ruddy of complexion, and high-coloured,” according to Salust. Salvianus, and Hercules de Saxonia. And as Savanarola, Vittorius Faventinus Emper. farther adds, [2563]“the veins of their eyes be red, as well as their faces.” They are much inclined to laughter, witty and merry, conceited in discourse, pleasant, if they be not far gone, much given to music, dancing, and to be in women's company. They meditate wholly on such things, and think [2564]“they see or hear plays, dancing, and suchlike sports” (free from all fear and sorrow, as [2565]Hercules de Saxonia supposeth.) If they be more strongly possessed with this kind of melancholy, Arnoldus adds, Breviar. lib. 1. cap. 18. Like him of Argos in the Poet, that sate laughing [2566]all day long, as if he had been at a theatre. Such another is mentioned by [2567]Aristotle, living at Abydos, a town of Asia Minor, that would sit after the same fashion, as if he had been upon a stage, and sometimes act himself; now clap his hands, and laugh, as if he had been well pleased with the sight. Wolfius relates of a country fellow called Brunsellius, subject to this humour, [2568]“that being by chance at a sermon, saw a woman fall off from a form half asleep, at which object most of the company laughed, but he for his part was so much moved, that for three whole days after he did nothing but laugh, by which means he was much weakened, and worse a long time following.” Such a one was old Sophocles, and Democritus himself had hilare delirium, much in this vein. Laurentius cap. 3. de melan. thinks this kind of melancholy, which is a little adust with some mixture of blood, to be that which Aristotle meant, when he said melancholy men of all others are most witty, which causeth many times a divine ravishment, and a kind of enthusiasmus, which stirreth them up to be excellent philosophers, poets, prophets, &c. Mercurialis, consil. 110. gives instance in a young man his patient, sanguine melancholy, [2569]“of a great wit, and excellently learned.”
If it arise from choler adust, they are bold and impudent, and of a more harebrain disposition, apt to quarrel, and think of such things, battles, combats, and their manhood, furious; impatient in discourse, stiff, irrefragable and prodigious in their tenets; and if they be moved, most violent, outrageous, [2570]ready to disgrace, provoke any, to kill themselves and others; Arnoldus adds, stark mad by fits, [2571]“they sleep little, their urine is subtle and fiery.” (Guianerius.) “In their fits you shall hear them speak all manner of languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, that never were taught or knew them before.” Apponensis in com. in Pro. sec. 30. speaks of a mad woman that spake excellent good Latin: and Rhasis knew another, that could prophecy in her fit, and foretell things truly to come. [2572]Guianerius had a patient could make Latin verses when the moon was combust, otherwise illiterate. Avicenna and some of his adherents will have these symptoms, when they happen, to proceed from the devil, and that they are rather demoniaci, possessed, than mad or melancholy, or both together, as Jason Pratensis thinks, Immiscent se mali genii, &c. but most ascribe it to the humour, which opinion Montaltus cap. 21. stiffly maintains, confuting Avicenna and the rest, referring it wholly to the quality and disposition of the humour and subject. Cardan de rerum var. lib. 8. cap. 10. holds these men of all others fit to be assassins, bold, hardy, fierce, and adventurous, to undertake anything by reason of their choler adust. [2573]“This humour, saith he, prepares them to endure death itself, and all manner of torments with invincible courage, and 'tis a wonder to see with what alacrity they will undergo such tortures,” ut supra naturam res videatur: he ascribes this generosity, fury, or rather stupidity, to this adustion of choler and melancholy: but I take these rather to be mad or desperate, than properly melancholy; for commonly this humour so adust and hot, degenerates into madness.
If it come from melancholy itself adust, those men, saith Avicenna, [2574] “are usually sad and solitary, and that continually, and in excess, more than ordinarily suspicious more fearful, and have long, sore, and most corrupt imaginations;” cold and black, bashful, and so solitary, that as [2575]Arnoldus writes, “they will endure no company, they dream of graves still, and dead men, and think themselves bewitched or dead:” if it be extreme, they think they hear hideous noises, see and talk [2576]“with black men, and converse familiarly with devils, and such strange chimeras and visions,” (Gordonius) or that they are possessed by them, that somebody talks to them, or within them. Tales melancholici plerumque daemoniaci, Montaltus consil. 26. ex Avicenna. Valescus de Taranta had such a woman in cure, [2577]“that thought she had to do with the devil:” and Gentilis Fulgosus quaest. 55. writes that he had a melancholy friend, that [2578] “had a black man in the likeness of a soldier” still following him wheresoever he was. Laurentius cap. 7. hath many stories of such as have thought themselves bewitched by their enemies; and some that would eat no meat as being dead. [2579]Anno 1550 an advocate of Paris fell into such a melancholy fit, that he believed verily he was dead, he could not be persuaded otherwise, or to eat or drink, till a kinsman of his, a scholar of Bourges, did eat before him dressed like a corse. The story, saith Serres, was acted in a comedy before Charles the Ninth. Some think they are beasts, wolves, hogs, and cry like dogs, foxes, bray like asses, and low like kine, as King Praetus' daughters. [2580]Hildesheim spicel. 2. de mania, hath an example of a Dutch baron so affected, and Trincavelius lib. 1. consil. 11. another of a nobleman in his country, [2581]“that thought he was certainly a beast, and would imitate most of their voices,” with many such symptoms, which may properly be reduced to this kind.
If it proceed from the several combinations of these four humours, or spirits, Herc. de Saxon. adds hot, cold, dry, moist, dark, confused, settled, constringed, as it participates of matter, or is without matter, the symptoms are likewise mixed. One thinks himself a giant, another a dwarf. One is heavy as lead, another is as light as a feather. Marcellus Donatus l. 2. cap. 41. makes mention out of Seneca, of one Seneccio, a rich man, [2582]“that thought himself and everything else he had, great: great wife, great horses, could not abide little things, but would have great pots to drink in, great hose, and great shoes bigger than his feet.” Like her in [2583]Trallianus, that supposed she “could shake all the world with her finger,” and was afraid to clinch her hand together, lest she should crush the world like an apple in pieces: or him in Galen, that thought he was [2584]Atlas, and sustained heaven with his shoulders. Another thinks himself so little, that he can creep into a mouse-hole: one fears heaven will fall on his head: a second is a cock; and such a one, [2585]Guianerius saith he saw at Padua, that would clap his hands together and crow. [2586]Another thinks he is a nightingale, and therefore sings all the night long; another he is all glass, a pitcher, and will therefore let nobody come near him, and such a one [2587]Laurentius gives out upon his credit, that he knew in France. Christophorus a Vega cap. 3. lib. 14. Skenkius and Marcellus Donatus l. 2. cap. 1. have many such examples, and one amongst the rest of a baker in Ferrara that thought he was composed of butter, and durst not sit in the sun, or come near the fire for fear of being melted: of another that thought he was a case of leather, stuffed with wind. Some laugh, weep; some are mad, some dejected, moped, in much agony, some by fits, others continuate, &c. Some have a corrupt ear, they think they hear music, or some hideous noise as their phantasy conceives, corrupt eyes, some smelling, some one sense, some another. [2588]Lewis the Eleventh had a conceit everything did stink about him, all the odoriferous perfumes they could get, would not ease him, but still he smelled a filthy stink. A melancholy French poet in [2589]Laurentius, being sick of a fever, and troubled with waking, by his physicians was appointed to use unguentum populeum to anoint his temples; but he so distasted the smell of it, that for many years after, all that came near him he imagined to scent of it, and would let no man talk with him but aloof off, or wear any new clothes, because he thought still they smelled of it; in all other things wise and discreet, he would talk sensibly, save only in this. A gentleman in Limousin, saith Anthony Verdeur, was persuaded he had but one leg, affrighted by a wild boar, that by chance struck him on the leg; he could not be satisfied his leg was sound (in all other things well) until two Franciscans by chance coming that way, fully removed him from the conceit. Sed abunde fabularum audivimus,—enough of story-telling.
Another great occasion of the variety of these symptoms proceeds from custom, discipline, education, and several inclinations, [2590]“this humour will imprint in melancholy men the objects most answerable to their condition of life, and ordinary actions, and dispose men according to their several studies and callings.” If an ambitious man become melancholy, he forthwith thinks he is a king, an emperor, a monarch, and walks alone, pleasing himself with a vain hope of some future preferment, or present as he supposeth, and withal acts a lord's part, takes upon him to be some statesman or magnifico, makes conges, gives entertainment, looks big, &c. Francisco Sansovino records of a melancholy man in Cremona, that would not be induced to believe but that he was pope, gave pardons, made cardinals, &c. [2591]Christophorus a Vega makes mention of another of his acquaintance, that thought he was a king, driven from his kingdom, and was very anxious to recover his estate. A covetous person is still conversant about purchasing of lands and tenements, plotting in his mind how to compass such and such manors, as if he were already lord of, and able to go through with it; all he sees is his, re or spe, he hath devoured it in hope, or else in conceit esteems it his own: like him in [2592]Athenaeus, that thought all the ships in the haven to be his own. A lascivious inamorato plots all the day long to please his mistress, acts and struts, and carries himself as if she were in presence, still dreaming of her, as Pamphilus of his Glycerium, or as some do in their morning sleep. [2593] Marcellus Donatus knew such a gentlewoman in Mantua, called Elionora Meliorina, that constantly believed she was married to a king, and [2594] “would kneel down and talk with him, as if he had been there present with his associates; and if she had found by chance a piece of glass in a muck-hill or in the street, she would say that it was a jewel sent from her lord and husband.” If devout and religious, he is all for fasting, prayer, ceremonies, alms, interpretations, visions, prophecies, revelations, [2595] he is inspired by the Holy Ghost, full of the spirit: one while he is saved, another while damned, or still troubled in mind for his sins, the devil will surely have him, &c. more of these in the third partition of love-melancholy. [2596]A scholar's mind is busied about his studies, he applauds himself for that he hath done, or hopes to do, one while fearing to be out in his next exercise, another while contemning all censures; envies one, emulates another; or else with indefatigable pains and meditation, consumes himself. So of the rest, all which vary according to the more remiss and violent impression of the object, or as the humour itself is intended or remitted. For some are so gently melancholy, that in all their carriage, and to the outward apprehension of others it can hardly be discerned, yet to them an intolerable burden, and not to be endured. [2597]Quaedam occulta quaedam manifesta, some signs are manifest and obvious to all at all times, some to few, or seldom, or hardly perceived; let them keep their own council, none will take notice or suspect them. “They do not express in outward show their depraved imaginations,” as [2598]Hercules de Saxonia observes, “but conceal them wholly to themselves, and are very wise men, as I have often seen; some fear, some do not fear at all, as such as think themselves kings or dead, some have more signs, some fewer, some great, some less,” some vex, fret, still fear, grieve, lament, suspect, laugh, sing, weep, chafe, &c. by fits (as I have said) or more during and permanent. Some dote in one thing, are most childish, and ridiculous, and to be wondered at in that, and yet for all other matters most discreet and wise. To some it is in disposition, to another in habit; and as they write of heat and cold, we may say of this humour, one is melancholicus ad octo, a second two degrees less, a third halfway. 'Tis superparticular, sesquialtera, sesquitertia, and superbipartiens tertias, quintas Melancholiae, &c. all those geometrical proportions are too little to express it. [2599]“It comes to many by fits, and goes; to others it is continuate:” many (saith [2600]Faventinus) “in spring and fall only are molested,” some once a year, as that Roman [2601] Galen speaks of: [2602]one, at the conjunction of the moon alone, or some unfortunate aspects, at such and such set hours and times, like the sea-tides, to some women when they be with child, as [2603]Plater notes, never otherwise: to others 'tis settled and fixed; to one led about and variable still by that ignis fatuus of phantasy, like an arthritis or running gout, 'tis here and there, and in every joint, always molesting some part or other; or if the body be free, in a myriad of forms exercising the mind. A second once peradventure in his life hath a most grievous fit, once in seven years, once in five years, even to the extremity of madness, death, or dotage, and that upon, some feral accident or perturbation, terrible object, and for a time, never perhaps so before, never after. A third is moved upon all such troublesome objects, cross fortune, disaster, and violent passions, otherwise free, once troubled in three or four years. A fourth, if things be to his mind, or he in action, well pleased, in good company, is most jocund, and of a good complexion: if idle, or alone, a la mort, or carried away wholly with pleasant dreams and phantasies, but if once crossed and displeased,
Generally thus much we may conclude of melancholy; that it is [2604]most pleasant at first, I say, mentis gratissimus error, [2605]a most delightsome humour, to be alone, dwell alone, walk alone, meditate, lie in bed whole days, dreaming awake as it were, and frame a thousand fantastical imaginations unto themselves. They are never better pleased than when they are so doing, they are in paradise for the time, and cannot well endure to be interrupt; with him in the poet, [2606]pol me occidistis amici, non servastis ait? you have undone him, he complains, if you trouble him: tell him what inconvenience will follow, what will be the event, all is one, canis ad vomitum, [2607]'tis so pleasant he cannot refrain. He may thus continue peradventure many years by reason of a strong temperature, or some mixture of business, which may divert his cogitations: but at the last laesa imaginatio, his phantasy is crazed, and now habituated to such toys, cannot but work still like a fate, the scene alters upon a sudden, fear and sorrow supplant those pleasing thoughts, suspicion, discontent, and perpetual anxiety succeed in their places; so by little and little, by that shoeing-horn of idleness, and voluntary solitariness, melancholy this feral fiend is drawn on, [2608]et quantum vertice ad auras Aethereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit, “extending up, by its branches, so far towards Heaven, as, by its roots, it does down towards Tartarus;” it was not so delicious at first, as now it is bitter and harsh; a cankered soul macerated with cares and discontents, taedium vitae, impatience, agony, inconstancy, irresolution, precipitate them unto unspeakable miseries. They cannot endure company, light, or life itself, some unfit for action, and the like. [2609]Their bodies are lean and dried up, withered, ugly, their looks harsh, very dull, and their souls tormented, as they are more or less entangled, as the humour hath been intended, or according to the continuance of time they have been troubled.
To discern all which symptoms the better, [2610]Rhasis the Arabian makes three degrees of them. The first is, falsa cogitatio, false conceits and idle thoughts: to misconstrue and amplify, aggravating everything they conceive or fear; the second is, falso cogitata loqui, to talk to themselves, or to use inarticulate incondite voices, speeches, obsolete gestures, and plainly to utter their minds and conceits of their hearts, by their words and actions, as to laugh, weep, to be silent, not to sleep, eat their meat, &c.: the third is to put in practice [2611]that which they think or speak. Savanarola, Rub. 11. tract. 8. cap. 1. de aegritudine, confirms as much, [2612]“when he begins to express that in words, which he conceives in his heart, or talks idly, or goes from one thing to another,” which [2613]Gordonius calls nec caput habentia, nec caudam, (“having neither head nor tail,”) he is in the middle way: [2614] “but when he begins to act it likewise, and to put his fopperies in execution, he is then in the extent of melancholy, or madness itself.” This progress of melancholy you shall easily observe in them that have been so affected, they go smiling to themselves at first, at length they laugh out; at first solitary, at last they can endure no company: or if they do, they are now dizzards, past sense and shame, quite moped, they care not what they say or do, all their actions, words, gestures, are furious or ridiculous. At first his mind is troubled, he doth not attend what is said, if you tell him a tale, he cries at last, what said you? but in the end he mutters to himself, as old women do many times, or old men when they sit alone, upon a sudden they laugh, whoop, halloo, or run away, and swear they see or hear players, [2615]devils, hobgoblins, ghosts, strike, or strut, &c., grow humorous in the end; like him in the poet, saepe ducentos, saepe decem servos, (“at one time followed by two hundred servants, at another only by ten”) he will dress himself, and undress, careless at last, grows insensible, stupid, or mad. [2616]He howls like a wolf, barks like a dog, and raves like Ajax and Orestes, hears music and outcries, which no man else hears. As [2617]he did whom Amatus Lusitanus mentioneth cent. 3, cura. 55, or that woman in [2618]Springer, that spake many languages, and said she was possessed: that farmer in [2619]Prosper Calenius, that disputed and discoursed learnedly in philosophy and astronomy, with Alexander Achilles his master, at Bologna, in Italy. But of these I have already spoken.
Who can sufficiently speak of these symptoms, or prescribe rules to comprehend them? as Echo to the painter in Ausonius, vane quid affectas, &c., foolish fellow; what wilt? if you must needs paint me, paint a voice, et similem si vis pingere, pinge sonum; if you will describe melancholy, describe a fantastical conceit, a corrupt imagination, vain thoughts and different, which who can do? The four and twenty letters make no more variety of words in diverse languages, than melancholy conceits produce diversity of symptoms in several persons. They are irregular, obscure, various, so infinite, Proteus himself is not so diverse, you may as well make the moon a new coat, as a true character of a melancholy man; as soon find the motion of a bird in the air, as the heart of man, a melancholy man. They are so confused, I say, diverse, intermixed with other diseases. As the species be confounded (which [2620]I have showed) so are the symptoms; sometimes with headache, cachexia, dropsy, stone; as you may perceive by those several examples and illustrations, collected by [2621] Hildesheim spicel. 2. Mercurialis consil. 118. cap. 6 and 11. with headache, epilepsy, priapismus. Trincavelius consil. 12. lib. 1. consil. 49. with gout: caninus appetitus. Montanus consil. 26, &c. 23, 234, 249, with falling-sickness, headache, vertigo, lycanthropia, &c. J. Caesar Claudinus consult. 4. consult. 89 and 116. with gout, agues, haemorrhoids, stone, &c., who can distinguish these melancholy symptoms so intermixed with others, or apply them to their several kinds, confine them into method? 'Tis hard I confess, yet I have disposed of them as I could, and will descend to particularise them according to their species. For hitherto I have expatiated in more general lists or terms, speaking promiscuously of such ordinary signs, which occur amongst writers. Not that they are all to be found in one man, for that were to paint a monster or chimera, not a man: but some in one, some in another, and that successively or at several times.
Which I have been the more curious to express and report; not to upbraid any miserable man, or by way of derision, (I rather pity them,) but the better to discern, to apply remedies unto them; and to show that the best and soundest of us all is in great danger; how much we ought to fear our own fickle estates, remember our miseries and vanities, examine and humiliate ourselves, seek to God, and call to Him for mercy, that needs not look for any rods to scourge ourselves, since we carry them in our bowels, and that our souls are in a miserable captivity, if the light of grace and heavenly truth doth not shine continually upon us: and by our discretion to moderate ourselves, to be more circumspect and wary in the midst of these dangers.
“If [2622]no symptoms appear about the stomach, nor the blood be misaffected, and fear and sorrow continue, it is to be thought the brain itself is troubled, by reason of a melancholy juice bred in it, or otherwise conveyed into it, and that evil juice is from the distemperature of the part, or left after some inflammation,” thus far Piso. But this is not always true, for blood and hypochondries both are often affected even in head-melancholy. [2623]Hercules de Saxonia differs here from the common current of writers, putting peculiar signs of head-melancholy, from the sole distemperature of spirits in the brain, as they are hot, cold, dry, moist, “all without matter from the motion alone, and tenebrosity of spirits;” of melancholy which proceeds from humours by adustion, he treats apart, with their several symptoms and cures. The common signs, if it be by essence in the head, “are ruddiness of face, high sanguine complexion, most part rubore saturato,” [2624]one calls it, a bluish, and sometimes full of pimples, with red eyes. Avicenna l. 3, Fen. 2, Tract. 4, c. 18. Duretus and others out of Galen, de affect. l. 3, c. 6. [2625]Hercules de Saxonia to this of redness of face, adds “heaviness of the head, fixed and hollow eyes.” [2626]“If it proceed from dryness of the brain, then their heads will be light, vertiginous, and they most apt to wake, and to continue whole months together without sleep. Few excrements in their eyes and nostrils, and often bald by reason of excess of dryness,” Montaltus adds, c. 17. If it proceed from moisture: dullness, drowsiness, headache follows; and as Salust. Salvianus, c. 1, l. 2, out of his own experience found, epileptical, with a multitude of humours in the head. They are very bashful, if ruddy, apt to blush, and to be red upon all occasions, praesertim si metus accesserit. But the chiefest symptom to discern this species, as I have said, is this, that there be no notable signs in the stomach, hypochondries, or elsewhere, digna, as [2627] Montaltus terms them, or of greater note, because oftentimes the passions of the stomach concur with them. Wind is common to all three species, and is not excluded, only that of the hypochondries is [2628]more windy than the rest, saith Hollerius. Aetius tetrab. l. 2, sc. 2, c. 9 and 10, maintains the same, [2629]if there be more signs, and more evident in the head than elsewhere, the brain is primarily affected, and prescribes head-melancholy to be cured by meats amongst the rest, void of wind, and good juice, not excluding wind, or corrupt blood, even in head-melancholy itself: but these species are often confounded, and so are their symptoms, as I have already proved. The symptoms of the mind are superfluous and continual cogitations; [2630]“for when the head is heated, it scorcheth the blood, and from thence proceed melancholy fumes, which trouble the mind,” Avicenna. They are very choleric, and soon hot, solitary, sad, often silent, watchful, discontent, Montaltus, cap. 24. If anything trouble them, they cannot sleep, but fret themselves still, till another object mitigate, or time wear it out. They have grievous passions, and immoderate perturbations of the mind, fear, sorrow, &c., yet not so continuate, but that they are sometimes merry, apt to profuse laughter, which is more to be wondered at, and that by the authority of [2631]Galen himself, by reason of mixture of blood, praerubri jocosis delectantur, et irrisores plerumque sunt, if they be ruddy, they are delighted in jests, and oftentimes scoffers themselves, conceited: and as Rodericus a Vega comments on that place of Galen, merry, witty, of a pleasant disposition, and yet grievously melancholy anon after: omnia discunt sine doctore, saith Aretus, they learn without a teacher: and as [2632]Laurentius supposeth, those feral passions and symptoms of such as think themselves glass, pitchers, feathers, &c., speak strange languages, a colore cerebri (if it be in excess) from the brain's distempered heat.
“In this hypochondriacal or flatuous melancholy, the symptoms are so ambiguous,” saith [2633]Crato in a counsel of his for a noblewoman, “that the most exquisite physicians cannot determine of the part affected.” Matthew Flaccius, consulted about a noble matron, confessed as much, that in this malady he with Hollerius, Fracastorius, Falopius, and others, being to give their sentence of a party labouring of hypochondriacal melancholy, could not find out by the symptoms which part was most especially affected; some said the womb, some heart, some stomach, &c., and therefore Crato, consil. 24. lib. 1. boldly avers, that in this diversity of symptoms, which commonly accompany this disease, [2634]“no physician can truly say what part is affected.” Galen lib. 3. de loc. affect., reckons up these ordinary symptoms, which all the Neoterics repeat of Diocles; only this fault he finds with him, that he puts not fear and sorrow amongst the other signs. Trincavelius excuseth Diocles, lib. 3. consil. 35. because that oftentimes in a strong head and constitution, a generous spirit, and a valiant, these symptoms appear not, by reason of his valour and courage. [2635]Hercules de Saxonia (to whom I subscribe) is of the same mind (which I have before touched) that fear and sorrow are not general symptoms; some fear and are not sad; some be sad and fear not; some neither fear nor grieve. The rest are these, beside fear and sorrow, [2636]“sharp belchings, fulsome crudities, heat in the bowels, wind and rumbling in the guts, vehement gripings, pain in the belly and stomach sometimes, after meat that is hard of concoction, much watering of the stomach, and moist spittle, cold sweat, importunus sudor, unseasonable sweat all over the body,” as Octavius Horatianus lib. 2. cap. 5. calls it; “cold joints, indigestion, [2637]they cannot endure their own fulsome belchings, continual wind about their hypochondries, heat and griping in their bowels, praecordia sursum convelluntur, midriff and bowels are pulled up, the veins about their eyes look red, and swell from vapours and wind.” Their ears sing now and then, vertigo and giddiness come by fits, turbulent dreams, dryness, leanness, apt they are to sweat upon all occasions, of all colours and complexions. Many of them are high-coloured especially after meals, which symptom Cardinal Caecius was much troubled with, and of which he complained to Prosper Calenus his physician, he could not eat, or drink a cup of wine, but he was as red in the face as if he had been at a mayor's feast. That symptom alone vexeth many. [2638]Some again are black, pale, ruddy, sometimes their shoulders and shoulder blades ache, there is a leaping all over their bodies, sudden trembling, a palpitation of the heart, and that cardiaca passio, grief in the mouth of the stomach, which maketh the patient think his heart itself acheth, and sometimes suffocation, difficultas anhelitus, short breath, hard wind, strong pulse, swooning. Montanus consil. 55. Trincavelius lib. 3. consil. 36. et 37. Fernelius cons. 43. Frambesarius consult. lib. 1. consil. 17. Hildesheim, Claudinus, &c., give instance of every particular. The peculiar symptoms which properly belong to each part be these. If it proceed from the stomach, saith [2639]Savanarola, 'tis full of pain wind. Guianerius adds, vertigo, nausea, much spitting, &c. If from the mirach, a swelling and wind in the hypochondries, a loathing, and appetite to vomit, pulling upward. If from the heart, aching and trembling of it, much heaviness. If from the liver, there is usually a pain in the right hypochondry. If from the spleen, hardness and grief in the left hypochondry, a rumbling, much appetite and small digestion, Avicenna. If from the mesaraic veins and liver on the other side, little or no appetite, Herc. de Saxonia. If from the hypochondries, a rumbling inflation, concoction is hindered, often belching, &c. And from these crudities, windy vapours ascend up to the brain which trouble the imagination, and cause fear, sorrow, dullness, heaviness, many terrible conceits and chimeras, as Lemnius well observes, l. 1. c. 16. “as [2640]a black and thick cloud covers the sun, and intercepts his beams and light, so doth this melancholy vapour obnubilate the mind, enforce it to many absurd thoughts and imaginations,” and compel good, wise, honest, discreet men (arising to the brain from the [2641] lower parts, “as smoke out of a chimney”) to dote, speak, and do that which becomes them not, their persons, callings, wisdoms. One by reason of those ascending vapours and gripings, rumbling beneath, will not be persuaded but that he hath a serpent in his guts, a viper, another frogs. Trallianus relates a story of a woman, that imagined she had swallowed an eel, or a serpent, and Felix Platerus, observat. lib. 1. hath a most memorable example of a countryman of his, that by chance, falling into a pit where frogs and frogs' spawn was, and a little of that water swallowed, began to suspect that he had likewise swallowed frogs' spawn, and with that conceit and fear, his phantasy wrought so far, that he verily thought he had young live frogs in his belly, qui vivebant ex alimento suo, that lived by his nourishment, and was so certainly persuaded of it, that for many years afterwards he could not be rectified in his conceit: He studied physic seven years together to cure himself, travelled into Italy, France and Germany to confer with the best physicians about it, and A.D. 1609, asked his counsel amongst the rest; he told him it was wind, his conceit, &c., but mordicus contradicere, et ore, et scriptis probare nitebatur: no saying would serve, it was no wind, but real frogs: “and do you not hear them croak?” Platerus would have deceived him, by putting live frog's into his excrements; but he, being a physician himself, would not be deceived, vir prudens alias, et doctus a wise and learned man otherwise, a doctor of physic, and after seven years' dotage in this kind, a phantasia liberatus est, he was cured. Laurentius and Goulart have many such examples, if you be desirous to read them. One commodity above the rest which are melancholy, these windy flatuous have, lucidia intervalla, their symptoms and pains are not usually so continuate as the rest, but come by fits, fear and sorrow, and the rest: yet in another they exceed all others; and that is, [2642]they are luxurious, incontinent, and prone to venery, by reason of wind, et facile amant, et quamlibet fere amant. (Jason Pratensis) [2643]Rhasis is of opinion, that Venus doth many of them much good; the other symptoms of the mind be common with the rest.
Their bodies that are affected with this universal melancholy are most part black, [2644]“the melancholy juice is redundant all over,” hirsute they are, and lean, they have broad veins, their blood is gross and thick [2645] “Their spleen is weak,” and a liver apt to engender the humour; they have kept bad diet, or have had some evacuation stopped, as haemorrhoids, or months in women, which [2646]Trallianus, in the cure, would have carefully to be inquired, and withal to observe of what complexion the party is of, black or red. For as Forrestus and Hollerius contend, if [2647]they be black, it proceeds from abundance of natural melancholy; if it proceed from cares, agony, discontents, diet, exercise, &c., they may be as well of any other colour: red, yellow, pale, as black, and yet their whole blood corrupt: praerubri colore saepe sunt tales, saepe flavi, (saith [2648] Montaltus cap. 22.) The best way to discern this species, is to let them bleed, if the blood be corrupt, thick and black, and they withal free from those hypochondriacal symptoms, and not so grievously troubled with them, or those of the head, it argues they are melancholy, a toto corpore. The fumes which arise from this corrupt blood, disturb the mind, and make them fearful and sorrowful, heavy hearted, as the rest, dejected, discontented, solitary, silent, weary of their lives, dull and heavy, or merry, &c., and if far gone, that which Apuleius wished to his enemy, by way of imprecation, is true in them; [2649]“Dead men's bones, hobgoblins, ghosts are ever in their minds, and meet them still in every turn: all the bugbears of the night, and terrors, fairy-babes of tombs, and graves are before their eyes, and in their thoughts, as to women and children, if they be in the dark alone.” If they hear, or read, or see any tragical object, it sticks by them, they are afraid of death, and yet weary of their lives, in their discontented humours they quarrel with all the world, bitterly inveigh, tax satirically, and because they cannot otherwise vent their passions or redress what is amiss, as they mean, they will by violent death at last be revenged on themselves.
Because Lodovicus Mercatus in his second book de mulier. affect. cap. 4. and Rodericus a Castro de morb. mulier. cap. 3. lib. 2. two famous physicians in Spain, Daniel Sennertus of Wittenberg lib. 1. part 2. cap. 13. with others, have vouchsafed in their works not long since published, to write two just treatises de Melancholia virginum, Monialium et Viduarum, as a particular species of melancholy (which I have already specified) distinct from the rest; [2650](for it much differs from that which commonly befalls men and other women, as having one only cause proper to women alone) I may not omit in this general survey of melancholy symptoms, to set down the particular signs of such parties so misaffected.
The causes are assigned out of Hippocrates, Cleopatra, Moschion, and those old Gynaeciorum Scriptores, of this feral malady, in more ancient maids, widows, and barren women, ob septum transversum violatum, saith Mercatus, by reason of the midriff or Diaphragma, heart and brain offended with those vicious vapours which come from menstruous blood, inflammationem arteriae circa dorsum, Rodericus adds, an inflammation of the back, which with the rest is offended by [2651]that fuliginous exhalation of corrupt seed, troubling the brain, heart and mind; the brain, I say, not in essence, but by consent, Universa enim hujus affectus causa ab utero pendet, et a sanguinis menstrui malitia, for in a word, the whole malady proceeds from that inflammation, putridity, black smoky vapours, &c., from thence comes care, sorrow, and anxiety, obfuscation of spirits, agony, desperation, and the like, which are intended or remitted; si amatorius accesserit ardor, or any other violent object or perturbation of mind. This melancholy may happen to widows, with much care and sorrow, as frequently it doth, by reason of a sudden alteration of their accustomed course of life, &c. To such as lie in childbed ob suppressam purgationem; but to nuns and more ancient maids, and some barren women for the causes abovesaid, 'tis more familiar, crebrius his quam reliquis accidit, inquit Rodericus, the rest are not altogether excluded.
Out of these causes Rodericus defines it with Areteus, to be angorem animi, a vexation of the mind, a sudden sorrow from a small, light, or no occasion, [2652]with a kind of still dotage and grief of some part or other, head, heart, breasts, sides, back, belly, &c., with much solitariness, weeping, distraction, &c., from which they are sometimes suddenly delivered, because it comes and goes by fits, and is not so permanent as other melancholy.
But to leave this brief description, the most ordinary symptoms be these, pulsatio juxta dorsum, a beating about the back, which is almost perpetual, the skin is many times rough, squalid, especially, as Areteus observes, about the arms, knees, and knuckles. The midriff and heart-strings do burn and beat very fearfully, and when this vapour or fume is stirred, flieth upward, the heart itself beats, is sore grieved, and faints, fauces siccitate praecluduntur, ut difficulter possit ab uteri strangulatione decerni, like fits of the mother, Alvus plerisque nil reddit, aliis exiguum, acre, biliosum, lotium flavum. They complain many times, saith Mercatus, of a great pain in their heads, about their hearts, and hypochondries, and so likewise in their breasts, which are often sore, sometimes ready to swoon, their faces are inflamed, and red, they are dry, thirsty, suddenly hot, much troubled with wind, cannot sleep, &c. And from hence proceed ferina deliramenta, a brutish kind of dotage, troublesome sleep, terrible dreams in the night, subrusticus pudor et verecundia ignava, a foolish kind of bashfulness to some, perverse conceits and opinions, [2653]dejection of mind, much discontent, preposterous judgment. They are apt to loath, dislike, disdain, to be weary of every object, &c., each thing almost is tedious to them, they pine away, void of counsel, apt to weep, and tremble, timorous, fearful, sad, and out of all hope of better fortunes. They take delight in nothing for the time, but love to be alone and solitary, though that do them more harm: and thus they are affected so long as this vapour lasteth; but by-and-by, as pleasant and merry as ever they were in their lives, they sing, discourse, and laugh in any good company, upon all occasions, and so by fits it takes them now and then, except the malady be inveterate, and then 'tis more frequent, vehement, and continuate. Many of them cannot tell how to express themselves in words, or how it holds them, what ails them, you cannot understand them, or well tell what to make of their sayings; so far gone sometimes, so stupefied and distracted, they think themselves bewitched, they are in despair, aptae ad fletum, desperationem, dolores mammis et hypocondriis. Mercatus therefore adds, now their breasts, now their hypochondries, belly and sides, then their heart and head aches, now heat, then wind, now this, now that offends, they are weary of all; [2654]and yet will not, cannot again tell how, where or what offends them, though they be in great pain, agony, and frequently complain, grieving, sighing, weeping, and discontented still, sine causa manifesta, most part, yet I say they will complain, grudge, lament, and not be persuaded, but that they are troubled with an evil spirit, which is frequent in Germany, saith Rodericus, amongst the common sort: and to such as are most grievously affected, (for he makes three degrees of this disease in women,) they are in despair, surely forespoken or bewitched, and in extremity of their dotage, (weary of their lives,) some of them will attempt to make away themselves. Some think they see visions, confer with spirits and devils, they shall surely be damned, are afraid of some treachery, imminent danger, and the like, they will not speak, make answer to any question, but are almost distracted, mad, or stupid for the time, and by fits: and thus it holds them, as they are more or less affected, and as the inner humour is intended or remitted, or by outward objects and perturbations aggravated, solitariness, idleness, &c.
Many other maladies there are incident to young women, out of that one and only cause above specified, many feral diseases. I will not so much as mention their names, melancholy alone is the subject of my present discourse, from which I will not swerve. The several cures of this infirmity, concerning diet, which must be very sparing, phlebotomy, physic, internal, external remedies, are at large in great variety in [2655] Rodericus a Castro, Sennertus, and Mercatus, which whoso will, as occasion serves, may make use of. But the best and surest remedy of all, is to see them well placed, and married to good husbands in due time, hinc illae, lachrymae, that is the primary cause, and this the ready cure, to give them content to their desires. I write not this to patronise any wanton, idle flirt, lascivious or light housewives, which are too forward many times, unruly, and apt to cast away themselves on him that comes next, without all care, counsel, circumspection, and judgment. If religion, good discipline, honest education, wholesome exhortation, fair promises, fame and loss of good name cannot inhibit and deter such, (which to chaste and sober maids cannot choose but avail much,) labour and exercise, strict diet, rigour and threats may more opportunely be used, and are able of themselves to qualify and divert an ill-disposed temperament. For seldom should you see an hired servant, a poor handmaid, though ancient, that is kept hard to her work, and bodily labour, a coarse country wench troubled in this kind, but noble virgins, nice gentlewomen, such as are solitary and idle, live at ease, lead a life out of action and employment, that fare well, in great houses and jovial companies, ill-disposed peradventure of themselves, and not willing to make any resistance, discontented otherwise, of weak judgment, able bodies, and subject to passions, (grandiores virgines, saith Mercatus, steriles et viduae plerumque melancholicae,) such for the most part are misaffected, and prone to this disease. I do not so much pity them that may otherwise be eased, but those alone that out of a strong temperament, innate constitution, are violently carried away with this torrent of inward humours, and though very modest of themselves, sober, religious, virtuous, and well given, (as many so distressed maids are,) yet cannot make resistance, these grievances will appear, this malady will take place, and now manifestly show itself, and may not otherwise be helped. But where am I? Into what subject have I rushed? What have I to do with nuns, maids, virgins, widows? I am a bachelor myself, and lead a monastic life in a college, nae ego sane ineptus qui haec dixerim,) I confess 'tis an indecorum, and as Pallas a virgin blushed, when Jupiter by chance spake of love matters in her presence, and turned away her face; me reprimam though my subject necessarily require it, I will say no more.
And yet I must and will say something more, add a word or two in gratiam virginum et viduarum, in favour of all such distressed parties, in commiseration of their present estate. And as I cannot choose but condole their mishap that labour of this infirmity, and are destitute of help in this case, so must I needs inveigh against them that are in fault, more than manifest causes, and as bitterly tax those tyrannising pseudopoliticians, superstitious orders, rash vows, hard-hearted parents, guardians, unnatural friends, allies, (call them how you will,) those careless and stupid overseers, that out of worldly respects, covetousness, supine negligence, their own private ends (cum sibi sit interim bene) can so severely reject, stubbornly neglect, and impiously contemn, without all remorse and pity, the tears, sighs, groans, and grievous miseries of such poor souls committed to their charge. How odious and abominable are those superstitious and rash vows of Popish monasteries, so to bind and enforce men and women to vow virginity, to lead a single life, against the laws of nature, opposite to religion, policy, and humanity, so to starve, to offer violence, to suppress the vigour of youth, by rigorous statutes, severe laws, vain persuasions, to debar them of that to which by their innate temperature they are so furiously inclined, urgently carried, and sometimes precipitated, even irresistibly led, to the prejudice of their soul's health, and good estate of body and mind: and all for base and private respects, to maintain their gross superstition, to enrich themselves and their territories as they falsely suppose, by hindering some marriages, that the world be not full of beggars, and their parishes pestered with orphans; stupid politicians; haeccine fieri flagilia? ought these things so to be carried? better marry than burn, saith the Apostle, but they are otherwise persuaded. They will by all means quench their neighbour's house if it be on fire, but that fire of lust which breaks out into such lamentable flames, they will not take notice of, their own bowels oftentimes, flesh and blood shall so rage and burn, and they will not see it: miserum est, saith Austin, seipsum non miserescere, and they are miserable in the meantime that cannot pity themselves, the common good of all, and per consequens their own estates. For let them but consider what fearful maladies, feral diseases, gross inconveniences, come to both sexes by this enforced temperance, it troubles me to think of, much more to relate those frequent abortions and murdering of infants in their nunneries (read [2656]Kemnitius and others), and notorious fornications, those Spintrias, Tribadas, Ambubeias, &c., those rapes, incests, adulteries, mastuprations, sodomies, buggeries of monks and friars. See Bale's visitation of abbeys, [2657]Mercurialis, Rodericus a Castro, Peter Forestus, and divers physicians; I know their ordinary apologies and excuses for these things, sed viderint Politici, Medici, Theologi, I shall more opportunely meet with them [2658]elsewhere.
To give some satisfaction to melancholy men that are troubled with these symptoms, a better means in my judgment cannot be taken, than to show them the causes whence they proceed; not from devils as they suppose, or that they are bewitched or forsaken of God, hear or see, &c. as many of them think, but from natural and inward causes, that so knowing them, they may better avoid the effects, or at least endure them with more patience. The most grievous and common symptoms are fear and sorrow, and that without a cause to the wisest and discreetest men, in this malady not to be avoided. The reason why they are so, Aetius discusseth at large, Tetrabib. 2. 2. in his first problem out of Galen, lib. 2. de causis sympt. 1. For Galen imputeth all to the cold that is black, and thinks that the spirits being darkened, and the substance of the brain cloudy and dark, all the objects thereof appear terrible, and the [2660]mind itself, by those dark, obscure, gross fumes, ascending from black humours, is in continual darkness, fear, and sorrow; divers terrible monstrous fictions in a thousand shapes and apparitions occur, with violent passions, by which the brain and fantasy are troubled and eclipsed. [2661]Fracastorius, lib. 2. de intellect, “will have cold to be the cause of fear and sorrow; for such as are cold are ill-disposed to mirth, dull, and heavy, by nature solitary, silent; and not for any inward darkness (as physicians think) for many melancholy men dare boldly be, continue, and walk in the dark, and delight in it:” solum frigidi timidi: if they be hot, they are merry; and the more hot, the more furious, and void of fear, as we see in madmen; but this reason holds not, for then no melancholy, proceeding from choler adust, should fear. [2662]Averroes scoffs at Galen for his reasons, and brings five arguments to repel them: so doth Herc. de Saxonia, Tract. de Melanch. cap. 3. assigning other causes, which are copiously censured and confuted by Aelianus Montaltus, cap. 5 and 6. Lod. Mercatus de Inter. morb. cur. lib. 1. cap. 17. Altomarus, cap. 7. de mel. Guianerius, tract. 15. c. 1. Bright cap. 37. Laurentius, cap. 5. Valesius, med. cont. lib. 5, con. 1. [2663]“Distemperature,” they conclude, “makes black juice, blackness obscures the spirits, the spirits obscured, cause fear and sorrow.” Laurentius, cap. 13. supposeth these black fumes offend specially the diaphragma or midriff, and so per consequens the mind, which is obscured as [2664]the sun by a cloud. To this opinion of Galen, almost all the Greeks and Arabians subscribe, the Latins new and old, internae, tenebrae offuscant animum, ut externae nocent pueris, as children are affrighted in the dark, so are melancholy men at all times, [2665]as having the inward cause with them, and still carrying it about. Which black vapours, whether they proceed from the black blood about the heart, as T. W. Jes. thinks in his treatise of the passions of the mind, or stomach, spleen, midriff, or all the misaffected parts together, it boots not, they keep the mind in a perpetual dungeon, and oppress it with continual fears, anxieties, sorrows, &c. It is an ordinary thing for such as are sound to laugh at this dejected pusillanimity, and those other symptoms of melancholy, to make themselves merry with them, and to wonder at such, as toys and trifles, which may be resisted and withstood, if they will themselves: but let him that so wonders, consider with himself, that if a man should tell him on a sudden, some of his especial friends were dead, could he choose but grieve? Or set him upon a steep rock, where he should be in danger to be precipitated, could he be secure? His heart would tremble for fear, and his head be giddy. P. Byaras, Tract. de pest. gives instance (as I have said) [2666]“and put case” (saith he) “in one that walks upon a plank, if it lie on the ground, he can safely do it: but if the same plank be laid over some deep water, instead of a bridge, he is vehemently moved, and 'tis nothing but his imagination, forma cadendi impressa, to which his other members and faculties obey.” Yea, but you infer, that such men have a just cause to fear, a true object of fear; so have melancholy men an inward cause, a perpetual fume and darkness, causing fear, grief, suspicion, which they carry with them, an object which cannot be removed; but sticks as close, and is as inseparable as a shadow to a body, and who can expel or overrun his shadow? Remove heat of the liver, a cold stomach, weak spleen: remove those adust humours and vapours arising from them, black blood from the heart, all outward perturbations, take away the cause, and then bid them not grieve nor fear, or be heavy, dull, lumpish, otherwise counsel can do little good; you may as well bid him that is sick of an ague not to be a dry; or him that is wounded not to feel pain.
Suspicion follows fear and sorrow at heels, arising out of the same fountain, so thinks [2667]Fracastorius, “that fear is the cause of suspicion, and still they suspect some treachery, or some secret machination to be framed against them, still they distrust.” Restlessness proceeds from the same spring, variety of fumes make them like and dislike. Solitariness, avoiding of light, that they are weary of their lives, hate the world, arise from the same causes, for their spirits and humours are opposite to light, fear makes them avoid company, and absent themselves, lest they should be misused, hissed at, or overshoot themselves, which still they suspect. They are prone to venery by reason of wind. Angry, waspish, and fretting still, out of abundance of choler, which causeth fearful dreams and violent perturbations to them, both sleeping and waking: That they suppose they have no heads, fly, sink, they are pots, glasses, &c. is wind in their heads. [2668]Herc. de Saxonia doth ascribe this to the several motions in the animal spirits, “their dilation, contraction, confusion, alteration, tenebrosity, hot or cold distemperature,” excluding all material humours. [2669]Fracastorius “accounts it a thing worthy of inquisition, why they should entertain such false conceits, as that they have horns, great noses, that they are birds, beasts,” &c., why they should think themselves kings, lords, cardinals. For the first, [2670] Fracastorius gives two reasons: “One is the disposition of the body; the other, the occasion of the fantasy,” as if their eyes be purblind, their ears sing, by reason of some cold and rheum, &c. To the second, Laurentius answers, the imagination inwardly or outwardly moved, represents to the understanding, not enticements only, to favour the passion or dislike, but a very intensive pleasure follows the passion or displeasure, and the will and reason are captivated by delighting in it.
Why students and lovers are so often melancholy and mad, the philosopher of [2671]Conimbra assigns this reason, “because by a vehement and continual meditation of that wherewith they are affected, they fetch up the spirits into the brain, and with the heat brought with them, they incend it beyond measure: and the cells of the inner senses dissolve their temperature, which being dissolved, they cannot perform their offices as they ought.”
Why melancholy men are witty, which Aristotle hath long since maintained in his problems; and that [2672]all learned men, famous philosophers, and lawgivers, ad unum fere omnes melancholici, have still been melancholy, is a problem much controverted. Jason Pratensis will have it understood of natural melancholy, which opinion Melancthon inclines to, in his book de Anima, and Marcilius Ficinus de san. tuend. lib. 1. cap. 5. but not simple, for that makes men stupid, heavy, dull, being cold and dry, fearful, fools, and solitary, but mixed with the other humours, phlegm only excepted; and they not adust, [2673]but so mixed as that blood he half, with little or no adustion, that they be neither too hot nor too cold. Aponensis, cited by Melancthon, thinks it proceeds from melancholy adust, excluding all natural melancholy as too cold. Laurentius condemns his tenet, because adustion of humours makes men mad, as lime burns when water is cast on it. It must be mixed with blood, and somewhat adust, and so that old aphorism of Aristotle may be verified, Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae, no excellent wit without a mixture of madness. Fracastorius shall decide the controversy, [2674]“phlegmatic are dull: sanguine lively, pleasant, acceptable, and merry, but not witty; choleric are too swift in motion, and furious, impatient of contemplation, deceitful wits: melancholy men have the most excellent wits, but not all; this humour may be hot or cold, thick, or thin; if too hot, they are furious and mad: if too cold, dull, stupid, timorous, and sad: if temperate, excellent, rather inclining to that extreme of heat, than cold.” This sentence of his will agree with that of Heraclitus, a dry light makes a wise mind, temperate heat and dryness are the chief causes of a good wit; therefore, saith Aelian, an elephant is the wisest of all brute beasts, because his brain is driest, et ob atrae, bilis capiam: this reason Cardan approves, subtil. l. 12. Jo. Baptista Silvaticus, a physician of Milan, in his first controversy, hath copiously handled this question: Rulandus in his problems, Caelius Rhodiginus, lib. 17. Valleriola 6to. narrat. med. Herc. de Saxonia, Tract. posth. de mel. cap. 3. Lodovicus Mercatus, de inter. morb. cur. lib. cap. 17. Baptista Porta, Physiog. lib. 1. c. 13. and many others.
Weeping, sighing, laughing, itching, trembling, sweating, blushing, hearing and seeing strange noises, visions, wind, crudity, are motions of the body, depending upon these precedent motions of the mind: neither are tears, affections, but actions (as Scaliger holds) [2675]“the voice of such as are afraid, trembles, because the heart is shaken” (Conimb. prob. 6. sec. 3. de som.) why they stutter or falter in their speech, Mercurialis and Montaltus, cap. 17. give like reasons out of Hippocrates, [2676]“dryness, which makes the nerves of the tongue torpid.” Fast speaking (which is a symptom of some few) Aetius will have caused [2677] “from abundance of wind, and swiftness of imagination:” [2678]“baldness comes from excess of dryness,” hirsuteness from a dry temperature. The cause of much waking in a dry brain, continual meditation, discontent, fears and cares, that suffer not the mind to be at rest, incontinency is from wind, and a hot liver, Montanus, cons. 26. Rumbling in the guts is caused from wind, and wind from ill concoction, weakness of natural heat, or a distempered heat and cold; [2679]Palpitation of the heart from vapours, heaviness and aching from the same cause. That the belly is hard, wind is a cause, and of that leaping in many parts. Redness of the face, and itching, as if they were flea-bitten, or stung with pismires, from a sharp subtle wind. [2680]Cold sweat from vapours arising from the hypochondries, which pitch upon the skin; leanness for want of good nourishment. Why their appetite is so great, [2681]Aetius answers: Os ventris frigescit, cold in those inner parts, cold belly, and hot liver, causeth crudity, and intention proceeds from perturbations, [2682]our souls for want of spirits cannot attend exactly to so many intentive operations, being exhaust, and overswayed by passion, she cannot consider the reasons which may dissuade her from such affections.
[2683]Bashfulness and blushing, is a passion proper to men alone, and is not only caused for [2684]some shame and ignominy, or that they are guilty unto themselves of some foul fact committed, but as [2685]Fracastorius well determines, ob defectum proprium, et timorem, “from fear, and a conceit of our defects; the face labours and is troubled at his presence that sees our defects, and nature willing to help, sends thither heat, heat draws the subtlest blood, and so we blush. They that are bold, arrogant, and careless, seldom or never blush, but such as are fearful.” Anthonius Lodovicus, in his book de pudore, will have this subtle blood to arise in the face, not so much for the reverence of our betters in presence, [2686]“but for joy and pleasure, or if anything at unawares shall pass from us, a sudden accident, occurse, or meeting:” (which Disarius in [2687] Macrobius confirms) any object heard or seen, for blind men never blush, as Dandinus observes, the night and darkness make men impudent. Or that we be staid before our betters, or in company we like not, or if anything molest and offend us, erubescentia turns to rubor, blushing to a continuate redness. [2688]Sometimes the extremity of the ears tingle, and are red, sometimes the whole face, Etsi nihil vitiosum commiseris, as Lodovicus holds: though Aristotle is of opinion, omnis pudor ex vitio commisso, all shame for some offence. But we find otherwise, it may as well proceed [2689]from fear, from force and inexperience, (so [2690]Dandinus holds) as vice; a hot liver, saith Duretus (notis in Hollerium:) “from a hot brain, from wind, the lungs heated, or after drinking of wine, strong drink, perturbations,” &c.
Laughter what it is, saith [2691]Tully, “how caused, where, and so suddenly breaks out, that desirous to stay it, we cannot, how it comes to possess and stir our face, veins, eyes, countenance, mouth, sides, let Democritus determine.” The cause that it often affects melancholy men so much, is given by Gomesius, lib. 3. de sale genial. cap. 18. abundance of pleasant vapours, which, in sanguine melancholy especially, break from the heart, [2692]“and tickle the midriff, because it is transverse and full of nerves: by which titillation the sense being moved, and arteries distended, or pulled, the spirits from thence move and possess the sides, veins, countenance, eyes.” See more in Jossius de risu et fletu, Vives 3 de Anima. Tears, as Scaliger defines, proceed from grief and pity, [2693]“or from the heating of a moist brain, for a dry cannot weep.”
That they see and hear so many phantasms, chimeras, noises, visions, &c. as Fienus hath discoursed at large in his book of imagination, and [2694] Lavater de spectris, part. 1. cap. 2. 3. 4. their corrupt phantasy makes them see and hear that which indeed is neither heard nor seen, Qui multum jejunant, aut noctes ducunt insomnes, they that much fast, or want sleep, as melancholy or sick men commonly do, see visions, or such as are weak-sighted, very timorous by nature, mad, distracted, or earnestly seek. Sabini quod volunt somniant, as the saying is, they dream of that they desire. Like Sarmiento the Spaniard, who when he was sent to discover the straits of Magellan, and confine places, by the Prorex of Peru, standing on the top of a hill, Amaenissimam planitiem despicere sibi visus fuit, aedificia magnifica, quamplurimos Pagos, alias Turres, splendida Templa, and brave cities, built like ours in Europe, not, saith mine [2695]author, that there was any such thing, but that he was vanissimus et nimis credulus, and would fain have had it so. Or as [2696]Lod. Mercatus proves, by reason of inward vapours, and humours from blood, choler, &c. diversely mixed, they apprehend and see outwardly, as they suppose, divers images, which indeed are not. As they that drink wine think all runs round, when it is in their own brain; so is it with these men, the fault and cause is inward, as Galen affirms, [2697]mad men and such as are near death, quas extra se videre putant Imagines, intra oculos habent, 'tis in their brain, which seems to be before them; the brain as a concave glass reflects solid bodies. Senes etiam decrepiti cerebrum habent concavum et aridum, ut imaginentur se videre (saith [2698]Boissardus) quae non sunt, old men are too frequently mistaken and dote in like case: or as he that looketh through a piece of red glass, judgeth everything he sees to be red; corrupt vapours mounting from the body to the head, and distilling again from thence to the eyes, when they have mingled themselves with the watery crystal which receiveth the shadows of things to be seen, make all things appear of the same colour, which remains in the humour that overspreads our sight, as to melancholy men all is black, to phlegmatic all white, &c. Or else as before the organs corrupt by a corrupt phantasy, as Lemnius, lib. 1. cap. 16. well quotes, [2699]“cause a great agitation of spirits, and humours, which wander to and fro in all the creeks of the brain, and cause such apparitions before their eyes.” One thinks he reads something written in the moon, as Pythagoras is said to have done of old, another smells brimstone, hears Cerberus bark: Orestes now mad supposed he saw the furies tormenting him, and his mother still ready to run upon him,
So Pentheus (in Bacchis Euripidis) saw two suns, two Thebes, his brain alone was troubled. Sickness is an ordinary cause of such sights. Cardan, subtil. 8. Mens aegra laboribus et jejuniis fracta, facit eos videre, audire, &c. And, Osiander beheld strange visions, and Alexander ab Alexandro both, in their sickness, which he relates de rerum varietat. lib. 8. cap. 44. Albategnius that noble Arabian, on his death-bed, saw a ship ascending and descending, which Fracastorius records of his friend Baptista Tirrianus. Weak sight and a vain persuasion withal, may effect as much, and second causes concurring, as an oar in water makes a refraction, and seems bigger, bended double, &c. The thickness of the air may cause such effects, or any object not well-discerned in the dark, fear and phantasy will suspect to be a ghost, a devil, &c. [2702]Quod nimis miseri timent, hoc facile credunt, we are apt to believe, and mistake in such cases. Marcellus Donatus, lib. 2. cap. 1. brings in a story out of Aristotle, of one Antepharon which likely saw, wheresoever he was, his own image in the air, as in a glass. Vitellio, lib. 10. perspect. hath such another instance of a familiar acquaintance of his, that after the want of three or four nights sleep, as he was riding by a river side, saw another riding with him, and using all such gestures as he did, but when more light appeared, it vanished. Eremites and anchorites have frequently such absurd visions, revelations by reason of much fasting, and bad diet, many are deceived by legerdemain, as Scot hath well showed in his book of the discovery of witchcraft, and Cardan, subtil. 18. suffites, perfumes, suffumigations, mixed candles, perspective glasses, and such natural causes, make men look as if they were dead, or with horse-heads, bull's-horns, and such like brutish shapes, the room full of snakes, adders, dark, light, green, red, of all colours, as you may perceive in Baptista Porta, Alexis, Albertus, and others, glow-worms, fire-drakes, meteors, Ignis fatuus, which Plinius, lib. 2. cap. 37. calls Castor and Pollux, with many such that appear in moorish grounds, about churchyards, moist valleys, or where battles have been fought, the causes of which read in Goclenius, Velouris, Fickius, &c. such fears are often done, to frighten children with squibs, rotten wood, &c. to make folks look as if they were dead, [2703]solito majores, bigger, lesser, fairer, fouler, ut astantes sine capitibus videantur; aut toti igniti, aut forma daemonum, accipe pilos canis nigri, &c. saith Albertus; and so 'tis ordinary to see strange uncouth sights by catoptrics: who knows not that if in a dark room, the light be admitted at one only little hole, and a paper or glass put upon it, the sun shining, will represent on the opposite wall all such objects as are illuminated by his rays? with concave and cylinder glasses, we may reflect any shape of men, devils, antics, (as magicians most part do, to gull a silly spectator in a dark room), we will ourselves, and that hanging in the air, when 'tis nothing but such an horrible image as [2704]Agrippa demonstrates, placed in another room. Roger Bacon of old is said to have represented his own image walking in the air by this art, though no such thing appear in his perspectives. But most part it is in the brain that deceives them, although I may not deny, but that oftentimes the devil deludes them, takes his opportunity to suggest, and represent vain objects to melancholy men, and such as are ill affected. To these you may add the knavish impostures of jugglers, exorcists, mass-priests, and mountebanks, of whom Roger Bacon speaks, &c. de miraculis naturae et artis. cap. 1. [2705]they can counterfeit the voices of all birds and brute beasts almost, all tones and tunes of men, and speak within their throats, as if they spoke afar off, that they make their auditors believe they hear spirits, and are thence much astonished and affrighted with it. Besides, those artificial devices to overhear their confessions, like that whispering place of Gloucester [2706]with us, or like the duke's place at Mantua in Italy, where the sound is reverberated by a concave wall; a reason of which Blancanus in his Echometria gives, and mathematically demonstrates.
So that the hearing is as frequently deluded as the sight, from the same causes almost, as he that hears bells, will make them sound what he list. “As the fool thinketh, so the bell clinketh.” Theophilus in Galen thought he heard music, from vapours which made his ears sound, &c. Some are deceived by echoes, some by roaring of waters, or concaves and reverberation of air in the ground, hollow places and walls. [2707]At Cadurcum, in Aquitaine, words and sentences are repeated by a strange echo to the full, or whatsoever you shall play upon a musical instrument, more distinctly and louder, than they are spoken at first. Some echoes repeat a thing spoken seven times, as at Olympus, in Macedonia, as Pliny relates, lib. 36. cap. 15. Some twelve times, as at Charenton, a village near Paris, in France. At Delphos, in Greece, heretofore was a miraculous echo, and so in many other places. Cardan, subtil. l. 18, hath wonderful stories of such as have been deluded by these echoes. Blancanus the Jesuit, in his Echometria, hath variety of examples, and gives his reader full satisfaction of all such sounds by way of demonstration. [2708]At Barrey, an isle in the Severn mouth, they seem to hear a smith's forge; so at Lipari, and those sulphureous isles, and many such like, which Olaus speaks of in the continent of Scandia, and those northern countries. Cardan de rerum var. l. 15, c. 84, mentioneth a woman, that still supposed she heard the devil call her, and speaking to her, she was a painter's wife in Milan: and many such illusions and voices, which proceed most part from a corrupt imagination.
Whence it comes to pass, that they prophesy, speak several languages, talk of astronomy, and other unknown sciences to them (of which they have been ever ignorant): [2709]I have in brief touched, only this I will here add, that Arculanus, Bodin. lib. 3, cap. 6, daemon. and some others, [2710] hold as a manifest token that such persons are possessed with the devil; so doth [2711]Hercules de Saxonia, and Apponensis, and fit only to be cured by a priest. But [2712]Guianerius, [2713]Montaltus, Pomporiatius of Padua, and Lemnius lib. 2. cap. 2, refer it wholly to the ill-disposition of the [2714]humour, and that out of the authority of Aristotle prob. 30. 1, because such symptoms are cured by purging; and as by the striking of a flint fire is enforced, so by the vehement motion of spirits, they do elicere voces inauditas, compel strange speeches to be spoken: another argument he hath from Plato's reminiscentia, which all out as likely as that which [2715]Marsilius Ficinus speaks of his friend Pierleonus; by a divine kind of infusion he understood the secrets of nature, and tenets of Grecian and barbarian philosophers, before ever he heard of, saw, or read their works: but in this I should rather hold with Avicenna and his associates, that such symptoms proceed from evil spirits, which take all opportunities of humours decayed, or otherwise to pervert the soul of man: and besides, the humour itself is balneum diaboli, the devil's bath; and as Agrippa proves, doth entice him to seize upon them.
Prognostics, or signs of things to come, are either good or bad. If this malady be not hereditary, and taken at the beginning, there is good hope of cure, recens curationem non habet difficilem, saith Avicenna, l. 3, Fen. 1, Tract. 4, c. 18. That which is with laughter, of all others is most secure, gentle, and remiss, Hercules de Saxonia. [2716]“If that evacuation of haemorrhoids, or varices, which they call the water between the skin, shall happen to a melancholy man, his misery is ended,” Hippocrates Aphor. 6, 11. Galen l. 6, de morbis vulgar. com. 8, confirms the same; and to this aphorism of Hippocrates, all the Arabians, new and old Latins subscribe; Montaltus c. 25, Hercules de Saxonia, Mercurialis, Vittorius Faventinus, &c. Skenkius, l. 1, observat. med. c. de Mania, illustrates this aphorism, with an example of one Daniel Federer a coppersmith that was long melancholy, and in the end mad about the 27th year of his age, these varices or water began to arise in his thighs, and he was freed from his madness. Marius the Roman was so cured, some, say, though with great pain. Skenkius hath some other instances of women that have been helped by flowing of their mouths, which before were stopped. That the opening of the haemorrhoids will do as much for men, all physicians jointly signify, so they be voluntary, some say, and not by compulsion. All melancholy are better after a quartan; [2717]Jobertus saith, scarce any man hath that ague twice; but whether it free him from this malady, 'tis a question; for many physicians ascribe all long agues for especial causes, and a quartan ague amongst the rest. [2718]Rhasis cont. lib. 1, tract. 9. “When melancholy gets out at the superficies of the skin, or settles breaking out in scabs, leprosy, morphew, or is purged by stools, or by the urine, or that the spleen is enlarged, and those varices appear, the disease is dissolved.” Guianerius, cap. 5, tract. 15, adds dropsy, jaundice, dysentery, leprosy, as good signs, to these scabs, morphews, and breaking out, and proves it out of the 6th of Hippocrates' Aphorisms.
Evil prognostics on the other part. Inveterata melancholia incurabilis, if it be inveterate, it is [2719]incurable, a common axiom, aut difficulter curabilis as they say that make the best, hardly cured. This Galen witnesseth, l. 3, de loc. affect. cap. 6, [2720]“be it in whom it will, or from what cause soever, it is ever long, wayward, tedious, and hard to be cured, if once it be habituated.” As Lucian said of the gout, she was [2721]“the queen of diseases, and inexorable,” may we say of melancholy. Yet Paracelsus will have all diseases whatsoever curable, and laughs at them which think otherwise, as T. Erastus par. 3, objects to him; although in another place, hereditary diseases he accounts incurable, and by no art to be removed. [2722]Hildesheim spicel. 2, de mel. holds it less dangerous if only [2723]“imagination be hurt, and not reason,” [2724]“the gentlest is from blood. Worse from choler adust, but the worst of all from melancholy putrefied.” [2725]Bruel esteems hypochondriacal least dangerous, and the other two species (opposite to Galen) hardest to be cured. [2726]The cure is hard in man, but much more difficult in women. And both men and women must take notice of that saying of Montanus consil. 230, pro Abate Italo, [2727]“This malady doth commonly accompany them to their grave; physicians may ease, and it may lie hid for a time, but they cannot quite cure it, but it will return again more violent and sharp than at first, and that upon every small occasion or error:” as in Mercury's weather-beaten statue, that was once all over gilt, the open parts were clean, yet there was in fimbriis aurum, in the chinks a remnant of gold: there will be some relics of melancholy left in the purest bodies (if once tainted) not so easily to be rooted out. [2728] Oftentimes it degenerates into epilepsy, apoplexy, convulsions, and blindness: by the authority of Hippocrates and Galen, [2729]all aver, if once it possess the ventricles of the brain, Frambesarius, and Salust. Salvianus adds, if it get into the optic nerves, blindness. Mercurialis, consil. 20, had a woman to his patient, that from melancholy became epileptic and blind. [2730]If it come from a cold cause, or so continue cold, or increase, epilepsy; convulsions follow, and blindness, or else in the end they are moped, sottish, and in all their actions, speeches, and gestures, ridiculous. [2731]If it come from a hot cause, they are more furious, and boisterous, and in conclusion mad. Calescentem melancholiam saepius sequitur mania. [2732]If it heat and increase, that is the common event, [2733]per circuitus, aut semper insanit, he is mad by fits, or altogether. For as [2734]Sennertus contends out of Crato, there is seminarius ignis in this humour, the very seeds of fire. If it come from melancholy natural adust, and in excess, they are often demoniacal, Montanus.
[2735]Seldom this malady procures death, except (which is the greatest, most grievous calamity, and the misery of all miseries,) they make away themselves, which is a frequent thing, and familiar amongst them. 'Tis [2736]Hippocrates' observation, Galen's sentence, Etsi mortem timent, tamen plerumque sibi ipsis mortem consciscunt, l. 3. de locis affec. cap. 7. The doom of all physicians. 'Tis [2737]Rabbi Moses' Aphorism, the prognosticon of Avicenna, Rhasis, Aetius, Gordonius, Valescus, Altomarus, Salust. Salvianus, Capivaccius, Mercatus, Hercules de Saxonia, Piso, Bruel, Fuchsius, all, &c.
In such sort doth the torture and extremity of his misery torment him, that he can take no pleasure in his life, but is in a manner enforced to offer violence unto himself, to be freed from his present insufferable pains. So some (saith [2739]Fracastorius) “in fury, but most in despair, sorrow, fear, and out of the anguish and vexation of their souls, offer violence to themselves: for their life is unhappy and miserable. They can take no rest in the night, nor sleep, or if they do slumber, fearful dreams astonish them.” In the daytime they are affrighted still by some terrible object, and torn in pieces with suspicion, fear, sorrow, discontents, cares, shame, anguish, &c. as so many wild horses, that they cannot be quiet an hour, a minute of time, but even against their wills they are intent, and still thinking of it, they cannot forget it, it grinds their souls day and night, they are perpetually tormented, a burden to themselves, as Job was, they can neither eat, drink or sleep. Psal. cvii. 18. “Their soul abhorreth all meat, and they are brought to death's door, [2740]being bound in misery and iron:” they [2741]curse their stars with Job, [2742]“and day of their birth, and wish for death:” for as Pineda and most interpreters hold, Job was even melancholy to despair, and almost [2743]madness itself; they murmur many times against the world, friends, allies, all mankind, even against God himself in the bitterness of their passion, [2744]vivere nolunt, mori nesciunt, live they will not, die they cannot. And in the midst of these squalid, ugly, and such irksome days, they seek at last, finding no comfort, [2745]no remedy in this wretched life, to be eased of all by death. Omnia appetunt bonum, all creatures seek the best, and for their good as they hope, sub specie, in show at least, vel quia mori pulchrum putant (saith [2746]Hippocrates) vel quia putant inde se majoribus malis liberari, to be freed as they wish. Though many times, as Aesop's fishes, they leap from the frying-pan into the fire itself, yet they hope to be eased by this means: and therefore (saith Felix [2747]Platerus) “after many tedious days at last, either by drowning, hanging, or some such fearful end,” they precipitate or make away themselves: “many lamentable examples are daily seen amongst us:” alius ante, fores se laqueo suspendit (as Seneca notes), alius se praecipitavit a tecto, ne dominum stomachantem audiret, alius ne reduceretur a fuga ferrum redegit in viscera, “one hangs himself before his own door,—another throws himself from the house-top, to avoid his master's anger,—a third, to escape expulsion, plunges a dagger into his heart,”—so many causes there are—His amor exitio est, furor his—love, grief, anger, madness, and shame, &c. 'Tis a common calamity, [2748]a fatal end to this disease, they are condemned to a violent death, by a jury of physicians, furiously disposed, carried headlong by their tyrannising wills, enforced by miseries, and there remains no more to such persons, if that heavenly Physician, by his assisting grace and mercy alone do not prevent, (for no human persuasion or art can help) but to be their own butchers, and execute themselves. Socrates his cicuta, Lucretia's dagger, Timon's halter, are yet to be had; Cato's knife, and Nero's sword are left behind them, as so many fatal engines, bequeathed to posterity, and will be used to the world's end, by such distressed souls: so intolerable, insufferable, grievous, and violent is their pain, [2749]so unspeakable and continuate. One day of grief is an hundred years, as Cardan observes: 'Tis carnificina hominum, angor animi, as well saith Areteus, a plague of the soul, the cramp and convulsion of the soul, an epitome of hell; and if there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man's heart.
Another doubt is made by some philosophers, whether it be lawful for a man in such extremity of pain and grief, to make away himself: and how these men that so do are to be censured. The Platonists approve of it, that it is lawful in such cases, and upon a necessity; Plotinus l. de beatitud. c. 7. and Socrates himself defends it, in Plato's Phaedon, “if any man labour of an incurable disease, he may despatch himself, if it be to his good.” Epicurus and his followers, the cynics and stoics in general affirm it, Epictetus and [2761]Seneca amongst the rest, quamcunque veram esse viam ad libertatem, any way is allowable that leads to liberty, [2762]“let us give God thanks, that no man is compelled to live against his will;” [2763] quid ad hominem claustra, career, custodia? liberum ostium habet, death is always ready and at hand. Vides illum praecipitem locum, illud flumen, dost thou see that steep place, that river, that pit, that tree, there's liberty at hand, effugia servitutis et doloris sunt, as that Laconian lad cast himself headlong (non serviam aiebat puer) to be freed of his misery: every vein in thy body, if these be nimis operosi exitus, will set thee free, quid tua refert finem facias an accipias? there's no necessity for a man to live in misery. Malum est necessitati vivere; sed in necessitate vivere, necessitas nulla est. Ignavus qui sine causa moritur, et stultus qui cum dolore vivit. Idem epi. 58. Wherefore hath our mother the earth brought out poisons, saith [2764]Pliny, in so great a quantity, but that men in distress might make away themselves? which kings of old had ever in a readiness, ad incerta fortunae venenum sub custode promptum, Livy writes, and executioners always at hand. Speusippes being sick was met by Diogenes, and carried on his slaves' shoulders, he made his moan to the philosopher; but I pity thee not, quoth Diogenes, qui cum talis vivere sustines, thou mayst be freed when thou wilt, meaning by death. [2765]Seneca therefore commends Cato, Dido, and Lucretia, for their generous courage in so doing, and others that voluntarily die, to avoid a greater mischief, to free themselves from misery, to save their honour, or vindicate their good name, as Cleopatra did, as Sophonisba, Syphax's wife did, Hannibal did, as Junius Brutus, as Vibius Virus, and those Campanian senators in Livy (Dec. 3. lib. 6.) to escape the Roman tyranny, that poisoned themselves. Themistocles drank bull's blood, rather than he would fight against his country, and Demosthenes chose rather to drink poison, Publius Crassi filius, Censorius and Plancus, those heroical Romans to make away themselves, than to fall into their enemies' hands. How many myriads besides in all ages might I remember, qui sibi lethum Insontes pepperere manu, &c. [2766]Rhasis in the Maccabees is magnified for it, Samson's death approved. So did Saul and Jonas sin, and many worthy men and women, quorum memoria celebratur in Ecclesia, saith [2767]Leminchus, for killing themselves to save their chastity and honour, when Rome was taken, as Austin instances, l. 1. de Civit. Dei, cap. 16. Jerome vindicateth the same in Ionam and Ambrose, l. 3. de virginitate commendeth Pelagia for so doing. Eusebius, lib. 8. cap. 15. admires a Roman matron for the same fact to save herself from the lust of Maxentius the Tyrant. Adelhelmus, abbot of Malmesbury, calls them Beatas virgines quae sic, &c. Titus Pomponius Atticus, that wise, discreet, renowned Roman senator, Tully's dear friend, when he had been long sick, as he supposed, of an incurable disease, vitamque produceret ad augendos dolores, sine spe salutis, was resolved voluntarily by famine to despatch himself to be rid of his pain; and when as Agrippa, and the rest of his weeping friends earnestly besought him, osculantes obsecrarent ne id quod natura cogeret, ipse acceleraret, not to offer violence to himself, “with a settled resolution he desired again they would approve of his good intent, and not seek to dehort him from it:” and so constantly died, precesque eorum taciturna sua obstinatione depressit. Even so did Corellius Rufus, another grave senator, by the relation of Plinius Secundus, epist. lib. 1. epist. 12. famish himself to death; pedibus correptus cum incredibiles cruciatus et indignissima tormenta pateretur, a cibis omnino abstinuit; [2768]neither he nor Hispilla his wife could divert him, but destinatus mori obstinate magis, &c. die he would, and die he did. So did Lycurgus, Aristotle, Zeno, Chrysippus, Empedocles, with myriads, &c. In wars for a man to run rashly upon imminent danger, and present death, is accounted valour and magnanimity, [2769]to be the cause of his own, and many a thousand's ruin besides, to commit wilful murder in a manner, of himself and others, is a glorious thing, and he shall be crowned for it. The [2770] Massegatae in former times, [2771]Barbiccians, and I know not what nations besides, did stifle their old men, after seventy years, to free them from those grievances incident to that age. So did the inhabitants of the island of Choa, because their air was pure and good, and the people generally long lived, antevertebant fatum suum, priusquam manci forent, aut imbecillitas accederet, papavere vel cicuta, with poppy or hemlock they prevented death. Sir Thomas More in his Utopia commends voluntary death, if he be sibi aut aliis molestus, troublesome to himself or others, ([2772] “especially if to live be a torment to him,) let him free himself with his own hands from this tedious life, as from a prison, or suffer himself to be freed by others.” [2773]And 'tis the same tenet which Laertius relates of Zeno, of old, Juste sapiens sibi mortem consciscit, si in acerbis doloribus versetur, membrorum mutilatione aut morbis aegre curandis, and which Plato 9. de legibus approves, if old age, poverty, ignominy, &c. oppress, and which Fabius expresseth in effect. (Praefat. 7. Institut.) Nemo nisi sua culpa diu dolet. It is an ordinary thing in China, (saith Mat. Riccius the Jesuit,) [2774]“if they be in despair of better fortunes, or tired and tortured with misery, to bereave themselves of life, and many times, to spite their enemies the more, to hang at their door.” Tacitus the historian, Plutarch the philosopher, much approve a voluntary departure, and Aust. de civ. Dei, l. 1. c. 29. defends a violent death, so that it be undertaken in a good cause, nemo sic mortuus, qui non fuerat aliquando moriturus; quid autem interest, quo mortis genere vita ista finiatur, quando ille cui finitur, iterum mori non cogitur? &c. [2775]no man so voluntarily dies, but volens nolens, he must die at last, and our life is subject to innumerable casualties, who knows when they may happen, utrum satius est unam perpeti moriendo, an omnes timere vivendo, [2776] rather suffer one, than fear all. “Death is better than a bitter life,” Eccl. xxx. 17. [2777]and a harder choice to live in fear, than by once dying, to be freed from all. Theombrotus Ambraciotes persuaded I know not how many hundreds of his auditors, by a luculent oration he made of the miseries of this, and happiness of that other life, to precipitate themselves. And having read Plato's divine tract de anima, for example's sake led the way first. That neat epigram of Callimachus will tell you as much,
Inveterate Melancholy, howsoever it may seem to be a continuate, inexorable disease, hard to be cured, accompanying them to their graves, most part, as [2789]Montanus observes, yet many times it may be helped, even that which is most violent, or at least, according to the same [2790]author, “it may be mitigated and much eased.” Nil desperandum. It may be hard to cure, but not impossible for him that is most grievously affected, if he but willing to be helped.
Upon this good hope I will proceed, using the same method in the cure, which I have formerly used in the rehearsing of the causes; first general, then particular; and those according to their several species. Of these cures some be lawful, some again unlawful, which though frequent, familiar, and often used, yet justly censured, and to be controverted. As first, whether by these diabolical means, which are commonly practised by the devil and his ministers, sorcerers, witches, magicians, &c., by spells, cabilistical words, charms, characters, images, amulets, ligatures, philters, incantations, &c., this disease and the like may be cured? and if they may, whether it be lawful to make use of them, those magnetical cures, or for our good to seek after such means in any case? The first, whether they can do any such cures, is questioned amongst many writers, some affirming, some denying. Valesius, cont. med. lib. 5. cap. 6. Malleus Maleficar, Heurnius, lib. 3. pract. med. cap. 28. Caelius lib. 16. c. 16. Delrio Tom. 3. Wierus lib. 2. de praestig. daem. Libanius Lavater de spect. part. 2. cap. 7. Holbrenner the Lutheran in Pistorium, Polydore Virg. l. 1. de prodig. Tandlerus, Lemnius, (Hippocrates and Avicenna amongst the rest) deny that spirits or devils have any power over us, and refer all with Pomponatius of Padua to natural causes and humours. Of the other opinion are Bodinus Daemonamantiae, lib. 3, cap. 2. Arnoldus, Marcellus Empyricus, I. Pistorius, Paracelsus Apodix. Magic. Agrippa lib. 2. de occult. Philos. cap. 36. 69. 71. 72. et l. 3, c. 23, et 10. Marcilius Ficinus de vit. coelit. compar. cap. 13. 15. 18. 21. &c. Galeottus de promiscua doct. cap. 24. Jovianus Pontanus Tom. 2. Plin. lib. 28, c. 2. Strabo, lib. 15. Geog. Leo Suavius: Goclenius de ung. armar. Oswoldus Crollius, Ernestus Burgravius, Dr. Flud, &c. Cardan de subt. brings many proofs out of Ars Notoria, and Solomon's decayed works, old Hermes, Artefius, Costaben Luca, Picatrix, &c. that such cures may be done. They can make fire it shall not burn, fetch back thieves or stolen goods, show their absent faces in a glass, make serpents lie still, stanch blood, salve gouts, epilepsies, biting of mad dogs, toothache, melancholy, et omnia mundi mala, make men immortal, young again as the [2791]Spanish marquis is said to have done by one of his slaves, and some, which jugglers in [2792]China maintain still (as Tragaltius writes) that they can do by their extraordinary skill in physic, and some of our modern chemists by their strange limbecks, by their spells, philosopher's stones and charms. [2793]“Many doubt,” saith Nicholas Taurellus, “whether the devil can cure such diseases he hath not made, and some flatly deny it, howsoever common experience confirms to our astonishment, that magicians can work such feats, and that the devil without impediment can penetrate through all the parts of our bodies, and cure such maladies by means to us unknown.” Daneus in his tract de Sortiariis subscribes to this of Taurellus; Erastus de lamiis, maintaineth as much, and so do most divines, out of their excellent knowledge and long experience they can commit [2794]agentes cum patientibus, colligere semina rerum, eaque materiae applicare, as Austin infers de Civ. Dei et de Trinit. lib. 3. cap. 7. et 8. they can work stupendous and admirable conclusions; we see the effects only, but not the causes of them. Nothing so familiar as to hear of such cures. Sorcerers are too common; cunning men, wizards, and white-witches, as they call them, in every village, which if they be sought unto, will help almost all infirmities of body and mind, Servatores in Latin, and they have commonly St. Catherine's wheel printed in the roof of their mouth, or in some other part about them, resistunt incantatorum praestigiis ([2795]Boissardus writes) morbos a sagis motos propulsant &c., that to doubt of it any longer, [2796]“or not to believe, were to run into that other sceptical extreme of incredulity,” saith Taurellus. Leo Suavius in his comment upon Paracelsus seems to make it an art, which ought to be approved; Pistorius and others stiffly maintain the use of charms, words, characters, &c. Ars vera est, sed pauci artifices reperiuntur; the art is true, but there be but a few that have skill in it. Marcellius Donatus lib. 2. de hist, mir. cap. 1. proves out of Josephus' eight books of antiquities, that [2797]“Solomon so cured all the diseases of the mind by spells, charms, and drove away devils, and that Eleazer did as much before Vespasian.” Langius in his med. epist. holds Jupiter Menecrates, that did so many stupendous cures in his time, to have used this art, and that he was no other than a magician. Many famous cures are daily done in this kind, the devil is an expert physician, as Godelman calls him, lib. 1. cap. 18. and God permits oftentimes these witches and magicians to produce such effects, as Lavater cap. 3. lib. 8. part. 3. cap. 1. Polid. Virg. lib. 1. de prodigiis, Delrio and others admit. Such cures may be done, and as Paracels. Tom. 4. de morb. ament. stiffly maintains, [2798]“they cannot otherwise be cured but by spells, seals, and spiritual physic.” [2799]Arnoldus, lib. de sigillis, sets down the making of them, so doth Rulandus and many others.
Hoc posito, they can effect such cures, the main question is, whether it be lawful in a desperate case to crave their help, or ask a wizard's advice. 'Tis a common practice of some men to go first to a witch, and then to a physician, if one cannot the other shall, Flectere si nequeant superos Acheronta movebunt. [2800]“It matters not,” saith Paracelsus, “whether it be God or the devil, angels, or unclean spirits cure him, so that he be eased.” If a man fall into a ditch, as he prosecutes it, what matter is it whether a friend or an enemy help him out? and if I be troubled with such a malady, what care I whether the devil himself, or any of his ministers by God's permission, redeem me? He calls a [2801] magician, God's minister and his vicar, applying that of vos estis dii profanely to them, for which he is lashed by T. Erastus part. 1. fol. 45. And elsewhere he encourageth his patients to have a good faith, [2802] “a strong imagination, and they shall find the effects: let divines say to the contrary what they will.” He proves and contends that many diseases cannot otherwise be cured. Incantatione orti incantatione curari debent; if they be caused by incantation, [2803]they must be cured by incantation. Constantinus lib. 4. approves of such remedies: Bartolus the lawyer, Peter Aerodius rerum Judic. lib. 3. tit. 7. Salicetus Godefridus, with others of that sect, allow of them; modo sint ad sanitatem quae a magis fiunt, secus non, so they be for the parties good, or not at all. But these men are confuted by Remigius, Bodinus, daem. lib. 3. cap 2. Godelmanus lib. 1. cap. 8, Wierus, Delrio lib. 6. quaest. 2. tom. 3. mag. inquis. Erastus de Lamiis; all our [2804]divines, schoolmen, and such as write cases of conscience are against it, the scripture itself absolutely forbids it as a mortal sin, Levit. cap. xviii. xix. xx. Deut. xviii. &c. Rom. viii. 19. “Evil is not to be done, that good may come of it.” Much better it were for such patients that are so troubled, to endure a little misery in this life, than to hazard their souls' health for ever, and as Delrio counselleth, [2805]“much better die, than be so cured.” Some take upon them to expel devils by natural remedies, and magical exorcisms, which they seem to approve out of the practice of the primitive church, as that above cited of Josephus, Eleazer, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Austin. Eusebius makes mention of such, and magic itself hath been publicly professed in some universities, as of old in Salamanca in Spain, and Krakow in Poland: but condemned anno 1318, by the chancellor and university of [2806]Paris. Our pontifical writers retain many of these adjurations and forms of exorcisms still in the church; besides those in baptism used, they exorcise meats, and such as are possessed, as they hold, in Christ's name. Read Hieron. Mengus cap. 3. Pet. Tyreus, part. 3. cap. 8. What exorcisms they prescribe, besides those ordinary means of [2807]“fire suffumigations, lights, cutting the air with swords,” cap. 57. herbs, odours: of which Tostatus treats, 2. Reg. cap. 16. quaest. 43, you shall find many vain and frivolous superstitious forms of exorcisms among them, not to be tolerated, or endured.
Being so clearly evinced, as it is, all unlawful cures are to be refused, it remains to treat of such as are to be admitted, and those are commonly such which God hath appointed, [2808]by virtue of stones, herbs, plants, meats, and the like, which are prepared and applied to our use, by art and industry of physicians, who are the dispensers of such treasures for our good, and to be [2809]“honoured for necessities' sake,” God's intermediate ministers, to whom in our infirmities we are to seek for help. Yet not so that we rely too much, or wholly upon them: a Jove principium, we must first begin with [2810]prayer, and then use physic; not one without the other, but both together. To pray alone, and reject ordinary means, is to do like him in Aesop, that when his cart was stalled, lay flat on his back, and cried aloud help Hercules, but that was to little purpose, except as his friend advised him, rotis tute ipse annitaris, he whipped his horses withal, and put his shoulder to the wheel. God works by means, as Christ cured the blind man with clay and spittle: Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano. As we must pray for health of body and mind, so we must use our utmost endeavours to preserve and continue it. Some kind of devils are not cast out but by fasting and prayer, and both necessarily required, not one without the other. For all the physic we can use, art, excellent industry, is to no purpose without calling upon God, nil juvat immensos Cratero promittere montes: it is in vain to seek for help, run, ride, except God bless us.
That we must pray to God, no man doubts; but whether we should pray to saints in such cases, or whether they can do us any good, it may be lawfully controverted. Whether their images, shrines, relics, consecrated things, holy water, medals, benedictions, those divine amulets, holy exorcisms, and the sign of the cross, be available in this disease? The papists on the one side stiffly maintain how many melancholy, mad, demoniacal persons are daily cured at St. Anthony's Church in Padua, at St. Vitus' in Germany, by our Lady of Loretto in Italy, our Lady of Sichem in the Low Countries: [2822]Quae et caecis lumen, aegris salutem, mortuis vitam, claudis gressum reddit, omnes morbos corporis, animi, curat, et in ipsos daemones imperium exercet; she cures halt, lame, blind, all diseases of body and mind, and commands the devil himself, saith Lipsius. “twenty-five thousand in a day come thither,” [2823]quis nisi numen in illum locum sic induxit; who brought them? in auribus, in oculis omnium gesta, novae novitia; new news lately done, our eyes and ears are full of her cures, and who can relate them all? They have a proper saint almost for every peculiar infirmity: for poison, gouts, agues, Petronella: St. Romanus for such as are possessed; Valentine for the falling sickness; St. Vitus for madmen, &c. and as of old [2824]Pliny reckons up Gods for all diseases, (Febri fanum dicalum est) Lilius Giraldus repeats many of her ceremonies: all affections of the mind were heretofore accounted gods, [2825]love, and sorrow, virtue, honour, liberty, contumely, impudency, had their temples, tempests, seasons, Crepitus Ventris, dea Vacuna, dea Cloacina, there was a goddess of idleness, a goddess of the draught, or jakes, Prema, Premunda, Priapus, bawdy gods, and gods for all [2826] offices. Varro reckons up 30,000 gods: Lucian makes Podagra the gout a goddess, and assigns her priests and ministers: and melancholy comes not behind; for as Austin mentioneth, lib. 4. de Civit. Dei, cap. 9. there was of old Angerona dea, and she had her chapel and feasts, to whom (saith [2827]Macrobius) they did offer sacrifice yearly, that she might be pacified as well as the rest. 'Tis no new thing, you see this of papists; and in my judgment, that old doting Lipsius might have fitter dedicated his [2828]pen after all his labours, to this our goddess of melancholy, than to his Virgo Halensis, and been her chaplain, it would have become him better: but he, poor man, thought no harm in that which he did, and will not be persuaded but that he doth well, he hath so many patrons, and honourable precedents in the like kind, that justify as much, as eagerly, and more than he there saith of his lady and mistress: read but superstitious Coster and Gretser's Tract de Cruce, Laur. Arcturus Fanteus de Invoc. Sanct. Bellarmine, Delrio dis. mag. tom. 3. l. 6. quaest. 2. sect. 3. Greg. Tolosanus tom. 2. lib. 8. cap. 24. Syntax. Strozius Cicogna lib. 4. cap. 9. Tyreus, Hieronymus Mengus, and you shall find infinite examples of cures done in this kind, by holy waters, relics, crosses, exorcisms, amulets, images, consecrated beads, &c. Barradius the Jesuit boldly gives it out, that Christ's countenance, and the Virgin Mary's, would cure melancholy, if one had looked steadfastly on them. P. Morales the Spaniard in his book de pulch. Jes. et Mar. confirms the same out of Carthusianus, and I know not whom, that it was a common proverb in those days, for such as were troubled in mind to say, eamus ad videndum filium Mariae, let us see the son of Mary, as they now do post to St. Anthony's in Padua, or to St. Hilary's at Poitiers in France. [2829] In a closet of that church, there is at this day St. Hilary's bed to be seen, “to which they bring all the madmen in the country, and after some prayers and other ceremonies, they lay them down there to sleep, and so they recover.” It is an ordinary thing in those parts, to send all their madmen to St. Hilary's cradle. They say the like of St. Tubery in [2830] another place. Giraldus Cambrensis Itin. Camb. c. 1. tells strange stories of St. Ciricius' staff, that would cure this and all other diseases. Others say as much (as [2831]Hospinian observes) of the three kings of Cologne; their names written in parchment, and hung about a patient's neck, with the sign of the cross, will produce like effects. Read Lippomanus, or that golden legend of Jacobus de Voragine, you shall have infinite stories, or those new relations of our [2832]Jesuits in Japan and China, of Mat. Riccius, Acosta, Loyola, Xaverius's life, &c. Jasper Belga, a Jesuit, cured a mad woman by hanging St. John's gospel about her neck, and many such. Holy water did as much in Japan, &c. Nothing so familiar in their works, as such examples.
But we on the other side seek to God alone. We say with David, Psal. xlvi. 1. “God is our hope and strength, and help in trouble, ready to be found.” For their catalogue of examples, we make no other answer, but that they are false fictions, or diabolical illusions, counterfeit miracles. We cannot deny but that it is an ordinary thing on St. Anthony's day in Padua, to bring diverse madmen and demoniacal persons to be cured: yet we make a doubt whether such parties be so affected indeed, but prepared by their priests, by certain ointments and drams, to cozen the commonalty, as [2833] Hildesheim well saith; the like is commonly practised in Bohemia as Mathiolus gives us to understand in his preface to his comment upon Dioscorides. But we need not run so far for examples in this kind, we have a just volume published at home to this purpose. [2834]“A declaration of egregious popish impostures, to withdraw the hearts of religious men under the pretence of casting out of devils, practised by Father Edmunds, alias Weston, a Jesuit, and divers Romish priests, his wicked associates,” with the several parties' names, confessions, examinations, &c. which were pretended to be possessed. But these are ordinary tricks only to get opinion and money, mere impostures. Aesculapius of old, that counterfeit God, did as many famous cures; his temple (as [2835]Strabo relates) was daily full of patients, and as many several tables, inscriptions, pendants, donories, &c. to be seen in his church, as at this day our Lady of Loretto's in Italy. It was a custom long since,
Of those diverse gifts which our apostle Paul saith God hath bestowed on man, this of physic is not the least, but most necessary, and especially conducing to the good of mankind. Next therefore to God in all our extremities (“for of the most high cometh healing,” Ecclus. xxxviii. 2.) we must seek to, and rely upon the Physician, [2843]who is Manus Dei, saith Hierophilus, and to whom he hath given knowledge, that he might be glorified in his wondrous works. “With such doth he heal men, and take away their pains,” Ecclus. xxxviii. 6. 7. “when thou hast need of him, let him not go from thee. The hour may come that their enterprises may have good success,” ver. 13. It is not therefore to be doubted, that if we seek a physician as we ought, we may be eased of our infirmities, such a one I mean as is sufficient, and worthily so called; for there be many mountebanks, quacksalvers, empirics, in every street almost, and in every village, that take upon them this name, make this noble and profitable art to be evil spoken of and contemned, by reason of these base and illiterate artificers: but such a physician I speak of, as is approved, learned, skilful, honest, &c., of whose duty Wecker, Antid. cap. 2. and Syntax. med. Crato, Julius Alexandrinus medic. Heurnius prax. med. lib. 3. cap. 1. &c. treat at large. For this particular disease, him that shall take upon him to cure it, [2844]Paracelsus will have to be a magician, a chemist, a philosopher, an astrologer; Thurnesserus, Severinus the Dane, and some other of his followers, require as much: “many of them cannot be cured but by magic.” [2845]Paracelsus is so stiff for those chemical medicines, that in his cures he will admit almost of no other physic, deriding in the mean time Hippocrates, Galen, and all their followers: but magic, and all such remedies I have already censured, and shall speak of chemistry [2846]elsewhere. Astrology is required by many famous physicians, by Ficinus, Crato, Fernelius; [2847]doubted of, and exploded by others: I will not take upon me to decide the controversy myself, Johannes Hossurtus, Thomas Boderius, and Maginus in the preface to his mathematical physic, shall determine for me. Many physicians explode astrology in physic (saith he), there is no use of it, unam artem ac quasi temerarium insectantur, ac gloriam sibi ab ejus imperitia, aucupari: but I will reprove physicians by physicians, that defend and profess it, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicen. &c., that count them butchers without it, homicidas medicos Astrologiae ignaros, &c. Paracelsus goes farther, and will have his physician [2848]predestinated to this man's cure, this malady; and time of cure, the scheme of each geniture inspected, gathering of herbs, of administering astrologically observed; in which Thurnesserus and some iatromathematical professors, are too superstitious in my judgment. [2849]“Hellebore will help, but not alway, not given by every physician, &c.” but these men are too peremptory and self-conceited as I think. But what do I do, interposing in that which is beyond my reach? A blind man cannot judge of colours, nor I peradventure of these things. Only thus much I would require, honesty in every physician, that he be not over-careless or covetous, harpy-like to make a prey of his patient; Carnificis namque est (as [2850]Wecker notes) inter ipsos cruciatus ingens precium exposcere, as a hungry chirurgeon often produces and wire-draws his cure, so long as there is any hope of pay, Non missura cutem, nisi plena cruoris hirudo. [2851]Many of them, to get a fee, will give physic to every one that comes, when there is no cause, and they do so irritare silentem morbum, as [2852]Heurnius complains, stir up a silent disease, as it often falleth out, which by good counsel, good advice alone, might have been happily composed, or by rectification of those six non-natural things otherwise cured. This is Naturae bellum inferre, to oppugn nature, and to make a strong body weak. Arnoldus in his 8 and 11 Aphorisms gives cautions against, and expressly forbiddeth it. [2853]“A wise physician will not give physic, but upon necessity, and first try medicinal diet, before he proceed to medicinal cure.” [2854]In another place he laughs those men to scorn, that think longis syrupis expugnare daemones et animi phantasmata, they can purge fantastical imaginations and the devil by physic. Another caution is, that they proceed upon good grounds, if so be there be need of physic, and not mistake the disease; they are often deceived by the [2855]similitude of symptoms, saith Heurnius, and I could give instance in many consultations, wherein they have prescribed opposite physic. Sometimes they go too perfunctorily to work, in not prescribing a just [2856]course of physic: To stir up the humour, and not to purge it, doth often more harm than good. Montanus consil. 30. inveighs against such perturbations, “that purge to the halves, tire nature, and molest the body to no purpose.” 'Tis a crabbed humour to purge, and as Laurentius calls this disease, the reproach of physicians: Bessardus, flagellum medicorum, their lash; and for that cause, more carefully to be respected. Though the patient be averse, saith Laurentius, desire help, and refuse it again, though he neglect his own health, it behoves a good physician not to leave him helpless. But most part they offend in that other extreme, they prescribe too much physic, and tire out their bodies with continual potions, to no purpose. Aetius tetrabib. 2. 2. ser. cap. 90. will have them by all means therefore [2857]“to give some respite to nature,” to leave off now and then; and Laelius a Fonte Eugubinus in his consultations, found it (as he there witnesseth) often verified by experience, [2858]“that after a deal of physic to no purpose, left to themselves, they have recovered.” 'Tis that which Nic. Piso, Donatus Altomarus, still inculcate, dare requiem naturae, to give nature rest.
When these precedent cautions are accurately kept, and that we have now got a skilful, an honest physician to our mind, if his patient will not be conformable, and content to be ruled by him, all his endeavours will come to no good end. Many things are necessarily to be observed and continued on the patient's behalf: First that he be not too niggardly miserable of his purse, or think it too much he bestows upon himself, and to save charges endanger his health. The Abderites, when they sent for [2859]Hippocrates, promised him what reward he would, [2860]“all the gold they had, if all the city were gold he should have it.” Naaman the Syrian, when he went into Israel to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy, took with him ten talents of silver, six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment, (2 Kings v. 5.) Another thing is, that out of bashfulness he do not conceal his grief; if aught trouble his mind, let him freely disclose it, Stultorum incurata pudor malus ulcera celat: by that means he procures to himself much mischief, and runs into a greater inconvenience: he must be willing to be cured, and earnestly desire it. Pars sanitatis velle sanare fuit, (Seneca). 'Tis a part of his cure to wish his own health, and not to defer it too long.
A third thing to be required in a patient, is confidence, to be of good cheer, and have sure hope that his physician can help him. [2866]Damascen the Arabian requires likewise in the physician himself, that he be confident he can cure him, otherwise his physic will not be effectual, and promise withal that he will certainly help him, make him believe so at least. [2867]Galeottus gives this reason, because the form of health is contained in the physician's mind, and as Galen, holds [2868]“confidence and hope to be more good than physic,” he cures most in whom most are confident. Axiocus sick almost to death, at the very sight of Socrates recovered his former health. Paracelsus assigns it for an only cause, why Hippocrates was so fortunate in his cures, not for any extraordinary skill he had; [2869]but “because the common people had a most strong conceit of his worth.” To this of confidence we may add perseverance, obedience, and constancy, not to change his physician, or dislike him upon every toy; for he that so doth (saith [2870]Janus Damascen) “or consults with many, falls into many errors; or that useth many medicines.” It was a chief caveat of [2871]Seneca to his friend Lucilius, that he should not alter his physician, or prescribed physic: “Nothing hinders health more; a wound can never be cured, that hath several plasters.” Crato consil. 186. taxeth all melancholy persons of this fault: [2872]“'Tis proper to them, if things fall not out to their mind, and that they have not present ease, to seek another and another;” (as they do commonly that have sore eyes) “twenty one after another, and they still promise all to cure them, try a thousand remedies; and by this means they increase their malady, make it most dangerous and difficult to be cured.” “They try many” (saith [2873] Montanus) “and profit by none:” and for this cause, consil. 24. he enjoins his patient before he take him in hand, [2874]“perseverance and sufferance, for in such a small time no great matter can be effected, and upon that condition he will administer physic, otherwise all his endeavour and counsel would be to small purpose.” And in his 31. counsel for a notable matron, he tells her, [2875]“if she will be cured, she must be of a most abiding patience, faithful obedience, and singular perseverance; if she remit, or despair, she can expect or hope for no good success.” Consil. 230. for an Italian Abbot, he makes it one of the greatest reasons why this disease is so incurable, [2876]“because the parties are so restless, and impatient, and will therefore have him that intends to be eased,” [2877]“to take physic, not for a month, a year, but to apply himself to their prescriptions all the days of his life.” Last of all, it is required that the patient be not too bold to practise upon himself, without an approved physician's consent, or to try conclusions, if he read a receipt in a book; for so, many grossly mistake, and do themselves more harm than good. That which is conducing to one man, in one case, the same time is opposite to another. [2878]An ass and a mule went laden over a brook, the one with salt, the other with wool: the mule's pack was wet by chance, the salt melted, his burden the lighter, and he thereby much eased: he told the ass, who, thinking to speed as well, wet his pack likewise at the next water, but it was much the heavier, he quite tired. So one thing may be good and bad to several parties, upon diverse occasions. “Many things” (saith [2879] Penottus) “are written in our books, which seem to the reader to be excellent remedies, but they that make use of them are often deceived, and take for physic poison.” I remember in Valleriola's observations, a story of one John Baptist a Neapolitan, that finding by chance a pamphlet in Italian, written in praise of hellebore, would needs adventure on himself, and took one dram for one scruple, and had not he been sent for, the poor fellow had poisoned himself. From whence he concludes out of Damascenus 2 et 3. Aphoris. [2880]“that without exquisite knowledge, to work out of books is most dangerous: how unsavoury a thing it is to believe writers, and take upon trust, as this patient perceived by his own peril.” I could recite such another example of mine own knowledge, of a friend of mine, that finding a receipt in Brassivola, would needs take hellebore in substance, and try it on his own person; but had not some of his familiars come to visit him by chance, he had by his indiscretion hazarded himself: many such I have observed. These are those ordinary cautions, which I should think fit to be noted, and he that shall keep them, as [2881] Montanus saith, shall surely be much eased, if not thoroughly cured.
Physic itself in the last place is to be considered; “for the Lord hath created medicines of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them.” Ecclus. xxxviii. 4. ver. 8. “of such doth the apothecary make a confection,” &c. Of these medicines there be diverse and infinite kinds, plants, metals, animals, &c., and those of several natures, some good for one, hurtful to another: some noxious in themselves, corrected by art, very wholesome and good, simples, mixed, &c., and therefore left to be managed by discreet and skilful physicians, and thence applied to man's use. To this purpose they have invented method, and several rules of art, to put these remedies in order, for their particular ends. Physic (as Hippocrates defines it) is nought else but [2882]“addition and subtraction;” and as it is required in all other diseases, so in this of melancholy it ought to be most accurate, it being (as [2883]Mercurialis acknowledgeth) so common an affection in these our times, and therefore fit to be understood. Several prescripts and methods I find in several men, some take upon them to cure all maladies with one medicine, severally applied, as that panacea, aurum potabile, so much controverted in these days, herba solis, &c. Paracelsus reduceth all diseases to four principal heads, to whom Severinus, Ravelascus, Leo Suavius, and others adhere and imitate: those are leprosy, gout, dropsy, falling-sickness. To which they reduce the rest; as to leprosy, ulcers, itches, furfurs, scabs, &c. To gout, stone, colic, toothache, headache, &c. To dropsy, agues, jaundice, cachexia, &c. To the falling-sickness, belong palsy, vertigo, cramps, convulsions, incubus, apoplexy, &c. [2884]“If any of these four principal be cured” (saith Ravelascus) “all the inferior are cured,” and the same remedies commonly serve: but this is too general, and by some contradicted: for this peculiar disease of melancholy, of which I am now to speak, I find several cures, several methods and prescripts. They that intend the practic cure of melancholy, saith Duretus in his notes to Hollerius, set down nine peculiar scopes or ends; Savanarola prescribes seven especial canons. Aelianus Montaltus cap. 26. Faventinus in his empirics, Hercules de Saxonia, &c., have their several injunctions and rules, all tending to one end. The ordinary is threefold, which I mean to follow. Διαιτητικὴ, Pharmaceutica, and Chirurgica, diet, or living, apothecary, chirurgery, which Wecker, Crato, Guianerius, &c., and most, prescribe; of which I will insist, and speak in their order.
Diet, Διαιτητικὴ, victus, or living, according to [2885] Fuchsius and others, comprehends those six non-natural things, which I have before specified, are especial causes, and being rectified, a sole or chief part of the cure. [2886]Johannes Arculanus, cap. 16. in 9. Rhasis, accounts the rectifying of these six a sufficient cure. Guianerius, tract. 15, cap. 9. calls them, propriam et primam curam, the principal cure: so doth Montanus, Crato, Mercurialis, Altomarus, &c., first to be tried, Lemnius, instit. cap. 22, names them the hinges of our health, [2887]no hope of recovery without them. Reinerus Solenander, in his seventh consultation for a Spanish young gentlewoman, that was so melancholy she abhorred all company, and would not sit at table with her familiar friends, prescribes this physic above the rest, [2888]no good to be done without it. [2889]Aretus, lib. 1. cap. 7. an old physician, is of opinion, that this is enough of itself, if the party be not too far gone in sickness. [2890]Crato, in a consultation of his for a noble patient, tells him plainly, that if his highness will keep but a good diet, he will warrant him his former health. [2891]Montanus, consil. 27. for a nobleman of France, admonisheth his lordship to be most circumspect in his diet, or else all his other physic will [2892]be to small purpose. The same injunction I find verbatim in J. Caesar Claudinus, Respon. 34. Scoltzii, consil. 183. Trallianus, cap. 16. lib. 1. Laelius a Fonte Aeugubinus often brags, that he hath done more cures in this kind by rectification of diet, than all other physic besides. So that in a word I may say to most melancholy men, as the fox said to the weasel, that could not get out of the garner, Macra cavum repetes, quem macra subisti, [2893]the six non-natural things caused it, and they must cure it. Which howsoever I treat of, as proper to the meridian of melancholy, yet nevertheless, that which is here said with him in [2894]Tully, though writ especially for the good of his friends at Tarentum and Sicily, yet it will generally serve [2895]most other diseases, and help them likewise, if it be observed.
Of these six non-natural things, the first is diet, properly so called, which consists in meat and drink, in which we must consider substance, quantity, quality, and that opposite to the precedent. In substance, such meats are generally commended, which are [2896]“moist, easy of digestion, and not apt to engender wind, not fried, nor roasted, but sod” (saith Valescus, Altomarus, Piso, &c.) “hot and moist, and of good nourishment;” Crato, consil. 21. lib. 2. admits roast meat, [2897]if the burned and scorched superficies, the brown we call it, be pared off. Salvianus, lib. 2. cap. 1. cries out on cold and dry meats; [2898]young flesh and tender is approved, as of kid, rabbits, chickens, veal, mutton, capons, hens, partridge, pheasant, quails, and all mountain birds, which are so familiar in some parts of Africa, and in Italy, and as [2899]Dublinius reports, the common food of boors and clowns in Palestine. Galen takes exception at mutton, but without question he means that rammy mutton, which is in Turkey and Asia Minor, which have those great fleshy tails, of forty-eight pounds weight, as Vertomannus witnesseth, navig. lib. 2. cap. 5. The lean of fat meat is best, and all manner of broths, and pottage, with borage, lettuce, and such wholesome herbs are excellent good, especially of a cock boiled; all spoon meat. Arabians commend brains, but [2900]Laurentius, c. 8. excepts against them, and so do many others; [2901]eggs are justified as a nutritive wholesome meat, butter and oil may pass, but with some limitation; so [2902]Crato confines it, and “to some men sparingly at set times, or in sauce,” and so sugar and honey are approved. [2903]All sharp and sour sauces must be avoided, and spices, or at least seldom used: and so saffron sometimes in broth may be tolerated; but these things may be more freely used, as the temperature of the party is hot or cold, or as he shall find inconvenience by them. The thinnest, whitest, smallest wine is best, not thick, nor strong; and so of beer, the middling is fittest. Bread of good wheat, pure, well purged from the bran is preferred; Laurentius, cap. 8. would have it kneaded with rain water, if it may be gotten.
Water.] Pure, thin, light water by all means use, of good smell and taste, like to the air in sight, such as is soon hot, soon cold, and which Hippocrates so much approves, if at least it may be had. Rain water is purest, so that it fall not down in great drops, and be used forthwith, for it quickly putrefies. Next to it fountain water that riseth in the east, and runneth eastward, from a quick running spring, from flinty, chalky, gravelly grounds: and the longer a river runneth, it is commonly the purest, though many springs do yield the best water at their fountains. The waters in hotter countries, as in Turkey, Persia, India, within the tropics, are frequently purer than ours in the north, more subtile, thin, and lighter, as our merchants observe, by four ounces in a pound, pleasanter to drink, as good as our beer, and some of them, as Choaspis in Persia, preferred by the Persian kings, before wine itself.
Amongst fishes, those are most allowed of, that live in gravelly or sandy waters, pikes, perch, trout, gudgeon, smelts, flounders, &c. Hippolitus Salvianus takes exception at carp; but I dare boldly say with [2917] Dubravius, it is an excellent meat, if it come not from [2918]muddy pools, that it retain not an unsavoury taste. Erinacius Marinus is much commended by Oribatius, Aetius, and most of our late writers.
[2919]Crato, consil. 21. lib. 2. censures all manner of fruits, as subject to putrefaction, yet tolerable at sometimes, after meals, at second course, they keep down vapours, and have their use. Sweet fruits are best, as sweet cherries, plums, sweet apples, pearmains, and pippins, which Laurentius extols, as having a peculiar property against this disease, and Plater magnifies, omnibus modis appropriata conveniunt, but they must be corrected for their windiness: ripe grapes are good, and raisins of the sun, musk-melons well corrected, and sparingly used. Figs are allowed, and almonds blanched. Trallianus discommends figs, [2920]Salvianus olives and capers, which [2921]others especially like of, and so of pistick nuts. Montanus and Mercurialis out of Avenzoar, admit peaches, [2922]pears, and apples baked after meals, only corrected with sugar, and aniseed, or fennel-seed, and so they may be profitably taken, because they strengthen the stomach, and keep down vapours. The like may be said of preserved cherries, plums, marmalade of plums, quinces, &c., but not to drink after them. [2923]Pomegranates, lemons, oranges are tolerated, if they be not too sharp.
[2924]Crato will admit of no herbs, but borage, bugloss, endive, fennel, aniseed, baum; Callenius and Arnoldus tolerate lettuce, spinach, beets, &c. The same Crato will allow no roots at all to be eaten. Some approve of potatoes, parsnips, but all corrected for wind. No raw salads; but as Laurentius prescribes, in broths; and so Crato commends many of them: or to use borage, hops, baum, steeped in their ordinary drink. [2925]Avenzoar magnifies the juice of a pomegranate, if it be sweet, and especially rose water, which he would have to be used in every dish, which they put in practice in those hot countries, about Damascus, where (if we may believe the relations of Vertomannus) many hogsheads of rose water are to be sold in the market at once, it is in so great request with them.
Man alone, saith [2926]Cardan, eats and drinks without appetite, and useth all his pleasure without necessity, animae vitio, and thence come many inconveniences unto him. For there is no meat whatsoever, though otherwise wholesome and good, but if unseasonably taken, or immoderately used, more than the stomach can well bear, it will engender crudity, and do much harm. Therefore [2927]Crato adviseth his patient to eat but twice a day, and that at his set meals, by no means to eat without an appetite, or upon a full stomach, and to put seven hours' difference between dinner and supper. Which rule if we did observe in our colleges, it would be much better for our healths: but custom, that tyrant, so prevails, that contrary to all good order and rules of physic, we scarce admit of five. If after seven hours' tarrying he shall have no stomach, let him defer his meal, or eat very little at his ordinary time of repast. This very counsel was given by Prosper Calenus to Cardinal Caesius, labouring of this disease; and [2928] Platerus prescribes it to a patient of his, to be most severely kept. Guianerius admits of three meals a day, but Montanus, consil. 23. pro. Ab. Italo, ties him precisely to two. And as he must not eat overmuch, so he may not absolutely fast; for as Celsus contends, lib. 1. Jacchinus 15. in 9. Rhasis, [2929]repletion and inanition may both do harm in two contrary extremes. Moreover, that which he doth eat, must be well [2930]chewed, and not hastily gobbled, for that causeth crudity and wind; and by all means to eat no more than he can well digest. “Some think” (saith [2931] Trincavelius, lib. 11. cap. 29. de curand. part. hum.) “the more they eat the more they nourish themselves:” eat and live, as the proverb is, “not knowing that only repairs man, which is well concocted, not that which is devoured.” Melancholy men most part have good [2932]appetites, but ill digestion, and for that cause they must be sure to rise with an appetite; and that which Socrates and Disarius the physicians in [2933]Macrobius so much require, St. Hierom enjoins Rusticus to eat and drink no more than, will [2934]satisfy hunger and thirst. [2935]Lessius, the Jesuit, holds twelve, thirteen, or fourteen ounces, or in our northern countries, sixteen at most, (for all students, weaklings, and such as lead an idle sedentary life) of meat, bread, &c., a fit proportion for a whole day, and as much or little more of drink. Nothing pesters the body and mind sooner than to be still fed, to eat and ingurgitate beyond all measure, as many do. [2936] “By overmuch eating and continual feasts they stifle nature, and choke up themselves; which, had they lived coarsely, or like galley slaves been tied to an oar, might have happily prolonged many fair years.”
A great inconvenience comes by variety of dishes, which causeth the precedent distemperature, [2937]“than which” (saith Avicenna) “nothing is worse; to feed on diversity of meats, or overmuch,” Sertorius-like, in lucem caenare, and as commonly they do in Muscovy and Iceland, to prolong their meals all day long, or all night. Our northern countries offend especially in this, and we in this island (ampliter viventes in prandiis et caenis, as [2938]Polydore notes) are most liberal feeders, but to our own hurt. [2939]Persicos odi puer apparatus: “Excess of meat breedeth sickness, and gluttony causeth choleric diseases: by surfeiting many perish, but he that dieteth himself prolongeth his life,” Ecclus. xxxvii. 29, 30. We account it a great glory for a man to have his table daily furnished with variety of meats: but hear the physician, he pulls thee by the ear as thou sittest, and telleth thee, [2940]“that nothing can be more noxious to thy health than such variety and plenty.” Temperance is a bridle of gold, and he that can use it aright, [2941]ego non summis viris comparo, sed simillimum Deo judico, is liker a God than a man: for as it will transform a beast to a man again, so will it make a man a God. To preserve thine honour, health, and to avoid therefore all those inflations, torments, obstructions, crudities, and diseases that come by a full diet, the best way is to [2942]feed sparingly of one or two dishes at most, to have ventrem bene moratum, as Seneca calls it, [2943]“to choose one of many, and to feed on that alone,” as Crato adviseth his patient. The same counsel [2944]Prosper Calenus gives to Cardinal Caesius, to use a moderate and simple diet: and though his table be jovially furnished by reason of his state and guests, yet for his own part to single out some one savoury dish and feed on it. The same is inculcated by [2945]Crato, consil. 9. l. 2. to a noble personage affected with this grievance, he would have his highness to dine or sup alone, without all his honourable attendance and courtly company, with a private friend or so, [2946]a dish or two, a cup of Rhenish wine, &c. Montanus, consil. 24. for a noble matron enjoins her one dish, and by no means to drink between meals. The like, consil. 229. or not to eat till he be an hungry, which rule Berengarius did most strictly observe, as Hilbertus, Cenomecensis Episc. writes in his life,
It much avails likewise to keep good order in our diet, [2948]“to eat liquid things first, broths, fish, and such meats as are sooner corrupted in the stomach; harder meats of digestion must come last.” Crato would have the supper less than the dinner, which Cardan, Contradict. lib. 1. tract. 5. contradict. 18. disallows, and that by the authority of Galen. 7. art. curat. cap. 6. and for four reasons he will have the supper biggest: I have read many treatises to this purpose, I know not how it may concern some few sick men, but for my part generally for all, I should subscribe to that custom of the Romans, to make a sparing dinner, and a liberal supper; all their preparation and invitation was still at supper, no mention of dinner. Many reasons I could give, but when all is said pro and con, [2949]Cardan's rule is best, to keep that we are accustomed unto, though it be naught, and to follow our disposition and appetite in some things is not amiss; to eat sometimes of a dish which is hurtful, if we have an extraordinary liking to it. Alexander Severus loved hares and apples above all other meats, as [2950]Lampridius relates in his life: one pope pork, another peacock, &c.; what harm came of it? I conclude our own experience is the best physician; that diet which is most propitious to one, is often pernicious to another, such is the variety of palates, humours, and temperatures, let every man observe, and be a law unto himself. Tiberius, in [2951]Tacitus, did laugh at all such, that thirty years of age would ask counsel of others concerning matters of diet; I say the same.
These few rules of diet he that keeps, shall surely find great ease and speedy remedy by it. It is a wonder to relate that prodigious temperance of some hermits, anchorites, and fathers of the church: he that shall but read their lives, written by Hierom, Athanasius, &c., how abstemious heathens have been in this kind, those Curii and Fabritii, those old philosophers, as Pliny records, lib. 11. Xenophon, lib. 1. de vit. Socrat. Emperors and kings, as Nicephorus relates, Eccles. hist. lib. 18. cap. 8. of Mauritius, Ludovicus Pius, &c., and that admirable [2952]example of Ludovicus Cornarus, a patrician of Venice, cannot but admire them. This have they done voluntarily and in health; what shall these private men do that are visited with sickness, and necessarily [2953]enjoined to recover, and continue their health? It is a hard thing to observe a strict diet, et qui medice vivit, misere vivit, [2954]as the saying is, quale hoc ipsum erit vivere, his si privatus fueris? as good be buried, as so much debarred of his appetite; excessit medicina malum, the physic is more troublesome than the disease, so he complained in the poet, so thou thinkest: yet he that loves himself will easily endure this little misery, to avoid a greater inconvenience; e malis minimum better do this than do worse. And as [2955]Tully holds, “better be a temperate old man than a lascivious youth.” 'Tis the only sweet thing (which he adviseth) so to moderate ourselves, that we may have senectutem in juventute, et in juventute senectutem, be youthful in our old age, staid in our youth, discreet and temperate in both.
I have declared in the causes what harm costiveness hath done in procuring this disease; if it be so noxious, the opposite must needs be good, or mean at least, as indeed it is, and to this cure necessarily required; maxime conducit, saith Montaltus, cap. 27. it very much avails. [2956] Altomarus, cap. 7, “commends walking in a morning, into some fair green pleasant fields, but by all means first, by art or nature, he will have these ordinary excrements evacuated.” Piso calls it, Beneficium ventris, the benefit, help or pleasure of the belly, for it doth much ease it. Laurentius, cap. 8, Crato, consil. 21. l. 2. prescribes it once a day at least: where nature is defective, art must supply, by those lenitive electuaries, suppositories, condite prunes, turpentine, clysters, as shall be shown. Prosper Calenus, lib. de atra bile, commends clysters in hypochondriacal melancholy, still to be used as occasion serves; [2957] Peter Cnemander in a consultation of his pro hypocondriaco, will have his patient continually loose, and to that end sets down there many forms of potions and clysters. Mercurialis, consil. 88. if this benefit come not of its own accord, prescribes [2958]clysters in the first place: so doth Montanus, consil. 24. consil. 31 et 229. he commends turpentine to that purpose: the same he ingeminates, consil. 230. for an Italian abbot. 'Tis very good to wash his hands and face often, to shift his clothes, to have fair linen about him, to be decently and comely attired, for sordes vitiant, nastiness defiles and dejects any man that is so voluntarily, or compelled by want, it dulleth the spirits.
Baths are either artificial or natural, both have their special uses in this malady, and as [2959]Alexander supposeth, lib. 1. cap. 16. yield as speedy a remedy as any other physic whatsoever. Aetius would have them daily used, assidua balnea, Tetra. 2. sect. 2. c. 9. Galen cracks how many several cures he hath performed in this kind by use of baths alone, and Rufus pills, moistening them which are otherwise dry. Rhasis makes it a principal cure, Tota cura sit in humectando, to bathe and afterwards anoint with oil. Jason Pratensis, Laurentius, cap. 8. and Montanus set down their peculiar forms of artificial baths. Crato, consil. 17. lib. 2. commends mallows, camomile, violets, borage to be boiled in it, and sometimes fair water alone, and in his following counsel, Balneum aquae dulcis solum saepissime profuisse compertum habemus. So doth Fuchsius, lib. 1. cap. 33. Frisimelica, 2. consil. 42. in Trincavelius. Some beside herbs prescribe a ram's head and other things to be boiled. [2960] Fernelius, consil. 44. will have them used ten or twelve days together; to which he must enter fasting, and so continue in a temperate heat, and after that frictions all over the body. Lelius Aegubinus, consil. 142. and Christoph. Aererus, in a consultation of his, hold once or twice a week sufficient to bathe, the [2961]“water to be warm, not hot, for fear of sweating.” Felix Plater, observ. lib. 1. for a melancholy lawyer, [2962] “will have lotions of the head still joined to these baths, with a ley wherein capital herbs have been boiled.” [2963]Laurentius speaks of baths of milk, which I find approved by many others. And still after bath, the body to be anointed with oil of bitter almonds, of violets, new or fresh butter, [2964]capon's grease, especially the backbone, and then lotions of the head, embrocations, &c. These kinds of baths have been in former times much frequented, and diversely varied, and are still in general use in those eastern countries. The Romans had their public baths very sumptuous and stupend, as those of Antoninus and Diocletian. Plin. 36. saith there were an infinite number of them in Rome, and mightily frequented; some bathed seven times a day, as Commodus the emperor is reported to have done; usually twice a day, and they were after anointed with most costly ointments: rich women bathed themselves in milk, some in the milk of five hundred she-asses at once: we have many ruins of such, baths found in this island, amongst those parietines and rubbish of old Roman towns. Lipsius, de mag. Urb. Rom. l. 3, c. 8, Rosinus, Scot of Antwerp, and other antiquaries, tell strange stories of their baths. Gillius, l. 4. cap. ult. Topogr. Constant. reckons up 155 public [2965]baths in Constantinople, of fair building; they are still [2966]frequented in that city by the Turks of all sorts, men and women, and all over Greece, and those hot countries; to absterge belike that fulsomeness of sweat, to which they are there subject. [2967]Busbequius, in his epistles, is very copious in describing the manner of them, how their women go covered, a maid following with a box of ointment to rub them. The richer sort have private baths in their houses; the poorer go to the common, and are generally so curious in this behalf, that they will not eat nor drink until they have bathed, before and after meals some, [2968]“and will not make water (but they will wash their hands) or go to stool.” Leo Afer. l. 3. makes mention of one hundred several baths at Fez in Africa, most sumptuous, and such as have great revenues belonging to them. Buxtorf. cap. 14, Synagog. Jud. speaks of many ceremonies amongst the Jews in this kind; they are very superstitious in their baths, especially women.
Natural baths are praised by some, discommended by others; but it is in a divers respect. [2969]Marcus, de Oddis in Hip. affect. consulted about baths, condemns them for the heat of the liver, because they dry too fast; and yet by and by, [2970]in another counsel for the same disease, he approves them because they cleanse by reason of the sulphur, and would have their water to be drunk. Areteus, c. 7. commends alum baths above the rest; and [2971]Mercurialis, consil. 88. those of Lucca in that hypochondriacal passion. “He would have his patient tarry there fifteen days together, and drink the water of them, and to be bucketed, or have the water poured on his head.” John Baptista, Sylvaticus cont. 64. commends all the baths in Italy, and drinking of their water, whether they be iron, alum, sulphur; so doth [2972]Hercules de Saxonia. But in that they cause sweat and dry so much, he confines himself to hypochondriacal melancholy alone, excepting that of the head and the other. Trincavelius, consil. 14. lib. 1. refers those [2973]Porrectan baths before the rest, because of the mixture of brass, iron, alum, and consil. 35. l. 3. for a melancholy lawyer, and consil. 36. in that hypochondriacal passion, the [2974]baths of Aquaria, and 36. consil. the drinking of them. Frisimelica, consulted amongst the rest in Trincavelius, consil. 42. lib. 2. prefers the waters of [2975]Apona before all artificial baths whatsoever in this disease, and would have one nine years affected with hypochondriacal passions fly to them as to a [2976]holy anchor. Of the same mind is Trincavelius himself there, and yet both put a hot liver in the same party for a cause, and send him to the waters of St. Helen, which are much hotter. Montanus, consil. 230. magnifies the [2977]Chalderinian baths, and consil 237. et 239. he exhorteth to the same, but with this caution, [2978]“that the liver be outwardly anointed with some coolers that it be not overheated.” But these baths must be warily frequented by melancholy persons, or if used, to such as are very cold of themselves, for as Gabelius concludes of all Dutch baths, and especially of those of Baden, “they are good for all cold diseases, [2979]naught for choleric, hot and dry, and all infirmities proceeding of choler, inflammations of the spleen and liver.” Our English baths, as they are hot, must needs incur the same censure: but D. Turner of old, and D. Jones have written at large of them. Of cold baths I find little or no mention in any physician, some speak against them: [2980]Cardan alone out of Agathinus commends “bathing in fresh rivers, and cold waters, and adviseth all such as mean to live long to use it, for it agrees with all ages and complexions, and is most profitable for hot temperatures.” As for sweating, urine, bloodletting by haemrods, or otherwise, I shall elsewhere more opportunely speak of them.
Immoderate Venus in excess, as it is a cause, or in defect; so moderately used to some parties an only help, a present remedy. Peter Forestus calls it aptissimum remedium, a most apposite remedy, [2981]“remitting anger, and reason, that was otherwise bound.” Avicenna Fen. 3. 20. Oribasius med. collect. lib. 6. cap. 37. contend out of Ruffus and others, [2982] “that many madmen, melancholy, and labouring of the falling sickness, have been cured by this alone.” Montaltus cap. 27. de melan. will have it drive away sorrow, and all illusions of the brain, to purge the heart and brain from ill smokes and vapours that offend them: [2983]“and if it be omitted,” as Valescus supposeth, “it makes the mind sad, the body dull and heavy.” Many other inconveniences are reckoned up by Mercatus, and by Rodericus a Castro, in their tracts de melancholia virginum et monialium; ob seminis retentionem saviunt saepe moniales et virgines, but as Platerus adds, si nubant sanantur, they rave single, and pine away, much discontent, but marriage mends all. Marcellus Donatus lib. 2. med. hist. cap. 1. tells a story to confirm this out of Alexander Benedictus, of a maid that was mad, ob menses inhibitos, cum in officinam meritoriam incidisset, a quindecem viris eadem nocte compressa, mensium largo profluvio, quod pluribus annis ante constiterat, non sine magno pudore mane menti restituta discessit. But this must be warily understood, for as Arnoldus objects, lib. 1. breviar. 18. cap. Quid coitus ad melancholicum succum? What affinity have these two? [2984]“except it be manifest that superabundance of seed, or fullness of blood be a cause, or that love, or an extraordinary desire of Venus, have gone before,” or that as Lod. Mercatus excepts, they be very flatuous, and have been otherwise accustomed unto it. Montaltus cap. 27. will not allow of moderate Venus to such as have the gout, palsy, epilepsy, melancholy, except they be very lusty, and full of blood. [2985]Lodovicus Antonius lib. med. miscet. in his chapter of Venus, forbids it utterly to all wrestlers, ditchers, labouring men, &c. [2986]Ficinus and [2987]Marsilius Cognatus puts Venus one of the five mortal enemies of a student: “it consumes the spirits, and weakeneth the brain.” Halyabbas the Arabian, 5. Theor. cap. 36. and Jason Pratensis make it the fountain of most diseases, [2988]“but most pernicious to them who are cold and dry:” a melancholy man must not meddle with it, but in some cases. Plutarch in his book de san. tuend. accounts of it as one of the three principal signs and preservers of health, temperance in this kind: [2989]“to rise with an appetite, to be ready to work, and abstain from venery,” tria saluberrima, are three most healthful things. We see their opposites how pernicious they are to mankind, as to all other creatures they bring death, and many feral diseases: Immodicis brevis est aetas et rara senectus. Aristotle gives instance in sparrows, which are parum vivaces ob salacitatem, [2990]short lived because of their salacity, which is very frequent, as Scoppius in Priapus will better inform you. The extremes being both bad, [2991]the medium is to be kept, which cannot easily be determined. Some are better able to sustain, such as are hot and moist, phlegmatic, as Hippocrates insinuateth, some strong and lusty, well fed like [2992]Hercules, [2993] Proculus the emperor, lusty Laurence, [2994]prostibulum faeminae Messalina the empress, that by philters, and such kind of lascivious meats, use all means to [2995]enable themselves: and brag of it in the end, confodi multas enim, occidi vero paucas per ventrem vidisti, as that Spanish [2996]Celestina merrily said: others impotent, of a cold and dry constitution, cannot sustain those gymnics without great hurt done to their own bodies, of which number (though they be very prone to it) are melancholy men for the most part.
As a long-winged hawk, when he is first whistled off the fist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure fetcheth many a circuit in the air, still soaring higher and higher, till he be come to his full pitch, and in the end when the game is sprung, comes down amain, and stoops upon a sudden: so will I, having now come at last into these ample fields of air, wherein I may freely expatiate and exercise myself for my recreation, awhile rove, wander round about the world, mount aloft to those ethereal orbs and celestial spheres, and so descend to my former elements again. In which progress I will first see whether that relation of the friar of [2997] Oxford be true, concerning those northern parts under the pole (if I meet obiter with the wandering Jew, Elias Artifex, or Lucian's Icaromenippus, they shall be my guides) whether there be such 4. Euripes, and a great rock of loadstones, which may cause the needle in the compass still to bend that way, and what should be the true cause of the variation of the compass, [2998]is it a magnetical rock, or the pole-star, as Cardan will; or some other star in the bear, as Marsilius Ficinus; or a magnetical meridian, as Maurolieus; Vel situs in vena terrae, as Agricola; or the nearness of the next continent, as Cabeus will; or some other cause, as Scaliger, Cortesius, Conimbricenses, Peregrinus contend; why at the Azores it looks directly north, otherwise not? In the Mediterranean or Levant (as some observe) it varies 7. grad. by and by 12. and then 22. In the Baltic Seas, near Rasceburg in Finland, the needle runs round, if any ships come that way, though [2999]Martin Ridley write otherwise, that the needle near the Pole will hardly be forced from his direction. 'Tis fit to be inquired whether certain rules may be made of it, as 11. grad. Lond. variat. alibi 36. &c. and that which is more prodigious, the variation varies in the same place, now taken accurately, 'tis so much after a few years quite altered from that it was: till we have better intelligence, let our Dr. Gilbert, and Nicholas [3000]Cabeus the Jesuit, that have both written great volumes of this subject, satisfy these inquisitors. Whether the sea be open and navigable by the Pole arctic, and which is the likeliest way, that of Bartison the Hollander, under the Pole itself, which for some reasons I hold best: or by Fretum Davis, or Nova Zembla. Whether [3001]Hudson's discovery be true of a new found ocean, any likelihood of Button's Bay in 50. degrees, Hubberd's Hope in 60. that of ut ultra near Sir Thomas Roe's welcome in Northwest Fox, being that the sea ebbs and flows constantly there 15. foot in 12. hours, as our [3002]new cards inform us that California is not a cape, but an island, and the west winds make the neap tides equal to the spring, or that there be any probability to pass by the straits of Anian to China, by the promontory of Tabin. If there be, I shall soon perceive whether [3003]Marcus Polus the Venetian's narration be true or false, of that great city of Quinsay and Cambalu; whether there be any such places, or that as [3004]Matth. Riccius the Jesuit hath written, China and Cataia be all one, the great Cham of Tartary and the king of China be the same; Xuntain and Quinsay, and the city of Cambalu be that new Peking, or such a wall 400 leagues long to part China from Tartary: whether [3005]Presbyter John be in Asia or Africa; M. Polus Venetus puts him in Asia, [3006]the most received opinion is, that he is emperor of the Abyssines, which of old was Ethiopia, now Nubia, under the equator in Africa. Whether [3007]Guinea be an island or part of the continent, or that hungry [3008]Spaniard's discovery of Terra Australis Incognita, or Magellanica, be as true as that of Mercurius Britannius, or his of Utopia, or his of Lucinia. And yet in likelihood it may be so, for without all question it being extended from the tropic of Capricorn to the circle Antarctic, and lying as it doth in the temperate zone, cannot choose but yield in time some flourishing kingdoms to succeeding ages, as America did unto the Spaniards. Shouten and Le Meir have done well in the discovery of the Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient passage to Mare pacificum: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus, whether Herodotus, [3011]Seneca, Plin. lib. 5. cap. 9. Strabo. lib. 5. give a true cause of his annual flowing, [3012]Pagaphetta discourse rightly of it, or of Niger and Senegal; examine Cardan, [3013]Scaliger's reasons, and the rest. Is it from those Etesian winds, or melting of snow in the mountains under the equator (for Jordan yearly overflows when the snow melts in Mount Libanus), or from those great dropping perpetual showers which are so frequent to the inhabitants within the tropics, when the sun is vertical, and cause such vast inundations in Senegal, Maragnan, Oronoco and the rest of those great rivers in Zona Torrida, which have all commonly the same passions at set times: and by good husbandry and policy hereafter no doubt may come to be as populous, as well tilled, as fruitful, as Egypt itself or Cauchinthina? I would observe all those motions of the sea, and from what cause they proceed, from the moon (as the vulgar hold) or earth's motion, which Galileus, in the fourth dialogue of his system of the world, so eagerly proves, and firmly demonstrates; or winds, as [3014] some will. Why in that quiet ocean of Zur, in mari pacifico, it is scarce perceived, in our British seas most violent, in the Mediterranean and Red Sea so vehement, irregular, and diverse? Why the current in that Atlantic Ocean should still be in some places from, in some again towards the north, and why they come sooner than go? and so from Moabar to Madagascar in that Indian Ocean, the merchants come in three weeks, as [3015]Scaliger discusseth, they return scarce in three months, with the same or like winds: the continual current is from east to west. Whether Mount Athos, Pelion, Olympus, Ossa, Caucasus, Atlas, be so high as Pliny, Solinus, Mela relate, above clouds, meteors, ubi nec aurae nec venti spirant (insomuch that they that ascend die suddenly very often, the air is so subtile,) 1250 paces high, according to that measure of Dicearchus, or 78 miles perpendicularly high, as Jacobus Mazonius, sec. 3. et 4. expounding that place of Aristotle about Caucasus; and as [3016]Blancanus the Jesuit contends out of Clavius and Nonius demonstrations de Crepusculis: or rather 32 stadiums, as the most received opinion is; or 4 miles, which the height of no mountain doth perpendicularly exceed, and is equal to the greatest depths of the sea, which is, as Scaliger holds, 1580 paces, Exer. 38, others 100 paces. I would see those inner parts of America, whether there be any such great city of Manoa, or Eldorado, in that golden empire, where the highways are as much beaten (one reports) as between Madrid and Valadolid in Spain; or any such Amazons as he relates, or gigantic Patagones in Chica; with that miraculous mountain [3017]Ybouyapab in the Northern Brazil, cujus jugum sternitur in amoenissimam planitiem, &c. or that of Pariacacca so high elevated in Peru. [3018]The peak of Tenerife how high it is? 70 miles, or 50 as Patricius holds, or 9 as Snellius demonstrates in his Eratosthenes: see that strange [3019]Cirknickzerksey lake in Carniola, whose waters gush so fast out of the ground, that they will overtake a swift horseman, and by and by with as incredible celerity are supped up: which Lazius and Wernerus make an argument of the Argonauts sailing under ground. And that vast den or hole called [3020]Esmellen in Muscovia, quae visitur horriendo hiatu, &c. which if anything casually fall in, makes such a roaring noise, that no thunder, or ordnance, or warlike engine can make the like; such another is Gilber's Cave in Lapland, with many the like. I would examine the Caspian Sea, and see where and how it exonerates itself, after it hath taken in Volga, Jaxares, Oxus, and those great rivers; at the mouth of Oby, or where? What vent the Mexican lake hath, the Titicacan in Peru, or that circular pool in the vale of Terapeia, of which Acosta l. 3. c. 16. hot in a cold country, the spring of which boils up in the middle twenty foot square, and hath no vent but exhalation: and that of Mare mortuum in Palestine, of Thrasymene, at Peruzium in Italy: the Mediterranean itself. For from the ocean, at the Straits of Gibraltar, there is a perpetual current into the Levant, and so likewise by the Thracian Bosphorus out of the Euxine or Black Sea, besides all those great rivers of Nile, Po, Rhone, &c. how is this water consumed, by the sun or otherwise? I would find out with Trajan the fountains of Danube, of Ganges, Oxus, see those Egyptian pyramids, Trajan's bridge, Grotto de Sybilla, Lucullus's fishponds, the temple of Nidrose, &c. (And, if I could, observe what becomes of swallows, storks, cranes, cuckoos, nightingales, redstarts, and many other kind of singing birds, water-fowls, hawks, &c. some of them are only seen in summer, some in winter; some are observed in the [3021]snow, and at no other times, each have their seasons. In winter not a bird is in Muscovy to be found, but at the spring in an instant the woods and hedges are full of them, saith [3022]Herbastein: how comes it to pass? Do they sleep in winter, like Gesner's Alpine mice; or do they lie hid (as [3023]Olaus affirms) “in the bottom of lakes and rivers, spiritum continentes? often so found by fishermen in Poland and Scandia, two together, mouth to mouth, wing to wing; and when the spring comes they revive again, or if they be brought into a stove, or to the fireside.” Or do they follow the sun, as Peter Martyr legat Babylonica l. 2. manifestly convicts, out of his own knowledge; for when he was ambassador in Egypt, he saw swallows, Spanish kites, [3024]and many such other European birds, in December and January very familiarly flying, and in great abundance, about Alexandria, ubi floridae tunc arbores ac viridaria. Or lie they hid in caves, rocks, and hollow trees, as most think, in deep tin-mines or sea-cliffs, as [3025]Mr. Carew gives out? I conclude of them all, for my part, as [3026]Munster doth of cranes and storks; whence they come, whither they go, incompertum adhuc, as yet we know not. We see them here, some in summer, some in winter; “their coming and going is sure in the night: in the plains of Asia” (saith he) “the storks meet on such a set day, he that comes last is torn in pieces, and so they get them gone.” Many strange places, Isthmi, Euripi, Chersonesi, creeks, havens, promontories, straits, Lakes, baths, rocks, mountains, places, and fields, where cities have been ruined or swallowed, battles fought, creatures, sea-monsters, remora, &c. minerals, vegetals. Zoophytes were fit to be considered in such an expedition, and amongst the rest that of [3027]Harbastein his Tartar lamb, [3028]Hector Boethius goosebearing tree in the orchards, to which Cardan lib. 7. cap. 36. de rerum varietat. subscribes: [3029]Vertomannus wonderful palm, that [3030] fly in Hispaniola, that shines like a torch in the night, that one may well see to write; those spherical stones in Cuba which nature hath so made, and those like birds, beasts, fishes, crowns, swords, saws, pots, &c. usually found in the metal mines in Saxony about Mansfield, and in Poland near Nokow and Pallukie, as [3031]Munster and others relate. Many rare creatures and novelties each part of the world affords: amongst the rest, I would know for a certain whether there be any such men, as Leo Suavius, in his comment on Paracelsus de sanit. tuend. and [3032]Gaguinus records in his description of Muscovy, “that in Lucomoria, a province in Russia, lie fast asleep as dead all winter, from the 27 of November, like frogs and swallows, benumbed with cold, but about the 24 of April in the spring they revive again, and go about their business.” I would examine that demonstration of Alexander Picolomineus, whether the earth's superficies be bigger than the seas: or that of Archimedes be true, the superficies of all water is even? Search the depth, and see that variety of sea-monsters and fishes, mermaids, seamen, horses, &c. which it affords. Or whether that be true which Jordanus Brunus scoffs at, that if God did not detain it, the sea would overflow the earth by reason of his higher site, and which Josephus Blancanus the Jesuit in his interpretation on those mathematical places of Aristotle, foolishly fears, and in a just tract proves by many circumstances, that in time the sea will waste away the land, and all the globe of the earth shall be covered with waters; risum teneatis amici? what the sea takes away in one place it adds in another. Methinks he might rather suspect the sea should in time be filled by land, trees grow up, carcasses, &c. that all-devouring fire, omnia devorans et consumens, will sooner cover and dry up the vast ocean with sand and ashes. I would examine the true seat of that terrestrial [3033]paradise, and where Ophir was whence Solomon did fetch his gold: from Peruana, which some suppose, or that Aurea Chersonesus, as Dominicus Niger, Arias Montanus, Goropius, and others will. I would censure all Pliny's, Solinus', Strabo's, Sir John Mandeville's, Olaus Magnus', Marcus Polus' lies, correct those errors in navigation, reform cosmographical charts, and rectify longitudes, if it were possible; not by the compass, as some dream, with Mark Ridley in his treatise of magnetical bodies, cap. 43. for as Cabeus magnet philos. lib. 3. cap. 4. fully resolves, there is no hope thence, yet I would observe some better means to find them out.
I would have a convenient place to go down with Orpheus, Ulysses, Hercules, [3034]Lucian's Menippus, at St. Patrick's purgatory, at Trophonius' den, Hecla in Iceland, Aetna in Sicily, to descend and see what is done in the bowels of the earth: do stones and metals grow there still? how come fir trees to be [3035]digged out from tops of hills, as in our mosses, and marshes all over Europe? How come they to dig up fish bones, shells, beams, ironworks, many fathoms under ground, and anchors in mountains far remote from all seas? [3036]Anno 1460 at Bern in Switzerland 50 fathom deep a ship was digged out of a mountain, where they got metal ore, in which were 48 carcasses of men, with other merchandise. That such things are ordinarily found in tops of hills, Aristotle insinuates in his meteors, [3037]Pomponius Mela in his first book, c. de Numidia, and familiarly in the Alps, saith [3038]Blancanus the Jesuit, the like is to be seen: came this from earthquakes, or from Noah's flood, as Christians suppose, or is there a vicissitude of sea and land, as Anaximenes held of old, the mountains of Thessaly would become seas, and seas again mountains? The whole world belike should be new moulded, when it seemed good to those all-commanding powers, and turned inside out, as we do haycocks in harvest, top to bottom, or bottom to top: or as we turn apples to the fire, move the world upon his centre; that which is under the poles now, should be translated to the equinoctial, and that which is under the torrid zone to the circle arctic and antarctic another while, and so be reciprocally warmed by the sun: or if the worlds be infinite, and every fixed star a sun, with his compassing planets (as Brunus and Campanella conclude) cast three or four worlds into one; or else of one world make three or four new, as it shall seem to them best. To proceed, if the earth be 21,500 miles in [3039]compass, its diameter is 7,000 from us to our antipodes, and what shall be comprehended in all that space? What is the centre of the earth? is it pure element only, as Aristotle decrees, inhabited (as [3040] Paracelsus thinks) with creatures, whose chaos is the earth: or with fairies, as the woods and waters (according to him) are with nymphs, or as the air with spirits? Dionisiodorus, a mathematician in [3041]Pliny, that sent a letter, ad superos after he was dead, from the centre of the earth, to signify what distance the same centre was from the superficies of the same, viz. 42,000 stadiums, might have done well to have satisfied all these doubts. Or is it the place of hell, as Virgil in his Aenides, Plato, Lucian, Dante, and others poetically describe it, and as many of our divines think? In good earnest, Anthony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian College, in Milan, in his great volume de Inferno, lib. 1. cap. 47. is stiff in this tenet, 'tis a corporeal fire tow, cap. 5. I. 2. as he there disputes. “Whatsoever philosophers write” (saith [3042]Surius) “there be certain mouths of hell, and places appointed for the punishment of men's souls, as at Hecla in Iceland, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living: God would have such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed, that there be such punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God.” Kranzius Dan. hist. lib. 2. cap. 24. subscribes to this opinion of Surius, so doth Colerus cap. 12. lib. de immortal animae (out of the authority belike of St. Gregory, Durand, and the rest of the schoolmen, who derive as much from Aetna in Sicily, Lipari, Hiera, and those sulphureous vulcanian islands) making Terra del Fuego, and those frequent volcanoes in America, of which Acosta lib. 3. cap. 24. that fearful mount Hecklebirg in Norway, an especial argument to prove it, [3043]“where lamentable screeches and howlings are continually heard, which strike a terror to the auditors; fiery chariots are commonly seen to bring in the souls of men in the likeness of crows, and devils ordinarily go in and out.” Such another proof is that place near the Pyramids in Egypt, by Cairo, as well to confirm this as the resurrection, mentioned by [3044]Kornmannus mirac. mort. lib. 1. cap. 30. Camerarius oper. suc. cap. 37. Bredenbachius pereg. ter. sanct. and some others, “where once a year dead bodies arise about March, and walk, after awhile hide themselves again: thousands of people come yearly to see them.” But these and such like testimonies others reject, as fables, illusions of spirits, and they will have no such local known place, more than Styx or Phlegethon, Pluto's court, or that poetical Infernus, where Homer's soul was seen hanging on a tree, &c., to which they ferried over in Charon's boat, or went down at Hermione in Greece, compendiaria ad Infernos via, which is the shortest cut, quia nullum a mortuis naulum eo loci exposcunt, (saith [3045]Gerbelius) and besides there were no fees to be paid. Well then, is it hell, or purgatory, as Bellarmine: or Limbus patrum, as Gallucius will, and as Rusca will (for they have made maps of it) [3046]or Ignatius parler? Virgil, sometimes bishop of Saltburg (as Aventinus anno 745 relates) by Bonifacius bishop of Mentz was therefore called in question, because he held antipodes (which they made a doubt whether Christ died for) and so by that means took away the seat of hell, or so contracted it, that it could bear no proportion to heaven, and contradicted that opinion of Austin, Basil, Lactantius that held the earth round as a trencher (whom Acosta and common experience more largely confute) but not as a ball; and Jerusalem where Christ died the middle of it; or Delos, as the fabulous Greeks feigned: because when Jupiter let two eagles loose, to fly from the world's ends east and west, they met at Delos. But that scruple of Bonifacius is now quite taken away by our latter divines: Franciscus Ribera, in cap. 14. Apocalyps. will have hell a material and local fire in the centre of the earth, 200 Italian miles in diameter, as he defines it out of those words, Exivit sanguis de terra—per stadia mille sexcenta, &c. But Lessius lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24. will have this local hell far less, one Dutch mile in diameter, all filled with fire and brimstone: because, as he there demonstrates, that space, cubically multiplied, will make a sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand millions of damned bodies (allowing each body six foot square) which will abundantly suffice; Cum cerium sit, inquit, facta subductione, non futuros centies mille milliones damnandorum. But if it be no material fire (as Sco. Thomas, Bonaventure, Soncinas, Voscius, and others argue) it may be there or elsewhere, as Keckerman disputes System. Theol. for sure somewhere it is, certum est alicubi, etsi definitus circulus non assignetur. I will end the controversy in [3047]Austin's words, “Better doubt of things concealed, than to contend about uncertainties, where Abraham's bosom is, and hell fire:” [3048]Vix a mansuetis, a contentiosis nunquam invenitur; scarce the meek, the contentious shall never find. If it be solid earth, 'tis the fountain of metals, waters, which by his innate temper turns air into water, which springs up in several chinks, to moisten the earth's superficies, and that in a tenfold proportion (as Aristotle holds) or else these fountains come directly from the sea, by [3049]secret passages, and so made fresh again, by running through the bowels of the earth; and are either thick, thin, hot, cold, as the matter or minerals are by which they pass; or as Peter Martyr Ocean. Decad. lib. 9. and some others hold, from [3050] abundance of rain that falls, or from that ambient heat and cold, which alters that inward heat, and so per consequens the generation of waters. Or else it may be full of wind, or a sulphureous innate fire, as our meteorologists inform us, which sometimes breaking out, causeth those horrible earthquakes, which are so frequent in these days in Japan, China, and oftentimes swallow up whole cities. Let Lucian's Menippus consult with or ask of Tiresias, if you will not believe philosophers, he shall clear all your doubts when he makes a second voyage.
In the mean time let us consider of that which is sub dio, and find out a true cause, if it be possible, of such accidents, meteors, alterations, as happen above ground. Whence proceed that variety of manners, and a distinct character (as it were) to several nations? Some are wise, subtile, witty; others dull, sad and heavy; some big, some little, as Tully de Fato, Plato in Timaeo, Vegetius and Bodine prove at large, method. cap. 5. some soft, and some hardy, barbarous, civil, black, dun, white, is it from the air, from the soil, influence of stars, or some other secret cause? Why doth Africa breed so many venomous beasts, Ireland none? Athens owls, Crete none? [3051]Why hath Daulis and Thebes no swallows (so Pausanius informeth us) as well as the rest of Greece, [3052]Ithaca no hares, Pontus asses, Scythia swine? whence comes this variety of complexions, colours, plants, birds, beasts, [3053]metals, peculiar almost to every place? Why so many thousand strange birds and beasts proper to America alone, as Acosta demands lib. 4. cap. 36. were they created in the six days, or ever in Noah's ark? if there, why are they not dispersed and found in other countries? It is a thing (saith he) hath long held me in suspense; no Greek, Latin, Hebrew ever heard of them before, and yet as differing from our European animals, as an egg and a chestnut: and which is more, kine, horses, sheep, &c., till the Spaniards brought them, were never heard of in those parts? How comes it to pass, that in the same site, in one latitude, to such as are Perioeci, there should be such difference of soil, complexion, colour, metal, air, &c. The Spaniards are white, and so are Italians, when as the inhabitants about [3054]Caput bonae spei are blackamoors, and yet both alike distant from the equator: nay they that dwell in the same parallel line with these Negroes, as about the Straits of Magellan, are white coloured, and yet some in Presbyter John's country in Ethiopia are dun; they in Zeilan and Malabar parallel with them again black: Manamotapa in Africa, and St. Thomas Isle are extreme hot, both under the line, coal black their inhabitants, whereas in Peru they are quite opposite in colour, very temperate, or rather cold, and yet both alike elevated. Moscow in 53. degrees of latitude extreme cold, as those northern countries usually are, having one perpetual hard frost all winter long; and in 52. deg. lat. sometimes hard frost and snow all summer, as Button's Bay, &c., or by fits; and yet [3055]England near the same latitude, and Ireland, very moist, warm, and more temperate in winter than Spain, Italy, or France. Is it the sea that causeth this difference, and the air that comes from it: Why then is [3056]Ister so cold near the Euxine, Pontus, Bithynia, and all Thrace; frigidas regiones Maginus calls them, and yet their latitude is but 42. which should be hot: [3057] Quevira, or Nova Albion in America, bordering on the sea, was so cold in July, that our [3058]Englishmen could hardly endure it. At Noremberga in 45. lat. all the sea is frozen ice, and yet in a more southern latitude than ours. New England, and the island of Cambrial Colchos, which that noble gentleman Mr. Vaughan, or Orpheus junior, describes in his Golden Fleece, is in the same latitude with little Britain in France, and yet their winter begins not till January, their spring till May; which search he accounts worthy of an astrologer: is this from the easterly winds, or melting of ice and snow dissolved within the circle arctic; or that the air being thick, is longer before it be warm by the sunbeams, and once heated like an oven will keep itself from cold? Our climes breed lice, [3059] Hungary and Ireland male audiunt in this kind; come to the Azores, by a secret virtue of that air they are instantly consumed, and all our European vermin almost, saith Ortelius. Egypt is watered with Nilus not far from the sea, and yet there it seldom or never rains: Rhodes, an island of the same nature, yields not a cloud, and yet our islands ever dropping and inclining to rain. The Atlantic Ocean is still subject to storms, but in Del Zur, or Mare pacifico, seldom or never any. Is it from tropic stars, apertio portarum, in the dodecotemories or constellations, the moon's mansions, such aspects of planets, such winds, or dissolving air, or thick air, which causeth this and the like differences of heat and cold? Bodin relates of a Portugal ambassador, that coming from [3060]Lisbon to [3061]Danzig in Spruce, found greater heat there than at any time at home. Don Garcia de Sylva, legate to Philip III., king of Spain, residing at Ispahan in Persia, 1619, in his letter to the Marquess of Bedmar, makes mention of greater cold in Ispahan, whose lat. is 31. gr. than ever he felt in Spain, or any part of Europe. The torrid zone was by our predecessors held to be uninhabitable, but by our modern travellers found to be most temperate, bedewed with frequent rains, and moistening showers, the breeze and cooling blasts in some parts, as [3062]Acosta describes, most pleasant and fertile. Arica in Chile is by report one of the sweetest places that ever the sun shined on, Olympus terrae, a heaven on earth: how incomparably do some extol Mexico in Nova Hispania, Peru, Brazil, &c., in some again hard, dry, sandy, barren, a very desert, and still in the same latitude. Many times we find great diversity of air in the same [3063]country, by reason of the site to seas, hills or dales, want of water, nature of soil, and the like: as in Spain Arragon is aspera et sicca, harsh and evil inhabited; Estremadura is dry, sandy, barren most part, extreme hot by reason of his plains; Andalusia another paradise; Valencia a most pleasant air, and continually green; so is it about [3064]Granada, on the one side fertile plains, on the other, continual snow to be seen all summer long on the hill tops. That their houses in the Alps are three quarters of the year covered with snow, who knows not? That Tenerife is so cold at the top, extreme hot at the bottom: Mons Atlas in Africa, Libanus in Palestine, with many such, tantos inter ardores fidos nivibus, [3065]Tacitus calls them, and Radzivilus epist. 2. fol. 27. yields it to be far hotter there than in any part of Italy: 'tis true; but they are highly elevated, near the middle region, and therefore cold, ob paucam solarium radiorum refractionem, as Serrarius answers, com. in. 3. cap. Josua quaest. 5. Abulensis quaest. 37. In the heat of summer, in the king's palace in Escurial, the air is most temperate, by reason of a cold blast which comes from the snowy mountains of Sierra de Cadarama hard by, when as in Toledo it is very hot: so in all other countries. The causes of these alterations are commonly by reason of their nearness (I say) to the middle region; but this diversity of air, in places equally situated, elevated and distant from the pole, can hardly be satisfied with that diversity of plants, birds, beasts, which is so familiar with us: with Indians, everywhere, the sun is equally distant, the same vertical stars, the same irradiations of planets, aspects like, the same nearness of seas, the same superficies, the same soil, or not much different. Under the equator itself, amongst the Sierras, Andes, Lanos, as Herrera, Laet, and [3066]Acosta contend, there is tam mirabilis et inopinata varietas, such variety of weather, ut merito exerceat ingenia, that no philosophy can yet find out the true cause of it. When I consider how temperate it is in one place, saith [3067]Acosta, within the tropic of Capricorn, as about Laplata, and yet hard by at Potosi, in that same altitude, mountainous alike, extreme cold; extreme hot in Brazil, &c. Hic ego, saith Acosta, philosophiam Aristotelis meteorologicam vehementer irrisi, cum, &c., when the sun comes nearest to them, they have great tempests, storms, thunder and lightning, great store of rain, snow, and the foulest weather: when the sun is vertical, their rivers overflow, the morning fair and hot, noonday cold and moist: all which is opposite to us. How comes it to pass? Scaliger poetices l. 3. c. 16. discourseth thus of this subject. How comes, or wherefore is this temeraria siderum dispositio, this rash placing of stars, or as Epicurus will, fortuita, or accidental? Why are some big, some little, why are they so confusedly, unequally situated in the heavens, and set so much out of order? In all other things nature is equal, proportionable, and constant; there be justae dimensiones, et prudens partium dispositio, as in the fabric of man, his eyes, ears, nose, face, members are correspondent, cur non idem coelo opere omnium pulcherrimo? Why are the heavens so irregular, neque paribus molibus, neque paribus intervallis, whence is this difference? Diversos (he concludes) efficere locorum Genios, to make diversity of countries, soils, manners, customs, characters, and constitutions among us, ut quantum vicinia ad charitatem addat, sidera distrahant ad perniciem, and so by this means fluvio vel monte distincti sunt dissimiles, the same places almost shall be distinguished in manners. But this reason is weak and most insufficient. The fixed stars are removed since Ptolemy's time 26. gr. from the first of Aries, and if the earth be immovable, as their site varies, so should countries vary, and diverse alterations would follow. But this we perceive not; as in Tully's time with us in Britain, coelum visu foedum, et in quo facile generantur nubes, &c., 'tis so still. Wherefore Bodine Theat. nat. lib. 2. and some others, will have all these alterations and effects immediately to proceed from those genii, spirits, angels, which rule and domineer in several places; they cause storms, thunder, lightning, earthquakes, ruins, tempests, great winds, floods, &c., the philosophers of Conimbra, will refer this diversity to the influence of that empyrean heaven: for some say the eccentricity of the sun is come nearer to the earth than in Ptolemy's time, the virtue therefore of all the vegetals is decayed, [3068]men grow less, &c. There are that observe new motions of the heavens, new stars, palantia sidera, comets, clouds, call them what you will, like those Medicean, Burbonian, Austrian planets, lately detected, which do not decay, but come and go, rise higher and lower, hide and show themselves amongst the fixed stars, amongst the planets, above and beneath the moon, at set times, now nearer, now farther off, together, asunder; as he that plays upon a sackbut by pulling it up and down alters his tones and tunes, do they their stations and places, though to us undiscerned; and from those motions proceed (as they conceive) diverse alterations. Clavius conjectures otherwise, but they be but conjectures. About Damascus in Coeli-Syria is a [3069]Paradise, by reason of the plenty of waters, in promptu causa est, and the deserts of Arabia barren, because of rocks, rolling seas of sands, and dry mountains quod inaquosa (saith Adricomius) montes habens asperos, saxosos, praecipites, horroris et mortis speciem prae se ferentes, “uninhabitable therefore of men, birds, beasts, void of all green trees, plants, and fruits, a vast rocky horrid wilderness, which by no art can be manured, 'tis evident.” Bohemia is cold, for that it lies all along to the north. But why should it be so hot in Egypt, or there never rain? Why should those [3070]etesian and northeastern winds blow continually and constantly so long together, in some places, at set times, one way still, in the dog-days only: here perpetual drought, there dropping showers; here foggy mists, there a pleasant air; here [3071]terrible thunder and lightning at such set seasons, here frozen seas all the year, there open in the same latitude, to the rest no such thing, nay quite opposite is to be found? Sometimes (as in [3072]Peru) on the one side of the mountains it is hot, on the other cold, here snow, there wind, with infinite such. Fromundus in his Meteors will excuse or solve all this by the sun's motion, but when there is such diversity to such as Perioeci or very near site, how can that position hold?
Who can give a reason of this diversity of meteors, that it should rain [3073]stones, frogs, mice, &c. Rats, which they call lemmer in Norway, and are manifestly observed (as [3074]Munster writes) by the inhabitants, to descend and fall with some feculent showers, and like so many locusts, consume all that is green. Leo Afer speaks as much of locusts, about Fez in Barbary there be infinite swarms in their fields upon a sudden: so at Aries in France, 1553, the like happened by the same mischief, all their grass and fruits were devoured, magna incolarum admiratione et consternatione (as Valleriola obser. med. lib. 1. obser. 1. relates) coelum subito obumbrabant, &c. he concludes, [3075]it could not be from natural causes, they cannot imagine whence they come, but from heaven. Are these and such creatures, corn, wood, stones, worms, wool, blood, &c. lifted up into the middle region by the sunbeams, as [3076]Baracellus the physician disputes, and thence let fall with showers, or there engendered? [3077]Cornelius Gemma is of that opinion, they are there conceived by celestial influences: others suppose they are immediately from God, or prodigies raised by art and illusions of spirits, which are princes of the air; to whom Bodin. lib. 2. Theat. Nat. subscribes. In fine, of meteors in general, Aristotle's reasons are exploded by Bernardinus Telesius, by Paracelsus his principles confuted, and other causes assigned, sal, sulphur, mercury, in which his disciples are so expert, that they can alter elements, and separate at their pleasure, make perpetual motions, not as Cardan, Tasneir, Peregrinus, by some magnetical virtue, but by mixture of elements; imitate thunder, like Salmoneus, snow, hail, the sea's ebbing and flowing, give life to creatures (as they say) without generation, and what not? P. Nonius Saluciensis and Kepler take upon them to demonstrate that no meteors, clouds, fogs, [3078]vapours, arise higher than fifty or eighty miles, and all the rest to be purer air or element of fire: which [3079]Cardan, [3080]Tycho, and [3081]John Pena manifestly confute by refractions, and many other arguments, there is no such element of fire at all. If, as Tycho proves, the moon be distant from us fifty and sixty semi-diameters of the earth: and as Peter Nonius will have it, the air be so angust, what proportion is there betwixt the other three elements and it? To what use serves it? Is it full of spirits which inhabit it, as the Paracelsians and Platonists hold, the higher the more noble, [3082]full of birds, or a mere vacuum to no purpose? It is much controverted between Tycho Brahe and Christopher Rotman, the landgrave of Hesse's mathematician, in their astronomical epistles, whether it be the same Diaphanum clearness, matter of air and heavens, or two distinct essences? Christopher Rotman, John Pena, Jordanus Brunus, with many other late mathematicians, contend it is the same and one matter throughout, saving that the higher still the purer it is, and more subtile; as they find by experience in the top of some hills in [3083]America; if a man ascend, he faints instantly for want of thicker air to refrigerate the heart. Acosta, l. 3. c. 9. calls this mountain Periacaca in Peru; it makes men cast and vomit, he saith, that climb it, as some other of those Andes do in the deserts of Chile for five hundred miles together, and for extremity of cold to lose their fingers and toes. Tycho will have two distinct matters of heaven and air; but to say truth, with some small qualification, they have one and the self-same opinion about the essence and matter of heavens; that it is not hard and impenetrable, as peripatetics hold, transparent, of a quinta essentia, [3084]“but that it is penetrable and soft as the air itself is, and that the planets move in it, as birds in the air, fishes in the sea.” This they prove by motion of comets, and otherwise (though Claremontius in his Antitycho stiffly opposes), which are not generated, as Aristotle teacheth, in the aerial region, of a hot and dry exhalation, and so consumed: but as Anaxagoras and Democritus held of old, of a celestial matter: and as [3085] Tycho, [3086]Eliseus, Roeslin, Thaddeus, Haggesius, Pena, Rotman, Fracastorius, demonstrate by their progress, parallaxes, refractions, motions of the planets, which interfere and cut one another's orbs, now higher, and then lower, as ♂ amongst the rest, which sometimes, as [3087]Kepler confirms by his own, and Tycho's accurate observations, comes nearer the earth than the ☉ and is again eftsoons aloft in Jupiter's orb; and [3088]other sufficient reasons, far above the moon: exploding in the meantime that element of fire, those fictitious first watery movers, those heavens I mean above the firmament, which Delrio, Lodovicus Imola, Patricius, and many of the fathers affirm; those monstrous orbs of eccentrics, and Eccentre Epicycles deserentes. Which howsoever Ptolemy, Alhasen, Vitellio, Purbachius, Maginus, Clavius, and many of their associates, stiffly maintain to be real orbs, eccentric, concentric, circles aequant, &c. are absurd and ridiculous. For who is so mad to think that there should be so many circles, like subordinate wheels in a clock, all impenetrable and hard, as they feign, add and subtract at their pleasure. [3089]Maginus makes eleven heavens, subdivided into their orbs and circles, and all too little to serve those particular appearances: Fracastorius, seventy-two homocentrics; Tycho Brahe, Nicholas Ramerus, Heliseus Roeslin, have peculiar hypotheses of their own inventions; and they be but inventions, as most of them acknowledge, as we admit of equators, tropics, colures, circles arctic and antarctic, for doctrine's sake (though Ramus thinks them all unnecessary), they will have them supposed only for method and order. Tycho hath feigned I know not how many subdivisions of epicycles in epicycles, &c., to calculate and express the moon's motion: but when all is done, as a supposition, and no otherwise; not (as he holds) hard, impenetrable, subtile, transparent, &c., or making music, as Pythagoras maintained of old, and Robert Constantine of late, but still, quiet, liquid, open, &c.
If the heavens then be penetrable, as these men deliver, and no lets, it were not amiss in this aerial progress, to make wings and fly up, which that Turk in Busbequius made his fellow-citizens in Constantinople believe he would perform: and some new-fangled wits, methinks, should some time or other find out: or if that may not be, yet with a Galileo's glass, or Icaromenippus' wings in Lucian, command the spheres and heavens, and see what is done amongst them. Whether there be generation and corruption, as some think, by reason of ethereal comets, that in Cassiopea, 1572, that in Cygno, 1600, that in Sagittarius, 1604, and many like, which by no means Jul. Caesar la Galla, that Italian philosopher, in his physical disputation with Galileis de phenomenis in orbe lunae, cap. 9. will admit: or that they were created ab initio, and show themselves at set times. and as [3090]Helisaeus Roeslin contends, have poles, axle-trees, circles of their own, and regular motions. For, non pereunt, sed minuuntur et disparent, [3091]Blancanus holds they come and go by fits, casting their tails still from the sun: some of them, as a burning-glass, projects the sunbeams from it; though not always neither: for sometimes a comet casts his tail from Venus, as Tycho observes. And as [3092]Helisaeus Roeslin of some others, from the moon, with little stars about them ad stuporem astronomorum; cum multis aliis in coelo miraculis, all which argue with those Medicean, Austrian, and Burbonian stars, that the heaven of the planets is indistinct, pure, and open, in which the planets move certis legibus ac metis. Examine likewise, An coelum sit coloratum? Whether the stars be of that bigness, distance, as astronomers relate, so many in [3093]number, 1026, or 1725, as J. Bayerus; or as some Rabbins, 29,000 myriads; or as Galileo discovers by his glasses, infinite, and that via lactea, a confused light of small stars, like so many nails in a door: or all in a row, like those 12,000 isles of the Maldives in the Indian ocean? Whether the least visible star in the eighth sphere be eighteen times bigger than the earth; and as Tycho calculates, 14,000 semi-diameters distant from it? Whether they be thicker parts of the orbs, as Aristotle delivers: or so many habitable worlds, as Democritus? Whether they have light of their own, or from the sun, or give light round, as Patritius discourseth? An aeque distent a centra mundi? Whether light be of their essence; and that light be a substance or an accident? Whether they be hot by themselves, or by accident cause heat? Whether there be such a precession of the equinoxes as Copernicus holds, or that the eighth sphere move? An bene philosophentur, R. Bacon and J. Dee, Aphorism. de multiplicatione specierum? Whether there be any such images ascending with each degree of the zodiac in the east, as Aliacensis feigns? An aqua super coelum? as Patritius and the schoolmen will, a crystalline [3094]watery heaven, which is [3095] certainly to be understood of that in the middle region? for otherwise, if at Noah's flood the water came from thence, it must be above a hundred years falling down to us, as [3096]some calculate. Besides, An terra sit animata? which some so confidently believe, with Orpheus, Hermes, Averroes, from which all other souls of men, beasts, devils, plants, fishes, &c. are derived, and into which again, after some revolutions, as Plato in his Timaeus, Plotinus in his Enneades more largely discuss, they return (see Chalcidius and Bennius, Plato's commentators), as all philosophical matter, in materiam primam. Keplerus, Patritius, and some other Neoterics, have in part revived this opinion. And that every star in heaven hath a soul, angel or intelligence to animate or move it, &c. Or to omit all smaller controversies, as matters of less moment, and examine that main paradox, of the earth's motion, now so much in question: Aristarchus Samius, Pythagoras maintained it of old, Democritus and many of their scholars, Didacus Astunica, Anthony Fascarinus, a Carmelite, and some other commentators, will have Job to insinuate as much, cap. 9. ver. 4. Qui commovet terram de loco suo, &c., and that this one place of scripture makes more for the earth's motion than all the other prove against it; whom Pineda confutes most contradict. Howsoever, it is revived since by Copernicus, not as a truth, but a supposition, as he himself confesseth in the preface to pope Nicholas, but now maintained in good earnest by [3097] Calcagninus, Telesius, Kepler, Rotman, Gilbert, Digges, Galileo, Campanella, and especially by [3098]Lansbergius, naturae, rationi, et veritati consentaneum, by Origanus, and some [3099]others of his followers. For if the earth be the centre of the world, stand still, and the heavens move, as the most received [3100]opinion is, which they call inordinatam coeli dispositionem, though stiffly maintained by Tycho, Ptolemeus, and their adherents, quis ille furor? &c. what fury is that, saith [3101]Dr. Gilbert, satis animose, as Cabeus notes, that shall drive the heavens about with such incomprehensible celerity in twenty-four hours, when as every point of the firmament, and in the equator, must needs move (so [3102]Clavius calculates) 176,660 in one 246th part of an hour, and an arrow out of a bow must go seven times about the earth, whilst a man can say an Ave Maria, if it keep the same space, or compass the earth 1884 times in an hour, which is supra humanam cogitationem, beyond human conceit: ocyor et jaculo, et ventos, aequante sagitta. A man could not ride so much ground, going 40 miles a day, in 2904 years, as the firmament goes in 23 hours: or so much in 203 years, as the firmament in one minute: quod incredibile videtur: and the [3103]pole-star, which to our thinking scarce moveth out of his place, goeth a bigger circuit than the sun, whose diameter is much larger than the diameter of the heaven of the sun, and 20,000 semi-diameters of the earth from us, with the rest of the fixed stars, as Tycho proves. To avoid therefore these impossibilities, they ascribe a triple motion to the earth, the sun immovable in the centre of the whole world, the earth centre of the moon, alone, above ♂ and ☿, beneath ♄, ♃, ♂ (or as [3104]Origanus and others will, one single motion to the earth, still placed in the centre of the world, which is more probable) a single motion to the firmament, which moves in 30 or 26 thousand years; and so the planets, Saturn in 30 years absolves his sole and proper motion, Jupiter in 12, Mars in 3, &c. and so solve all appearances better than any way whatsoever: calculate all motions, be they in longum or latum, direct, stationary, retrograde, ascent or descent, without epicycles, intricate eccentrics, &c. rectius commodiusque per unicum motum terrae, saith Lansbergius, much more certain than by those Alphonsine, or any such tables, which are grounded from those other suppositions. And 'tis true they say, according to optic principles, the visible appearances of the planets do so indeed answer to their magnitudes and orbs, and come nearest to mathematical observations and precedent calculations, there is no repugnancy to physical axioms, because no penetration of orbs; but then between the sphere of Saturn and the firmament, there is such an incredible and vast [3105]space or distance (7,000,000 semi-diameters of the earth, as Tycho calculates) void of stars: and besides, they do so enhance the bigness of the stars, enlarge their circuit, to solve those ordinary objections of parallaxes and retrogradations of the fixed stars, that alteration of the poles, elevation in several places or latitude of cities here on earth (for, say they, if a man's eye were in the firmament, he should not at all discern that great annual motion of the earth, but it would still appear punctum indivisibile and seem to be fixed in one place, of the same bigness) that it is quite opposite to reason, to natural philosophy, and all out as absurd as disproportional (so some will) as prodigious, as that of the sun's swift motion of heavens. But hoc posito, to grant this their tenet of the earth's motion: if the earth move, it is a planet, and shines to them in the moon, and to the other planetary inhabitants, as the moon and they do to us upon the earth: but shine she doth, as Galileo, [3106] Kepler, and others prove, and then per consequens, the rest of the planets are inhabited, as well as the moon, which he grants in his dissertation with Galileo's Nuncius Sidereus, [3107]“that there be Jovial and Saturn inhabitants,” &c., and those several planets have their several moons about them, as the earth hath hers, as Galileo hath already evinced by his glasses: [3108]four about Jupiter, two about Saturn (though Sitius the Florentine, Fortunius Licetus, and Jul. Caesar le Galla cavil at it) yet Kepler, the emperor's mathematician, confirms out of his experience, that he saw as much by the same help, and more about Mars, Venus, and the rest they hope to find out, peradventure even amongst the fixed stars, which Brunus and Brutius have already averred. Then (I say) the earth and they be planets alike, moved about the sun, the common centre of the world alike, and it may be those two green children which [3109] Nubrigensis speaks of in his time, that fell from heaven, came from thence; and that famous stone that fell from heaven in Aristotle's time, olymp. 84, anno tertio, ad Capuas Fluenta, recorded by Laertius and others, or Ancile or buckler in Numa's time, recorded by Festus. We may likewise insert with Campanella and Brunus, that which Pythagoras, Aristarchus, Samius, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Melissus, Democritus, Leucippus maintained in their ages, there be [3110]infinite worlds, and infinite earths or systems, in infinito aethere, which [3111]Eusebius collects out of their tenets, because infinite stars and planets like unto this of ours, which some stick not still to maintain and publicly defend, sperabundus expecto innumerabilium mundorum in aeternitate per ambulationem, &c. (Nic. Hill. Londinensis philos. Epicur.) For if the firmament be of such an incomparable bigness, as these Copernical giants will have it, infinitum, aut infinito proximum, so vast and full of innumerable stars, as being infinite in extent, one above another, some higher, some lower, some nearer, some farther off, and so far asunder, and those so huge and great, insomuch that if the whole sphere of Saturn, and all that is included in it, totum aggregatum (as Fromundus of Louvain in his tract, de immobilitate terrae argues) evehatur inter stellas, videri a nobis non poterat, tam immanis est distantia inter tellurem et fixas, sed instar puncti, &c. If our world be small in respect, why may we not suppose a plurality of worlds, those infinite stars visible in the firmament to be so many suns, with particular fixed centres; to have likewise their subordinate planets, as the sun hath his dancing still round him? which Cardinal Cusanus, Walkarinus, Brunus, and some others have held, and some still maintain, Animae, Aristotelismo innutritae, et minutis speculationibus assuetae, secus forsan, &c. Though they seem close to us, they are infinitely distant, and so per consequens, there are infinite habitable worlds: what hinders? Why should not an infinite cause (as God is) produce infinite effects? as Nic. Hill. Democrit. philos. disputes: Kepler (I confess) will by no means admit of Brunus's infinite worlds, or that the fixed stars should be so many suns, with their compassing planets, yet the said [3112]Kepler between jest and earnest in his perspectives, lunar geography, [3113] & somnio suo, dissertat. cum nunc. sider. seems in part to agree with this, and partly to contradict; for the planets, he yields them to be inhabited, he doubts of the stars; and so doth Tycho in his astronomical epistles, out of a consideration of their vastity and greatness, break out into some such like speeches, that he will never believe those great and huge bodies were made to no other use than this that we perceive, to illuminate the earth, a point insensible in respect of the whole. But who shall dwell in these vast bodies, earths, worlds, [3114] “if they be inhabited? rational creatures?” as Kepler demands, “or have they souls to be saved? or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they lords of the world? And how are all things made for man?” Difficile est nodum hunc expedire, eo quod nondum omnia quae huc pertinent explorata habemus: 'tis hard to determine: this only he proves, that we are in praecipuo mundi sinu, in the best place, best world, nearest the heart of the sun. [3115]Thomas Campanella, a Calabrian monk, in his second book de sensu rerum, cap. 4, subscribes to this of Kepler; that they are inhabited he certainly supposeth, but with what kind of creatures he cannot say, he labours to prove it by all means: and that there are infinite worlds, having made an apology for Galileo, and dedicates this tenet of his to Cardinal Cajetanus. Others freely speak, mutter, and would persuade the world (as [3116]Marinus Marcenus complains) that our modern divines are too severe and rigid against mathematicians; ignorant and peevish, in not admitting their true demonstrations and certain observations, that they tyrannise over art, science, and all philosophy, in suppressing their labours (saith Pomponatius), forbidding them to write, to speak a truth, all to maintain their superstition, and for their profit's sake. As for those places of Scripture which oppugn it, they will have spoken ad captum vulgi, and if rightly understood, and favourably interpreted, not at all against it; and as Otho Gasman, Astrol. cap. 1. part. 1. notes, many great divines, besides Porphyrius, Proclus, Simplicius, and those heathen philosophers, doctrina et aetate venerandi, Mosis Genesin mundanam popularis nescio cujus ruditatis, quae longa absit a vera Philosophorum eruditione, insimulant: for Moses makes mention but of two planets, ☉ and ☾, no four elements, &c. Read more on him, in [3117]Grossius and Junius. But to proceed, these and such like insolent and bold attempts, prodigious paradoxes, inferences must needs follow, if it once be granted, which Rotman, Kepler, Gilbert, Diggeus, Origanus, Galileo, and others, maintain of the earth's motion, that 'tis a planet, and shines as the moon doth, which contains in it [3118]“both land and sea as the moon doth:” for so they find by their glasses that Maculae in facie Lunae, “the brighter parts are earth, the dusky sea,” which Thales, Plutarch, and Pythagoras formerly taught: and manifestly discern hills and dales, and such like concavities, if we may subscribe to and believe Galileo's observations. But to avoid these paradoxes of the earth's motion (which the Church of Rome hath lately [3119]condemned as heretical, as appears by Blancanus and Fromundus's writings) our latter mathematicians have rolled all the stones that may be stirred: and to solve all appearances and objections, have invented new hypotheses, and fabricated new systems of the world, out of their own Dedalaean heads. Fracastorius will have the earth stand still, as before; and to avoid that supposition of eccentrics and epicycles, he hath coined seventy-two homocentrics, to solve all appearances. Nicholas Ramerus will have the earth the centre of the world, but movable, and the eighth sphere immovable, the five upper planets to move about the sun, the sun and moon about the earth. Of which orbs Tycho Brahe puts the earth the centre immovable, the stars immovable, the rest with Ramerus, the planets without orbs to wander in the air, keep time and distance, true motion, according to that virtue which God hath given them. [3120]Helisaeus Roeslin censureth both, with Copernicus (whose hypothesis de terrae motu, Philippus Lansbergius hath lately vindicated, and demonstrated with solid arguments in a just volume, Jansonius Caesins [3121]hath illustrated in a sphere.) The said Johannes Lansbergius, 1633, hath since defended his assertion against all the cavils and calumnies of Fromundus his Anti-Aristarchus, Baptista Morinus, and Petrus Bartholinus: Fromundus, 1634, hath written against him again, J. Rosseus of Aberdeen, &c. (sound drums and trumpets) whilst Roeslin (I say) censures all, and Ptolemeus himself as insufficient: one offends against natural philosophy, another against optic principles, a third against mathematical, as not answering to astronomical observations: one puts a great space between Saturn's orb and the eighth sphere, another too narrow. In his own hypothesis he makes the earth as before the universal centre, the sun to the five upper planets, to the eighth sphere he ascribes diurnal motion, eccentrics, and epicycles to the seven planets, which hath been formerly exploded; and so, Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria currunt, [3122]as a tinker stops one hole and makes two, he corrects them, and doth worse himself: reforms some, and mars all. In the mean time, the world is tossed in a blanket amongst them, they hoist the earth up and down like a ball, make it stand and go at their pleasures: one saith the sun stands, another he moves; a third comes in, taking them all at rebound, and lest there should any paradox be wanting, he [3123]finds certain spots and clouds in the sun, by the help of glasses, which multiply (saith Keplerus) a thing seen a thousand times bigger in plano, and makes it come thirty-two times nearer to the eye of the beholder: but see the demonstration of this glass in [3124]Tarde, by means of which, the sun must turn round upon his own centre, or they about the sun. Fabricius puts only three, and those in the sun: Apelles 15, and those without the sun, floating like the Cyanean Isles in the Euxine sea. [3125]Tarde, the Frenchman, hath observed thirty-three, and those neither spots nor clouds, as Galileo, Epist. ad Valserum, supposeth, but planets concentric with the sun, and not far from him with regular motions. [3126]Christopher Shemer, a German Suisser Jesuit, Ursica Rosa, divides them in maculas et faculas, and will have them to be fixed in Solis superficie: and to absolve their periodical and regular motion in twenty-seven or twenty-eight days, holding withal the rotation of the sun upon his centre; and all are so confident, that they have made schemes and tables of their motions. The [3127]Hollander, in his dissertatiuncula cum Apelle, censures all; and thus they disagree amongst themselves, old and new, irreconcilable in their opinions; thus Aristarchus, thus Hipparchus, thus Ptolemeus, thus Albateginus, thus Alfraganus, thus Tycho, thus Ramerus, thus Roeslinus, thus Fracastorius, thus Copernicus and his adherents, thus Clavius and Maginus, &c., with their followers, vary and determine of these celestial orbs and bodies: and so whilst these men contend about the sun and moon, like the philosophers in Lucian, it is to be feared, the sun and moon will hide themselves, and be as much offended as [3128]she was with those, and send another messenger to Jupiter, by some new-fangled Icaromenippus, to make an end of all those curious controversies, and scatter them abroad.
But why should the sun and moon be angry, or take exceptions at mathematicians and philosophers? when as the like measure is offered unto God himself, by a company of theologasters: they are not contented to see the sun and moon, measure their site and biggest distance in a glass, calculate their motions, or visit the moon in a poetical fiction, or a dream, as he saith, [3129]Audax facinus et memorabile nunc incipiam, neque hoc saeculo usurpatum prius, quid in Lunae regno hac nocte gestum sit exponam, et quo nemo unquam nisi somniando pervenit, [3130]but he and Menippus: or as [3131]Peter Cuneus, Bona fide agam, nihil eorum quae scripturus sum, verum esse scitote, &c. quae nec facta, nec futura sunt, dicam, [3132]stili tantum et ingenii causa, not in jest, but in good earnest these gigantical Cyclops will transcend spheres, heaven, stars, into that Empyrean heaven; soar higher yet, and see what God himself doth. The Jewish Talmudists take upon them to determine how God spends his whole time, sometimes playing with Leviathan, sometimes overseeing the world, &c., like Lucian's Jupiter, that spent much of the year in painting butterflies' wings, and seeing who offered sacrifice; telling the hours when it should rain, how much snow should fall in such a place, which way the wind should stand in Greece, which way in Africa. In the Turks' Alcoran, Mahomet is taken up to heaven, upon a Pegasus sent on purpose for him, as he lay in bed with his wife, and after some conference with God is set on ground again. The pagans paint him and mangle him after a thousand fashions; our heretics, schismatics, and some schoolmen, come not far behind: some paint him in the habit of an old man, and make maps of heaven, number the angels, tell their several [3133]names, offices: some deny God and his providence, some take his office out of his hands, will [3134]bind and loose in heaven, release, pardon, forgive, and be quarter-master with him: some call his Godhead in question, his power, and attributes, his mercy, justice, providence: they will know with [3135]Cecilius, why good and bad are punished together, war, fires, plagues, infest all alike, why wicked men flourish, good are poor, in prison, sick, and ill at ease. Why doth he suffer so much mischief and evil to be done, if he be [3136]able to help? why doth he not assist good, or resist bad, reform our wills, if he be not the author of sin, and let such enormities be committed, unworthy of his knowledge, wisdom, government, mercy, and providence, why lets he all things be done by fortune and chance? Others as prodigiously inquire after his omnipotency, an possit plures similes creare deos? an ex scarcibaeo deum? &c., et quo demum ruetis sacrificuli? Some, by visions and revelations, take upon them to be familiar with God, and to be of privy council with him; they will tell how many, and who shall be saved, when the world shall come to an end, what year, what month, and whatsoever else God hath reserved unto himself, and to his angels. Some again, curious fantastics, will know more than this, and inquire with [3137]Epicurus, what God did before the world was made? was he idle? Where did he bide? What did he make the world of? why did he then make it, and not before? If he made it new, or to have an end, how is he unchangeable, infinite, &c. Some will dispute, cavil, and object, as Julian did of old, whom Cyril confutes, as Simon Magus is feigned to do, in that [3138]dialogue betwixt him and Peter: and Ammonius the philosopher, in that dialogical disputation with Zacharias the Christian. If God be infinitely and only good, why should he alter or destroy the world? if he confound that which is good, how shall himself continue good? If he pull it down because evil, how shall he be free from the evil that made it evil? &c., with many such absurd and brain-sick questions, intricacies, froth of human wit, and excrements of curiosity, &c., which, as our Saviour told his inquisitive disciples, are not fit for them to know. But hoo! I am now gone quite out of sight, I am almost giddy with roving about: I could have ranged farther yet; but I am an infant, and not [3139]able to dive into these profundities, or sound these depths; not able to understand, much less to discuss. I leave the contemplation of these things to stronger wits, that have better ability, and happier leisure to wade into such philosophical mysteries; for put case I were as able as willing, yet what can one man do? I will conclude with [3140]Scaliger, Nequaquam nos homines sumus, sed partes hominis, ex omnibus aliquid fieri potest, idque non magnum; ex singulis fere nihil. Besides (as Nazianzen hath it) Deus latere nos multa voluit; and with Seneca, cap. 35. de Cometis, Quid miramur tam rara mundi spectacula non teneri certis legibus, nondum intelligi? multae sunt gentes quae tantum de facie sciunt coelum, veniet, tempus fortasse, quo ista quae, nunc latent in lucem dies extrahat longioris aevi diligentia, una aetas non sufficit, posteri, &c., when God sees his time, he will reveal these mysteries to mortal men, and show that to some few at last, which he hath concealed so long. For I am of [3141]his mind, that Columbus did not find out America by chance, but God directed him at that time to discover it: it was contingent to him, but necessary to God; he reveals and conceals to whom and when he will. And which [3142]one said of history and records of former times, “God in his providence, to check our presumptuous inquisition, wraps up all things in uncertainty, bars us from long antiquity, and bounds our search within the compass of some few ages:” many good things are lost, which our predecessors made use of, as Pancirola will better inform you; many new things are daily invented, to the public good; so kingdoms, men, and knowledge ebb and flow, are hid and revealed, and when you have all done, as the Preacher concluded, Nihil est sub sole novum (nothing new under the sun.) But my melancholy spaniel's quest, my game is sprung, and I must suddenly come down and follow.
Jason Pratensis, in his book de morbis capitis, and chapter of Melancholy, hath these words out of Galen, [3143]“Let them come to me to know what meat and drink they shall use, and besides that, I will teach them what temper of ambient air they shall make choice of, what wind, what countries they shall choose, and what avoid.” Out of which lines of his, thus much we may gather, that to this cure of melancholy, amongst other things, the rectification of air is necessarily required. This is performed, either in reforming natural or artificial air. Natural is that which is in our election to choose or avoid: and 'tis either general, to countries, provinces; particular, to cities, towns, villages, or private houses. What harm those extremities of heat or cold do in this malady, I have formerly shown: the medium must needs be good, where the air is temperate, serene, quiet, free from bogs, fens, mists, all manner of putrefaction, contagious and filthy noisome smells. The [3144]Egyptians by all geographers are commended to be hilares, a conceited and merry nation: which I can ascribe to no other cause than the serenity of their air. They that live in the Orcades are registered by [3145]Hector Boethius and [3146]Cardan, to be of fair complexion, long-lived, most healthful, free from all manner of infirmities of body and mind, by reason of a sharp purifying air, which comes from the sea. The Boeotians in Greece were dull and heavy, crassi Boeoti, by reason of a foggy air in which they lived, [3147]Boeotum in crasso jurares aere natum, Attica most acute, pleasant, and refined. The clime changes not so much customs, manners, wits (as Aristotle Polit. lib. 6. cap. 4. Vegetius, Plato, Bodine, method. hist. cap. 5. hath proved at large) as constitutions of their bodies, and temperature itself. In all particular provinces we see it confirmed by experience, as the air is, so are the inhabitants, dull, heavy, witty, subtle, neat, cleanly, clownish, sick, and sound. In [3148]Perigord in France the air is subtle, healthful, seldom any plague or contagious disease, but hilly and barren: the men sound, nimble, and lusty; but in some parts of Guienne, full of moors and marshes, the people dull, heavy, and subject to many infirmities. Who sees not a great difference between Surrey, Sussex, and Romney Marsh, the wolds in Lincolnshire and the fens. He therefore that loves his health, if his ability will give him leave, must often shift places, and make choice of such as are wholesome, pleasant, and convenient: there is nothing better than change of air in this malady, and generally for health to wander up and down, as those [3149]Tartari Zamolhenses, that live in hordes, and take opportunity of times, places, seasons. The kings of Persia had their summer and winter houses; in winter at Sardis, in summer at Susa; now at Persepolis, then at Pasargada. Cyrus lived seven cold months at Babylon, three at Susa, two at Ecbatana, saith [3150]Xenophon, and had by that means a perpetual spring. The great Turk sojourns sometimes at Constantinople, sometimes at Adrianople, &c. The kings of Spain have their Escurial in heat of summer, [3151]Madrid for a wholesome seat, Valladolid a pleasant site, &c., variety of secessus as all princes and great men have, and their several progresses to this purpose. Lucullus the Roman had his house at Rome, at Baiae, &c. [3152]When Cn. Pompeius, Marcus Cicero (saith Plutarch) and many noble men in the summer came to see him, at supper Pompeius jested with him, that it was an elegant and pleasant village, full of windows, galleries, and all offices fit for a summer house; but in his judgment very unfit for winter: Lucullus made answer that the lord of the house had wit like a crane, that changeth her country with the season; he had other houses furnished, and built for that purpose, all out as commodious as this. So Tully had his Tusculan, Plinius his Lauretan village, and every gentleman of any fashion in our times hath the like. The [3153]bishop of Exeter had fourteen several houses all furnished, in times past. In Italy, though they bide in cities in winter, which is more gentlemanlike, all the summer they come abroad to their country-houses, to recreate themselves. Our gentry in England live most part in the country (except it be some few castles) building still in bottoms (saith [3154]Jovius) or near woods, corona arborum virentium; you shall know a village by a tuft of trees at or about it, to avoid those strong winds wherewith the island is infested, and cold winter blasts. Some discommend moated houses, as unwholesome; so Camden saith of [3155]Ew-elme, that it was therefore unfrequented, ob stagni vicini halitus, and all such places as be near lakes or rivers. But I am of opinion that these inconveniences will be mitigated, or easily corrected by good fires, as [3156]one reports of Venice, that graveolentia and fog of the moors is sufficiently qualified by those innumerable smokes. Nay more, [3157]Thomas Philol. Ravennas, a great physician, contends that the Venetians are generally longer-lived than any city in Europe, and live many of them 120 years. But it is not water simply that so much offends, as the slime and noisome smells that accompany such overflowed places, which is but at some few seasons after a flood, and is sufficiently recompensed with sweet smells and aspects in summer, Ver pinget vario gemmantia prata colore, and many other commodities of pleasure and profit; or else may be corrected by the site, if it be somewhat remote from the water, as Lindley, [3158]Orton super montem, [3159]Drayton, or a little more elevated, though nearer, as [3160]Caucut, [3161]Amington, [3162]Polesworth, [3163]Weddington (to insist in such places best to me known, upon the river of Anker, in Warwickshire, [3164] Swarston, and [3165]Drakesly upon Trent). Or howsoever they be unseasonable in winter, or at some times, they have their good use in summer. If so be that their means be so slender as they may not admit of any such variety, but must determine once for all, and make one house serve each season, I know no men that have given better rules in this behalf than our husbandry writers. [3166]Cato and Columella prescribe a good house to stand by a navigable river, good highways, near some city, and in a good soil, but that is more for commodity than health.
The best soil commonly yields the worst air, a dry sandy plat is fittest to build upon, and such as is rather hilly than plain, full of downs, a Cotswold country, as being most commodious for hawking, hunting, wood, waters, and all manner of pleasures. Perigord in France is barren, yet by reason of the excellency of the air, and such pleasures that it affords, much inhabited by the nobility; as Nuremberg in Germany, Toledo in Spain. Our countryman Tusser will tell us so much, that the fieldone is for profit, the woodland for pleasure and health; the one commonly a deep clay, therefore noisome in winter, and subject to bad highways: the other a dry sand. Provision may be had elsewhere, and our towns are generally bigger in the woodland than the fieldone, more frequent and populous, and gentlemen more delight to dwell in such places. Sutton Coldfield in Warwickshire (where I was once a grammar scholar), may be a sufficient witness, which stands, as Camden notes, loco ingrato et sterili, but in an excellent air, and full of all manner of pleasures. [3167]Wadley in Berkshire is situate in a vale, though not so fertile a soil as some vales afford, yet a most commodious site, wholesome, in a delicious air, a rich and pleasant seat. So Segrave in Leicestershire (which town [3168]I am now bound to remember) is situated in a champaign, at the edge of the wolds, and more barren than the villages about it, yet no place likely yields a better air. And he that built that fair house, [3169]Wollerton in Nottinghamshire, is much to be commended (though the tract be sandy and barren about it) for making choice of such a place. Constantine, lib. 2. cap. de Agricult. praiseth mountains, hilly, steep places, above the rest by the seaside, and such as look toward the [3170]north upon some great river, as [3171] Farmack in Derbyshire, on the Trent, environed with hills, open only to the north, like Mount Edgecombe in Cornwall, which Mr. [3172]Carew so much admires for an excellent seat: such is the general site of Bohemia: serenat Boreas, the north wind clarifies, [3173]“but near lakes or marshes, in holes, obscure places, or to the south and west, he utterly disproves,” those winds are unwholesome, putrefying, and make men subject to diseases. The best building for health, according to him, is in [3174] “high places, and in an excellent prospect,” like that of Cuddeston in Oxfordshire (which place I must honoris ergo mention) is lately and fairly [3175]built in a good air, good prospect, good soil, both for profit and pleasure, not so easily to be matched. P. Crescentius, in his lib. 1. de Agric. cap. 5. is very copious in this subject, how a house should be wholesomely sited, in a good coast, good air, wind, &c., Varro de re rust. lib. 1. cap. 12. [3176]forbids lakes and rivers, marshy and manured grounds, they cause a bad air, gross diseases, hard to be cured: [3177]“if it be so that he cannot help it, better (as he adviseth) sell thy house and land than lose thine health.” He that respects not this in choosing of his seat, or building his house, is mente captus, mad, [3178]Cato saith, “and his dwelling next to hell itself,” according to Columella: he commends, in conclusion, the middle of a hill, upon a descent. Baptista, Porta Villae, lib. 1. cap. 22. censures Varro, Cato, Columella, and those ancient rustics, approving many things, disallowing some, and will by all means have the front of a house stand to the south, which how it may be good in Italy and hotter climes, I know not, in our northern countries I am sure it is best: Stephanus, a Frenchman, praedio rustic. lib. 1. cap. 4. subscribes to this, approving especially the descent of a hill south or south-east, with trees to the north, so that it be well watered; a condition in all sites which must not be omitted, as Herbastein inculcates, lib. 1. Julius Caesar Claudinus, a physician, consult. 24, for a nobleman in Poland, melancholy given, adviseth him to dwell in a house inclining to the [3179]east, and [3180]by all means to provide the air be clear and sweet; which Montanus, consil. 229, counselleth the earl of Monfort, his patient, to inhabit a pleasant house, and in a good air. If it be so the natural site may not be altered of our city, town, village, yet by artificial means it may be helped. In hot countries, therefore, they make the streets of their cities very narrow, all over Spain, Africa, Italy, Greece, and many cities of France, in Languedoc especially, and Provence, those southern parts: Montpelier, the habitation and university of physicians, is so built, with high houses, narrow streets, to divert the sun's scalding rays, which Tacitus commends, lib. 15. Annat., as most agreeing to their health, [3181]“because the height of buildings, and narrowness of streets, keep away the sunbeams.” Some cities use galleries, or arched cloisters towards the street, as Damascus, Bologna, Padua, Berne in Switzerland, Westchester with us, as well to avoid tempests, as the sun's scorching heat. They build on high hills, in hot countries, for more air; or to the seaside, as Baiae, Naples, &c. In our northern countries we are opposite, we commend straight, broad, open, fair streets, as most befitting and agreeing to our clime. We build in bottoms for warmth: and that site of Mitylene in the island of Lesbos, in the Aegean sea, which Vitruvius so much discommends, magnificently built with fair houses, sed imprudenter positam unadvisedly sited, because it lay along to the south, and when the south wind blew, the people were all sick, would make an excellent site in our northern climes.
Of that artificial site of houses I have sufficiently discoursed: if the plan of the dwelling may not be altered, yet there is much in choice of such a chamber or room, in opportune opening and shutting of windows, excluding foreign air and winds, and walking abroad at convenient times. [3182]Crato, a German, commends east and south site (disallowing cold air and northern winds in this case, rainy weather and misty days), free from putrefaction, fens, bogs, and muck—hills. If the air be such, open no windows, come not abroad. Montanus will have his patient not to [3183]stir at all, if the wind be big or tempestuous, as most part in March it is with us; or in cloudy, lowering, dark days, as in November, which we commonly call the black month; or stormy, let the wind stand how it will, consil. 27. and 30. he must not [3184]“open a casement in bad weather,” or in a boisterous season, consil. 299, he especially forbids us to open windows to a south wind. The best sites for chamber windows, in my judgment, are north, east, south, and which is the worst, west. Levinus Lemnius, lib. 3. cap. 3. de occult. nat. mir. attributes so much to air, and rectifying of wind and windows, that he holds it alone sufficient to make a man sick or well; to alter body and mind. [3185]“A clear air cheers up the spirits, exhilarates the mind; a thick, black, misty, tempestuous, contracts, overthrows.” Great heed is therefore to be taken at what times we walk, how we place our windows, lights, and houses, how we let in or exclude this ambient air. The Egyptians, to avoid immoderate heat, make their windows on the top of the house like chimneys, with two tunnels to draw a thorough air. In Spain they commonly make great opposite windows without glass, still shutting those which are next to the sun: so likewise in Turkey and Italy (Venice excepted, which brags of her stately glazed palaces) they use paper windows to like purpose; and lie, sub dio, in the top of their flat-roofed houses, so sleeping under the canopy of heaven. In some parts of [3186]Italy they have windmills, to draw a cooling air out of hollow caves, and disperse the same through all the chambers of their palaces, to refresh them; as at Costoza, the house of Caesareo Trento, a gentleman of Vicenza, and elsewhere. Many excellent means are invented to correct nature by art. If none of these courses help, the best way is to make artificial air, which howsoever is profitable and good, still to be made hot and moist, and to be seasoned with sweet perfumes, [3187]pleasant and lightsome as it may be; to have roses, violets, and sweet-smelling flowers ever in their windows, posies in their hand. Laurentius commends water-lilies, a vessel of warm water to evaporate in the room, which will make a more delightful perfume, if there be added orange-flowers, pills of citrons, rosemary, cloves, bays, rosewater, rose-vinegar, benzoin, laudanum, styrax, and such like gums, which make a pleasant and acceptable perfume. [3188]Bessardus Bisantinus prefers the smoke of juniper to melancholy persons, which is in great request with us at Oxford, to sweeten our chambers. [3189]Guianerius prescribes the air to be moistened with water, and sweet herbs boiled in it, vine, and sallow leaves, &c., [3190] to besprinkle the ground and posts with rosewater, rose-vinegar, which Avicenna much approves. Of colours it is good to behold green, red, yellow, and white, and by all means to have light enough, with windows in the day, wax candles in the night, neat chambers, good fires in winter, merry companions; for though melancholy persons love to be dark and alone, yet darkness is a great increaser of the humour.
Although our ordinary air be good by nature or art, yet it is not amiss, as I have said, still to alter it; no better physic for a melancholy man than change of air, and variety of places, to travel abroad and see fashions. [3191]Leo Afer speaks of many of his countrymen so cured, without all other physic: amongst the Negroes, “there is such an excellent air, that if any of them be sick elsewhere, and brought thither, he is instantly recovered, of which he was often an eyewitness.” [3192]Lipsius, Zuinger, and some others, add as much of ordinary travel. No man, saith Lipsius, in an epistle to Phil. Lanoius, a noble friend of his, now ready to make a voyage, [3193]“can be such a stock or stone, whom that pleasant speculation of countries, cities, towns, rivers, will not affect.” [3194] Seneca the philosopher was infinitely taken with the sight of Scipio Africanus' house, near Linternum, to view those old buildings, cisterns, baths, tombs, &c. And how was [3195]Tully pleased with the sight of Athens, to behold those ancient and fair buildings, with a remembrance of their worthy inhabitants. Paulus Aemilius, that renowned Roman captain, after he had conquered Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, and now made an end of his tedious wars, though he had been long absent from Rome, and much there desired, about the beginning of autumn (as [3196]Livy describes it) made a pleasant peregrination all over Greece, accompanied with his son Scipio, and Atheneus the brother of king Eumenes, leaving the charge of his army with Sulpicius Gallus. By Thessaly he went to Delphos, thence to Megaris, Aulis, Athens, Argos, Lacedaemon, Megalopolis, &c. He took great content, exceeding delight in that his voyage, as who doth not that shall attempt the like, though his travel be ad jactationem magis quam ad usum reipub. (as [3197]one well observes) to crack, gaze, see fine sights and fashions, spend time, rather than for his own or public good? (as it is to many gallants that travel out their best days, together with their means, manners, honesty, religion) yet it availeth howsoever. For peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, [3198]that some count him unhappy that never travelled, and pity his case, that from his cradle to his old age beholds the same still; still, still the same, the same. Insomuch that [3199]Rhasis, cont. lib. 1. Tract. 2. doth not only commend, but enjoin travel, and such variety of objects to a melancholy man, “and to lie in diverse inns, to be drawn into several companies:” Montaltus, cap. 36. and many neoterics are of the same mind: Celsus adviseth him therefore that will continue his health, to have varium vitae genus, diversity of callings, occupations, to be busied about, [3200] “sometimes to live in the city, sometimes in the country; now to study or work, to be intent, then again to hawk or hunt, swim, run, ride, or exercise himself.” A good prospect alone will ease melancholy, as Comesius contends, lib. 2. c. 7. de Sale. The citizens of [3201]Barcino, saith he, otherwise penned in, melancholy, and stirring little abroad, are much delighted with that pleasant prospect their city hath into the sea, which like that of old Athens besides Aegina Salamina, and many pleasant islands, had all the variety of delicious objects: so are those Neapolitans and inhabitants of Genoa, to see the ships, boats, and passengers go by, out of their windows, their whole cities being situated on the side of a hill, like Pera by Constantinople, so that each house almost hath a free prospect to the sea, as some part of London to the Thames: or to have a free prospect all over the city at once, as at Granada in Spain, and Fez in Africa, the river running betwixt two declining hills, the steepness causeth each house almost, as well to oversee, as to be overseen of the rest. Every country is full of such [3202]delightsome prospects, as well within land, as by sea, as Hermon and [3203]Rama in Palestina, Colalto in Italy, the top of Magetus, or Acrocorinthus, that old decayed castle in Corinth, from which Peloponessus, Greece, the Ionian and Aegean seas were semel et simul at one view to be taken. In Egypt the square top of the great pyramid, three hundred yards in height, and so the Sultan's palace in Grand Cairo, the country being plain, hath a marvellous fair prospect as well over Nilus, as that great city, five Italian miles long, and two broad, by the river side: from mount Sion in Jerusalem, the Holy Land is of all sides to be seen: such high places are infinite: with us those of the best note are Glastonbury tower, Box Hill in Surrey, Bever castle, Rodway Grange, [3204]Walsby in Lincolnshire, where I lately received a real kindness, by the munificence of the right honourable my noble lady and patroness, the Lady Frances, countess dowager of Exeter: and two amongst the rest, which I may not omit for vicinity's sake, Oldbury in the confines of Warwickshire, where I have often looked about me with great delight, at the foot of which hill [3205]I was born: and Hanbury in Staffordshire, contiguous to which is Falde, a pleasant village, and an ancient patrimony belonging to our family, now in the possession of mine elder brother, William Burton, Esquire. [3206]Barclay the Scot commends that of Greenwich tower for one of the best prospects in Europe, to see London on the one side, the Thames, ships, and pleasant meadows on the other. There be those that say as much and more of St. Mark's steeple in Venice. Yet these are at too great a distance: some are especially affected with such objects as be near, to see passengers go by in some great roadway, or boats in a river, in subjectum forum despicere, to oversee a fair, a marketplace, or out of a pleasant window into some thoroughfare street, to behold a continual concourse, a promiscuous rout, coming and going, or a multitude of spectators at a theatre, a mask, or some such like show. But I rove: the sum is this, that variety of actions, objects, air, places, are excellent good in this infirmity, and all others, good for man, good for beast. [3207]Constantine the emperor, lib. 18. cap. 13. ex Leontio, “holds it an only cure for rotten sheep, and any manner of sick cattle.” Laelius a Fonte Aegubinus, that great doctor, at the latter end of many of his consultations (as commonly he doth set down what success his physic had,) in melancholy most especially approves of this above all other remedies whatsoever, as appears consult. 69. consult. 229. &c. [3208]“Many other things helped, but change of air was that which wrought the cure, and did most good.”
To that great inconvenience, which comes on the one side by immoderate and unseasonable exercise, too much solitariness and idleness on the other, must be opposed as an antidote, a moderate and seasonable use of it, and that both of body and mind, as a most material circumstance, much conducing to this cure, and to the general preservation of our health. The heavens themselves run continually round, the sun riseth and sets, the moon increaseth and decreaseth, stars and planets keep their constant motions, the air is still tossed by the winds, the waters ebb and flow to their conservation no doubt, to teach us that we should ever be in action. For which cause Hieron prescribes Rusticus the monk, that he be always occupied about some business or other, [3209]“that the devil do not find him idle.” [3210]Seneca would have a man do something, though it be to no purpose. [3211]Xenophon wisheth one rather to play at tables, dice, or make a jester of himself (though he might be far better employed) than do nothing. The [3212]Egyptians of old, and many flourishing commonwealths since, have enjoined labour and exercise to all sorts of men, to be of some vocation and calling, and give an account of their time, to prevent those grievous mischiefs that come by idleness: “for as fodder, whip, and burthen belong to the ass: so meat, correction, and work unto the servant,” Ecclus. xxxiii. 23. The Turks enjoin all men whatsoever, of what degree, to be of some trade or other, the Grand Signior himself is not excused. [3213]“In our memory” (saith Sabellicus) “Mahomet the Turk, he that conquered Greece, at that very time when he heard ambassadors of other princes, did either carve or cut wooden spoons, or frame something upon a table.” [3214]This present sultan makes notches for bows. The Jews are most severe in this examination of time. All well-governed places, towns, families, and every discreet person will be a law unto himself. But amongst us the badge of gentry is idleness: to be of no calling, not to labour, for that's derogatory to their birth, to be a mere spectator, a drone, fruges consumere natus, to have no necessary employment to busy himself about in church and commonwealth (some few governors exempted), “but to rise to eat,” &c., to spend his days in hawking, hunting, &c., and such like disports and recreations ([3215]which our casuists tax), are the sole exercise almost, and ordinary actions of our nobility, and in which they are too immoderate. And thence it comes to pass, that in city and country so many grievances of body and mind, and this feral disease of melancholy so frequently rageth, and now domineers almost all over Europe amongst our great ones. They know not how to spend their time (disports excepted, which are all their business), what to do, or otherwise how to bestow themselves: like our modern Frenchmen, that had rather lose a pound of blood in a single combat, than a drop of sweat in any honest labour. Every man almost hath something or other to employ himself about, some vocation, some trade, but they do all by ministers and servants, ad otia duntaxat se natos existimant, imo ad sui ipsius plerumque et aliorum perniciem, [3216]as one freely taxeth such kind of men, they are all for pastimes, 'tis all their study, all their invention tends to this alone, to drive away time, as if they were born some of them to no other ends. Therefore to correct and avoid these errors and inconveniences, our divines, physicians, and politicians, so much labour, and so seriously exhort; and for this disease in particular, [3217]“there can be no better cure than continual business,” as Rhasis holds, “to have some employment or other, which may set their mind awork, and distract their cogitations.” Riches may not easily be had without labour and industry, nor learning without study, neither can our health be preserved without bodily exercise. If it be of the body, Guianerius allows that exercise which is gentle, [3218]“and still after those ordinary frications” which must be used every morning. Montaltus, cap. 26. and Jason Pratensis use almost the same words, highly commending exercise if it be moderate; “a wonderful help so used,” Crato calls it,“ and a great means to preserve our health, as adding strength to the whole body, increasing natural heat, by means of which the nutriment is well concocted in the stomach, liver, and veins, few or no crudities left, is happily distributed over all the body.” Besides, it expels excrements by sweat and other insensible vapours; insomuch, that [3219]Galen prefers exercise before all physic, rectification of diet, or any regimen in what kind soever; 'tis nature's physician. [3220]Fulgentius, out of Gordonius de conserv. vit. hom. lib. 1. cap. 7. terms exercise, “a spur of a dull, sleepy nature, the comforter of the members, cure of infirmity, death of diseases, destruction of all mischiefs and vices.” The fittest time for exercise is a little before dinner, a little before supper, [3221]or at any time when the body is empty. Montanus, consil. 31. prescribes it every morning to his patient, and that, as [3222]Calenus adds, “after he hath done his ordinary needs, rubbed his body, washed his hands and face, combed his head and gargarised.” What kind of exercise he should use, Galen tells us, lib. 2. et 3. de sanit. tuend. and in what measure, [3223] “till the body be ready to sweat,” and roused up; ad ruborem, some say, non ad sudorem, lest it should dry the body too much; others enjoin those wholesome businesses, as to dig so long in his garden, to hold the plough, and the like. Some prescribe frequent and violent labour and exercises, as sawing every day so long together (epid. 6. Hippocrates confounds them), but that is in some cases, to some peculiar men; [3224]the most forbid, and by no means will have it go farther than a beginning sweat, as being [3225]perilous if it exceed.
Of these labours, exercises, and recreations, which are likewise included, some properly belong to the body, some to the mind, some more easy, some hard, some with delight, some without, some within doors, some natural, some are artificial. Amongst bodily exercises, Galen commends ludum parvae pilae, to play at ball, be it with the hand or racket, in tennis-courts or otherwise, it exerciseth each part of the body, and doth much good, so that they sweat not too much. It was in great request of old amongst the Greeks, Romans, Barbarians, mentioned by Homer, Herodotus, and Plinius. Some write, that Aganella, a fair maid of Corcyra, was the inventor of it, for she presented the first ball that ever was made to Nausica, the daughter of King Alcinous, and taught her how to use it.
The ordinary sports which are used abroad are hawking, hunting, hilares venandi labores, [3226]one calls them, because they recreate body and mind, [3227]another, the [3228]“best exercise that is, by which alone many have been [3229]freed from all feral diseases.” Hegesippus, lib. 1. cap. 37. relates of Herod, that he was eased of a grievous melancholy by that means. Plato, 7. de leg. highly magnifies it, dividing it into three parts, “by land, water, air.” Xenophon, in Cyropaed. graces it with a great name, Deorum munus, the gift of the gods, a princely sport, which they have ever used, saith Langius, epist. 59. lib. 2. as well for health as pleasure, and do at this day, it being the sole almost and ordinary sport of our noblemen in Europe, and elsewhere all over the world. Bohemus, de mor. gent. lib. 3. cap. 12. styles it therefore, studium nobilium, communiter venantur, quod sibi solis licere contendunt, 'tis all their study, their exercise, ordinary business, all their talk: and indeed some dote too much after it, they can do nothing else, discourse of naught else. Paulus Jovius, descr. Brit. doth in some sort tax our [3230] “English nobility for it, for living in the country so much, and too frequent use of it, as if they had no other means but hawking and hunting to approve themselves gentlemen with.”
Hawking comes near to hunting, the one in the air, as the other on the earth, a sport as much affected as the other, by some preferred. [3231]It was never heard of amongst the Romans, invented some twelve hundred years since, and first mentioned by Firmicus, lib. 5. cap. 8. The Greek emperors began it, and now nothing so frequent: he is nobody that in the season hath not a hawk on his fist. A great art, and many [3232]books written of it. It is a wonder to hear [3233]what is related of the Turks' officers in this behalf, how many thousand men are employed about it, how many hawks of all sorts, how much revenues consumed on that only disport, how much time is spent at Adrianople alone every year to that purpose. The [3234]Persian kings hawk after butterflies with sparrows made to that use, and stares: lesser hawks for lesser games they have, and bigger for the rest, that they may produce their sport to all seasons. The Muscovian emperors reclaim eagles to fly at hinds, foxes, &c., and such a one was sent for a present to [3235]Queen Elizabeth: some reclaim ravens, castrils, pies, &c., and man them for their pleasures.
Fowling is more troublesome, but all out as delightsome to some sorts of men, be it with guns, lime, nets, glades, gins, strings, baits, pitfalls, pipes, calls, stalking-horses, setting-dogs, decoy-ducks, &c., or otherwise. Some much delight to take larks with day-nets, small birds with chaff-nets, plovers, partridge, herons, snipe, &c. Henry the Third, king of Castile (as Mariana the Jesuit reports of him, lib. 3. cap. 7.) was much affected [3236]“with catching of quails,” and many gentlemen take a singular pleasure at morning and evening to go abroad with their quail-pipes, and will take any pains to satisfy their delight in that kind. The [3237]Italians have gardens fitted to such use, with nets, bushes, glades, sparing no cost or industry, and are very much affected with the sport. Tycho Brahe, that great astronomer, in the chorography of his Isle of Huena, and Castle of Uraniburge, puts down his nets, and manner of catching small birds, as an ornament and a recreation, wherein he himself was sometimes employed.
Fishing is a kind of hunting by water, be it with nets, weels, baits, angling, or otherwise, and yields all out as much pleasure to some men as dogs or hawks; [3238]“When they draw their fish upon the bank,” saith Nic. Henselius Silesiographiae, cap. 3. speaking of that extraordinary delight his countrymen took in fishing, and in making of pools. James Dubravius, that Moravian, in his book de pisc. telleth, how travelling by the highway side in Silesia, he found a nobleman, [3239]“booted up to the groins,” wading himself, pulling the nets, and labouring as much as any fisherman of them all: and when some belike objected to him the baseness of his office, he excused himself, [3240]“that if other men might hunt hares, why should not he hunt carps?” Many gentlemen in like sort with us will wade up to the arm-holes upon such occasions, and voluntarily undertake that to satisfy their pleasures, which a poor man for a good stipend would scarce be hired to undergo. Plutarch, in his book de soler. animal. speaks against all fishing, [3241]“as a filthy, base, illiberal employment, having neither wit nor perspicacity in it, nor worth the labour.” But he that shall consider the variety of baits for all seasons, and pretty devices which our anglers have invented, peculiar lines, false flies, several sleights, &c. will say, that it deserves like commendation, requires as much study and perspicacity as the rest, and is to be preferred before many of them. Because hawking and hunting are very laborious, much riding, and many dangers accompany them; but this is still and quiet: and if so be the angler catch no fish, yet he hath a wholesome walk to the brookside, pleasant shade by the sweet silver streams; he hath good air, and sweet smells of fine fresh meadow flowers, he hears the melodious harmony of birds, he sees the swans, herons, ducks, water-horns, coots, &c., and many other fowl, with their brood, which he thinketh better than the noise of hounds, or blast of horns, and all the sport that they can make.
Many other sports and recreations there be, much in use, as ringing, bowling, shooting, which Ascam recommends in a just volume, and hath in former times been enjoined by statute, as a defensive exercise, and an [3242]honour to our land, as well may witness our victories in France. Keelpins, tronks, quoits, pitching bars, hurling, wrestling, leaping, running, fencing, mustering, swimming, wasters, foils, football, balloon, quintain, &c., and many such, which are the common recreations of the country folks. Riding of great horses, running at rings, tilts and tournaments, horse races, wild-goose chases, which are the disports of greater men, and good in themselves, though many gentlemen by that means gallop quite out of their fortunes.
But the most pleasant of all outward pastimes is that of [3243]Areteus, deambulatio per amoena loca, to make a petty progress, a merry journey now and then with some good companions, to visit friends, see cities, castles, towns,
The country hath his recreations, the city his several gymnics and exercises, May games, feasts, wakes, and merry meetings, to solace themselves; the very being in the country; that life itself is a sufficient recreation to some men, to enjoy such pleasures, as those old patriarchs did. Diocletian, the emperor, was so much affected with it, that he gave over his sceptre, and turned gardener. Constantine wrote twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him, bragged of nothing more than of his orchard, hi sunt ordines mei. What shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so many several kinds of pears, apples, plums, peaches, &c.
Every palace, every city almost hath its peculiar walks, cloisters, terraces, groves, theatres, pageants, games, and several recreations; every country, some professed gymnics to exhilarate their minds, and exercise their bodies. The [3272]Greeks had their Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, Nemean games, in honour of Neptune, Jupiter, Apollo; Athens hers: some for honour, garlands, crowns; for [3273]beauty, dancing, running, leaping, like our silver games. The [3274]Romans had their feasts, as the Athenians, and Lacedaemonians held their public banquets, in Pritanaeo, Panathenaeis, Thesperiis, Phiditiis, plays, naumachies, places for sea-fights, [3275]theatres, amphitheatres able to contain 70,000 men, wherein they had several delightsome shows to exhilarate the people; [3276] gladiators, combats of men with themselves, with wild beasts, and wild beasts one with another, like our bull-baitings, or bear-baitings (in which many countrymen and citizens amongst us so much delight and so frequently use), dancers on ropes. Jugglers, wrestlers, comedies, tragedies, publicly exhibited at the emperor's and city's charge, and that with incredible cost and magnificence. In the Low-Countries (as [3277]Meteran relates) before these wars, they had many solemn feasts, plays, challenges, artillery gardens, colleges of rhymers, rhetoricians, poets: and to this day, such places are curiously maintained in Amsterdam, as appears by that description of Isaacus Pontanus, rerum Amstelrod. lib. 2. cap. 25. So likewise not long since at Friburg in Germany, as is evident by that relation of [3278]Neander, they had Ludos septennales, solemn plays every seven years, which Bocerus, one of their own poets, hath elegantly described:
Chess-play is a good and witty exercise of the mind for some kind of men, and fit for such melancholy, Rhasis holds, as are idle, and have extravagant impertinent thoughts, or troubled with cares, nothing better to distract their mind, and alter their meditations: invented (some say) by the [3297]general of an army in a famine, to keep soldiers from mutiny: but if it proceed from overmuch study, in such a case it may do more harm than good; it is a game too troublesome for some men's brains, too full of anxiety, all out as bad as study; besides it is a testy choleric game, and very offensive to him that loseth the mate. [3298]William the Conqueror, in his younger years, playing at chess with the Prince of France (Dauphine was not annexed to that crown in those days) losing a mate, knocked the chess-board about his pate, which was a cause afterward of much enmity between them. For some such reason it is belike, that Patritius, in his 3. book, tit. 12. de reg. instit. forbids his prince to play at chess; hawking and hunting, riding, &c. he will allow; and this to other men, but by no means to him. In Muscovy, where they live in stoves and hot houses all winter long, come seldom or little abroad, it is again very necessary, and therefore in those parts, (saith [3299]Herbastein) much used. At Fez in Africa, where the like inconvenience of keeping within doors is through heat, it is very laudable; and (as [3300]Leo Afer relates) as much frequented. A sport fit for idle gentlewomen, soldiers in garrison, and courtiers that have nought but love matters to busy themselves about, but not altogether so convenient for such as are students. The like I may say of Col. Bruxer's philosophy game, D. Fulke's Metromachia and his Ouronomachia, with the rest of those intricate astrological and geometrical fictions, for such especially as are mathematically given; and the rest of those curious games.
Dancing, singing, masking, mumming, stage plays, howsoever they be heavily censured by some severe Catos, yet if opportunely and soberly used, may justly be approved. Melius est foedere, quam saltare, [3301]saith Austin: but what is that if they delight in it? [3302]Nemo saltat sobrius. But in what kind of dance? I know these sports have many oppugners, whole volumes writ against them; when as all they say (if duly considered) is but ignoratio Elenchi; and some again, because they are now cold and wayward, past themselves, cavil at all such youthful sports in others, as he did in the comedy; they think them, illico nasci senes, &c. Some out of preposterous zeal object many times trivial arguments, and because of some abuse, will quite take away the good use, as if they should forbid wine because it makes men drunk; but in my judgment they are too stern: there “is a time for all things, a time to mourn, a time to dance,” Eccles. iii. 4. “a time to embrace, a time not to embrace,” (verse 5.) “and nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works,” verse 22; for my part, I will subscribe to the king's declaration, and was ever of that mind, those May games, wakes, and Whitsun ales, &c., 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, &c., play at ball, and barley-breaks, and what sports and recreations they like best. In Franconia, a province of Germany, (saith [3303]Aubanus Bohemus) the old folks, after evening prayer, went to the alehouse, the younger sort to dance: and to say truth with [3304]Salisburiensis, satius fuerat sic otiari, quam turpius occupari, better to do so than worse, as without question otherwise (such is the corruption of man's nature) many of them will do. For that cause, plays, masks, jesters, gladiators, tumblers, jugglers, &c., and all that crew is admitted and winked at: [3305]Tota jocularium scena procedit, et ideo spectacula admissa sunt, et infinita tyrocinia vanitatum, ut his occupentur, qui perniciosius otiari solent: that they might be busied about such toys, that would otherwise more perniciously be idle. So that as [3306]Tacitus said of the astrologers in Rome, we may say of them, genus hominum est quod in civitate nostra et vitabitur semper et retinebitur, they are a debauched company most part, still spoken against, as well they deserve some of them (for I so relish and distinguish them as fiddlers, and musicians), and yet ever retained. “Evil is not to be done (I confess) that good may come of it:” but this is evil per accidens, and in a qualified sense, to avoid a greater inconvenience, may justly be tolerated. Sir Thomas More, in his Utopian Commonwealth, [3307]“as he will have none idle, so will he have no man labour over hard, to be toiled out like a horse, 'tis more than slavish infelicity, the life of most of our hired servants and tradesmen elsewhere” (excepting his Utopians) “but half the day allotted for work, and half for honest recreation, or whatsoever employment they shall think fit for themselves.” If one half day in a week were allowed to our household servants for their merry meetings, by their hard masters, or in a year some feasts, like those Roman Saturnals, I think they would labour harder all the rest of their time, and both parties be better pleased: but this needs not (you will say), for some of them do nought but loiter all the week long.
This which I aim at, is for such as are fracti animis, troubled in mind, to ease them, over-toiled on the one part, to refresh: over idle on the other, to keep themselves busied. And to this purpose, as any labour or employment will serve to the one, any honest recreation will conduce to the other, so that it be moderate and sparing, as the use of meat and drink; not to spend all their life in gaming, playing, and pastimes, as too many gentlemen do; but to revive our bodies and recreate our souls with honest sports: of which as there be diverse sorts, and peculiar to several callings, ages, sexes, conditions, so there be proper for several seasons, and those of distinct natures, to fit that variety of humours which is amongst them, that if one will not, another may: some in summer, some in winter, some gentle, some more violent, some for the mind alone, some for the body and mind: (as to some it is both business and a pleasant recreation to oversee workmen of all sorts, husbandry, cattle, horses, &c. To build, plot, project, to make models, cast up accounts, &c.) some without, some within doors; new, old, &c., as the season serveth, and as men are inclined. It is reported of Philippus Bonus, that good duke of Burgundy (by Lodovicus Vives, in Epist. and Pont. [3308]Heuter in his history) that the said duke, at the marriage of Eleonora, sister to the king of Portugal, at Bruges in Flanders, which was solemnised in the deep of winter, when, as by reason of unseasonable weather, he could neither hawk nor hunt, and was now tired with cards, dice, &c., and such other domestic sports, or to see ladies dance, with some of his courtiers, he would in the evening walk disguised all about the town. It so fortuned, as he was walking late one night, he found a country fellow dead drunk, snorting on a bulk; [3309]he caused his followers to bring him to his palace, and there stripping him of his old clothes, and attiring him after the court fashion, when he waked, he and they were all ready to attend upon his excellency, persuading him he was some great duke. The poor fellow admiring how he came there, was served in state all the day long; after supper he saw them dance, heard music, and the rest of those court-like pleasures: but late at night, when he was well tippled, and again fast asleep, they put on his old robes, and so conveyed him to the place where they first found him. Now the fellow had not made them so good sport the day before as he did when he returned to himself; all the jest was, to see how he [3310]looked upon it. In conclusion, after some little admiration, the poor man told his friends he had seen a vision, constantly believed it, would not otherwise be persuaded, and so the jest ended. [3311]Antiochus Epiphanes would often disguise himself, steal from his court, and go into merchants', goldsmiths', and other tradesmen's shops, sit and talk with them, and sometimes ride or walk alone, and fall aboard with any tinker, clown, serving man, carrier, or whomsoever he met first. Sometimes he did ex insperato give a poor fellow money, to see how he would look, or on set purpose lose his purse as he went, to watch who found it, and withal how he would be affected, and with such objects he was much delighted. Many such tricks are ordinarily put in practice by great men, to exhilarate themselves and others, all which are harmless jests, and have their good uses.
But amongst those exercises, or recreations of the mind within doors, there is none so general, so aptly to be applied to all sorts of men, so fit and proper to expel idleness and melancholy, as that of study: Studia, senectutem oblectant, adolescentiam, alunt, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium et solatium praebent, domi delectant, &c., find the rest in Tully pro Archia Poeta. [3312]What so full of content, as to read, walk, and see maps, pictures, statues, jewels, marbles, which some so much magnify, as those that Phidias made of old so exquisite and pleasing to be beheld, that as [3313]Chrysostom thinketh, “if any man be sickly, troubled in mind, or that cannot sleep for grief, and shall but stand over against one of Phidias' images, he will forget all care, or whatsoever else may molest him, in an instant?” There be those as much taken with Michael Angelo's, Raphael de Urbino's, Francesco Francia's pieces, and many of those Italian and Dutch painters, which were excellent in their ages; and esteem of it as a most pleasing sight, to view those neat architectures, devices, escutcheons, coats of arms, read such books, to peruse old coins of several sorts in a fair gallery; artificial works, perspective glasses, old relics, Roman antiquities, variety of colours. A good picture is falsa veritas, et muta poesis: and though (as [3314]Vives saith) artificialia delectant, sed mox fastidimus, artificial toys please but for a time; yet who is he that will not be moved with them for the present? When Achilles was tormented and sad for the loss of his dear friend Patroclus, his mother Thetis brought him a most elaborate and curious buckler made by Vulcan, in which were engraven sun, moon, stars, planets, sea, land, men fighting, running, riding, women scolding, hills, dales, towns, castles, brooks, rivers, trees, &c., with many pretty landscapes, and perspective pieces: with sight of which he was infinitely delighted, and much eased of his grief.
Whosoever he is therefore that is overrun with solitariness, or carried away with pleasing melancholy and vain conceits, and for want of employment knows not how to spend his time, or crucified with worldly care, I can prescribe him no better remedy than this of study, to compose himself to the learning of some art or science. Provided always that this malady proceed not from overmuch study; for in such case he adds fuel to the fire, and nothing can be more pernicious: let him take heed he do not overstretch his wits, and make a skeleton of himself; or such inamoratos as read nothing but play-books, idle poems, jests, Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, the Seven Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon of Bordeaux, &c. Such many times prove in the end as mad as Don Quixote. Study is only prescribed to those that are otherwise idle, troubled in mind, or carried headlong with vain thoughts and imaginations, to distract their cogitations (although variety of study, or some serious subject, would do the former no harm) and divert their continual meditations another way. Nothing in this case better than study; semper aliquid memoriter ediscant, saith Piso, let them learn something without book, transcribe, translate, &c. Read the Scriptures, which Hyperius, lib. 1. de quotid. script. lec. fol. 77. holds available of itself, [3344]“the mind is erected thereby from all worldly cares, and hath much quiet and tranquillity.” For as [3345]Austin well hath it, 'tis scientia scientiarum, omni melle dulcior, omni pane suavior, omni vino, hilarior: 'tis the best nepenthe, surest cordial, sweetest alterative, presentest diverter: for neither as [3346]Chrysostom well adds, “those boughs and leaves of trees which are plashed for cattle to stand under, in the heat of the day, in summer, so much refresh them with their acceptable shade, as the reading of the Scripture doth recreate and comfort a distressed soul, in sorrow and affliction.” Paul bids “pray continually;” quod cibus corpori, lectio animae facit, saith Seneca, as meat is to the body, such is reading to the soul. [3347]“To be at leisure without books is another hell, and to be buried alive.” [3348]Cardan calls a library the physic of the soul; [3349]“divine authors fortify the mind, make men bold and constant; and (as Hyperius adds) godly conference will not permit the mind to be tortured with absurd cogitations.” Rhasis enjoins continual conference to such melancholy men, perpetual discourse of some history, tale, poem, news, &c., alternos sermones edere ac bibere, aeque jucundum quam cibus, sive potus, which feeds the mind as meat and drink doth the body, and pleaseth as much: and therefore the said Rhasis, not without good cause, would have somebody still talk seriously, or dispute with them, and sometimes [3350]“to cavil and wrangle” (so that it break not out to a violent perturbation), “for such altercation is like stirring of a dead fire to make it burn afresh,” it whets a dull spirit, “and will not suffer the mind to be drowned in those profound cogitations, which melancholy men are commonly troubled with.” [3351]Ferdinand and Alphonsus, kings of Arragon and Sicily, were both cured by reading the history, one of Curtius, the other of Livy, when no prescribed physic would take place. [3352]Camerarius relates as much of Lorenzo de' Medici. Heathen philosophers arc so full of divine precepts in this kind, that, as some think, they alone are able to settle a distressed mind. [3353]Sunt verba et voces, quibus hunc lenire dolorem, &c. Epictetus, Plutarch, and Seneca; qualis ille, quae tela, saith Lipsius, adversus omnes animi casus administrat, et ipsam mortem, quomodo vitia eripit, infert virtutes? when I read Seneca, [3354]“methinks I am beyond all human fortunes, on the top of a hill above mortality.” Plutarch saith as much of Homer, for which cause belike Niceratus, in Xenophon, was made by his parents to con Homer's Iliads and Odysseys without book, ut in virum bonum evaderet, as well to make him a good and honest man, as to avoid idleness. If this comfort be got from philosophy, what shall be had from divinity? What shall Austin, Cyprian, Gregory, Bernard's divine meditations afford us?
Now for women, instead of laborious studies, they have curious needleworks, cut-works, spinning, bone-lace, and many pretty devices of their own making, to adorn their houses, cushions, carpets, chairs, stools, (“for she eats not the bread of idleness,” Prov. xxxi. 27. quaesivit lanam et linum) confections, conserves, distillations, &c., which they show to strangers.
As waking that hurts, by all means must be avoided, so sleep, which so much helps, by like ways, [3376]“must be procured, by nature or art, inward or outward medicines, and be protracted longer than ordinary, if it may be, as being an especial help.” It moistens and fattens the body, concocts, and helps digestion (as we see in dormice, and those Alpine mice that sleep all winter), which Gesner speaks of, when they are so found sleeping under the snow in the dead of winter, as fat as butter. It expels cares, pacifies the mind, refresheth the weary limbs after long work:
Against fearful and troublesome dreams, Incubus and such inconveniences, wherewith melancholy men are molested, the best remedy is to eat a light supper, and of such meats as are easy of digestion, no hare, venison, beef, &c., not to lie on his back, not to meditate or think in the daytime of any terrible objects, or especially talk of them before he goes to bed. For, as he said in Lucian after such conference, Hecates somniare mihi videor, I can think of nothing but hobgoblins: and as Tully notes, [3394] “for the most part our speeches in the daytime cause our fantasy to work upon the like in our sleep,” which Ennius writes of Homer: Et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat: as a dog dreams of a hare, so do men on such subjects they thought on last.
Whosoever he is that shall hope to cure this malady in himself or any other, must first rectify these passions and perturbations of the mind: the chiefest cure consists in them. A quiet mind is that voluptas, or summum bonum of Epicurus, non dolere, curis vacare, animo tranquillo esse, not to grieve, but to want cares, and have a quiet soul, is the only pleasure of the world, as Seneca truly recites his opinion, not that of eating and drinking, which injurious Aristotle maliciously puts upon him, and for which he is still mistaken, male audit et vapulat, slandered without a cause, and lashed by all posterity. [3400]“Fear and sorrow, therefore, are especially to be avoided, and the mind to be mitigated with mirth, constancy, good hope; vain terror, bad objects are to be removed, and all such persons in whose companies they be not well pleased.” Gualter Bruel. Fernelius, consil. 43. Mercurialis, consil. 6. Piso, Jacchinus, cap. 15. in 9. Rhasis, Capivaccius, Hildesheim, &c., all inculcate this as an especial means of their cure, that their [3401]“minds be quietly pacified, vain conceits diverted, if it be possible, with terrors, cares,” [3402] “fixed studies, cogitations, and whatsoever it is that shall any way molest or trouble the soul,” because that otherwise there is no good to be done. [3403]“The body's mischiefs,” as Plato proves, “proceed from the soul: and if the mind be not first satisfied, the body can never be cured.” Alcibiades raves (saith [3404]Maximus Tyrius) and is sick, his furious desires carry him from Lyceus to the pleading place, thence to the sea, so into Sicily, thence to Lacedaemon, thence to Persia, thence to Samos, then again to Athens; Critias tyranniseth over all the city; Sardanapalus is lovesick; these men are ill-affected all, and can never be cured, till their minds be otherwise qualified. Crato, therefore, in that often-cited Counsel of his for a nobleman his patient, when he had sufficiently informed him in diet, air, exercise, Venus, sleep, concludes with these as matters of greatest moment, Quod reliquum est, animae accidentia corrigantur, from which alone proceeds melancholy; they are the fountain, the subject, the hinges whereon it turns, and must necessarily be reformed. [3405]“For anger stirs choler, heats the blood and vital spirits; sorrow on the other side refrigerates the body, and extinguisheth natural heat, overthrows appetite, hinders concoction, dries up the temperature, and perverts the understanding:” fear dissolves the spirits, infects the heart, attenuates the soul: and for these causes all passions and perturbations must, to the uttermost of our power and most seriously, be removed. Aelianus Montaltus attributes so much to them, [3406]“that he holds the rectification of them alone to be sufficient to the cure of melancholy in most patients.” Many are fully cured when they have seen or heard, &c., enjoy their desires, or be secured and satisfied in their minds; Galen, the common master of them all, from whose fountain they fetch water, brags, lib. 1. de san. tuend., that he, for his part, hath cured divers of this infirmity, solum animis ad rectum institutis, by right settling alone of their minds.
Yea, but you will here infer, that this is excellent good indeed if it could be done; but how shall it be effected, by whom, what art, what means? hic labor, hoc opus est. 'Tis a natural infirmity, a most powerful adversary, all men are subject to passions, and melancholy above all others, as being distempered by their innate humours, abundance of choler adust, weakness of parts, outward occurrences; and how shall they be avoided? The wisest men, greatest philosophers of most excellent wit, reason, judgment, divine spirits, cannot moderate themselves in this behalf; such as are sound in body and mind, Stoics, heroes, Homer's gods, all are passionate, and furiously carried sometimes; and how shall we that are already crazed, fracti animis, sick in body, sick in mind, resist? we cannot perform it. You may advise and give good precepts, as who cannot? But how shall they be put in practice? I may not deny but our passions are violent, and tyrannise of us, yet there be means to curb them; though they be headstrong, they may be tamed, they may be qualified, if he himself or his friends will but use their honest endeavours, or make use of such ordinary helps as are commonly prescribed.
He himself (I say); from the patient himself the first and chiefest remedy must be had; for if he be averse, peevish, waspish, give way wholly to his passions, will not seek to be helped, or be ruled by his friends, how is it possible he should be cured? But if he be willing at least, gentle, tractable, and desire his own good, no doubt but he may magnam morbi deponere partem, be eased at least, if not cured. He himself must do his utmost endeavour to resist and withstand the beginnings. Principiis obsta, “Give not water passage, no not a little,” Ecclus. xxv. 27. If they open a little, they will make a greater breach at length. Whatsoever it is that runneth in his mind, vain conceit, be it pleasing or displeasing, which so much affects or troubleth him, [3407]“by all possible means he must withstand it, expel those vain, false, frivolous imaginations, absurd conceits, feigned fears and sorrows; from which,” saith Piso, “this disease primarily proceeds, and takes his first occasion or beginning, by doing something or other that shall be opposite unto them, thinking of something else, persuading by reason, or howsoever to make a sudden alteration of them.” Though he have hitherto run in a full career, and precipitated himself, following his passions, giving reins to his appetite, let him now stop upon a sudden, curb himself in; and as [3408]Lemnius adviseth, “strive against with all his power, to the utmost of his endeavour, and not cherish those fond imaginations, which so covertly creep into his mind, most pleasing and amiable at first, but bitter as gall at last, and so headstrong, that by no reason, art, counsel, or persuasion, they may be shaken off.” Though he be far gone, and habituated unto such fantastical imaginations, yet as [3409]Tully and Plutarch advise, let him oppose, fortify, or prepare himself against them, by premeditation, reason, or as we do by a crooked staff, bend himself another way.
Yea, but you infer again, facile consilium damus aliis, we can easily give counsel to others; every man, as the saying is, can tame a shrew but he that hath her; si hic esses, aliter sentires; if you were in our misery, you would find it otherwise, 'tis not so easily performed. We know this to be true; we should moderate ourselves, but we are furiously carried, we cannot make use of such precepts, we are overcome, sick, male sani, distempered and habituated to these courses, we can make no resistance; you may as well bid him that is diseased not to feel pain, as a melancholy man not to fear, not to be sad: 'tis within his blood, his brains, his whole temperature, it cannot be removed. But he may choose whether he will give way too far unto it, he may in some sort correct himself. A philosopher was bitten with a mad dog, and as the nature of that disease is to abhor all waters, and liquid things, and to think still they see the picture of a dog before them: he went for all this, reluctante se, to the bath, and seeing there (as he thought) in the water the picture of a dog, with reason overcame this conceit, quid cani cum balneo? what should a dog do in a bath? a mere conceit. Thou thinkest thou hearest and seest devils, black men, &c., 'tis not so, 'tis thy corrupt fantasy; settle thine imagination, thou art well. Thou thinkest thou hast a great nose, thou art sick, every man observes thee, laughs thee to scorn; persuade thyself 'tis no such matter: this is fear only, and vain suspicion. Thou art discontent, thou art sad and heavy; but why? upon what ground? consider of it: thou art jealous, timorous, suspicious; for what cause? examine it thoroughly, thou shalt find none at all, or such as is to be contemned; such as thou wilt surely deride, and contemn in thyself, when it is past. Rule thyself then with reason, satisfy thyself, accustom thyself, wean thyself from such fond conceits, vain fears, strong imaginations, restless thoughts. Thou mayst do it; Est in nobis assuescere (as Plutarch saith), we may frame ourselves as we will. As he that useth an upright shoe, may correct the obliquity, or crookedness, by wearing it on the other side; we may overcome passions if we will. Quicquid sibi imperavit animus obtinuit (as [3414]Seneca saith) nulli tam feri affectus, ut non disciplina perdomentur, whatsoever the will desires, she may command: no such cruel affections, but by discipline they may be tamed; voluntarily thou wilt not do this or that, which thou oughtest to do, or refrain, &c., but when thou art lashed like a dull jade, thou wilt reform it: fear of a whip will make thee do, or not do. Do that voluntarily then which thou canst do, and must do by compulsion; thou mayst refrain if thou wilt, and master thine affections. [3415]“As in a city” (saith Melancthon) “they do by stubborn rebellious rogues, that will not submit themselves to political judgment, compel them by force; so must we do by our affections. If the heart will not lay aside those vicious motions, and the fantasy those fond imaginations, we have another form of government to enforce and refrain our outward members, that they be not led by our passions.” If appetite will not obey, let the moving faculty overrule her, let her resist and compel her to do otherwise. In an ague the appetite would drink; sore eyes that itch would be rubbed; but reason saith no, and therefore the moving faculty will not do it. Our fantasy would intrude a thousand fears, suspicions, chimeras upon us, but we have reason to resist, yet we let it be overborne by our appetite; [3416]“imagination enforceth spirits, which, by an admirable league of nature, compel the nerves to obey, and they our several limbs:” we give too much way to our passions. And as to him that is sick of an ague, all things are distasteful and unpleasant, non ex cibi vitio saith Plutarch, not in the meat, but in our taste: so many things are offensive to us, not of themselves, but out of our corrupt judgment, jealousy, suspicion, and the like: we pull these mischiefs upon our own heads.
If then our judgment be so depraved, our reason overruled, will precipitated, that we cannot seek our own good, or moderate ourselves, as in this disease commonly it is, the best way for ease is to impart our misery to some friend, not to smother it up in our own breast: aliter vitium crescitque tegendo, &c., and that which was most offensive to us, a cause of fear and grief, quod nunc te coquit, another hell; for [3417] strangulat inclusus dolor atque exaestuat intus, grief concealed strangles the soul; but when as we shall but impart it to some discreet, trusty, loving friend, it is [3418]instantly removed, by his counsel happily, wisdom, persuasion, advice, his good means, which we could not otherwise apply unto ourselves. A friend's counsel is a charm, like mandrake wine, curas sopit; and as a [3419]bull that is tied to a fig-tree becomes gentle on a sudden (which some, saith [3420]Plutarch, interpret of good words), so is a savage, obdurate heart mollified by fair speeches. “All adversity finds ease in complaining” (as [3421]Isidore holds), “and 'tis a solace to relate it,” [3422]Ἀγαθὴ δε παραίφασις ἐστὶν ἐταίρου. Friends' confabulations are comfortable at all times, as fire in winter, shade in summer, quale sopor fessis in gramine, meat and drink to him that is hungry or athirst; Democritus's collyrium is not so sovereign to the eyes as this is to the heart; good words are cheerful and powerful of themselves, but much more from friends, as so many props, mutually sustaining each other like ivy and a wall, which Camerarius hath well illustrated in an emblem. Lenit animum simplex vel saepe narratio, the simple narration many times easeth our distressed mind, and in the midst of greatest extremities; so diverse have been relieved, by [3423]exonerating themselves to a faithful friend: he sees that which we cannot see for passion and discontent, he pacifies our minds, he will ease our pain, assuage our anger; quanta inde voluptas, quanta securitas, Chrysostom adds, what pleasure, what security by that means! [3424]“Nothing so available, or that so much refresheth the soul of man.” Tully, as I remember, in an epistle to his dear friend Atticus, much condoles the defect of such a friend. [3425]“I live here” (saith he) “in a great city, where I have a multitude of acquaintance, but not a man of all that company with whom I dare familiarly breathe, or freely jest. Wherefore I expect thee, I desire thee, I send for thee; for there be many things which trouble and molest me, which had I but thee in presence, I could quickly disburden myself of in a walking discourse.” The like, peradventure, may he and he say with that old man in the comedy,
When the patient of himself is not able to resist, or overcome these heart-eating passions, his friends or physician must be ready to supply that which is wanting. Suae erit humanitatis et sapientiae (which [3431] Tully enjoineth in like case) siquid erratum, curare, aut improvisum, sua diligentia corrigere. They must all join; nec satis medico, saith [3432] Hippocrates, suum fecisse officium, nisi suum quoque aegrotus, suum astantes, &c. First, they must especially beware, a melancholy discontented person (be it in what kind of melancholy soever) never be left alone or idle: but as physicians prescribe physic, cum custodia, let them not be left unto themselves, but with some company or other, lest by that means they aggravate and increase their disease; non oportet aegros humjusmodi esse solos vel inter ignotos, vel inter eos quos non amant aut negligunt, as Rod. a Fonseca, tom. 1. consul. 35. prescribes. Lugentes custodire solemus (saith [3433]Seneca) ne solitudine male utantur; we watch a sorrowful person, lest he abuse his solitariness, and so should we do a melancholy man; set him about some business, exercise or recreation, which may divert his thoughts, and still keep him otherwise intent; for his fantasy is so restless, operative and quick, that if it be not in perpetual action, ever employed, it will work upon itself, melancholise, and be carried away instantly, with some fear, jealousy, discontent, suspicion, some vain conceit or other. If his weakness be such that he cannot discern what is amiss, correct, or satisfy, it behoves them by counsel, comfort, or persuasion, by fair or foul means, to alienate his mind, by some artificial invention, or some contrary persuasion, to remove all objects, causes, companies, occasions, as may any ways molest him, to humour him, please him, divert him, and if it be possible, by altering his course of life, to give him security and satisfaction. If he conceal his grievances, and will not be known of them, [3434]“they must observe by his looks, gestures, motions, fantasy, what it is that offends,” and then to apply remedies unto him: many are instantly cured, when their minds are satisfied. [3435]Alexander makes mention of a woman, “that by reason of her husband's long absence in travel, was exceeding peevish and melancholy, but when she heard her husband was returned, beyond all expectation, at the first sight of him, she was freed from all fear, without help of any other physic restored to her former health.” Trincavellius, consil. 12. lib. 1. hath such a story of a Venetian, that being much troubled with melancholy, [3436]“and ready to die for grief, when he heard his wife was brought to bed of a son, instantly recovered.” As Alexander concludes, [3437]“If our imaginations be not inveterate, by this art they may be cured, especially if they proceed from such a cause.” No better way to satisfy, than to remove the object, cause, occasion, if by any art or means possible we may find it out. If he grieve, stand in fear, be in suspicion, suspense, or any way molested, secure him, Solvitur malum, give him satisfaction, the cure is ended; alter his course of life, there needs no other physic. If the party be sad, or otherwise affected, “consider” (saith [3438]Trallianus) “the manner of it, all circumstances, and forthwith make a sudden alteration,” by removing the occasions, avoid all terrible objects, heard or seen, [3439]“monstrous and prodigious aspects,” tales of devils, spirits, ghosts, tragical stories; to such as are in fear they strike a great impression, renewed many times, and recall such chimeras and terrible fictions into their minds. [3440]“Make not so much as mention of them in private talk, or a dumb show tending to that purpose: such things” (saith Galateus) “are offensive to their imaginations.” And to those that are now in sorrow, [3441]Seneca “forbids all sad companions, and such as lament; a groaning companion is an enemy to quietness.” [3442]“Or if there be any such party, at whose presence the patient is not well pleased, he must be removed: gentle speeches, and fair means, must first be tried; no harsh language used, or uncomfortable words; and not expel, as some do, one madness with another; he that so doth, is madder than the patient himself:” all things must be quietly composed; eversa non evertenda, sed erigenda, things down must not be dejected, but reared, as Crato counselleth; [3443] “he must be quietly and gently used,” and we should not do anything against his mind, but by little and little effect it. As a horse that starts at a drum or trumpet, and will not endure the shooting of a piece, may be so manned by art, and animated, that he cannot only endure, but is much more generous at the hearing of such things, much more courageous than before, and much delighteth in it: they must not be reformed ex abrupto, but by all art and insinuation, made to such companies, aspects, objects they could not formerly away with. Many at first cannot endure the sight of a green wound, a sick man, which afterward become good chirurgeons, bold empirics: a horse starts at a rotten post afar off, which coming near he quietly passeth. 'Tis much in the manner of making such kind of persons, be they never so averse from company, bashful, solitary, timorous, they may be made at last with those Roman matrons, to desire nothing more than in a public show, to see a full company of gladiators breathe out their last.
If they may not otherwise be accustomed to brook such distasteful and displeasing objects, the best way then is generally to avoid them. Montanus, consil. 229. to the Earl of Montfort, a courtier, and his melancholy patient, adviseth him to leave the court, by reason of those continual discontents, crosses, abuses, [3444]“cares, suspicions, emulations, ambition, anger, jealousy, which that place afforded, and which surely caused him to be so melancholy at the first:” Maxima quaeque domus servis est plena superbis; a company of scoffers and proud jacks are commonly conversant and attend in such places, and able to make any man that is of a soft, quiet disposition (as many times they do) ex stulto insanum, if once they humour him, a very idiot, or stark mad. A thing too much practised in all common societies, and they have no better sport than to make themselves merry by abusing some silly fellow, or to take advantage of another man's weakness. In such cases as in a plague, the best remedy is cito longe tarde: (for to such a party, especially if he be apprehensive, there can be no greater misery) to get him quickly gone far enough off, and not to be overhasty in his return. If he be so stupid that he do not apprehend it, his friends should take some order, and by their discretion supply that which is wanting in him, as in all other cases they ought to do. If they see a man melancholy given, solitary, averse from company, please himself with such private and vain meditations, though he delight in it, they ought by all means seek to divert him, to dehort him, to tell him of the event and danger that may come of it. If they see a man idle, that by reason of his means otherwise will betake himself to no course of life, they ought seriously to admonish him, he makes a noose to entangle himself, his want of employment will be his undoing. If he have sustained any great loss, suffered a repulse, disgrace, &c., if it be possible, relieve him. If he desire aught, let him be satisfied; if in suspense, fear, suspicion, let him be secured: and if it may conveniently be, give him his heart's content; for the body cannot be cured till the mind be satisfied. [3445] Socrates, in Plato, would prescribe no physic for Charmides' headache, “till first he had eased his troubled mind; body and soul must be cured together, as head and eyes.”
When none of these precedent remedies will avail, it will not be amiss, which Savanarola and Aelian Montaltus so much commend, clavum clavo pellere, [3458]“to drive out one passion with another, or by some contrary passion,” as they do bleeding at nose by letting blood in the arm, to expel one fear with another, one grief with another. [3459] Christophorus a Vega accounts it rational physic, non alienum a ratione: and Lemnius much approves it, “to use a hard wedge to a hard knot,” to drive out one disease with another, to pull out a tooth, or wound him, to geld him, saith [3460]Platerus, as they did epileptical patients of old, because it quite alters the temperature, that the pain of the one may mitigate the grief of the other; [3461]“and I knew one that was so cured of a quartan ague, by the sudden coming of his enemies upon him.” If we may believe [3462]Pliny, whom Scaliger calls mendaciorum patrem, the father of lies, Q. Fabius Maximus, that renowned consul of Rome, in a battle fought with the king of the Allobroges, at the river Isaurus, was so rid of a quartan ague. Valesius, in his controversies, holds this an excellent remedy, and if it be discreetly used in this malady, better than any physic.
Sometimes again by some [3463]feigned lie, strange news, witty device, artificial invention, it is not amiss to deceive them. [3464]“As they hate those,” saith Alexander, “that neglect or deride, so they will give ear to such as will soothe them up. If they say they have swallowed frogs or a snake, by all means grant it, and tell them you can easily cure it;” 'tis an ordinary thing. Philodotus, the physician, cured a melancholy king, that thought his head was off, by putting a leaden cap thereon; the weight made him perceive it, and freed him of his fond imagination. A woman, in the said Alexander, swallowed a serpent as she thought; he gave her a vomit, and conveyed a serpent, such as she conceived, into the basin; upon the sight of it she was amended. The pleasantest dotage that ever I read, saith [3465]Laurentius, was of a gentleman at Senes in Italy, who was afraid to piss, lest all the town should be drowned; the physicians caused the bells to be rung backward, and told him the town was on fire, whereupon he made water, and was immediately cured. Another supposed his nose so big that he should dash it against the wall if he stirred; his physician took a great piece of flesh, and holding it in his hand, pinched him by the nose, making him believe that flesh was cut from it. Forestus, obs. lib. 1. had a melancholy patient, who thought he was dead, [3466]“he put a fellow in a chest, like a dead man, by his bedside, and made him rear himself a little, and eat: the melancholy man asked the counterfeit, whether dead men use to eat meat? He told him yea; whereupon he did eat likewise and was cured.” Lemnius, lib. 2. cap. 6. de 4. complex, hath many such instances, and Jovianus Pontanus, lib. 4. cap. 2. of Wisd. of the like; but amongst the rest I find one most memorable, registered in the [3467]French chronicles of an advocate of Paris before mentioned, who believed verily he was dead, &c. I read a multitude of examples of melancholy men cured by such artificial inventions.
Many and sundry are the means which philosophers and physicians have prescribed to exhilarate a sorrowful heart, to divert those fixed and intent cares and meditations, which in this malady so much offend; but in my judgment none so present, none so powerful, none so apposite as a cup of strong drink, mirth, music, and merry company. Ecclus. xl. 20. “Wine and music rejoice the heart.” [3468]Rhasis, cont. 9. Tract. 15. Altomarus, cap. 7. Aelianus Montaltus, c. 26. Ficinus, Bened. Victor. Faventinus are almost immoderate in the commendation of it; a most forcible medicine [3469]Jacchinus calls it: Jason Pratensis, “a most admirable thing, and worthy of consideration, that can so mollify the mind, and stay those tempestuous affections of it.” Musica est mentis medicina moestae, a roaring-meg against melancholy, to rear and revive the languishing soul; [3470]“affecting not only the ears, but the very arteries, the vital and animal spirits, it erects the mind, and makes it nimble.” Lemnius, instit, cap. 44. This it will effect in the most dull, severe and sorrowful souls, [3471]“expel grief with mirth, and if there be any clouds, dust, or dregs of cares yet lurking in our thoughts, most powerfully it wipes them all away,” Salisbur. polit. lib. 1. cap. 6. and that which is more, it will perform all this in an instant: [3472]“Cheer up the countenance, expel austerity, bring in hilarity” (Girald. Camb. cap. 12. Topog. Hiber.) “inform our manners, mitigate anger;” Athenaeus (Dipnosophist. lib. 14. cap. 10.) calleth it an infinite treasure to such as are endowed with it: Dulcisonum reficit tristia corda melos, Eobanus Hessus. Many other properties [3473]Cassiodorus, epist. 4. reckons up of this our divine music, not only to expel the greatest griefs, but “it doth extenuate fears and furies, appeaseth cruelty, abateth heaviness, and to such as are watchful it causeth quiet rest; it takes away spleen and hatred,” be it instrumental, vocal, with strings, wind, [3474]Quae, a spiritu, sine manuum dexteritate gubernetur, &c. it cures all irksomeness and heaviness of the soul. [3475]Labouring men that sing to their work, can tell as much, and so can soldiers when they go to fight, whom terror of death cannot so much affright, as the sound of trumpet, drum, fife, and such like music animates; metus enim mortis, as [3476]Censorinus informeth us, musica depellitur. “It makes a child quiet,” the nurse's song, and many times the sound of a trumpet on a sudden, bells ringing, a carman's whistle, a boy singing some ballad tune early in the streets, alters, revives, recreates a restless patient that cannot sleep in the night, &c. In a word, it is so powerful a thing that it ravisheth the soul, regina sensuum, the queen of the senses, by sweet pleasure (which is a happy cure), and corporal tunes pacify our incorporeal soul, sine ore loquens, dominatum in animam exercet, and carries it beyond itself, helps, elevates, extends it. Scaliger, exercit. 302, gives a reason of these effects, [3477]“because the spirits about the heart take in that trembling and dancing air into the body, are moved together, and stirred up with it,” or else the mind, as some suppose harmonically composed, is roused up at the tunes of music. And 'tis not only men that are so affected, but almost all other creatures. You know the tale of Hercules Gallus, Orpheus, and Amphion, felices animas Ovid calls them, that could saxa movere sono testudinis, &c. make stocks and stones, as well as beasts and other animals, dance after their pipes: the dog and hare, wolf and lamb; vicinumque lupo praebuit agna latus; clamosus graculus, stridula cornix, et Jovis aquila, as Philostratus describes it in his images, stood all gaping upon Orpheus; and [3478]trees pulled up by the roots came to hear him, Et comitem quercum pinus amica trahit.
Arion made fishes follow him, which, as common experience evinceth, [3479] are much affected with music. All singing birds are much pleased with it, especially nightingales, if we may believe Calcagninus; and bees amongst the rest, though they be flying away, when they hear any tingling sound, will tarry behind. [3480]“Harts, hinds, horses, dogs, bears, are exceedingly delighted with it.” Scal, exerc. 302. Elephants, Agrippa adds, lib. 2. cap. 24. and in Lydia in the midst of a lake there be certain floating islands (if ye will believe it), that after music will dance.
But to leave all declamatory speeches in praise [3481]of divine music, I will confine myself to my proper subject: besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against [3482] despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself. Canus, a Rhodian fiddler, in [3483]Philostratus, when Apollonius was inquisitive to know what he could do with his pipe, told him, “That he would make a melancholy man merry, and him that was merry much merrier than before, a lover more enamoured, a religious man more devout.” Ismenias the Theban, [3484]Chiron the centaur, is said to have cured this and many other diseases by music alone: as now they do those, saith [3485]Bodine, that are troubled with St. Vitus's Bedlam dance. [3486]Timotheus, the musician, compelled Alexander to skip up and down, and leave his dinner (like the tale of the Friar and the Boy), whom Austin, de civ. Dei, lib. 17. cap. 14. so much commends for it. Who hath not heard how David's harmony drove away the evil spirits from king Saul, 1 Sam. xvi. and Elisha when he was much troubled by importunate kings, called for a minstrel, “and when he played, the hand of the Lord came upon him,” 2 Kings iii. Censorinus de natali, cap. 12. reports how Asclepiades the physician helped many frantic persons by this means, phreneticorum mentes morbo turbatas—Jason Pratensis, cap. de Mania, hath many examples, how Clinias and Empedocles cured some desperately melancholy, and some mad by this our music. Which because it hath such excellent virtues, belike [3487]Homer brings in Phemius playing, and the Muses singing at the banquet of the gods. Aristotle, Polit. l. 8. c. 5, Plato 2. de legibus, highly approve it, and so do all politicians. The Greeks, Romans, have graced music, and made it one of the liberal sciences, though it be now become mercenary. All civil Commonwealths allow it: Cneius Manlius (as [3488]Livius relates) anno ab urb. cond. 567. brought first out of Asia to Rome singing wenches, players, jesters, and all kinds of music to their feasts. Your princes, emperors, and persons of any quality, maintain it in their courts; no mirth without music. Sir Thomas More, in his absolute Utopian commonwealth, allows music as an appendix to every meal, and that throughout, to all sorts. Epictetus calls mensam mutam praesepe, a table without music a manger: for “the concert of musicians at a banquet is a carbuncle set in gold; and as the signet of an emerald well trimmed with gold, so is the melody of music in a pleasant banquet.” Ecclus. xxxii. 5, 6. [3489]Louis the Eleventh, when he invited Edward the Fourth to come to Paris, told him that as a principal part of his entertainment, he should hear sweet voices of children, Ionic and Lydian tunes, exquisite music, he should have a —, and the cardinal of Bourbon to be his confessor, which he used as a most plausible argument: as to a sensual man indeed it is. [3490] Lucian in his book, de saltatione, is not ashamed to confess that he took infinite delight in singing, dancing, music, women's company, and such like pleasures: “and if thou” (saith he) “didst but hear them play and dance, I know thou wouldst be so well pleased with the object, that thou wouldst dance for company thyself, without doubt thou wilt be taken with it.” So Scaliger ingenuously confesseth, exercit. 274. [3491]“I am beyond all measure affected with music, I do most willingly behold them dance, I am mightily detained and allured with that grace and comeliness of fair women, I am well pleased to be idle amongst them.” And what young man is not? As it is acceptable and conducing to most, so especially to a melancholy man. Provided always, his disease proceed not originally from it, that he be not some light inamorato, some idle fantastic, who capers in conceit all the day long, and thinks of nothing else, but how to make jigs, sonnets, madrigals, in commendation of his mistress. In such cases music is most pernicious, as a spur to a free horse will make him run himself blind, or break his wind; Incitamentum enim amoris musica, for music enchants, as Menander holds, it will make such melancholy persons mad, and the sound of those jigs and hornpipes will not be removed out of the ears a week after. [3492]Plato for this reason forbids music and wine to all young men, because they are most part amorous, ne ignis addatur igni, lest one fire increase another. Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth; and therefore to such as are discontent, in woe, fear, sorrow, or dejected, it is a most present remedy: it expels cares, alters their grieved minds, and easeth in an instant. Otherwise, saith [3493]Plutarch, Musica magis dementat quam vinum; music makes some men mad as a tiger; like Astolphos' horn in Ariosto; or Mercury's golden wand in Homer, that made some wake, others sleep, it hath divers effects: and [3494]Theophrastus right well prophesied, that diseases were either procured by music, or mitigated.
Mirth and merry company may not be separated from music, both concerning and necessarily required in this business. “Mirth,” (saith [3495]Vives) “purgeth the blood, confirms health, causeth a fresh, pleasing, and fine colour,” prorogues life, whets the wit, makes the body young, lively and fit for any manner of employment. The merrier the heart the longer the life; “A merry heart is the life of the flesh,” Prov. xiv. 30. “Gladness prolongs his days,” Ecclus. xxx. 22; and this is one of the three Salernitan doctors, Dr. Merryman, Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, [3496]which cure all diseases—Mens hilaris, requies, moderata dieta. [3497]Gomesius, praefat. lib. 3. de sal. gen. is a great magnifier of honest mirth, by which (saith he) “we cure many passions of the mind in ourselves, and in our friends;” which [3498]Galateus assigns for a cause why we love merry companions: and well they deserve it, being that as [3499]Magninus holds, a merry companion is better than any music, and as the saying is, comes jucundus in via pro vehiculo, as a wagon to him that is wearied on the way. Jucunda confabulatio, sales, joci, pleasant discourse, jests, conceits, merry tales, melliti verborum globuli, as Petronius, [3500] Pliny, [3501]Spondanus, [3502]Caelius, and many good authors plead, are that sole Nepenthes of Homer, Helena's bowl, Venus's girdle, so renowned of old [3503]to expel grief and care, to cause mirth and gladness of heart, if they be rightly understood, or seasonably applied. In a word,
Machiavel, in the eighth book of his Florentine history, gives this note of Cosmo de Medici, the wisest and gravest man of his time in Italy, that he would [3518]“now and then play the most egregious fool in his carriage, and was so much given to jesters, players and childish sports, to make himself merry, that he that should but consider his gravity on the one part, his folly and lightness on the other, would surely say, there were two distinct persons in him.” Now methinks he did well in it, though [3519] Salisburiensis be of opinion, that magistrates, senators, and grave men, should not descend to lighter sports, ne respublica ludere videatur: but as Themistocles, still keep a stern and constant carriage. I commend Cosmo de Medici and Castruccius Castrucanus, than whom Italy never knew a worthier captain, another Alexander, if [3520]Machiavel do not deceive us in his life: “when a friend of his reprehended him for dancing beside his dignity,” (belike at some cushion dance) he told him again, qui sapit interdiu, vix unquam noctii desipit, he that is wise in the day may dote a little in the night. Paulus Jovius relates as much of Pope Leo Decimus, that he was a grave, discreet, staid man, yet sometimes most free, and too open in his sports. And 'tis not altogether [3521]unfit or misbeseeming the gravity of such a man, if that decorum of time, place, and such circumstances be observed. [3522]Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem—and as [3523]he said in an epigram to his wife, I would have every man say to himself, or to his friend,
But see the mischief; many men, knowing that merry company is the only medicine against melancholy, will therefore neglect their business; and in another extreme, spend all their days among good fellows in a tavern or an alehouse, and know not otherwise how to bestow their time but in drinking; malt-worms, men-fishes, or water-snakes, [3546]Qui bibunt solum ranarum more, nihil comedentes, like so many frogs in a puddle. 'Tis their sole exercise to eat, and drink; to sacrifice to Volupia, Rumina, Edulica, Potina, Mellona, is all their religion. They wish for Philoxenus' neck, Jupiter's trinoctium, and that the sun would stand still as in Joshua's time, to satisfy their lust, that they might dies noctesque pergraecari et bibere. Flourishing wits, and men of good parts, good fashion, and good worth, basely prostitute themselves to every rogue's company, to take tobacco and drink, to roar and sing scurrilous songs in base places.
Which Thomas Erastus objects to Paracelsus, that he would be drinking all day long with carmen and tapsters in a brothel-house, is too frequent among us, with men of better note: like Timocreon of Rhodes, multa bibens, et multa vorans, &c. They drown their wits, seethe their brains in ale, consume their fortunes, lose their time, weaken their temperatures, contract filthy diseases, rheums, dropsies, calentures, tremor, get swollen jugulars, pimpled red faces, sore eyes, &c.; heat their livers, alter their complexions, spoil their stomachs, overthrow their bodies; for drink drowns more than the sea and all the rivers that fall into it (mere funges and casks), confound their souls, suppress reason, go from Scylla to Charybdis, and use that which is a help to their undoing. [3548]Quid refert morbo an ferro pereamve ruina? [3549]When the Black Prince went to set the exiled king of Castile into his kingdom, there was a terrible battle fought between the English and the Spanish: at last the Spanish fled, the English followed them to the river side, where some drowned themselves to avoid their enemies, the rest were killed. Now tell me what difference is between drowning and killing? As good be melancholy still, as drunken beasts and beggars. Company a sole comfort, and an only remedy to all kind of discontent, is their sole misery and cause of perdition. As Hermione lamented in Euripides, malae mulieres me fecerunt malam. Evil company marred her, may they justly complain, bad companions have been their bane. For, [3550]malus malum vult ut sit sui similis; one drunkard in a company, one thief, one whoremaster, will by his goodwill make all the rest as bad as himself,
Because in the preceding section I have made mention of good counsel, comfortable speeches, persuasion, how necessarily they are required to the cure of a discontented or troubled mind, how present a remedy they yield, and many times a sole sufficient cure of themselves; I have thought fit in this following section, a little to digress (if at least it be to digress in this subject), to collect and glean a few remedies, and comfortable speeches out of our best orators, philosophers, divines, and fathers of the church, tending to this purpose. I confess, many have copiously written of this subject, Plato, Seneca, Plutarch, Xenophon, Epictetus, Theophrastus, Xenocrates, Grantor, Lucian, Boethius: and some of late, Sadoletus, Cardan, Budaeus, Stella, Petrarch, Erasmus, besides Austin, Cyprian, Bernard, &c. And they so well, that as Hierome in like case said, si nostrum areret ingenium, de illorum posset fontibus irrigari, if our barren wits were dried up, they might be copiously irrigated from those well-springs: and I shall but actum agere; yet because these tracts are not so obvious and common, I will epitomise, and briefly insert some of their divine precepts, reducing their voluminous and vast treatises to my small scale; for it were otherwise impossible to bring so great vessels into so little a creek. And although (as Cardan said of his book de consol.) [3553]“I know beforehand, this tract of mine many will contemn and reject; they that are fortunate, happy, and in flourishing estate, have no need of such consolatory speeches; they that are miserable and unhappy, think them insufficient to ease their grieved minds, and comfort their misery:” yet I will go on; for this must needs do some good to such as are happy, to bring them to a moderation, and make them reflect and know themselves, by seeing the inconstancy of human felicity, others' misery; and to such as are distressed, if they will but attend and consider of this, it cannot choose but give some content and comfort. [3554]“'Tis true, no medicine can cure all diseases, some affections of the mind are altogether incurable; yet these helps of art, physic, and philosophy must not be contemned.” Arrianus and Plotinus are stiff in the contrary opinion, that such precepts can do little good. Boethius himself cannot comfort in some cases, they will reject such speeches like bread of stones, Insana stultae mentis haec solatia. [3555]
“Words add no courage,” which [3556]Catiline once said to his soldiers, “a captain's oration doth not make a coward a valiant man:” and as Job [3557] feelingly said to his friends, “you are but miserable comforters all.” 'Tis to no purpose in that vulgar phrase to use a company of obsolete sentences, and familiar sayings: as [3558]Plinius Secundus, being now sorrowful and heavy for the departure of his dear friend Cornelius Rufus, a Roman senator, wrote to his fellow Tiro in like case, adhibe solatia, sed nova aliqua, sed fortia, quae audierim nunquam, legerim nunquam: nam quae audivi, quae legi omnia, tanto dolore superantur, either say something that I never read nor heard of before, or else hold thy peace. Most men will here except trivial consolations, ordinary speeches, and known persuasions in this behalf will be of small force; what can any man say that hath not been said? To what end are such paraenetical discourses? you may as soon remove Mount Caucasus, as alter some men's affections. Yet sure I think they cannot choose but do some good, and comfort and ease a little, though it be the same again, I will say it, and upon that hope I will adventure. [3559]Non meus hic sermo, 'tis not my speech this, but of Seneca, Plutarch, Epictetus, Austin, Bernard, Christ and his Apostles. If I make nothing, as [3560]Montaigne said in like case, I will mar nothing; 'tis not my doctrine but my study, I hope I shall do nobody wrong to speak what I think, and deserve not blame in imparting my mind. If it be not for thy ease, it may for mine own; so Tully, Cardan, and Boethius wrote de consol. as well to help themselves as others; be it as it may I will essay.
Discontents and grievances are either general or particular; general are wars, plagues, dearths, famine, fires, inundations, unseasonable weather, epidemical diseases which afflict whole kingdoms, territories, cities; or peculiar to private men, [3561]as cares, crosses, losses, death of friends, poverty, want, sickness, orbities, injuries, abuses, &c. Generally all discontent, [3562]homines quatimur fortunae, salo. No condition free, quisque suos patimur manes. Even in the midst of our mirth and jollity, there is some grudging, some complaint; as [3563]he saith, our whole life is a glycypicron, a bitter sweet passion, honey and gall mixed together, we are all miserable and discontent, who can deny it? If all, and that it be a common calamity, an inevitable necessity, all distressed, then as Cardan infers, [3564]“who art thou that hopest to go free? Why dost thou not grieve thou art a mortal man, and not governor of the world?” Ferre quam sortem patiuntur omnes, Nemo recuset, [3565]“If it be common to all, why should one man be more disquieted than another?” If thou alone wert distressed, it were indeed more irksome, and less to be endured; but when the calamity is common, comfort thyself with this, thou hast more fellows, Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris; 'tis not thy sole case, and why shouldst thou be so impatient? [3566]“Aye, but alas we are more miserable than others, what shall we do? Besides private miseries, we live in perpetual fear and danger of common enemies: we have Bellona's whips, and pitiful outcries, for epithalamiums; for pleasant music, that fearful noise of ordnance, drums, and warlike trumpets still sounding in our ears; instead of nuptial torches, we have firing of towns and cities; for triumphs, lamentations; for joy, tears.” [3567]“So it is, and so it was, and so it ever will be. He that refuseth to see and hear, to suffer this, is not fit to live in this world, and knows not the common condition of all men, to whom so long as they live, with a reciprocal course, joys and sorrows are annexed, and succeed one another.” It is inevitable, it may not be avoided, and why then shouldst thou be so much troubled? Grave nihil est homini quod fert necessitas, as [3568]Tully deems out of an old poet, “that which is necessary cannot be grievous.” If it be so, then comfort thyself in this, [3569]“that whether thou wilt or no, it must be endured:” make a virtue of necessity, and conform thyself to undergo it. [3570]Si longa est, levis est; si gravis est, brevis est. If it be long, 'tis light; if grievous, it cannot last. It will away, dies dolorem minuit, and if nought else, time will wear it out; custom will ease it; [3571] oblivion is a common medicine for all losses, injuries, griefs, and detriments whatsoever, [3572]“and when they are once past, this commodity comes of infelicity, it makes the rest of our life sweeter unto us:” [3573] Atque haec olim meminisse juvabit, “recollection of the past is pleasant:” “the privation and want of a thing many times makes it more pleasant and delightsome than before it was.” We must not think the happiest of us all to escape here without some misfortunes,
Yea, but thou thinkest thou art more miserable than the rest, other men are happy but in respect of thee, their miseries are but flea-bitings to thine, thou alone art unhappy, none so bad as thyself. Yet if, as Socrates said, [3579]“All men in the world should come and bring their grievances together, of body, mind, fortune, sores, ulcers, madness, epilepsies, agues, and all those common calamities of beggary, want, servitude, imprisonment, and lay them on a heap to be equally divided, wouldst thou share alike, and take thy portion? or be as thou art? Without question thou wouldst be as thou art.” If some Jupiter should say, to give us all content,
Particular discontents and grievances, are either of body, mind, or fortune, which as they wound the soul of man, produce this melancholy, and many great inconveniences, by that antidote of good counsel and persuasion may be eased or expelled. Deformities and imperfections of our bodies, as lameness, crookedness, deafness, blindness, be they innate or accidental, torture many men: yet this may comfort them, that those imperfections of the body do not a whit blemish the soul, or hinder the operations of it, but rather help and much increase it. Thou art lame of body, deformed to the eye, yet this hinders not but that thou mayst be a good, a wise, upright, honest man. [3603]“Seldom,” saith Plutarch, “honesty and beauty dwell together,” and oftentimes under a threadbare coat lies an excellent understanding, saepe sub attrita latitat sapientia veste. [3604]Cornelius Mussus, that famous preacher in Italy, when he came first into the pulpit in Venice, was so much contemned by reason of his outside, a little lean, poor, dejected person, [3605]they were all ready to leave the church; but when they heard his voice they did admire him, and happy was that senator could enjoy his company, or invite him first to his house. A silly fellow to look to, may have more wit, learning, honesty, than he that struts it out Ampullis jactans, &c. grandia gradiens, and is admired in the world's opinion: Vilis saepe cadus nobile nectar habet, the best wine comes out of an old vessel. How many deformed princes, kings, emperors, could I reckon up, philosophers, orators? Hannibal had but one eye, Appius Claudius, Timoleon, blind, Muleasse, king of Tunis, John, king of Bohemia, and Tiresias the prophet. [3606]“The night hath his pleasure;” and for the loss of that one sense such men are commonly recompensed in the rest; they have excellent memories, other good parts, music, and many recreations; much happiness, great wisdom, as Tully well discourseth in his [3607] Tusculan questions: Homer was blind, yet who (saith he) made more accurate, lively, or better descriptions, with both his eyes? Democritus was blind, yet as Laertius writes of him, he saw more than all Greece besides, as [3608]Plato concludes, Tum sane mentis oculus acute incipit cernere, quum primum corporis oculus deflorescit, when our bodily eyes are at worst, generally the eyes of our soul see best. Some philosophers and divines have evirated themselves, and put out their eyes voluntarily, the better to contemplate. Angelus Politianus had a tetter in his nose continually running, fulsome in company, yet no man so eloquent and pleasing in his works. Aesop was crooked, Socrates purblind, long-legged, hairy; Democritus withered, Seneca lean and harsh, ugly to behold, yet show me so many flourishing wits, such divine spirits: Horace a little blear-eyed contemptible fellow, yet who so sententious and wise? Marcilius Picinus, Faber Stapulensis, a couple of dwarfs, [3609]Melancthon a short hard-favoured man, parvus erat, sed magnus erat, &c., yet of incomparable parts all three. [3610]Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Jesuits, by reason of a hurt he received in his leg, at the siege of Pampeluna, the chief town of Navarre in Spain, unfit for wars and less serviceable at court, upon that accident betook himself to his beads, and by those means got more honour than ever he should have done with the use of his limbs, and properness of person: [3611]Vulnus non penetrat animum, a wound hurts not the soul. Galba the emperor was crook-backed, Epictetus lame: that great Alexander a little man of stature, [3612]Augustus Caesar of the same pitch: Agesilaus despicabili forma; Boccharis a most deformed prince as ever Egypt had, yet as [3613]Diodorus Siculus records of him, in wisdom and knowledge far beyond his predecessors. A. Dom. 1306. [3614] Uladeslaus Cubitalis that pigmy king of Poland reigned and fought more victorious battles than any of his long-shanked predecessors. Nullam virtus respuit staturam, virtue refuseth no stature, and commonly your great vast bodies, and fine features, are sottish, dull, and leaden spirits. What's in them? [3615]Quid nisi pondus iners stolidaeque ferocia memtis, What in Osus and Ephialtes (Neptune's sons in Homer), nine acres long?
Baseness of birth is a great disparagement to some men, especially if they be wealthy, bear office, and come to promotion in a commonwealth; then (as [3628]he observes) if their birth be not answerable to their calling, and to their fellows, they are much abashed and ashamed of themselves. Some scorn their own father and mother, deny brothers and sisters, with the rest of their kindred and friends, and will not suffer them to come near them, when they are in their pomp, accounting it a scandal to their greatness to have such beggarly beginnings. Simon in Lucian, having now got a little wealth, changed his name from Simon to Simonides, for that there were so many beggars of his kin, and set the house on fire where he was born, because no body should point at it. Others buy titles, coats of arms, and by all means screw themselves into ancient families, falsifying pedigrees, usurping scutcheons, and all because they would not seem to be base. The reason is, for that this gentility is so much admired by a company of outsides, and such honour attributed unto it, as amongst [3629]Germans, Frenchmen, and Venetians, the gentry scorn the commonalty, and will not suffer them to match with them; they depress, and make them as so many asses, to carry burdens. In our ordinary talk and fallings out, the most opprobrious and scurrile name we can fasten upon a man, or first give, is to call him base rogue, beggarly rascal, and the like: Whereas in my judgment, this ought of all other grievances to trouble men least. Of all vanities and fopperies, to brag of gentility is the greatest; for what is it they crack so much of, and challenge such superiority, as if they were demigods? Birth? Tantane vos generis tenuit fiducia vestri? [3630]It is non ens, a mere flash, a ceremony, a toy, a thing of nought. Consider the beginning, present estate, progress, ending of gentry, and then tell me what it is. [3631]“Oppression, fraud, cozening, usury, knavery, bawdry, murder, and tyranny, are the beginning of many ancient families:” [3632]“one hath been a bloodsucker, a parricide, the death of many a silly soul in some unjust quarrels, seditions, made many an orphan and poor widow, and for that he is made a lord or an earl, and his posterity gentlemen for ever after. Another hath been a bawd, a pander to some great men, a parasite, a slave,” [3633]“prostituted himself, his wife, daughter,” to some lascivious prince, and for that he is exalted. Tiberius preferred many to honours in his time, because they were famous whoremasters and sturdy drinkers; many come into this parchment-row (so [3634]one calls it) by flattery or cozening; search your old families, and you shall scarce find of a multitude (as Aeneas Sylvius observes) qui sceleratum non habent ortum, that have not a wicked beginning; aut qui vi et dolo eo fastigii non ascendunt, as that plebeian in [3635]Machiavel in a set oration proved to his fellows, that do not rise by knavery, force, foolery, villainy, or such indirect means. “They are commonly able that are wealthy; virtue and riches seldom settle on one man: who then sees not the beginning of nobility? spoils enrich one, usury another, treason a third, witchcraft a fourth, flattery a fifth, lying, stealing, bearing false witness a sixth, adultery the seventh,” &c. One makes a fool of himself to make his lord merry, another dandles my young master, bestows a little nag on him, a third marries a cracked piece, &c. Now may it please your good worship, your lordship, who was the first founder of your family? The poet answers, [3636]Aut Pastor fuit, aut illud quod dicere nolo. Are he or you the better gentleman? If he, then we have traced him to his form. If you, what is it of which thou boastest so much? That thou art his son. It may be his heir, his reputed son, and yet indeed a priest or a serving man may be the true father of him; but we will not controvert that now; married women are all honest; thou art his son's son's son, begotten and born infra quatuor maria, &c. Thy great great great grandfather was a rich citizen, and then in all likelihood a usurer, a lawyer, and then a—a courtier, and then a—a country gentleman, and then he scraped it out of sheep, &c. And you are the heir of all his virtues, fortunes, titles; so then, what is your gentry, but as Hierom saith, Opes antiquae, inveteratae divitiae, ancient wealth? that is the definition of gentility. The father goes often to the devil, to make his son a gentleman. For the present, what is it? “It began” (saith [3637]Agrippa) “with strong impiety, with tyranny, oppression, &c.” and so it is maintained: wealth began it (no matter how got), wealth continueth and increaseth it. Those Roman knights were so called, if they could dispend per annum so much. [3638]In the kingdom of Naples and France, he that buys such lands, buys the honour, title, barony, together with it; and they that can dispend so much amongst us, must be called to bear office, to be knights, or fine for it, as one observes, [3639]nobiliorum ex censu judicant, our nobles are measured by their means. And what now is the object of honour? What maintains our gentry but wealth? [3640]Nobilitas sine re projecta vilior alga. Without means gentry is naught worth, nothing so contemptible and base. [3641]Disputare de nobilitate generis, sine divitiis, est disputare de nobilitate stercoris, saith Nevisanus the lawyer, to dispute of gentry without wealth, is (saving your reverence) to discuss the original of a merd. So that it is wealth alone that denominates, money which maintains it, gives esse to it, for which every man may have it. And what is their ordinary exercise? [3642]“sit to eat, drink, lie down to sleep, and rise to play:” wherein lies their worth and sufficiency? in a few coats of arms, eagles, lions, serpents, bears, tigers, dogs, crosses, bends, fesses, &c., and such like baubles, which they commonly set up in their galleries, porches, windows, on bowls, platters, coaches, in tombs, churches, men's sleeves, &c. [3643]“If he can hawk and hunt, ride a horse, play at cards and dice, swagger, drink, swear,” take tobacco with a grace, sing, dance, wear his clothes in fashion, court and please his mistress, talk big fustian, [3644]insult, scorn, strut, contemn others, and use a little mimical and apish compliment above the rest, he is a complete, (Egregiam vero laudem) a well-qualified gentleman; these are most of their employments, this their greatest commendation. What is gentry, this parchment nobility then, but as [3645] Agrippa defines it, “a sanctuary of knavery and naughtiness, a cloak for wickedness and execrable vices, of pride, fraud, contempt, boasting, oppression, dissimulation, lust, gluttony, malice, fornication, adultery, ignorance, impiety?” A nobleman therefore in some likelihood, as he concludes, is an “atheist, an oppressor, an epicure, a [3646]gull, a dizzard, an illiterate idiot, an outside, a glowworm, a proud fool, an arrant ass,” Ventris et inguinis mancipium, a slave to his lust and belly, solaque libidine fortis. And as Salvianus observed of his countrymen the Aquitanes in France, sicut titulis primi fuere, sic et vitiis (as they were the first in rank so also in rottenness); and Cabinet du Roy, their own writer, distinctly of the rest. “The nobles of Berry are most part lechers, they of Touraine thieves, they of Narbonne covetous, they of Guienne coiners, they of Provence atheists, they of Rheims superstitious, they of Lyons treacherous, of Normandy proud, of Picardy insolent,” &c. We may generally conclude, the greater men, the more vicious. In fine, as [3647]Aeneas Sylvius adds, “they are most part miserable, sottish, and filthy fellows, like the walls of their houses, fair without, foul within.” What dost thou vaunt of now? [3648]“What dost thou gape and wonder at? admire him for his brave apparel, horses, dogs, fine houses, manors, orchards, gardens, walks? Why? a fool may be possessor of this as well as he; and he that accounts him a better man, a nobleman for having of it, he is a fool himself.” Now go and brag of thy gentility. This is it belike which makes the [3649]Turks at this day scorn nobility, and all those huffing bombast titles, which so much elevate their poles: except it be such as have got it at first, maintain it by some supereminent quality, or excellent worth. And for this cause, the Ragusian commonwealth, Switzers, and the united provinces, in all their aristocracies, or democratical monarchies, (if I may so call them,) exclude all these degrees of hereditary honours, and will admit of none to bear office, but such as are learned, like those Athenian Areopagites, wise, discreet, and well brought up. The [3650]Chinese observe the same customs, no man amongst them noble by birth; out of their philosophers and doctors they choose magistrates: their politic nobles are taken from such as be moraliter nobiles virtuous noble; nobilitas ut olim ab officio, non a natura, as in Israel of old, and their office was to defend and govern their country in war and peace, not to hawk, hunt, eat, drink, game alone, as too many do. Their Loysii, Mandarini, literati, licentiati, and such as have raised themselves by their worth, are their noblemen only, though fit to govern a state: and why then should any that is otherwise of worth be ashamed of his birth? why should not he be as much respected that leaves a noble posterity, as he that hath had noble ancestors? nay why not more? for plures solem orientem we adore the sun rising most part; and how much better is it to say, Ego meis majoribus virtute praeluxi, (I have outshone my ancestors in virtues), to boast himself of his virtues, than of his birth? Cathesbeius, sultan of Egypt and Syria, was by his condition a slave, but for worth, valour, and manhood second to no king, and for that cause (as, [3651]Jovius writes) elected emperor of the Mamelukes. That poor Spanish Pizarro for his valour made by Charles the fifth marquess of Anatillo; the Turkey Pashas are all such. Pertinax, Philippus Arabs, Maximinus, Probus, Aurelius, &c., from common soldiers, became emperors, Cato, Cincinnatus, &c. consuls. Pius Secundus, Sixtus Quintus, Johan, Secundus, Nicholas Quintus, &c. popes. Socrates, Virgil, Horace, libertino parte natus. [3652]The kings of Denmark fetch their pedigree, as some say, from one Ulfo, that was the son of a bear. [3653]E tenui casa saepe vir magnus exit, many a worthy man comes out of a poor cottage. Hercules, Romulus, Alexander (by Olympia's confession), Themistocles, Jugurtha, King Arthur, William the Conqueror, Homer, Demosthenes, P. Lumbard, P. Comestor, Bartholus, Adrian the fourth Pope, &c., bastards; and almost in every kingdom, the most ancient families have been at first princes' bastards: their worthiest captains, best wits, greatest scholars, bravest spirits in all our annals, have been base. [3654]Cardan, in his subtleties, gives a reason why they are most part better able than others in body and mind, and so, per consequens, more fortunate. Castruccius Castrucanus, a poor child, found in the field, exposed to misery, became prince of Lucca and Senes in Italy, a most complete soldier and worthy captain; Machiavel compares him to Scipio or Alexander. “And 'tis a wonderful thing” ([3655] saith he) “to him that shall consider of it, that all those, or the greatest part of them, that have done the bravest exploits here upon earth, and excelled the rest of the nobles of their time, have been still born in some abject, obscure place, or of base and obscure abject parents.” A most memorable observation, [3656]Scaliger accounts it, et non praetereundum, maximorum virorum plerosque patres ignoratos, matres impudicas fuisse. [3657]“I could recite a great catalogue of them,” every kingdom, every province will yield innumerable examples: and why then should baseness of birth be objected to any man? Who thinks worse of Tully for being arpinas, an upstart? Or Agathocles, that Silician king, for being a potter's son? Iphicrates and Marius were meanly born. What wise man thinks better of any person for his nobility? as he said in [3658]Machiavel, omnes eodem patre nati, Adam's sons, conceived all and born in sin, &c. “We are by nature all as one, all alike, if you see us naked; let us wear theirs and they our clothes, and what is the difference?” To speak truth, as [3659]Bale did of P. Schalichius, “I more esteem thy worth, learning, honesty, than thy nobility; honour thee more that thou art a writer, a doctor of divinity, than Earl of the Huns, Baron of Skradine, or hast title to such and such provinces,” &c. “Thou art more fortunate and great” (so [3660]Jovius writes to Cosmo de Medici, then Duke of Florence) “for thy virtues, than for thy lovely wife, and happy children, friends, fortunes, or great duchy of Tuscany.” So I account thee; and who doth not so indeed? [3661]Abdolominus was a gardener, and yet by Alexander for his virtues made King of Syria. How much better is it to be born of mean parentage, and to excel in worth, to be morally noble, which is preferred before that natural nobility, by divines, philosophers, and [3662]politicians, to be learned, honest, discreet, well-qualified, to be fit for any manner of employment, in country and commonwealth, war and peace, than to be Degeneres Neoptolemi, as many brave nobles are, only wise because rich, otherwise idiots, illiterate, unfit for any manner of service? [3663] Udalricus, Earl of Cilia, upbraided John Huniades with the baseness of his birth, but he replied, in te Ciliensis comitatus turpiter extinguitur, in me gloriose Bistricensis exoritur, thine earldom is consumed with riot, mine begins with honour and renown. Thou hast had so many noble ancestors; what is that to thee? Vix ea nostra voco, [3664]when thou art a dizzard thyself: quod prodest, Pontice, longo stemmate censeri? &c. I conclude, hast thou a sound body, and a good soul, good bringing up? Art thou virtuous, honest, learned, well-qualified, religious, are thy conditions good?—thou art a true nobleman, perfectly noble, although born of Thersites—dum modo tu sis—Aeacidae similis, non natus, sed factus, noble κατ' ἐξοχήν, [3665]“for neither sword, nor fire, nor water, nor sickness, nor outward violence, nor the devil himself can take thy good parts from thee.” Be not ashamed of thy birth then, thou art a gentleman all the world over, and shalt be honoured, when as he, strip him of his fine clothes, [3666]dispossess him of his wealth, is a funge (which [3667] Polynices in his banishment found true by experience, gentry was not esteemed) like a piece of coin in another country, that no man will take, and shall be contemned. Once more, though thou be a barbarian, born at Tontonteac, a villain, a slave, a Saldanian Negro, or a rude Virginian in Dasamonquepec, he a French monsieur, a Spanish don, a signor of Italy, I care not how descended, of what family, of what order, baron, count, prince, if thou be well qualified, and he not, but a degenerate Neoptolemus, I tell thee in a word, thou art a man, and he is a beast.
Let no terrae filius, or upstart, insult at this which I have said, no worthy gentleman take offence. I speak it not to detract from such as are well deserving, truly virtuous and noble: I do much respect and honour true gentry and nobility; I was born of worshipful parents myself, in an ancient family, but I am a younger brother, it concerns me not: or had I been some great heir, richly endowed, so minded as I am, I should not have been elevated at all, but so esteemed of it, as of all other human happiness, honours, &c., they have their period, are brittle and inconstant. As [3668] he said of that great river Danube, it riseth from a small fountain, a little brook at first, sometimes broad, sometimes narrow, now slow, then swift, increased at last to an incredible greatness by the confluence of sixty navigable rivers, it vanisheth in conclusion, loseth his name, and is suddenly swallowed up of the Euxine sea: I may say of our greatest families, they were mean at first, augmented by rich marriages, purchases, offices, they continue for some ages, with some little alteration of circumstances, fortunes, places, &c., by some prodigal son, for some default, or for want of issue they are defaced in an instant, and their memory blotted out.
So much in the mean time I do attribute to Gentility, that if he be well-descended, of worshipful or noble parentage, he will express it in his conditions,
One of the greatest miseries that can befall a man, in the world's esteem, is poverty or want, which makes men steal, bear false witness, swear, forswear, contend, murder and rebel, which breaketh sleep, and causeth death itself. οὐδὲν πενίας βαρύτερον ἐστὶ φορτίον, no burden (saith [3677]Menander) so intolerable as poverty: it makes men desperate, it erects and dejects, census honores, census amicitias; money makes, but poverty mars, &c. and all this in the world's esteem: yet if considered aright, it is a great blessing in itself, a happy estate, and yields no cause of discontent, or that men should therefore account themselves vile, hated of God, forsaken, miserable, unfortunate. Christ himself was poor, born in a manger, and had not a house to hide his head in all his life, [3678]“lest any man should make poverty a judgment of God, or an odious estate.” And as he was himself, so he informed his Apostles and Disciples, they were all poor, Prophets poor, Apostles poor, (Act. iii. “Silver and gold have I none.”) “As sorrowing” (saith Paul) “and yet always rejoicing; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things,” 1 Cor. vi. 10. Your great Philosophers have been voluntarily poor, not only Christians, but many others. Crates Thebanus was adored for a God in Athens, [3679]“a nobleman by birth, many servants he had, an honourable attendance, much wealth, many manors, fine apparel; but when he saw this, that all the wealth of the world was but brittle, uncertain and no whit availing to live well, he flung his burden into the sea, and renounced his estate.” Those Curii and Fabricii will be ever renowned for contempt of these fopperies, wherewith the world is so much affected. Amongst Christians I could reckon up many kings and queens, that have forsaken their crowns and fortunes, and wilfully abdicated themselves from these so much esteemed toys; [3680]many that have refused honours, titles, and all this vain pomp and happiness, which others so ambitiously seek, and carefully study to compass and attain. Riches I deny not are God's good gifts, and blessings; and honor est in honorante, honours are from God; both rewards of virtue, and fit to be sought after, sued for, and may well be possessed: yet no such great happiness in having, or misery in wanting of them. Dantur quidem bonis, saith Austin, ne quis mala aestimet: mails autem ne quis nimis bona, good men have wealth that we should not think, it evil; and bad men that they should not rely on or hold it so good; as the rain falls on both sorts, so are riches given to good and bad, sed bonis in bonum, but they are good only to the godly. But [3681]compare both estates, for natural parts they are not unlike; and a beggar's child, as [3682]Cardan well observes, “is no whit inferior to a prince's, most part better;” and for those accidents of fortune, it will easily appear there is no such odds, no such extraordinary happiness in the one, or misery in the other. He is rich, wealthy, fat; what gets he by it? pride, insolency, lust, ambition, cares, fears, suspicion, trouble, anger, emulation, and many filthy diseases of body and mind. He hath indeed variety of dishes, better fare, sweet wine, pleasant sauce, dainty music, gay clothes, lords it bravely out, &c., and all that which Misillus admired in [3683]Lucian; but with them he hath the gout, dropsies, apoplexies, palsies, stone, pox, rheums, catarrhs, crudities, oppilations, [3684]melancholy, &c., lust enters in, anger, ambition, according to [3685]Chrysostom, “the sequel of riches is pride, riot, intemperance, arrogancy, fury, and all irrational courses.”
“an evil sickness,” Solomon calls it, “and reserved to them for an evil,” 12 verse. “They that will be rich fall into many fears and temptations, into many foolish and noisome lusts, which drown men in perdition.” 1 Tim. vi. 9. “Gold and silver hath destroyed many,” Ecclus. viii. 2. divitia saeculi sunt laquei diaboli: so writes Bernard; worldly wealth is the devil's bait: and as the Moon when she is fuller of light is still farthest from the Sun, the more wealth they have, the farther they are commonly from God. (If I had said this of myself, rich men would have pulled me to pieces; but hear who saith, and who seconds it, an Apostle) therefore St. James bids them “weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon them; their gold shall rust and canker, and eat their flesh as fire,” James v. 1, 2, 3. I may then boldly conclude with [3698]Theodoret, quotiescunque divitiis affluentem, &c. “As often as you shall see a man abounding in wealth,” qui gemmis bibit et Serrano dormit in ostro, “and naught withal, I beseech you call him not happy, but esteem him unfortunate, because he hath many occasions offered to live unjustly; on the other side, a poor man is not miserable, if he be good, but therefore happy, that those evil occasions are taken from him.”
Wherein now consists his happiness? what privileges hath he more than other men? or rather what miseries, what cares and discontents hath he not more than other men?
But consider all those other unknown, concealed happinesses, which a poor man hath (I call them unknown, because they be not acknowledged in the world's esteem, or so taken) O fortunatos nimium bona si sua norint: happy they are in the meantime if they would take notice of it, make use, or apply it to themselves. “A poor man wise is better than a foolish king,” Eccles. ii. 13. [3717]“Poverty is the way to heaven,” [3718]“the mistress of philosophy,” [3719]“the mother of religion, virtue, sobriety, sister of innocency, and an upright mind.” How many such encomiums might I add out of the fathers, philosophers, orators? It troubles many that are poor, they account of it as a great plague, curse, a sign of God's hatred, ipsum scelus, damned villainy itself, a disgrace, shame and reproach; but to whom, or why? [3720]“If fortune hath envied me wealth, thieves have robbed me, my father have not left me such revenues as others have,” that I am a younger brother, basely born,—cui sine luce genus, surdumque parentum—nomen, of mean parentage, a dirt-dauber's son, am I therefore to be blamed? “an eagle, a bull, a lion is not rejected for his poverty, and why should a man?” 'Tis [3721]fortunae telum, non culpae, fortune's fault, not mine. “Good Sir, I am a servant,” (to use [3722]Seneca's words) “howsoever your poor friend; a servant, and yet your chamber-fellow, and if you consider better of it, your fellow-servant.” I am thy drudge in the world's eyes, yet in God's sight peradventure thy better, my soul is more precious, and I dearer unto him. Etiam servi diis curae sunt, as Evangelus at large proves in Macrobius, the meanest servant is most precious in his sight. Thou art an epicure, I am a good Christian; thou art many parasangs before me in means, favour, wealth, honour, Claudius's Narcissus, Nero's Massa, Domitian's Parthenius, a favourite, a golden slave; thou coverest thy floors with marble, thy roofs with gold, thy walls with statues, fine pictures, curious hangings, &c., what of all this? calcas opes, &c., what's all this to true happiness? I live and breathe under that glorious heaven, that august capitol of nature, enjoy the brightness of stars, that clear light of sun and moon, those infinite creatures, plants, birds, beasts, fishes, herbs, all that sea and land afford, far surpassing all that art and opulentia can give. I am free, and which [3723]Seneca said of Rome, culmen liberos texit, sub marmore et auro postea servitus habitavit, thou hast Amaltheae cornu, plenty, pleasure, the world at will, I am despicable and poor; but a word overshot, a blow in choler, a game at tables, a loss at sea, a sudden fire, the prince's dislike, a little sickness, &c., may make us equal in an instant; howsoever take thy time, triumph and insult awhile, cinis aequat, as [3724]Alphonsus said, death will equalise us all at last. I live sparingly, in the mean time, am clad homely, fare hardly; is this a reproach? am I the worse for it? am I contemptible for it? am I to be reprehended? A learned man in [3725] Nevisanus was taken down for sitting amongst gentlemen, but he replied, “my nobility is about the head, yours declines to the tail,” and they were silent. Let them mock, scoff and revile, 'tis not thy scorn, but his that made thee so; “he that mocketh the poor, reproacheth him that made him,” Prov. xi. 5. “and he that rejoiceth at affliction, shall not be unpunished.” For the rest, the poorer thou art, the happier thou art, ditior est, at non melior, saith [3726]Epictetus, he is richer, not better than thou art, not so free from lust, envy, hatred, ambition.
Yea, but their present estate crucifies and torments most mortal men, they have no such forecast, to see what may be, what shall likely be, but what is, though not wherefore, or from whom, hoc anget, their present misfortunes grind their souls, and an envious eye which they cast upon other men's prosperities, Vicinumque pecus grandius uber habet, how rich, how fortunate, how happy is he? But in the meantime he doth not consider the other miseries, his infirmities of body and mind, that accompany his estate, but still reflects upon his own false conceived woes and wants, whereas if the matter were duly examined, [3741]he is in no distress at all, he hath no cause to complain.
Yea, but this is very good counsel, and rightly applied to such as have it, and will not use it, that have a competency, that are able to work and get their living by the sweat of their brows, by their trade, that have something yet; he that hath birds, may catch birds; but what shall we do that are slaves by nature, impotent, and unable to help ourselves, mere beggars, that languish and pine away, that have no means at all, no hope of means, no trust of delivery, or of better success? as those old Britons complained to their lords and masters the Romans oppressed by the Picts. mare ad barbaros, barbari ad mare, the barbarians drove them to the sea, the sea drove them back to the barbarians: our present misery compels us to cry out and howl, to make our moan to rich men: they turn us back with a scornful answer to our misfortune again, and will take no pity of us; they commonly overlook their poor friends in adversity; if they chance to meet them, they voluntarily forget and will take no notice of them; they will not, they cannot help us. Instead of comfort they threaten us, miscall, scoff at us, to aggravate our misery, give us bad language, or if they do give good words, what's that to relieve us? According to that of Thales, Facile est alios monere; who cannot give good counsel? 'tis cheap, it costs them nothing. It is an easy matter when one's belly is full to declaim against fasting, Qui satur est pleno laudat jejunia ventre; “Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass, or loweth the ox when he hath fodder?” Job vi. 5. [3783]Neque enim populo Romano quidquam potest esse laetius, no man living so jocund, so merry as the people of Rome when they had plenty; but when they came to want, to be hunger-starved, “neither shame, nor laws, nor arms, nor magistrates could keep them in obedience.” Seneca pleadeth hard for poverty, and so did those lazy philosophers: but in the meantime [3784]he was rich, they had wherewithal to maintain themselves; but doth any poor man extol it? “There are those” (saith [3785] Bernard) “that approve of a mean estate, but on that condition they never want themselves: and some again are meek so long as they may say or do what they list; but if occasion be offered, how far are they from all patience?” I would to God (as he said) [3786]“No man should commend poverty, but he that is poor,” or he that so much admires it, would relieve, help, or ease others.
Yea, but this expectation is it which tortures me in the mean time; [3810] futura expectans praesentibus angor, whilst the grass grows the horse starves: [3811]despair not, but hope well,
“As a shoe too big or too little, one pincheth, the other sets the foot awry,” sed e malis minimum. If adversity hath killed his thousand, prosperity hath killed his ten thousand: therefore adversity is to be preferred; [3847]haec froeno indiget, illa solatio: illa fallit, haec instruit: the one deceives, the other instructs; the one miserably happy, the other happily miserable; and therefore many philosophers have voluntarily sought adversity, and so much commend it in their precepts. Demetrius, in Seneca, esteemed it a great infelicity, that in his lifetime he had no misfortune, miserum cui nihil unquam accidisset, adversi. Adversity then is not so heavily to be taken, and we ought not in such cases so much to macerate ourselves: there is no such odds in poverty and riches. To conclude in [3848]Hierom's words, “I will ask our magnificoes that build with marble, and bestow a whole manor on a thread, what difference between them and Paul the Eremite, that bare old man? They drink in jewels, he in his hand: he is poor and goes to heaven, they are rich and go to hell.”
Servitude, loss of liberty, imprisonment, are no such miseries as they are held to be: we are slaves and servants the best of us all: as we do reverence our masters, so do our masters their superiors: gentlemen serve nobles, and nobles subordinate to kings, omne sub regno graviore regnum, princes themselves are God's servants, reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis. They are subject to their own laws, and as the kings of China endure more than slavish imprisonment, to maintain their state and greatness, they never come abroad. Alexander was a slave to fear, Caesar of pride, Vespasian to his money (nihil enim refert, rerum sis servus an hominum), [3849] Heliogabalus to his gut, and so of the rest. Lovers are slaves to their mistresses, rich men to their gold, courtiers generally to lust and ambition, and all slaves to our affections, as Evangelus well discourseth in [3850]Macrobius, and [3851]Seneca the philosopher, assiduam servitutem extremam et ineluctabilem he calls it, a continual slavery, to be so captivated by vices; and who is free? Why then dost thou repine? Satis est potens, Hierom saith, qui servire non cogitur. Thou carriest no burdens, thou art no prisoner, no drudge, and thousands want that liberty, those pleasures which thou hast. Thou art not sick, and what wouldst thou have? But nitimur in vetitum, we must all eat of the forbidden fruit. Were we enjoined to go to such and such places, we would not willingly go: but being barred of our liberty, this alone torments our wandering soul that we may not go. A citizen of ours, saith [3852]Cardan, was sixty years of age, and had never been forth of the walls of the city of Milan; the prince hearing of it, commanded him not to stir out: being now forbidden that which all his life he had neglected, he earnestly desired, and being denied, dolore confectus mortem, obiit, he died for grief.
What I have said of servitude, I again say of imprisonment, we are all prisoners. [3853]What is our life but a prison? We are all imprisoned in an island. The world itself to some men is a prison, our narrow seas as so many ditches, and when they have compassed the globe of the earth, they would fain go see what is done in the moon. In [3854]Muscovy and many other northern parts, all over Scandia, they are imprisoned half the year in stoves, they dare not peep out for cold. At [3855]Aden in Arabia they are penned in all day long with that other extreme of heat, and keep their markets in the night. What is a ship but a prison? And so many cities are but as so many hives of bees, anthills; but that which thou abhorrest, many seek: women keep in all winter, and most part of summer, to preserve their beauties; some for love of study: Demosthenes shaved his beard because he would cut off all occasions from going abroad: how many monks and friars, anchorites, abandon the world. Monachus in urbe, piscis in arido. Art in prison? Make right use of it, and mortify thyself; [3856] “Where may a man contemplate better than in solitariness,” or study more than in quietness? Many worthy men have been imprisoned all their lives, and it hath been occasion of great honour and glory to them, much public good by their excellent meditation. [3857]Ptolomeus king of Egypt, cum viribus attenuatis infirma valetudine laboraret, miro descendi studio affectus, &c. now being taken with a grievous infirmity of body that he could not stir abroad, became Strato's scholar, fell hard to his book, and gave himself wholly to contemplation, and upon that occasion (as mine author adds), pulcherrimum regiae opulentiae monumentum, &c., to his great honour built that renowned library at Alexandria, wherein were 40,000 volumes. Severinus Boethius never writ so elegantly as in prison, Paul so devoutly, for most of his epistles were dictated in his bands: “Joseph,” saith [3858]Austin, “got more credit in prison, than when he distributed corn, and was lord of Pharaoh's house.” It brings many a lewd, riotous fellow home, many wandering rogues it settles, that would otherwise have been like raving tigers, ruined themselves and others.
Banishment is no grievance at all, Omne solum forti patria, &c. et patria est ubicunque bene est, that's a man's country where he is well at ease. Many travel for pleasure to that city, saith Seneca, to which thou art banished, and what a part of the citizens are strangers born in other places? [3859]Incolentibus patria, 'tis their country that are born in it, and they would think themselves banished to go to the place which thou leavest, and from which thou art so loath to depart. 'Tis no disparagement to be a stranger, or so irksome to be an exile. [3860]“The rain is a stranger to the earth, rivers to the sea, Jupiter in Egypt, the sun to us all. The soul is an alien to the body, a nightingale to the air, a swallow in a house, and Ganymede in heaven, an elephant at Rome, a Phoenix in India;” and such things commonly please us best, which are most strange and come the farthest off. Those old Hebrews esteemed the whole world Gentiles; the Greeks held all barbarians but themselves; our modern Italians account of us as dull Transalpines by way of reproach, they scorn thee and thy country which thou so much admirest. 'Tis a childish humour to hone after home, to be discontent at that which others seek; to prefer, as base islanders and Norwegians do, their own ragged island before Italy or Greece, the gardens of the world. There is a base nation in the north, saith [3861]Pliny, called Chauci, that live amongst rocks and sands by the seaside, feed on fish, drink water: and yet these base people account themselves slaves in respect, when they come to Rome. Ita est profecto (as he concludes) multis fortuna parcit in poenam, so it is, fortune favours some to live at home, to their further punishment: 'tis want of judgment. All places are distant from heaven alike, the sun shines happily as warm in one city as in another, and to a wise man there is no difference of climes; friends are everywhere to him that behaves himself well, and a prophet is not esteemed in his own country. Alexander, Caesar, Trajan, Adrian, were as so many land-leapers, now in the east, now in the west, little at home; and Polus Venetus, Lod. Vertomannus, Pinzonus, Cadamustus, Columbus, Americus Vespucius, Vascus Gama, Drake, Candish, Oliver Anort, Schoutien, got, all their honour by voluntary expeditions. But you say such men's travel is voluntary; we are compelled, and as malefactors must depart; yet know this of [3862]Plato to be true, ultori Deo summa cura peregrinus est, God hath an especial care of strangers, “and when he wants friends and allies, he shall deserve better and find more favour with God and men.” Besides the pleasure of peregrination, variety of objects will make amends; and so many nobles, Tully, Aristides, Themistocles, Theseus, Codrus, &c. as have been banished, will give sufficient credit unto it. Read Pet. Alcionius his two books of this subject.
Death and departure of friends are things generally grievous, [3863] Omnium quae in humana vita contingunt, luctus atque mors sunt acerbissima, the most austere and bitter accidents that can happen to a man in this life, in aeternum valedicere, to part for ever, to forsake the world and all our friends, 'tis ultimum terribilium, the last and the greatest terror, most irksome and troublesome unto us, [3864]Homo toties moritur, quoties amittit suos. And though we hope for a better life, eternal happiness, after these painful and miserable days, yet we cannot compose ourselves willingly to die; the remembrance of it is most grievous unto us, especially to such who are fortunate and rich: they start at the name of death, as a horse at a rotten post. Say what you can of that other world, [3865]Montezuma that Indian prince, Bonum est esse hic, they had rather be here. Nay many generous spirits, and grave staid men otherwise, are so tender in this, that at the loss of a dear friend they will cry out, roar, and tear their hair, lamenting some months after, howling “O Hone,” as those Irish women and [3866]Greeks at their graves, commit many indecent actions, and almost go beside themselves. My dear father, my sweet husband, mine only brother's dead, to whom shall I make my moan? O me miserum! Quis dabit in lachrymas fontem, &c. What shall I do?
[3908]“Returning out of Asia, when I sailed from Aegina toward Megara, I began” (saith Servius Sulpicius, in a consolatory epistle of his to Tully) “to view the country round about. Aegina was behind me, Megara before, Piraeus on the right hand, Corinth on the left, what flourishing towns heretofore, now prostrate and overwhelmed before mine eyes? I began to think with myself, alas, why are we men so much disquieted with the departure of a friend, whose life is much shorter? [3909]When so many goodly cities lie buried before us. Remember, O Servius, thou art a man; and with that I was much confirmed, and corrected myself.” Correct then likewise, and comfort thyself in this, that we must necessarily die, and all die, that we shall rise again: as Tully held; Jucundiorque multo congressus noster futurus, quam insuavis et acerbus digressus, our second meeting shall be much more pleasant than our departure was grievous.
Aye, but he was my most dear and loving friend, my sole friend,
“For he that so faints or fears, and yields to his passion, flings away his own weapons, makes a cord to bind himself, and pulls a beam upon his own head.”
Against those other [3932]passions and affections, there is no better remedy than as mariners when they go to sea, provide all things necessary to resist a tempest: to furnish ourselves with philosophical and Divine precepts, other men's examples, [3933]Periculum ex aliis facere, sibi quod ex usu siet: To balance our hearts with love, charity, meekness, patience, and counterpoise those irregular motions of envy, livor, spleen, hatred, with their opposite virtues, as we bend a crooked staff another way, to oppose [3934]“sufferance to labour, patience to reproach,” bounty to covetousness, fortitude to pusillanimity, meekness to anger, humility to pride, to examine ourselves for what cause we are so much disquieted, on what ground, what occasion, is it just or feigned? And then either to pacify ourselves by reason, to divert by some other object, contrary passion, or premeditation. [3935]Meditari secum oportet quo pacto adversam aerumnam ferat, Paricla, damna, exilia peregre rediens semper cogitet, aut filii peccatum, aut uxoris mortem, aut morbum filiae, communia esse haec: fieri posse, ut ne quid animo sit novum. To make them familiar, even all kind of calamities, that when they happen they may be less troublesome unto us. In secundis meditare, quo pacto feras adversa: or out of mature judgment to avoid the effect, or disannul the cause, as they do that are troubled with toothache, pull them quite out.
I have learned “in what state soever I am, therewith to be contented,” Philip, iv 11. Come what can come, I am prepared. Nave ferar magna an parva, ferar unus et idem. I am the same. I was once so mad to bustle abroad, and seek about for preferment, tire myself, and trouble all my friends, sed nihil labor tantus profecit nam dum alios amicorum mors avocat, aliis ignotus sum, his invisus, alii large promittunt, intercedunt illi mecum soliciti, hi vana spe lactant; dum alios ambio, hos capto, illis innotesco, aetas perit, anni defluunt, amici fatigantur, ego deferor, et jam, mundi taesus, humanaeque satur infidelitatis acquiesco. [3948]And so I say still; although I may not deny, but that I have had some [3949] bountiful patrons, and noble benefactors, ne sim interim ingratus, and I do thankfully acknowledge it, I have received some kindness, quod Deus illis beneficium rependat, si non pro votis, fortasse pro meritis, more peradventure than I deserve, though not to my desire, more of them than I did expect, yet not of others to my desert; neither am I ambitious or covetous, for this while, or a Suffenus to myself; what I have said, without prejudice or alteration shall stand. And now as a mired horse that struggles at first with all his might and main to get out, but when he sees no remedy, that his beating will not serve, lies still, I have laboured in vain, rest satisfied, and if I may usurp that of [3950]Prudentius,
I may not yet conclude, think to appease passions, or quiet the mind, till such time as I have likewise removed some other of their more eminent and ordinary causes, which produce so grievous tortures and discontents: to divert all, I cannot hope; to point alone at some few of the chiefest, is that which I aim at.
Repulse.] Repulse and disgrace are two main causes of discontent, but to an understanding man not so hardly to be taken. Caesar himself hath been denied, [3951]and when two stand equal in fortune, birth, and all other qualities alike, one of necessity must lose. Why shouldst thou take it so grievously? It hath a familiar thing for thee thyself to deny others. If every man might have what he would, we should all be deified, emperors, kings, princes; if whatsoever vain hope suggests, insatiable appetite affects, our preposterous judgment thinks fit were granted, we should have another chaos in an instant, a mere confusion. It is some satisfaction to him that is repelled, that dignities, honours, offices, are not always given by desert or worth, but for love, affinity, friendship, affection,[3952]great men's letters, or as commonly they are bought and sold. [3953]“Honours in court are bestowed not according to men's virtues and good conditions” (as an old courtier observes), “but as every man hath means, or more potent friends, so he is preferred.” With us in France ([3954]for so their own countryman relates) “most part the matter is carried by favour and grace; he that can get a great man to be his mediator, runs away with all the preferment.” Indignissimus plerumque praefertur, Vatinius Catoni, illaudatus laudatissimo;
Injuries, abuses, are very offensive, and so much the more in that they think veterem ferendo invitant novam, “by taking one they provoke another:” but it is an erroneous opinion, for if that were true, there would be no end of abusing each other; lis litem generat; 'tis much better with patience to bear, or quietly to put it up. If an ass kick me, saith Socrates, shall I strike him again? And when [3975]his wife Xantippe struck and misused him, to some friends that would have had him strike her again, he replied, that he would not make them sport, or that they should stand by and say, Eia Socrates, eia Xantippe, as we do when dogs fight, animate them the more by clapping of hands. Many men spend themselves, their goods, friends, fortunes, upon small quarrels, and sometimes at other men's procurements, with much vexation of spirit and anguish of mind, all which with good advice, or mediation of friends, might have been happily composed, or if patience had taken place. Patience in such cases is a most sovereign remedy, to put up, conceal, or dissemble it, to [3976]forget and forgive, [3977]“not seven, but seventy-seven times, as often as he repents forgive him;” Luke xvii. 3. as our Saviour enjoins us, stricken, “to turn the other side:” as our [3978]Apostle persuades us, “to recompense no man evil for evil, but as much as is possible to have peace with all men: not to avenge ourselves, and we shall heap burning coals upon our adversary's head.” “For [3979]if you put up wrong” (as Chrysostom comments), “you get the victory; he that loseth his money, loseth not the conquest in this our philosophy.” If he contend with thee, submit thyself unto him first, yield to him. Durum et durum non faciunt murum, as the diverb is, two refractory spirits will never agree, the only means to overcome is to relent, obsequio vinces. Euclid in Plutarch, when his brother had angered him, swore he would be revenged; but he gently replied, [3980]“Let me not live if I do not make thee to love me again,” upon which meek answer he was pacified.
[4018]I say the same of scoffs, slanders, contumelies, obloquies, defamations, detractions, pasquilling libels, and the like, which may tend any way to our disgrace: 'tis but opinion; if we could neglect, contemn, or with patience digest them, they would reflect on them that offered them at first. A wise citizen, I know not whence, had a scold to his wife: when she brawled, he played on his drum, and by that means madded her more, because she saw that he would not be moved. Diogenes in a crowd when one called him back, and told him how the boys laughed him to scorn, Ego, inquit, non rideor, took no notice of it. Socrates was brought upon the stage by Aristophanes, and misused to his face, but he laughed as if it concerned him not: and as Aelian relates of him, whatsoever good or bad accident or fortune befel him going in or coming out, Socrates still kept the same countenance; even so should a Christian do, as Hierom describes him, per infamiam et bonam famam grassari ad immortalitatem, march on through good and bad reports to immortality, [4019]not to be moved: for honesty is a sufficient reward, probitas sibi, praemium; and in our times the sole recompense to do well, is, to do well: but naughtiness will punish itself at last, [4020]Improbis ipsa nequitia supplicium. As the diverb is,
Yea, but I am ashamed, disgraced, dishonoured, degraded, exploded: my notorious crimes and villainies are come to light (deprendi miserum est), my filthy lust, abominable oppression and avarice lies open, my good name's lost, my fortune's gone, I have been stigmatised, whipped at post, arraigned and condemned, I am a common obloquy, I have lost my ears, odious, execrable, abhorred of God and men. Be content, 'tis but a nine days' wonder, and as one sorrow drives out another, one passion another, one cloud another, one rumour is expelled by another; every day almost, come new news unto our ears, as how the sun was eclipsed, meteors seen in the air, monsters born, prodigies, how the Turks were overthrown in Persia, an earthquake in Helvetia, Calabria, Japan, or China, an inundation in Holland, a great plague in Constantinople, a fire at Prague, a dearth in Germany, such a man is made a lord, a bishop, another hanged, deposed, pressed to death, for some murder, treason, rape, theft, oppression, all which we do hear at first with a kind of admiration, detestation, consternation, but by and by they are buried in silence: thy father's dead, thy brother robbed, wife runs mad, neighbour hath killed himself; 'tis heavy, ghastly, fearful news at first, in every man's mouth, table talk; but after a while who speaks or thinks of it? It will be so with thee and thine offence, it will be forgotten in an instant, be it theft, rape, sodomy, murder, incest, treason, &c., thou art not the first offender, nor shalt not be the last, 'tis no wonder, every hour such malefactors are called in question, nothing so common, Quocunque in populo, quocunque sub axe? [4021]Comfort thyself, thou art not the sole man. If he that were guiltless himself should fling the first stone at thee, and he alone should accuse thee that were faultless, how many executioners, how many accusers wouldst thou have? If every man's sins were written in his forehead, and secret faults known, how many thousands would parallel, if not exceed thine offence? It may be the judge that gave sentence, the jury that condemned thee, the spectators that gazed on thee, deserved much more, and were far more guilty than thou thyself. But it is thine infelicity to be taken, to be made a public example of justice, to be a terror to the rest; yet should every man have his desert, thou wouldst peradventure be a saint in comparison; vexat censura columbas, poor souls are punished; the great ones do twenty thousand times worse, and are not so much as spoken of.
In fine, if princes would do justice, judges be upright, clergymen truly devout, and so live as they teach, if great men would not be so insolent, if soldiers would quietly defend us, the poor would be patient, rich men. would be liberal and humble, citizens honest, magistrates meek, superiors would give good example, subjects peaceable, young men would stand in awe: if parents would be kind to their children, and they again obedient to their parents, brethren agree amongst themselves, enemies be reconciled, servants trusty to their masters, virgins chaste, wives modest, husbands would be loving and less jealous: if we could imitate Christ and his apostles, live after God's laws, these mischiefs would not so frequently happen amongst us; but being most part so irreconcilable as we are, perverse, proud, insolent, factious, and malicious, prone to contention, anger and revenge, of such fiery spirits, so captious, impious, irreligious, so opposite to virtue, void of grace, how should it otherwise be? Many men are very testy by nature, apt to mistake, apt to quarrel, apt to provoke and misinterpret to the worst, everything that is said or done, and thereupon heap unto themselves a great deal of trouble, and disquietness to others, smatterers in other men's matters, tale-bearers, whisperers, liars, they cannot speak in season, or hold their tongues when they should, [4033]Et suam partem itidem tacere cum aliena est oratio: they will speak more than comes to their shares, in all companies, and by those bad courses accumulate much evil to their own souls (qui contendit, sibi convicium facit) their life is a perpetual brawl, they snarl like so many dogs, with their wives, children, servants, neighbours, and all the rest of their friends, they can agree with nobody. But to such as are judicious, meek, submissive, and quiet, these matters are easily remedied: they will forbear upon all such occasions, neglect, contemn, or take no notice of them, dissemble, or wisely turn it off. If it be a natural impediment, as a red nose, squint eyes, crooked legs, or any such imperfection, infirmity, disgrace, reproach, the best way is to speak of it first thyself, [4034]and so thou shalt surely take away all occasions from others to jest at, or contemn, that they may perceive thee to be careless of it. Vatinius was wont to scoff at his own deformed feet, to prevent his enemies' obloquies and sarcasms in that kind; or else by prevention, as Cotys, king of Thrace, that brake a company of fine glasses presented to him, with his own hands, lest he should be overmuch moved when they were broken by chance. And sometimes again, so that it be discreetly and moderately done, it shall not be amiss to make resistance, to take down such a saucy companion, no better means to vindicate himself to purchase final peace: for he that suffers himself to be ridden, or through pusillanimity or sottishness will let every man baffle him, shall be a common laughing stock to flout at. As a cur that goes through a village, if he clap his tail between his legs, and run away, every cur will insult over him: but if he bristle up himself, and stand to it, give but a counter-snarl, there's not a dog dares meddle with him: much is in a man's courage and discreet carriage of himself.
Many other grievances there are, which happen to mortals in this life, from friends, wives, children, servants, masters, companions, neighbours, our own defaults, ignorance, errors, intemperance, indiscretion, infirmities, &c., and many good remedies to mitigate and oppose them, many divine precepts to counterpoise our hearts, special antidotes both in Scriptures and human authors, which, whoso will observe, shall purchase much ease and quietness unto himself: I will point out a few. Those prophetical, apostolical admonitions are well known to all; what Solomon, Siracides, our Saviour Christ himself hath said tending to this purpose, as “fear God: obey the prince: be sober and watch: pray continually: be angry but sin not: remember thy last: fashion not yourselves to this world, &c., apply yourselves to the times: strive not with a mighty man: recompense good for evil, let nothing be done through contention or vainglory, but with meekness of mind, every man esteeming of others better than himself: love one another;” or that epitome of the law and the prophets, which our Saviour inculcates, “love God above all, thy neighbour as thyself:” and “whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, so do unto them,” which Alexander Severus writ in letters of gold, and used as a motto, [4035] Hierom commends to Celantia as an excellent way, amongst so many enticements and worldly provocations, to rectify her life. Out of human authors take these few cautions, [4036]“know thyself. [4037]Be contented with thy lot. [4038]Trust not wealth, beauty, nor parasites, they will bring thee to destruction. [4039]Have peace with all men, war with vice. [4040]Be not idle. [4041]Look before you leap. [4042]Beware of 'had I wist.' [4043]Honour thy parents, speak well of friends. Be temperate in four things, lingua, locis, oculis, et poculis. Watch thine eye.[4044] Moderate thine expenses. Hear much, speak little, [4045]sustine et abstine. If thou seest ought amiss in another, mend it in thyself. Keep thine own counsel, reveal not thy secrets, be silent in thine intentions. [4046]Give not ear to tale-tellers, babblers, be not scurrilous in conversation: [4047]jest without bitterness: give no man cause of offence: set thine house in order: [4048]take heed of suretyship. [4049]Fide et diffide, as a fox on the ice, take heed whom you trust. [4050]Live not beyond thy means. [4051]Give cheerfully. Pay thy dues willingly. Be not a slave to thy money; [4052]omit not occasion, embrace opportunity, lose no time. Be humble to thy superiors, respective to thine equals, affable to all, [4053]but not familiar. Flatter no man. [4054]Lie not, dissemble not. Keep thy word and promise, be constant in a good resolution. Speak truth. Be not opiniative, maintain no factions. Lay no wagers, make no comparisons. [4055]Find no faults, meddle not with other men's matters. Admire not thyself. [4056]Be not proud or popular. Insult not. Fortunam reverentur habe. [4057]Fear not that which cannot be avoided. [4058] Grieve not for that which cannot be recalled. [4059]Undervalue not thyself. [4060]Accuse no man, commend no man rashly. Go not to law without great cause. Strive not with a greater man. Cast not off an old friend, take heed of a reconciled enemy. [4061]If thou come as a guest stay not too long. Be not unthankful. Be meek, merciful, and patient. Do good to all. Be not fond of fair words. [4062]Be not a neuter in a faction; moderate thy passions. [4063]Think no place without a witness. [4064] Admonish thy friend in secret, commend him in public. Keep good company. [4065]Love others to be beloved thyself. Ama tanquam osurus. Amicus tardo fias. Provide for a tempest. Noli irritare crabrones. Do not prostitute thy soul for gain. Make not a fool of thyself to make others merry. Marry not an old crony or a fool for money. Be not over solicitous or curious. Seek that which may be found. Seem not greater than thou art. Take thy pleasure soberly. Ocymum ne terito. [4066]Live merrily as thou canst. [4067]Take heed by other men's examples. Go as thou wouldst be met, sit as thou wouldst be found, [4068]yield to the time, follow the stream. Wilt thou live free from fears and cares? [4069]Live innocently, keep thyself upright, thou needest no other keeper, &c.” Look for more in Isocrates, Seneca, Plutarch, Epictetus, &c., and for defect, consult with cheese-trenchers and painted cloths.
“Every man,” saith [4070]Seneca, “thinks his own burthen the heaviest,” and a melancholy man above all others complains most; weariness of life, abhorring all company and light, fear, sorrow, suspicion, anguish of mind, bashfulness, and those other dread symptoms of body and mind, must needs aggravate this misery; yet compared to other maladies, they are not so heinous as they be taken. For first this disease is either in habit or disposition, curable or incurable. If new and in disposition, 'tis commonly pleasant, and it may be helped. If inveterate, or a habit, yet they have lucida intervalla, sometimes well, and sometimes ill; or if more continuate, as the [4071]Vejentes were to the Romans, 'tis hostis magis assiduus quam gravis, a more durable enemy than dangerous: and amongst many inconveniences, some comforts are annexed to it. First it is not catching, and as Erasmus comforted himself, when he was grievously sick of the stone, though it was most troublesome, and an intolerable pain to him, yet it was no whit offensive to others, not loathsome to the spectators, ghastly, fulsome, terrible, as plagues, apoplexies, leprosies, wounds, sores, tetters, pox, pestilent agues are, which either admit of no company, terrify or offend those that are present. In this malady, that which is, is wholly to themselves: and those symptoms not so dreadful, if they be compared to the opposite extremes. They are most part bashful, suspicious, solitary, &c., therefore no such ambitious, impudent intruders as some are, no sharkers, no cony-catchers, no prowlers, no smell-feasts, praters, panders, parasites, bawds, drunkards, whoremasters; necessity and defect compel them to be honest; as Mitio told Demea in the [4072]comedy,
Besides they are freed in this from many other infirmities, solitariness makes them more apt to contemplate, suspicion wary, which is a necessary humour in these times, [4074]Nam pol que maxime cavet, is saepe cautor captus est, “he that takes most heed, is often circumvented, and overtaken.” Fear and sorrow keep them temperate and sober, and free them from any dissolute acts, which jollity and boldness thrust men upon: they are therefore no sicarii, roaring boys, thieves or assassins. As they are soon dejected, so they are as soon, by soft words and good persuasions, reared. Wearisomeness of life makes them they are not so besotted on the transitory vain pleasures of the world. If they dote in one thing, they are wise and well understanding in most other. If it be inveterate, they are insensati, most part doting, or quite mad, insensible of any wrongs, ridiculous to others, but most happy and secure to themselves. Dotage is a state which many much magnify and commend: so is simplicity, and folly, as he said, [4075]sic hic furor o superi, sit mihi perpetuus. Some think fools and dizzards live the merriest lives, as Ajax in Sophocles, Nihil scire vita jucundissima, “'tis the pleasantest life to know nothing;” iners malorum remedium ignorantia, “ignorance is a downright remedy of evils.” These curious arts and laborious sciences, Galen's, Tully's, Aristotle's, Justinian's, do but trouble the world some think; we might live better with that illiterate Virginian simplicity, and gross ignorance; entire idiots do best, they are not macerated with cares, tormented with fears, and anxiety, as other wise men are: for as [4076]he said, if folly were a pain, you should hear them howl, roar, and cry out in every house, as you go by in the street, but they are most free, jocund, and merry, and in some [4077]countries, as amongst the Turks, honoured for saints, and abundantly maintained out of the common stock. [4078]They are no dissemblers, liars, hypocrites, for fools and madmen tell commonly truth. In a word, as they are distressed, so are they pitied, which some hold better than to be envied, better to be sad than merry, better to be foolish and quiet, quam sapere et ringi, to be wise and still vexed; better to be miserable than happy: of two extremes it is the best.
After a long and tedious discourse of these six non-natural things and their several rectifications, all which are comprehended in diet, I am come now at last to Pharmaceutice, or that kind of physic which cureth by medicines, which apothecaries most part make, mingle, or sell in their shops. Many cavil at this kind of physic, and hold it unnecessary, unprofitable to this or any other disease, because those countries which use it least, live longest, and are best in health, as [4079]Hector Boethius relates of the isles of Orcades, the people are still sound of body and mind, without any use of physic, they live commonly 120 years, and Ortelius in his itinerary of the inhabitants of the Forest of Arden, [4080] “they are very painful, long-lived, sound,” &c. [4081]Martianus Capella, speaking of the Indians of his time, saith, they were (much like our western Indians now) “bigger than ordinary men, bred coarsely, very long-lived, insomuch, that he that died at a hundred years of age, went before his time,” &c. Damianus A-Goes, Saxo Grammaticus, Aubanus Bohemus, say the like of them that live in Norway, Lapland, Finmark, Biarmia, Corelia, all over Scandia, and those northern countries, they are most healthful, and very long-lived, in which places there is no use at all of physic, the name of it is not once heard. Dithmarus Bleskenius in his accurate description of Iceland, 1607, makes mention, amongst other matters, of the inhabitants, and their manner of living, [4082]“which is dried fish instead of bread, butter, cheese, and salt meats, most part they drink water and whey, and yet without physic or physician, they live many of them 250 years.” I find the same relation by Lerius, and some other writers, of Indians in America. Paulus Jovius in his description of Britain, and Levinus Lemnius, observe as much of this our island, that there was of old no use of [4083]physic amongst us, and but little at this day, except it be for a few nice idle citizens, surfeiting courtiers, and stall-fed gentlemen lubbers. The country people use kitchen physic, and common experience tells vis, that they live freest from all manner of infirmities, that make least use of apothecaries' physic. Many are overthrown by preposterous use of it, and thereby get their bane, that might otherwise have escaped: [4084]some think physicians kill as many as they save, and who can tell, [4085]Quot Themison aegros autumno occiderit uno? “How many murders they make in a year,” quibus impune licet hominem occidere, “that may freely kill folks,” and have a reward for it, and according to the Dutch proverb, a new physician must have a new churchyard; and who daily observes it not? Many that did ill under physicians' hands, have happily escaped, when they have been given over by them, left to God and nature, and themselves; 'twas Pliny's dilemma of old, [4086]“every disease is either curable or incurable, a man recovers of it or is killed by it; both ways physic is to be rejected. If it be deadly, it cannot be cured; if it may be helped, it requires no physician, nature will expel it of itself.” Plato made it a great sign of an intemperate and corrupt commonwealth, where lawyers and physicians did abound; and the Romans distasted them so much that they were often banished out of their city, as Pliny and Celsus relate, for 600 years not admitted. It is no art at all, as some hold, no not worthy the name of a liberal science (nor law neither), as [4087]Pet. And. Canonherius a patrician of Rome and a great doctor himself, “one of their own tribe,” proves by sixteen arguments, because it is mercenary as now used, base, and as fiddlers play for a reward. Juridicis, medicis, fisco, fas vivere rapto, 'tis a corrupt trade, no science, art, no profession; the beginning, practice, and progress of it, all is naught, full of imposture, uncertainty, and doth generally more harm than good. The devil himself was the first inventor of it: Inventum est medicina meum, said Apollo, and what was Apollo, but the devil? The Greeks first made an art of it, and they were all deluded by Apollo's sons, priests, oracles. If we may believe Varro, Pliny, Columella, most of their best medicines were derived from his oracles. Aesculapius his son had his temples erected to his deity, and did many famous cures; but, as Lactantius holds, he was a magician, a mere impostor, and as his successors, Phaon, Podalirius, Melampius, Menecrates, (another God), by charms, spells, and ministry of bad spirits, performed most of their cures. The first that ever wrote in physic to any purpose, was Hippocrates, and his disciple and commentator Galen, whom Scaliger calls Fimbriam Hippocratis; but as [4088]Cardan censures them, both immethodical and obscure, as all those old ones are, their precepts confused, their medicines obsolete, and now most part rejected. Those cures which they did, Paracelsus holds, were rather done out of their patients' confidence, [4089]and good opinion they had of them, than out of any skill of theirs, which was very small, he saith, they themselves idiots and infants, as are all their academical followers. The Arabians received it from the Greeks, and so the Latins, adding new precepts and medicines of their own, but so imperfect still, that through ignorance of professors, impostors, mountebanks, empirics, disagreeing of sectaries, (which are as many almost as there be diseases) envy, covetousness, and the like, they do much harm amongst us. They are so different in their consultations, prescriptions, mistaking many times the parties' constitution, [4090]disease, and causes of it, they give quite contrary physic; [4091]“one saith this, another that,” out of singularity or opposition, as he said of Adrian, multitudo medicorum principem interfecit, “a multitude of physicians hath killed the emperor;” plus a medico quam a morbo periculi, “more danger there is from the physician, than from the disease.” Besides, there is much imposture and malice amongst them. “All arts” (saith [4092]Cardan) “admit of cozening, physic, amongst the rest, doth appropriate it to herself;” and tells a story of one Curtius, a physician in Venice: because he was a stranger, and practised amongst them, the rest of the physicians did still cross him in all his precepts. If he prescribed hot medicines they would prescribe cold, miscentes pro calidis frigida, pro frigidis humida, pro purgantibus astringentia, binders for purgatives, omnia perturbabant. If the party miscarried, Curtium damnabant, Curtius killed him, that disagreed from them: if he recovered, then [4093]they cured him themselves. Much emulation, imposture, malice, there is amongst them: if they be honest and mean well, yet a knave apothecary that administers the physic, and makes the medicine, may do infinite harm, by his old obsolete doses, adulterine drugs, bad mixtures, quid pro quo, &c. See Fuchsius lib. 1. sect. 1. cap. 8. Cordus' Dispensatory, and Brassivola's Examen simpl., &c. But it is their ignorance that doth more harm than rashness, their art is wholly conjectural, if it be an art, uncertain, imperfect, and got by killing of men, they are a kind of butchers, leeches, men-slayers; chirurgeons and apothecaries especially, that are indeed the physicians' hangman, carnifices, and common executioners; though to say truth, physicians themselves come not far behind; for according to that facete epigram of Maximilianus Urentius, what's the difference?
Medicines properly applied to melancholy, are either simple or compound. Simples are alterative or purgative. Alteratives are such as correct, strengthen nature, alter, any way hinder or resist the disease; and they be herbs, stones, minerals, &c. all proper to this humour. For as there be diverse distinct infirmities continually vexing us,
Amongst these 800 simples, which Galeottus reckons up, lib. 3. de promise, doctor, cap. 3, and many exquisite herbalists have written of, these few following alone I find appropriated to this humour: of which some be alteratives; [4119]“which by a secret force,” saith Renodeus, “and special quality expel future diseases, perfectly cure those which are, and many such incurable effects.” This is as well observed in other plants, stones, minerals, and creatures, as in herbs, in other maladies as in this. How many things are related of a man's skull? What several virtues of corns in a horse-leg, [4120]of a wolf's liver, &c. Of [4121]diverse excrements of beasts, all good against several diseases? What extraordinary virtues are ascribed unto plants? [4122]Satyrium et eruca penem erigunt, vitex et nymphea semen extinguunt, [4123]some herbs provoke lust, some again, as agnus castus, water-lily, quite extinguisheth seed; poppy causeth sleep, cabbage resisteth drunkenness, &c., and that which is more to be admired, that such and such plants should have a peculiar virtue to such particular parts, [4124]as to the head aniseeds, foalfoot, betony, calamint, eye-bright, lavender, bays, roses, rue, sage, marjoram, peony, &c. For the lungs calamint, liquorice, ennula campana, hyssop, horehound, water germander, &c. For the heart, borage, bugloss, saffron, balm, basil, rosemary, violet, roses, &c. For the stomach, wormwood, mints, betony, balm, centaury, sorrel, parslan. For the liver, darthspine or camaepitis, germander, agrimony, fennel, endive, succory, liverwort, barberries. For the spleen, maidenhair, finger-fern, dodder of thyme, hop, the rind of ash, betony. For the kidneys, grumel, parsley, saxifrage, plaintain, mallow. For the womb, mugwort, pennyroyal, fetherfew, savine, &c. For the joints, camomile, St. John's wort, organ, rue, cowslips, centaury the less, &c. And so to peculiar diseases. To this of melancholy you shall find a catalogue of herbs proper, and that in every part. See more in Wecker, Renodeus, Heurnius lib. 2. cap. 19. &c. I will briefly speak of them, as first of alteratives, which Galen, in his third book of diseased parts, prefers before diminutives, and Trallianus brags, that he hath done more cures on melancholy men [4125]by moistening, than by purging of them.
Borage.] In this catalogue, borage and bugloss may challenge the chiefest place, whether in substance, juice, roots, seeds, flowers, leaves, decoctions, distilled waters, extracts, oils, &c., for such kind of herbs be diversely varied. Bugloss is hot and moist, and therefore worthily reckoned up amongst those herbs which expel melancholy, and [4126] exhilarate the heart, Galen, lib. 6. cap. 80. de simpl. med. Dioscorides, lib. 4. cap. 123. Pliny much magnifies this plant. It may be diversely used; as in broth, in [4127]wine, in conserves, syrups, &c. It is an excellent cordial, and against this malady most frequently prescribed; a herb indeed of such sovereignty, that as Diodorus, lib. 7. bibl. Plinius, lib. 25. cap. 2. et lib. 21. cap. 22. Plutarch, sympos. lib. 1. cap. 1. Dioscorides, lib. 5. cap. 40. Caelius, lib. 19. c. 3. suppose it was that famous Nepenthes of [4128]Homer, which Polydaenna, Thonis's wife (then king of Thebes in Egypt), sent Helena for a token, of such rare virtue, “that if taken steeped in wine, if wife and children, father and mother, brother and sister, and all thy dearest friends should die before thy face, thou couldst not grieve or shed a tear for them.”
Balm.] Melissa balm hath an admirable virtue to alter melancholy, be it steeped in our ordinary drink, extracted, or otherwise taken. Cardan, lib. 8. much admires this herb. It heats and dries, saith [4129] Heurnius, in the second degree, with a wonderful virtue comforts the heart, and purgeth all melancholy vapours from the spirits, Matthiol. in lib. 3. cap. 10. in Dioscoridem. Besides they ascribe other virtues to it, [4130]“as to help concoction, to cleanse the brain, expel all careful thoughts, and anxious imaginations:” the same words in effect are in Avicenna, Pliny, Simon Sethi, Fuchsius, Leobel, Delacampius, and every herbalist. Nothing better for him that is melancholy than to steep this and borage in his ordinary drink.
Mathiolus, in his fifth book of Medicinal Epistles, reckons up scorzonera, [4131]“not against poison only, falling sickness, and such as are vertiginous, but to this malady; the root of it taken by itself expels sorrow, causeth mirth and lightness of heart.”
Antonius Musa, that renowned physician to Caesar Augustus, in his book which he writ of the virtues of betony, cap. 6. wonderfully commends that herb, animas hominum et corpora custodit, securas de metu reddit, it preserves both body and mind, from fears, cares, griefs; cures falling sickness, this and many other diseases, to whom Galen subscribes, lib. 7. simp. med. Dioscorides, lib. 4. cap. 1. &c.
Marigold is much approved against melancholy, and often used therefore in our ordinary broth, as good against this and many other diseases.
Hop.] Lupulus, hop, is a sovereign remedy; Fuchsius, cap. 58. Plant. hist. much extols it; [4132]“it purgeth all choler, and purifies the blood.” Matthiol. cap. 140. in 4. Dioscor. wonders the physicians of his time made no more use of it, because it rarefies and cleanseth: we use it to this purpose in our ordinary beer, which before was thick and fulsome.
Wormwood, centaury, pennyroyal, are likewise magnified and much prescribed (as I shall after show), especially in hypochondriac melancholy, daily to be used, sod in whey: and as Ruffus Ephesias, [4133]Areteus relate, by breaking wind, helping concoction, many melancholy men have been cured with the frequent use of them alone.
And because the spleen and blood are often misaffected in melancholy, I may not omit endive, succory, dandelion, fumitory, &c., which cleanse the blood, Scolopendria, cuscuta, ceterache, mugwort, liverwort, ash, tamarisk, genist, maidenhair, &c., which must help and ease the spleen.
To these I may add roses, violets, capers, featherfew, scordium, staechas, rosemary, ros solis, saffron, ochyme, sweet apples, wine, tobacco, sanders, &c. That Peruvian chamico, monstrosa facultate &c., Linshcosteus Datura; and to such as are cold, the [4134]decoction of guiacum, China sarsaparilla, sassafras, the flowers of carduus benedictus, which I find much used by Montanus in his Consultations, Julius Alexandrinus, Lelius, Egubinus, and others. [4135]Bernardus Penottus prefers his herba solis, or Dutch sindaw, before all the rest in this disease, “and will admit of no herb upon the earth to be comparable to it.” It excels Homer's moly, cures this, falling sickness, and almost all other infirmities. The same Penottus speaks of an excellent balm out of Aponensis, which, taken to the quantity of three drops in a cup of wine, [4136]“will cause a sudden alteration, drive away dumps, and cheer up the heart.” Ant. Guianerius, in his Antidotary, hath many such. [4137]Jacobus de Dondis the aggregator, repeats ambergris, nutmegs, and allspice amongst the rest. But that cannot be general. Amber and spice will make a hot brain mad, good for cold and moist. Garcias ab Horto hath many Indian plants, whose virtues he much magnifies in this disease. Lemnius, instit. cap. 58. admires rue, and commends it to have excellent virtue, [4138]“to expel vain imaginations, devils, and to ease afflicted souls.” Other things are much magnified [4139]by writers, as an old cock, a ram's head, a wolf's heart borne or eaten, which Mercurialis approves; Prosper Altinus the water of Nilus; Gomesius all seawater, and at seasonable times to be seasick: goat's milk, whey, &c.
Precious stones are diversely censured; many explode the use of them or any minerals in physic, of whom Thomas Erastus is the chief, in his tract against Paracelsus, and in an epistle of his to Peter Monavius, [4140] “That stones can work any wonders, let them believe that list, no man shall persuade me; for my part, I have found by experience there is no virtue in them.” But Matthiolus, in his comment upon [4141]Dioscorides, is as profuse on the other side, in their commendation; so is Cardan, Renodeus, Alardus, Rueus, Encelius, Marbodeus, &c. [4142]Matthiolus specifies in coral: and Oswaldus Crollius, Basil. Chym. prefers the salt of coral. [4143]Christoph. Encelius, lib. 3. cap. 131. will have them to be as so many several medicines against melancholy, sorrow, fear, dullness, and the like; [4144]Renodeus admires them, “besides they adorn kings' crowns, grace the fingers, enrich our household stuff, defend us from enchantments, preserve health, cure diseases, they drive away grief, cares, and exhilarate the mind.” The particulars be these.
Granatus, a precious stone so called, because it is like the kernels of a pomegranate, an imperfect kind of ruby, it comes from Calecut; [4145]“if hung about the neck, or taken in drink, it much resisteth sorrow, and recreates the heart.” The same properties I find ascribed to the hyacinth and topaz. [4146]They allay anger, grief, diminish madness, much delight and exhilarate the mind. [4147]“If it be either carried about, or taken in a potion, it will increase wisdom,” saith Cardan, “expel fear; he brags that he hath cured many madmen with it, which, when they laid by the stone, were as mad again as ever they were at first.” Petrus Bayerus, lib. 2. cap. 13. veni mecum, Fran. Rueus, cap. 19. de geminis, say as much of the chrysolite, [4148]a friend of wisdom, an enemy to folly. Pliny, lib. 37. Solinus, cap. 52. Albertus de Lapid. Cardan. Encelius, lib. 3. cap. 66. highly magnifies the virtue of the beryl, [4149]“it much avails to a good understanding, represseth vain conceits, evil thoughts, causeth mirth,” &c. In the belly of a swallow there is a stone found called chelidonius, [4150]“which if it be lapped in a fair cloth, and tied to the right arm, will cure lunatics, madmen, make them amiable and merry.”
There is a kind of onyx called a chalcedony, which hath the same qualities, [4151]“avails much against fantastic illusions which proceed from melancholy,” preserves the vigour and good estate of the whole body.
The Eban stone, which goldsmiths use to sleeken their gold with, borne about or given to drink, [4152]hath the same properties, or not much unlike.
Levinus Lemnius, Institui. ad vit. cap. 58. amongst other jewels, makes mention of two more notable; carbuncle and coral, [4153]“which drive away childish fears, devils, overcome sorrow, and hung about the neck repress troublesome dreams,” which properties almost Cardan gives to that green-coloured [4154]emmetris if it be carried about, or worn in a ring; Rueus to the diamond.
Nicholas Cabeus, a Jesuit of Ferrara, in the first book of his Magnetical Philosophy, cap. 3. speaking of the virtues of a loadstone, recites many several opinions; some say that if it be taken in parcels inward, si quis per frustra voret, juventutem restituet, it will, like viper's wine, restore one to his youth; and yet if carried about them, others will have it to cause melancholy; let experience determine.
Mercurialis admires the emerald for its virtues in pacifying all affections of the mind; others the sapphire, which is “the [4155]fairest of all precious stones, of sky colour, and a great enemy to black choler, frees the mind, mends manners,” &c. Jacobus de Dondis, in his catalogue of simples, hath ambergris, os in corde cervi, [4156]the bone in a stag's heart, a monocerot's horn, bezoar's stone [4157](of which elsewhere), it is found in the belly of a little beast in the East Indies, brought into Europe by Hollanders, and our countrymen merchants. Renodeus, cap. 22. lib. 3. de ment. med. saith he saw two of these beasts alive, in the castle of the Lord of Vitry at Coubert.
Lapis lazuli and armenus, because they purge, shall be mentioned in their place.
Of the rest in brief thus much I will add out of Cardan, Renodeus, cap. 23. lib. 3. Rondoletius, lib. 1. de Testat. c. 15. &c. [4158]“That almost all jewels and precious stones have excellent virtues” to pacify the affections of the mind, for which cause rich men so much covet to have them: [4159]“and those smaller unions which are found in shells amongst the Persians and Indians, by the consent of all writers, are very cordial, and most part avail to the exhilaration of the heart.”
Minerals.] Most men say as much of gold and some other minerals, as these have done of precious stones. Erastus still maintains the opposite part. Disput. in Paracelsum. cap. 4. fol. 196. he confesseth of gold, [4160] “that it makes the heart merry, but in no other sense but as it is in a miser's chest:” at mihi plaudo simul ac nummos contemplor in arca, as he said in the poet, it so revives the spirits, and is an excellent recipe against melancholy,
Pliny, lib. 24. c. 1, bitterly taxeth all compound medicines, [4169] “Men's knavery, imposture, and captious wits, have invented those shops, in which every man's life is set to sale: and by and by came in those compositions and inexplicable mixtures, far-fetched out of India and Arabia; a medicine for a botch must be had as far as the Red Sea.” And 'tis not without cause which he saith; for out of question they are much to [4170]blame in their compositions, whilst they make infinite variety of mixtures, as [4171]Fuchsius notes. “They think they get themselves great credit, excel others, and to be more learned than the rest, because they make many variations; but he accounts them fools, and whilst they brag of their skill, and think to get themselves a name, they become ridiculous, betray their ignorance and error.” A few simples well prepared and understood, are better than such a heap of nonsense, confused compounds, which are in apothecaries' shops ordinarily sold. “In which many vain, superfluous, corrupt, exolete, things out of date are to be had” (saith Cornarius); “a company of barbarous names given to syrups, juleps, an unnecessary company of mixed medicines;” rudis indigestaque moles. Many times (as Agrippa taxeth) there is by this means [4172]“more danger from the medicine than from the disease,” when they put together they know not what, or leave it to an illiterate apothecary to be made, they cause death and horror for health. Those old physicians had no such mixtures; a simple potion of hellebore in Hippocrates' time was the ordinary purge; and at this day, saith [4173]Mat. Riccius, in that flourishing commonwealth of China, “their physicians give precepts quite opposite to ours, not unhappy in their physic; they use altogether roots, herbs, and simples in their medicines, and all their physic in a manner is comprehended in a herbal: no science, no school, no art, no degree, but like a trade, every man in private is instructed of his master.” [4174]Cardan cracks that he can cure all diseases with water alone, as Hippocrates of old did most infirmities with one medicine. Let the best of our rational physicians demonstrate and give a sufficient reason for those intricate mixtures, why just so many simples in mithridate or treacle, why such and such quantity; may they not be reduced to half or a quarter? Frustra fit per plura (as the saying is) quod fieri potest per pauciora; 300 simples in a julep, potion, or a little pill, to what end or purpose? I know not what [4175]Alkindus, Capivaccius, Montagna, and Simon Eitover, the best of them all and most rational, have said in this kind; but neither he, they, nor any one of them, gives his reader, to my judgment, that satisfaction which he ought; why such, so many simples? Rog. Bacon hath taxed many errors in his tract de graduationibus, explained some things, but not cleared. Mercurialis in his book de composit. medicin. gives instance in Hamech, and Philonium Romanum, which Hamech an Arabian, and Philonius a Roman, long since composed, but crasse as the rest. If they be so exact, as by him it seems they were, and those mixtures so perfect, why doth Fernelius alter the one, and why is the other obsolete? [4176]Cardan taxeth Galen for presuming out of his ambition to correct Theriachum Andromachi, and we as justly may carp at all the rest. Galen's medicines are now exploded and rejected; what Nicholas Meripsa, Mesue, Celsus, Scribanius, Actuarius, &c. writ of old, are most part contemned. Mellichius, Cordus, Wecker, Quercetan, Renodeus, the Venetian, Florentine states have their several receipts, and magistrals: they of Nuremberg have theirs, and Augustana Pharmacopoeia, peculiar medicines to the meridian of the city: London hers, every city, town, almost every private man hath his own mixtures, compositions, receipts, magistrals, precepts, as if he scorned antiquity, and all others in respect of himself. But each man must correct and alter to show his skill, every opinionative fellow must maintain his own paradox, be it what it will; Delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi: they dote, and in the meantime the poor patients pay for their new experiments, the commonalty rue it.
Thus others object, thus I may conceive out of the weakness of my apprehension; but to say truth, there is no such fault, no such ambition, no novelty, or ostentation, as some suppose; but as [4177]one answers, this of compound medicines, “is a most noble and profitable invention found out, and brought into physic with great judgment, wisdom, counsel and discretion.” Mixed diseases must have mixed remedies, and such simples are commonly mixed as have reference to the part affected, some to qualify, the rest to comfort, some one part, some another. Cardan and Brassavola both hold that Nullum simplex medicamentum sine noxa, no simple medicine is without hurt or offence; and although Hippocrates, Erasistratus, Diocles of old, in the infancy of this art, were content with ordinary simples: yet now, saith [4178]Aetius, “necessity compelleth to seek for new remedies, and to make compounds of simples, as well to correct their harms if cold, dry, hot, thick, thin, insipid, noisome to smell, to make them savoury to the palate, pleasant to taste and take, and to preserve them for continuance, by admixtion of sugar, honey, to make them last months and years for several uses.” In such cases, compound medicines may be approved, and Arnoldus in his 18. aphorism, doth allow of it. [4179]“If simples cannot, necessity compels us to use compounds;” so for receipts and magistrals, dies diem docet, one day teacheth another, and they are as so many words or phrases, Que nunc sunt in honore vocabula si volet usus, ebb and flow with the season, and as wits vary, so they may be infinitely varied. Quisque suum placitum quo capiatur habet. “Every man as he likes, so many men so many minds,” and yet all tending to good purpose, though not the same way. As arts and sciences, so physic is still perfected amongst the rest; Horae musarum nutrices, and experience teacheth us every day [4180]many things which our predecessors knew not of. Nature is not effete, as he saith, or so lavish, to bestow all her gifts upon an age, but hath reserved some for posterity, to show her power, that she is still the same, and not old or consumed. Birds and beasts can cure themselves by nature, [4181]naturae usu ea plerumque cognoscunt quae homines vix longo labore et doctrina assequuntur, but “men must use much labour and industry to find it out.” But I digress.
Compound medicines are inwardly taken, or outwardly applied. Inwardly taken, be either liquid or solid: liquid, are fluid or consisting. Fluid, as wines and syrups. The wines ordinarily used to this disease are wormwood wine, tamarisk, and buglossatum, wine made of borage and bugloss, the composition of which is specified in Arnoldus Villanovanus, lib. de vinis, of borage, balm, bugloss, cinnamon, &c. and highly commended for its virtues: [4182]“it drives away leprosy, scabs, clears the blood, recreates the spirits, exhilarates the mind, purgeth the brain of those anxious black melancholy fumes, and cleanseth the whole body of that black humour by urine. To which I add,” saith Villanovanus, “that it will bring madmen, and such raging bedlamites as are tied in chains, to the use of their reason again. My conscience bears me witness, that I do not lie, I saw a grave matron helped by this means; she was so choleric, and so furious sometimes, that she was almost mad, and beside herself; she said, and did she knew not what, scolded, beat her maids, and was now ready to be bound till she drank of this borage wine, and by this excellent remedy was cured, which a poor foreigner, a silly beggar, taught her by chance, that came to crave an alms from door to door.” The juice of borage, if it be clarified, and drunk in wine, will do as much, the roots sliced and steeped, &c. saith Ant. Mizaldus, art. med. who cities this story verbatim out of Villanovanus, and so doth Magninus a physician of Milan, in his regimen of health. Such another excellent compound water I find in Rubeus de distill. sect. 3. which he highly magnifies out of Savanarola, [4183]“for such as are solitary, dull, heavy or sad without a cause, or be troubled with trembling of heart.” Other excellent compound waters for melancholy, he cites in the same place. [4184]“If their melancholy be not inflamed, or their temperature over-hot.” Evonimus hath a precious aquavitae to this purpose, for such as are cold. But he and most commend aurum potabile, and every writer prescribes clarified whey, with borage, bugloss, endive, succory, &c. of goat's milk especially, some indefinitely at all times, some thirty days together in the spring, every morning fasting, a good draught. Syrups are very good, and often used to digest this humour in the heart, spleen, liver, &c. As syrup of borage (there is a famous syrup of borage highly commended by Laurentius to this purpose in his tract of melancholy), de pomis of king Sabor, now obsolete, of thyme and epithyme, hops, scolopendria, fumitory, maidenhair, bizantine, &c. These are most used for preparatives to other physic, mixed with distilled waters of like nature, or in juleps otherwise.
Consisting, are conserves or confections; conserves of borage, bugloss, balm, fumitory, succory, maidenhair, violets, roses, wormwood, &c. Confections, treacle, mithridate, eclegms, or linctures, &c. Solid, as aromatical confections: hot, diambra, diamargaritum calidum, dianthus, diamoschum dulce, electuarium de gemmis laetificans Galeni et Rhasis, diagalanga, diaciminum dianisum, diatrion piperion, diazinziber, diacapers, diacinnamonum: Cold, as diamargaritum frigidum, diacorolli, diarrhodon abbatis, diacodion, &c. as every pharmacopoeia will show you, with their tables or losings that are made out of them: with condites and the like.
Outwardly used as occasion serves, as amulets, oils hot and cold, as of camomile, staechados, violets, roses, almonds, poppy, nymphea, mandrake, &c. to be used after bathing, or to procure sleep.
Ointments composed of the said species, oils and wax, &c., as Alablastritum Populeum, some hot, some cold, to moisten, procure sleep, and correct other accidents.
Liniments are made of the same matter to the like purpose: emplasters of herbs, flowers, roots, &c., with oils, and other liquors mixed and boiled together.
Cataplasms, salves, or poultices made of green herbs, pounded, or sod in water till they be soft, which are applied to the hypochondries, and other parts, when the body is empty.
Cerotes are applied to several parts and frontals, to take away pain, grief, heat, procure sleep. Fomentations or sponges, wet in some decoctions, &c., epithemata, or those moist medicines, laid on linen, to bathe and cool several parts misaffected.
Sacculi, or little bags of herbs, flowers, seeds, roots, and the like, applied to the head, heart, stomach, &c., odoraments, balls, perfumes, posies to smell to, all which have their several uses in melancholy, as shall be shown, when I treat of the cure of the distinct species by themselves.
Melanagoga, or melancholy purging medicines, are either simple or compound, and that gently, or violently, purging upward or downward. These following purge upward. [4185]Asarum, or Asrabecca, which, as Mesue saith, is hot in the second degree, and dry in the third, “it is commonly taken in wine, whey,” or as with us, the juice of two or three leaves or more sometimes, pounded in posset drink qualified with a little liquorice, or aniseed, to avoid the fulsomeness of the taste, or as Diaserum Fernelii. Brassivola in Catart. reckons it up amongst those simples that only purge melancholy, and Ruellius confirms as much out of his experience, that it purgeth [4186]black choler, like hellebore itself. Galen, lib. G. simplic. and [4187]Matthiolus ascribe other virtues to it, and will have it purge other humours as well as this.
Laurel, by Heurnius's method, ad prax. lib. 2. cap. 24. is put amongst the strong purgers of melancholy; it is hot and dry in the fourth degree. Dioscorides, lib. 11. cap. 114. adds other effects to it. [4188]Pliny sets down fifteen berries in drink for a sufficient potion: it is commonly corrected with his opposites, cold and moist, as juice of endive, purslane, and is taken in a potion to seven grains and a half. But this and asrabecca, every gentlewoman in the country knows how to give, they are two common vomits.
Scilla, or sea-onion, is hot and dry in the third degree. Brassivola in Catart. out of Mesue, others, and his own experience, will have this simple to purge [4189]melancholy alone. It is an ordinary vomit, vinum scilliticum mixed with rubel in a little white wine.
White hellebore, which some call sneezing-powder, a strong purger upward, which many reject, as being too violent: Mesue and Averroes will not admit of it, [4190]“by reason of danger of suffocation,” [4191]“great pain and trouble it puts the poor patient to,” saith Dodonaeus. Yet Galen, lib. 6. simpl. med. and Dioscorides, cap. 145. allow of it. It was indeed [4192] “terrible in former times,” as Pliny notes, but now familiar, insomuch that many took it in those days, [4193]“that were students, to quicken their wits,” which Persius Sat. 1. objects to Accius the poet, Illas Acci ebria veratro. [4194]“It helps melancholy, the falling sickness, madness, gout, &c., but not to be taken of old men, youths, such as are weaklings, nice, or effeminate, troubled with headache, high-coloured, or fear strangling,” saith Dioscorides. [4195]Oribasius, an old physician, hath written very copiously, and approves of it, “in such affections which can otherwise hardly be cured.” Hernius, lib. 2. prax. med. de vomitoriis, will not have it used [4196]“but with great caution, by reason of its strength, and then when antimony will do no good,” which caused Hermophilus to compare it to a stout captain (as Codroneus observes cap. 7. comment. de Helleb.) that will see all his soldiers go before him and come post principia, like the bragging soldier, last himself; [4197]when other helps fail in inveterate melancholy, in a desperate case, this vomit is to be taken. And yet for all this, if it be well prepared, it may be [4198] securely given at first. [4199]Matthiolus brags, that he hath often, to the good of many, made use of it, and Heurnius, [4200]“that he hath happily used it, prepared after his own prescript,” and with good success. Christophorus a Vega, lib. 3. c. 41, is of the same opinion, that it may be lawfully given; and our country gentlewomen find it by their common practice, that there is no such great danger in it. Dr. Turner, speaking of this plant in his Herbal, telleth us, that in his time it was an ordinary receipt among good wives, to give hellebore in powder to ii'd weight, and he is not much against it. But they do commonly exceed, for who so bold as blind Bayard, and prescribe it by pennyworths, and such irrational ways, as I have heard myself market folks ask for it in an apothecary's shop: but with what success God knows; they smart often for their rash boldness and folly, break a vein, make their eyes ready to start out of their heads, or kill themselves. So that the fault is not in the physic, but in the rude and indiscreet handling of it. He that will know, therefore, when to use, how to prepare it aright, and in what dose, let him read Heurnius lib. 2. prax. med. Brassivola de Catart. Godefridus Stegius the emperor Rudolphus' physician, cap. 16. Matthiolus in Dioscor. and that excellent commentary of Baptista Codroncus, which is instar omnium de Helleb. alb. where we shall find great diversity of examples and receipts.
Antimony or stibium, which our chemists so much magnify, is either taken in substance or infusion, &c., and frequently prescribed in this disease. “It helps all infirmities,” saith [4201]Matthiolus, “which proceed from black choler, falling sickness, and hypochondriacal passions;” and for farther proof of his assertion, he gives several instances of such as have been freed with it: [4202]one of Andrew Gallus, a physician of Trent, that after many other essays, “imputes the recovery of his health, next after God, to this remedy alone.” Another of George Handshius, that in like sort, when other medicines failed, [4203]“was by this restored to his former health, and which of his knowledge others have likewise tried, and by the help of this admirable medicine, been recovered.” A third of a parish priest at Prague in Bohemia, [4204]“that was so far gone with melancholy, that he doted, and spake he knew not what; but after he had taken twelve grains of stibium, (as I myself saw, and can witness, for I was called to see this miraculous accident) he was purged of a deal of black choler, like little gobbets of flesh, and all his excrements were as black blood (a medicine fitter for a horse than a man), yet it did him so much good, that the next day he was perfectly cured.” This very story of the Bohemian priest, Sckenkius relates verbatim, Exoter. experiment. ad. var. morb. cent. 6. observ. 6. with great approbation of it. Hercules de Saxonia calls it a profitable medicine, if it be taken after meat to six or eight grains, of such as are apt to vomit. Rodericus a Fonseca the Spaniard, and late professor of Padua in Italy, extols it to this disease, Tom. 2. consul. 85. so doth Lod. Mercatus de inter. morb. cur. lib. 1. cap. 17. with many others. Jacobus Gervinus a French physician, on the other side, lib. 2. de venemis confut. explodes all this, and saith he took three grains only upon Matthiolus and some others' commendation, but it almost killed him, whereupon he concludes, [4205]“antimony is rather poison than a medicine.” Th. Erastus concurs with him in his opinion, and so doth Aelian Montaltus cap. 30 de melan. But what do I talk? 'tis the subject of whole books; I might cite a century of authors pro and con. I will conclude with [4206]Zuinger, antimony is like Scanderbeg's sword, which is either good or bad, strong or weak, as the party is that prescribes, or useth it: “a worthy medicine if it be rightly applied to a strong man, otherwise poison.” For the preparing of it, look in Evonimi thesaurus, Quercetan, Oswaldus Crollius, Basil. Chim. Basil. Valentius, &c.
Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases. A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used; but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.
Polypody and epithyme are, without all exceptions, gentle purgers of melancholy. Dioscorides will have them void phlegm; but Brassivola out of his experience averreth, that they purge this humour; they are used in decoction, infusion, &c. simple, mixed, &c.
Mirabolanes, all five kinds, are happily [4207]prescribed against melancholy and quartan agues; Brassivola speaks out [4208]“of a thousand” experiences, he gave them in pills, decoctions, &c., look for peculiar receipts in him.
Stoechas, fumitory, dodder, herb mercury, roots of capers, genista or broom, pennyroyal and half-boiled cabbage, I find in this catalogue of purgers of black choler, origan, featherfew, ammoniac [4209]salt, saltpetre. But these are very gentle; alyppus, dragon root, centaury, ditany, colutea, which Fuchsius cap. 168 and others take for senna, but most distinguish. Senna is in the middle of violent and gentle purgers downward, hot in the second degree, dry in the first. Brassivola calls it [4210]“a wonderful herb against melancholy, it scours the blood, lightens the spirits, shakes off sorrow, a most profitable medicine,” as [4211] Dodonaeus terms it, invented by the Arabians, and not heard of before. It is taken diverse ways, in powder, infusion, but most commonly in the infusion, with ginger, or some cordial flowers added to correct it. Actuarius commends it sodden in broth, with an old cock, or in whey, which is the common conveyor of all such things as purge black choler; or steeped in wine, which Heurnius accounts sufficient, without any farther correction.
Aloes by most is said to purge choler, but Aurelianus lib. 2. c. 6. de morb. chron. Arculanus cap. 6. in 9. Rhasis Julius Alexandrinus, consil. 185. Scoltz. Crato consil 189. Scoltz. prescribe it to this disease; as good for the stomach and to open the haemorrhoids, out of Mesue, Rhasis, Serapio, Avicenna: Menardus ep. lib. 1. epist. 1. opposeth it, aloes [4212]“doth not open the veins,” or move the haemorrhoids, which Leonhartus Fuchsius paradox. lib. 1. likewise affirms; but Brassivola and Dodonaeus defend Mesue out of their experience; let [4213]Valesius end the controversy.
Lapis armenus and lazuli are much magnified by [4214]Alexander lib. 1. cap. 16. Avicenna, Aetius, and Actuarius, if they be well washed, that the water be no more coloured, fifty times some say. [4215]“That good Alexander” (saith Guianerus) “puts such confidence in this one medicine, that he thought all melancholy passions might be cured by it; and I for my part have oftentimes happily used it, and was never deceived in the operation of it.” The like may be said of lapis lazuli, though it be somewhat weaker than the other. Garcias ab Horto, hist. lib. 1. cap. 65. relates, that the [4216]physicians of the Moors familiarly prescribe it to all melancholy passions, and Matthiolus ep. lib. 3. [4217]brags of that happy success which he still had in the administration of it. Nicholas Meripsa puts it amongst the best remedies, sect. 1. cap. 12. in Antidotis; [4218]“and if this will not serve” (saith Rhasis) “then there remains nothing but lapis armenus and hellebore itself.” Valescus and Jason Pratensis much commend pulvis hali, which is made of it. James Damascen. 2. cap. 12. Hercules de Saxonia, &c., speaks well of it. Crato will not approve this; it and both hellebores, he saith, are no better than poison. Victor Trincavelius, lib. 2. cap. 14, found it in his experience, [4219]“to be very noisome, to trouble the stomach, and hurt their bodies that take it overmuch.”
Black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous purger of melancholy, which all antiquity so much used and admired, was first found out by Melanpodius a shepherd, as Pliny records, lib. 25. cap. 5. [4220]who, seeing it to purge his goats when they raved, practised it upon Elige and Calene, King Praetus' daughters, that ruled in Arcadia, near the fountain Clitorius, and restored them to their former health. In Hippocrates's time it was in only request, insomuch that he writ a book of it, a fragment of which remains yet. Theophrastus, [4221]Galen, Pliny, Caelius Aurelianus, as ancient as Galen, lib. 1, cap. 6. Aretus lib. 1. cap. 5. Oribasius lib. 7. collect. a famous Greek, Aetius ser. 3. cap. 112 & 113 p. Aegineta, Galen's Ape, lib. 7. cap. 4. Actuarius, Trallianus lib. 5. cap. 15. Cornelius Celsus only remaining of the old Latins, lib. 3. cap. 23, extol and admire this excellent plant; and it was generally so much esteemed of the ancients for this disease amongst the rest, that they sent all such as were crazed, or that doted, to the Anticyrae, or to Phocis in Achaia, to be purged, where this plant was in abundance to be had. In Strabo's time it was an ordinary voyage, Naviget Anticyras; a common proverb among the Greeks and Latins, to bid a dizzard or a mad man go take hellebore; as in Lucian, Menippus to Tantalus, Tantale desipis, helleboro epoto tibi opus est, eoque sane meraco, thou art out of thy little wit, O Tantalus, and must needs drink hellebore, and that without mixture. Aristophanes in Vespis, drink hellebore, &c. and Harpax in the [4222] Comoedian, told Simo and Ballio, two doting fellows, that they had need to be purged with this plant. When that proud Menacrates ὀ ζεὺς, had writ an arrogant letter to Philip of Macedon, he sent back no other answer but this, Consulo tibi ut ad Anticyram te conferas, noting thereby that he was crazed, atque ellebore indigere, had much need of a good purge. Lilius Geraldus saith, that Hercules, after all his mad pranks upon his wife and children, was perfectly cured by a purge of hellebore, which an Anticyrian administered unto him. They that were sound commonly took it to quicken their wits, (as Ennis of old, [4223]Qui non nisi potus ad arma—prosiluit dicenda, and as our poets drink sack to improve their inventions (I find it so registered by Agellius lib. 17. cap. 15.) Cameades the academic, when he was to write against Zeno the stoic, purged himself with hellebore first, which [4224]Petronius puts upon Chrysippus. In such esteem it continued for many ages, till at length Mesue and some other Arabians began to reject and reprehend it, upon whose authority for many following lustres, it was much debased and quite out of request, held to be poison and no medicine; and is still oppugned to this day by [4225] Crato and some junior physicians. Their reasons are, because Aristotle l. 1. de plant. c. 3. said, henbane and hellebore were poison; and Alexander Aphrodiseus, in the preface of his problems, gave out, that (speaking of hellebore) [4226]“Quails fed on that which was poison to men.” Galen. l. 6. Epid. com. 5. Text. 35. confirms as much: [4227]Constantine the emperor in his Geoponicks, attributes no other virtue to it, than to kill mice and rats, flies and mouldwarps, and so Mizaldus, Nicander of old, Gervinus, Sckenkius, and some other Neoterics that have written of poisons, speak of hellebore in a chief place. [4228]Nicholas Leonicus hath a story of Solon, that besieging, I know not what city, steeped hellebore in a spring of water, which by pipes was conveyed into the middle of the town, and so either poisoned, or else made them so feeble and weak by purging, that they were not able to bear arms. Notwithstanding all these cavils and objections, most of our late writers do much approve of it. [4229] Gariopontus lib. 1. cap. 13. Codronchus com. de helleb. Fallopius lib. de med. purg. simpl. cap. 69. et consil. 15. Trincavelii, Montanus 239. Frisemelica consil. 14. Hercules de Saxonia, so that it be opportunely given. Jacobus de Dondis, Agg. Amatus, Lucet. cent. 66. Godef. Stegius cap. 13. Hollerius, and all our herbalists subscribe. Fernelius meth. med. lib. 5. cap. 16. “confesseth it to be a [4230] terrible purge and hard to take, yet well given to strong men, and such as have able bodies.” P. Forestus and Capivaccius forbid it to be taken in substance, but allow it in decoction or infusion, both which ways P. Monavius approves above all others, Epist. 231. Scoltzii, Jacchinus in 9. Rhasis, commends a receipt of his own preparing; Penottus another of his chemically prepared, Evonimus another. Hildesheim spicel. 2. de mel. hath many examples how it should be used, with diversity of receipts. Heurnius lib. 7. prax. med. cap. 14. “calls it an [4231]innocent medicine howsoever, if it be well prepared.” The root of it is only in use, which may be kept many years, and by some given in substance, as by Fallopius and Brassivola amongst the rest, who [4232]brags that he was the first that restored it again to its use, and tells a story how he cured one Melatasta, a madman, that was thought to be possessed, in the Duke of Ferrara's court, with one purge of black hellebore in substance: the receipt is there to be seen; his excrements were like ink, [4233]he perfectly healed at once; Vidus Vidius, a Dutch physician, will not admit of it in substance, to whom most subscribe, but as before, in the decoction, infusion, or which is all in all, in the extract, which he prefers before the rest, and calls suave medicamentum, a sweet medicine, an easy, that may be securely given to women, children, and weaklings. Baracellus, horto geniali, terms it maximae praestantia medicamentum, a medicine of great worth and note. Quercetan in his Spagir Phar. and many others, tell wonders of the extract. Paracelsus, above all the rest, is the greatest admirer of this plant; and especially the extract, he calls it Theriacum, terrestre Balsamum, another treacle, a terrestrial balm, instar omnium, “all in all, the [4234]sole and last refuge to cure this malady, the gout, epilepsy, leprosy, &c.” If this will not help, no physic in the world can but mineral, it is the upshot of all. Matthiolus laughs at those that except against it, and though some abhor it out of the authority of Mesue, and dare not adventure to prescribe it, [4235]“yet I” (saith he) “have happily used it six hundred times without offence, and communicated it to divers worthy physicians, who have given me great thanks for it.” Look for receipts, dose, preparation, and other cautions concerning this simple, in him, Brassivola, Baracelsus, Codronchus, and the rest.
Compound medicines which purge melancholy, are either taken in the superior or inferior parts: superior at mouth or nostrils. At the mouth swallowed or not swallowed: If swallowed liquid or solid: liquid, as compound wine of hellebore, scilla or sea-onion, senna, Vinum Scilliticum, Helleboratum, which [4236]Quercetan so much applauds “for melancholy and madness, either inwardly taken, or outwardly applied to the head, with little pieces of linen dipped warm in it.” Oxymel. Scilliticum, Syrupus Helleboratus major and minor in Quercetan, and Syrupus Genistae for hypochondriacal melancholy in the same author, compound syrup of succory, of fumitory, polypody, &c. Heurnius his purging cock-broth. Some except against these syrups, as appears by [4237]Udalrinus Leonoras his epistle to Matthiolus, as most pernicious, and that out of Hippocrates, cocta movere, et medicari, non cruda, no raw things to be used in physic; but this in the following epistle is exploded and soundly confuted by Matthiolus: many juleps, potions, receipts, are composed of these, as you shall find in Hildesheim spicel. 2. Heurnius lib. 2. cap. 14. George Sckenkius Ital. med. prax. &c.
Solid purges are confections, electuaries, pills by themselves, or compound with others, as de lapide lazulo, armeno, pil. indae, of fumitory, &c. Confection of Hamech, which though most approve, Solenander sec. 5. consil. 22. bitterly inveighs against, so doth Rondoletius Pharmacop. officina, Fernelius and others; diasena, diapolypodium, diacassia, diacatholicon, Wecker's electuary de Epithymo, Ptolemy's hierologadium, of which divers receipts are daily made.
Aetius 22. 23. commends Hieram Ruffi. Trincavelius consil. 12. lib. 4. approves of hiera; non, inquit, invenio melius medicamentum, I find no better medicine, he saith. Heurnius adds pil. aggregat. pills de Epithymo. pil. Ind. Mesue describes in the Florentine Antidotary, Pilulae sine quibus esse nolo, Pilulae, Cochics, cum Helleboro, Pil. Arabicae, Faetida, de quinque generibus mirabolanorum, &c. More proper to melancholy, not excluding in the meantime, turbith, manna, rhubarb, agaric, elescophe, &c. which are not so proper to this humour. For, as Montaltus holds cap. 30. and Montanus cholera etiam purganda, quod atrae, sit pabulum, choler is to be purged because it feeds the other: and some are of an opinion, as Erasistratus and Asclepiades maintained of old, against whom Galen disputes, [4238]“that no physic doth purge one humour alone, but all alike or what is next.” Most therefore in their receipts and magistrals which are coined here, make a mixture of several simples and compounds to purge all humours in general as well as this. Some rather use potions than pills to purge this humour, because that as Heurnius and Crato observe, hic succus a sicco remedio agre trahitur, this juice is not so easily drawn by dry remedies, and as Montanus adviseth 25 cons. “All [4239]drying medicines are to be repelled, as aloe, hiera,” and all pills whatsoever, because the disease is dry of itself.
I might here insert many receipts of prescribed potions, boles, &c. The doses of these, but that they are common in every good physician, and that I am loath to incur the censure of Forestus, lib. 3. cap. 6. de urinis, [4240]“against those that divulge and publish medicines in their mother-tongue,” and lest I should give occasion thereby to some ignorant reader to practise on himself, without the consent of a good physician.
Such as are not swallowed, but only kept in the mouth, are gargarisms used commonly after a purge, when the body is soluble and loose. Or apophlegmatisms, masticatories, to be held and chewed in the mouth, which are gentle, as hyssop, origan, pennyroyal, thyme, mustard; strong, as pellitory, pepper, ginger, &c.
Such as are taken into the nostrils, errhina are liquid or dry, juice of pimpernel, onions, &c., castor, pepper, white hellebore, &c. To these you may add odoraments, perfumes, and suffumigations, &c.
Taken into the inferior parts are clysters strong or weak, suppositories of Castilian soap, honey boiled to a consistence; or stronger of scammony, hellebore, &c.
These are all used, and prescribed to this malady upon several occasions, as shall be shown in its place.
In letting of blood three main circumstances are to be considered, [4241] “Who, how much, when.” That is, that it be done to such a one as may endure it, or to whom it may belong, that he be of a competent age, not too young, nor too old, overweak, fat, or lean, sore laboured, but to such as have need, are full of bad blood, noxious humours, and may be eased by it.
The quantity depends upon the party's habit of body, as he is strong or weak, full or empty, may spare more or less.
In the morning is the fittest time: some doubt whether it be best fasting, or full, whether the moon's motion or aspect of planets be to be observed; some affirm, some deny, some grant in acute, but not in chronic diseases, whether before or after physic. 'Tis Heurnius' aphorism a phlebotomia auspicandum esse curiationem, non a pharmacia, you must begin with bloodletting and not physic; some except this peculiar malady. But what do I? Horatius Augenius, a physician of Padua, hath lately writ 17 books of this subject, Jobertus, &c.
Particular kinds of bloodletting in use [4242]are three, first is that opening a vein in the arm with a sharp knife, or in the head, knees, or any other parts, as shall be thought fit.
Cupping-glasses with or without scarification, ocyssime compescunt, saith Fernelius, they work presently, and are applied to several parts, to divert humours, aches, winds, &c.
Horseleeches are much used in melancholy, applied especially to the haemorrhoids. Horatius Augenius, lib. 10. cap. 10. Platerus de mentis alienat. cap. 3. Altomarus, Piso, and many others, prefer them before any evacuations in this kind.
[4243]Cauteries, or searing with hot irons, combustions, borings, lancings, which, because they are terrible, Dropax and Sinapismus are invented by plasters to raise blisters, and eating medicines of pitch, mustard-seed, and the like.
Issues still to be kept open, made as the former, and applied in and to several parts, have their use here on divers occasions, as shall be shown.
The general cures thus briefly examined and discussed, it remains now to apply these medicines to the three particular species or kinds, that, according to the several parts affected, each man may tell in some sort how to help or ease himself. I will treat of head melancholy first, in which, as in all other good cures, we must begin with diet, as a matter of most moment, able oftentimes of itself to work this effect. I have read, saith Laurentius, cap. 8. de Melanch. that in old diseases which have gotten the upper hand or a habit, the manner of living is to more purpose, than whatsoever can be drawn out of the most precious boxes of the apothecaries. This diet, as I have said, is not only in choice of meat and drink, but of all those other non-natural things. Let air be clear and moist most part: diet moistening, of good juice, easy of digestion, and not windy: drink clear, and well brewed, not too strong, nor too small. “Make a melancholy man fat,” as [4244]Rhasis saith, “and thou hast finished the cure.” Exercise not too remiss, nor too violent. Sleep a little more than ordinary. [4245]Excrements daily to be voided by art or nature; and which Fernelius enjoins his patient, consil. 44, above the rest, to avoid all passions and perturbations of the mind. Let him not be alone or idle (in any kind of melancholy), but still accompanied with such friends and familiars he most affects, neatly dressed, washed, and combed, according to his ability at least, in clean sweet linen, spruce, handsome, decent, and good apparel; for nothing sooner dejects a man than want, squalor, and nastiness, foul, or old clothes out of fashion. Concerning the medicinal part, he that will satisfy himself at large (in this precedent of diet) and see all at once the whole cure and manner of it in every distinct species, let him consult with Gordonius, Valescus, with Prosper Calenius, lib. de atra bile ad Card. Caesium, Laurentius, cap. 8. et 9. de mela. Aelian Montaltus, de mel. cap. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. Donat. ab Altomari, cap. 7. artis med. Hercules de Saxonia, in Panth. cap. 7. et Tract. ejus peculiar. de melan. per Bolzetam, edit. Venetiis 1620. cap. 17. 18. 19. Savanarola, Rub. 82. Tract. 8. cap. 1. Sckenkius, in prax. curat. Ital. med. Heurnius, cap. 12. de morb. Victorius Faventius, pract. Magn. et Empir. Hildesheim, Spicel. 2. de man. et mel. Fel. Plater, Stockerus, Bruel. P. Baverus, Forestus, Fuchsius, Capivaccius, Rondoletius, Jason Pratensis, Sullust. Salvian. de remed. lib. 2. cap. 1. Jacchinus, in 9. Rhasis, Lod. Mercatus, de Inter. morb. cur. lib. 1. cap. 17. Alexan. Messaria, pract. med. lib. 1. cap. 21. de mel. Piso. Hollerius, &c. that have culled out of those old Greeks, Arabians, and Latins, whatsoever is observable or fit to be used. Or let him read those counsels and consultations of Hugo Senensis, consil. 13. et 14. Reinerus Solenander, consil. 6. sec. 1. et consil. 3. sec. 3. Crato, consil. 16. lib. 1. Montanus 20. 22. and his following counsels, Laelius a Fonte Egubinus, consult. 44. 69. 77. 125. 129. 142. Fernelius, consil. 44. 45. 46. Jul. Caesar Claudinus, Mercurialis, Frambesarius, Sennertus, &c. Wherein he shall find particular receipts, the whole method, preparatives, purgers, correctors, averters, cordials in great variety and abundance: out of which, because every man cannot attend to read or peruse them, I will collect for the benefit of the reader, some few more notable medicines.
Phlebotomy is promiscuously used before and after physic, commonly before, and upon occasion is often reiterated, if there be any need at least of it. For Galen, and many others, make a doubt of bleeding at all in this kind of head-melancholy. If the malady, saith Piso, cap. 23. and Altomarus, cap. 7. Fuchsius, cap. 33. [4246]“shall proceed primarily from the misaffected brain, the patient in such case shall not need at all to bleed, except the blood otherwise abound, the veins be full, inflamed blood, and the party ready to run mad.” In immaterial melancholy, which especially comes from a cold distemperature of spirits, Hercules de Saxonia, cap. 17. will not admit of phlebotomy; Laurentius, cap. 9, approves it out of the authority of the Arabians; but as Mesue, Rhasis, Alexander appoint, [4247]“especially in the head,” to open the veins of the forehead, nose and ears is good. They commonly set cupping-glasses on the party's shoulders, having first scarified the place, they apply horseleeches on the head, and in all melancholy diseases, whether essential or accidental, they cause the haemorrhoids to be opened, having the eleventh aphorism of the sixth book of Hippocrates for their ground and warrant, which saith, “That in melancholy and mad men, the varicose tumour or haemorrhoids appearing doth heal the same.” Valescus prescribes bloodletting in all three kinds, whom Sallust. Salvian follows. [4248]“If the blood abound, which is discerned by the fullness of the veins, his precedent diet, the party's laughter, age, &c., begin with the median or middle vein of the arm; if the blood be ruddy and clear, stop it, but if black in the spring time, or a good season, or thick, let it run, according to the party's strength: and some eight or twelve days after, open the head vein, and the veins in the forehead, or provoke it out of the nostrils, or cupping-glasses,” &c. Trallianus allows of this, [4249]“If there have been any suppression or stopping of blood at nose, or haemorrhoids, or women's months, then to open a vein in the head or about the ankles.” Yet he doth hardly approve of this course, if melancholy be situated in the head alone, or in any other dotage, [4250]“except it primarily proceed from blood, or that the malady be increased by it; for bloodletting refrigerates and dries up, except the body be very full of blood, and a kind of ruddiness in the face.” Therefore I conclude with Areteus, [4251]“before you let blood, deliberate of it,” and well consider all circumstances belonging to it.
After bloodletting we must proceed to other medicines; first prepare, and then purge, Augeae stabulum purgare, make the body clean before we hope to do any good. Walter Bruel would have a practitioner begin first with a clyster of his, which he prescribes before bloodletting: the common sort, as Mercurialis, Montaltus cap. 30. &c. proceed from lenitives to preparatives, and so to purgers. Lenitives are well known, electuarium lenitivum, diaphenicum diacatholicon, &c. Preparatives are usually syrups of borage, bugloss, apples, fumitory, thyme and epithyme, with double as much of the same decoction or distilled water, or of the waters of bugloss, balm, hops, endive, scolopendry, fumitory, &c. or these sodden in whey, which must be reiterated and used for many days together. Purges come last, “which must not be used at all, if the malady may be otherwise helped,” because they weaken nature and dry so much, and in giving of them, [4252] “we must begin with the gentlest first.” Some forbid all hot medicines, as Alexander, and Salvianus, &c. Ne insaniores inde fiant, hot medicines increase the disease [4253]“by drying too much.” Purge downward rather than upward, use potions rather than pills, and when you begin physic, persevere and continue in a course; for as one observes, [4254]movere et non educere in omnibus malum est; to stir up the humour (as one purge commonly doth) and not to prosecute, doth more harm than good. They must continue in a course of physic, yet not so that they tire and oppress nature, danda quies naturae, they must now and then remit, and let nature have some rest. The most gentle purges to begin with, are [4255]senna, cassia, epithyme, myrabolanea, catholicon: if these prevail not, we may proceed to stronger, as the confection of hamech, pil. Indae, fumitoriae, de assaieret, of lapis armenus and lazuli, diasena. Or if pills be too dry; [4256]some prescribe both hellebores in the last place, amongst the rest Aretus, [4257]“because this disease will resist a gentle medicine.” Laurentius and Hercules de Saxonia would have antimony tried last, “if the [4258]party be strong, and it warily given.” [4259]Trincavelius prefers hierologodium, to whom Francis Alexander in his Apol. rad. 5. subscribes, a very good medicine they account it. But Crato in a counsel of his, for the duke of Bavaria's chancellor, wholly rejects it.
I find a vast chaos of medicines, a confusion of receipts and magistrals, amongst writers, appropriated to this disease; some of the chiefest I will rehearse. [4260]To be seasick first is very good at seasonable times. Helleborismus Matthioli, with which he vaunts and boasts he did so many several cures, [4261]“I never gave it” (saith he), “but after once or twice, by the help of God, they were happily cured.” The manner of making it he sets down at large in his third book of Epist. to George Hankshius a physician. Walter Bruel, and Heurnius, make mention of it with great approbation; so doth Sckenkius in his memorable cures, and experimental medicines, cen. 6. obser. 37. That famous Helleborisme of Montanus, which he so often repeats in his consultations and counsels, as 28. pro. melan. sacerdote, et consil. 148. pro hypochondriaco, and cracks, [4262] “to be a most sovereign remedy for all melancholy persons, which he hath often given without offence, and found by long experience and observations to be such.”
Quercetan prefers a syrup of hellebore in his Spagirica Pharmac. and Hellebore's extract cap. 5. of his invention likewise (“a most safe medicine and not unfit to be given children”) before all remedies whatsoever. [4263]
Paracelsus, in his book of black hellebore, admits this medicine, but as it is prepared by him. [4264]“It is most certain” (saith he) “that the virtue of this herb is great, and admirable in effect, and little differing from balm itself; and he that knows well how to make use of it, hath more art than all their books contain, or all the doctors in Germany can show.”
Aelianus Montaltus in his exquisite work de morb. capitis, cap. 31. de mel. sets a special receipt of his own, which, in his practice [4265]“he fortunately used; because it is but short I will set it down.”
To these I may add Arnoldi vinum Buglossalum, or borage wine before mentioned, which [4267]Mizaldus calls vinum mirabile, a wonderful wine, and Stockerus vouchsafes to repeat verbatim amongst other receipts. Rubeus his [4268]compound water out of Savanarola; Pinetus his balm; Cardan's Pulvis Hyacinthi, with which, in his book de curis admirandis, he boasts that he had cured many melancholy persons in eight days, which [4269]Sckenkius puts amongst his observable medicines; Altomarus his syrup, with which [4270]he calls God so solemnly to witness, he hath in his kind done many excellent cures, and which Sckenkius cent. 7. observ. 80. mentioneth, Daniel Sennertus lib. 1. part. 2. cap. 12. so much commends; Rulandus' admirable water for melancholy, which cent. 2. cap. 96. he names Spiritum vitae aureum, Panaceam, what not, and his absolute medicine of 50 eggs, curat. Empir. cent. 1. cur. 5. to be taken three in a morning, with a powder of his. [4271]Faventinus prac. Emper. doubles this number of eggs, and will have 101 to be taken by three and three in like sort, which Sallust Salvian approves de red. med. lib. 2. c. 1. with some of the same powder, till all be spent, a most excellent remedy for all melancholy and mad men.
Averters and purgers must go together, as tending all to the same purpose, to divert this rebellious humour, and turn it another way. In this range, clysters and suppositories challenge a chief place, to draw this humour from the brain and heart, to the more ignoble parts. Some would have them still used a few days between, and those to be made with the boiled seeds of anise, fennel, and bastard saffron, hops, thyme, epithyme, mallows, fumitory, bugloss, polypody, senna, diasene, hamech, cassia, diacatholicon, hierologodium, oil of violets, sweet almonds, &c. For without question, a clyster opportunely used, cannot choose in this, as most other maladies, but to do very much good; Clysteres nutriunt, sometimes clysters nourish, as they may be prepared, as I was informed not long since by a learned lecture of our natural philosophy [4278]reader, which he handled by way of discourse, out of some other noted physicians. Such things as provoke urine most commend, but not sweat. Trincavelius consil. 16. cap. 1. in head-melancholy forbids it. P. Byarus and others approve frictions of the outward parts, and to bathe them with warm water. Instead of ordinary frictions, Cardan prescribes rubbing with nettles till they blister the skin, which likewise [4279]Basardus Visontinus so much magnifies.
Sneezing, masticatories, and nasals are generally received. Montaltus c. 34. Hildesheim spicel. 3. fol. 136 and 238. give several receipts of all three. Hercules de Saxonia relates of an empiric in Venice [4280]“that had a strong water to purge by the mouth and nostrils, which he still used in head-melancholy, and would sell for no gold.”
To open months and haemorrhoids is very good physic, [4281]“If they have been formerly stopped.” Faventinus would have them opened with horseleeches, so would Hercul. de Sax. Julius Alexandrinus consil. 185. Scoltzii thinks aloes fitter: [4282]most approve horseleeches in this case, to be applied to the forehead, [4283]nostrils, and other places.
Montaltus cap. 29. out of Alexander and others, prescribes [4284] “cupping-glasses, and issues in the left thigh.” Aretus lib. 7. cap. 5. [4285]Paulus Regolinus, Sylvius will have them without scarification, “applied to the shoulders and back, thighs and feet:” [4286]Montaltus cap. 34. “bids open an issue in the arm, or hinder part of the head.” [4287]Piso enjoins ligatures, frictions, suppositories, and cupping-glasses, still without scarification, and the rest.
Cauteries and hot irons are to be used [4288]“in the suture of the crown, and the seared or ulcerated place suffered to run a good while. 'Tis not amiss to bore the skull with an instrument, to let out the fuliginous vapours.” Sallus. Salvianus de re medic. lib. 2. cap. 1. [4289]“because this humour hardly yields to other physic, would have the leg cauterised, or the left leg, below the knee, [4290]and the head bored in two or three places,” for that it much avails to the exhalation of the vapours; [4291] “I saw” (saith he) “a melancholy man at Rome, that by no remedies could be healed, but when by chance he was wounded in the head, and the skull broken, he was excellently cured.” Another, to the admiration of the beholders, [4292]“breaking his head with a fall from on high, was instantly recovered of his dotage.” Gordonius cap. 13. part. 2. would have these cauteries tried last, when no other physic will serve. [4293] “The head to be shaved and bored to let out fumes, which without doubt will do much good. I saw a melancholy man wounded in the head with a sword, his brainpan broken; so long as the wound was open he was well, but when his wound was healed, his dotage returned again.” But Alexander Messaria a professor in Padua, lib. 1. pract. med. cap. 21. de melanchol. will allow no cauteries at all, 'tis too stiff a humour and too thick as he holds, to be so evaporated.
Guianerius c. 8. Tract. 15. cured a nobleman in Savoy, by boring alone, [4294]“leaving the hole open a month together,” by means of which, after two years' melancholy and madness, he was delivered. All approve of this remedy in the suture of the crown; but Arculanus would have the cautery to be made with gold. In many other parts, these cauteries are prescribed for melancholy men, as in the thighs, (Mercurialis consil. 86.) arms, legs. Idem consil. 6. & 19. & 25. Montanus 86. Rodericus a Fonseca tom. 2. cousult. 84. pro hypochond. coxa dextra, &c., but most in the head, “if other physic will do no good.”
Because this humour is so malign of itself, and so hard to be removed, the reliques are to be cleansed, by alteratives, cordials, and such means: the temper is to be altered and amended, with such things as fortify and strengthen the heart and brain, [4295]“which are commonly both affected in this malady, and do mutually misaffect one another:” which are still to be given every other day, or some few days inserted after a purge, or like physic, as occasion serves, and are of such force, that many times they help alone, and as [4296]Arnoldus holds in his Aphorisms, are to be “preferred before all other medicines, in what kind soever.”
Amongst this number of cordials and alteratives, I do not find a more present remedy, than a cup of wine or strong drink, if it be soberly and opportunely used. It makes a man bold, hardy, courageous, [4297]“whetteth the wit,” if moderately taken, (and as Plutarch [4298]saith, Symp. 7. quaest. 12.) “it makes those which are otherwise dull, to exhale and evaporate like frankincense, or quicken” (Xenophon adds) [4299]as oil doth fire. [4300]“A famous cordial” Matthiolus in Dioscoridum calls it, “an excellent nutriment to refresh the body, it makes a good colour, a flourishing age, helps concoction, fortifies the stomach, takes away obstructions, provokes urine, drives out excrements, procures sleep, clears the blood, expels wind and cold poisons, attenuates, concocts, dissipates all thick vapours, and fuliginous humours.” And that which is all in all to my purpose, it takes away fear and sorrow. [4301]Curas edaces dissipat Evius. “It glads the heart of man,” Psal. civ. 15. hilaritatis dulce seminarium. Helena's bowl, the sole nectar of the gods, or that true nepenthes in [4302]Homer, which puts away care and grief, as Oribasius 5. Collect, cap. 7. and some others will, was nought else but a cup of good wine. “It makes the mind of the king and of the fatherless both one, of the bond and freeman, poor and rich; it turneth all his thoughts to joy and mirth, makes him remember no sorrow or debt, but enricheth his heart, and makes him speak by talents,” Esdras iii. 19, 20, 21. It gives life itself, spirits, wit, &c. For which cause the ancients called Bacchus, Liber pater a liberando, and [4303]sacrificed to Bacchus and Pallas still upon an altar. [4304]“Wine measurably drunk, and in time, brings gladness and cheerfulness of mind, it cheereth God and men,” Judges ix. 13. laetitiae Bacchus dator, it makes an old wife dance, and such as are in misery to forget evil, and be [4305]merry.
Howsoever you say, if this be true, that wine and strong drink have such virtue to expel fear and sorrow, and to exhilarate the mind, ever hereafter let's drink and be merry.
I may say the same of the decoction of China roots, sassafras, sarsaparilla, guaiacum: China, saith Manardus, makes a good colour in the face, takes away melancholy, and all infirmities proceeding from cold, even so sarsaparilla provokes sweat mightily, guaiacum dries, Claudinus, consult. 89. & 46. Montanus, Capivaccius, consult. 188. Scoltzii, make frequent and good use of guaiacum and China, [4322]“so that the liver be not incensed,” good for such as are cold, as most melancholy men are, but by no means to be mentioned in hot.
The Turks have a drink called coffee (for they use no wine), so named of a berry as black as soot, and as bitter, (like that black drink which was in use amongst the Lacedaemonians, and perhaps the same,) which they sip still of, and sup as warm as they can suffer; they spend much time in those coffeehouses, which are somewhat like our alehouses or taverns, and there they sit chatting and drinking to drive away the time, and to be merry together, because they find by experience that kind of drink, so used, helpeth digestion, and procureth alacrity. Some of them take opium to this purpose.
Borage, balm, saffron, gold, I have spoken of; Montaltus, c. 23. commends scorzonera roots condite. Garcius ab Horto, plant. hist. lib. 2. cap. 25. makes mention of an herb called datura, [4323]“which, if it be eaten for twenty-four hours following, takes away all sense of grief, makes them incline to laughter and mirth:” and another called bauge, like in effect to opium, “which puts them for a time into a kind of ecstasy,” and makes them gently to laugh. One of the Roman emperors had a seed, which he did ordinarily eat to exhilarate himself. [4324]Christophorus Ayrerus prefers bezoar stone, and the confection of alkermes, before other cordials, and amber in some cases. [4325]“Alkermes comforts the inner parts;” and bezoar stone hath an especial virtue against all melancholy affections, [4326]“it refresheth the heart, and corroborates the whole body.” [4327]Amber provokes urine, helps the body, breaks wind, &c. After a purge, 3 or 4 grains of bezoar stone, and 3 grains of ambergris, drunk or taken in borage or bugloss water, in which gold hot hath been quenched, will do much good, and the purge shall diminish less (the heart so refreshed) of the strength and substance of the body.
Diamargaritum frigidum, diambra, diaboraginatum, electuarium laetificans Galeni et Rhasis, de gemmis, dianthos, diamoscum dulce et amarum, electuarium conciliatoris, syrup. Cidoniorum de pomis, conserves of roses, violets, fumitory, enula campana, satyrion, lemons, orange-pills, condite, &c., have their good use.
Odoraments to smell to, of rosewater, violet flowers, balm, rose-cakes, vinegar, &c., do much recreate the brains and spirits, according to Solomon. Prov. xxvii. 9. “They rejoice the heart,” and as some say, nourish; 'tis a question commonly controverted in our schools, an odores nutriant; let Ficinus, lib. 2. cap. 18. decide it; [4334]many arguments he brings to prove it; as of Democritus, that lived by the smell of bread alone, applied to his nostrils, for some few days, when for old age he could eat no meat. Ferrerius, lib. 2. meth. speaks of an excellent confection of his making, of wine, saffron, &c., which he prescribed to dull, weak, feeble, and dying men to smell to, and by it to have done very much good, aeque fere profuisse olfactu, et potu, as if he had given them drink. Our noble and learned Lord [4335]Verulam, in his book de vita et morte, commends, therefore, all such cold smells as any way serve to refrigerate the spirits. Montanus, consil. 31, prescribes a form which he would have his melancholy patient never to have out of his hands. If you will have them spagirically prepared, look in Oswaldus Crollius, basil. Chymica.
Irrigations of the head shaven, [4336]“of the flowers of water lilies, lettuce, violets, camomile, wild mallows, wether's-head, &c.,” must be used many mornings together. Montan. consil. 31, would have the head so washed once a week. Laelius a Fonte Eugubinus consult. 44, for an Italian count, troubled with head-melancholy, repeats many medicines which he tried, [4337]“but two alone which did the cure; use of whey made of goat's milk, with the extract of hellebore, and irrigations of the head with water lilies, lettuce, violets, camomile, &c., upon the suture of the crown.” Piso commends a ram's lungs applied hot to the fore part of the head, [4338]or a young lamb divided in the back, exenterated, &c.; all acknowledge the chief cure in moistening throughout. Some, saith Laurentius, use powders and caps to the brain; but forasmuch as such aromatical things are hot and dry, they must be sparingly administered.
Unto the heart we may do well to apply bags, epithems, ointments, of which Laurentius, c. 9. de melan. gives examples. Bruel prescribes an epithem for the heart, of bugloss, borage, water-lily, violet waters, sweet-wine, balm leaves, nutmegs, cloves, &c.
For the belly, make a fomentation of oil, [4339]in which the seeds of cumin, rue, carrots, dill, have been boiled.
Baths are of wonderful great force in this malady, much admired by [4340] Galen, [4341]Aetius, Rhasis, &c., of sweet water, in which is boiled the leaves of mallows, roses, violets, water-lilies, wether's-head, flowers of bugloss, camomile, melilot, &c. Guianer, cap. 8. tract. 15, would have them used twice a day, and when they came forth of the baths, their back bones to be anointed with oil of almonds, violets, nymphea, fresh capon grease, &c.
Amulets and things to be borne about, I find prescribed, taxed by some, approved by Renodeus, Platerus, (amuleta inquit non negligenda) and others; look for them in Mizaldus, Porta, Albertus, &c. Bassardus Viscontinus, ant. philos. commends hypericon, or St. John's wort gathered on a [4342]Friday in the hour of “Jupiter, when it comes to his effectual operation (that is about the full moon in July); so gathered and borne, or hung about the neck, it mightily helps this affection, and drives away all fantastical spirits.” [4343]Philes, a Greek author that flourished in the time of Michael Paleologus, writes that a sheep or kid's skin, whom a wolf worried, [4344]Haedus inhumani raptus ab ore lupi, ought not at all to be worn about a man, “because it causeth palpitation of the heart,” not for any fear, but a secret virtue which amulets have. A ring made of the hoof of an ass's right fore foot carried about, &c. I say with [4345]Renodeus, they are not altogether to be rejected. Paeony doth cure epilepsy; precious stones most diseases; [4346]a wolf's dung borne with one helps the colic, [4347]a spider an ague, &c. Being in the country in the vacation time not many years since, at Lindley in Leicestershire, my father's house, I first observed this amulet of a spider in a nut-shell lapped in silk, &c., so applied for an ague by [4348]my mother; whom, although I knew to have excellent skill in chirurgery, sore eyes, aches, &c., and such experimental medicines, as all the country where she dwelt can witness, to have done many famous and good cures upon diverse poor folks, that were otherwise destitute of help: yet among all other experiments, this methought was most absurd and ridiculous, I could see no warrant for it. Quid aranea cum febre? For what antipathy? till at length rambling amongst authors (as often I do) I found this very medicine in Dioscorides, approved by Matthiolus, repeated by Alderovandus, cap. de Aranea, lib. de insectis, I began to have a better opinion of it, and to give more credit to amulets, when I saw it in some parties answer to experience. Some medicines are to be exploded, that consist of words, characters, spells, and charms, which can do no good at all, but out of a strong conceit, as Pomponatius proves; or the devil's policy, who is the first founder and teacher of them.
When you have used all good means and helps of alteratives, averters, diminutives, yet there will be still certain accidents to be corrected and amended, as waking, fearful dreams, flushing in the face to some ruddiness, &c.
Waking, by reason of their continual cares, fears, sorrows, dry brains, is a symptom that much crucifies melancholy men, and must therefore be speedily helped, and sleep by all means procured, which sometimes is a sufficient [4349]remedy of itself without any other physic. Sckenkius, in his observations, hath an example of a woman that was so cured. The means to procure it, are inward or outward. Inwardly taken, are simples, or compounds; simples, as poppy, nymphea, violets, roses, lettuce, mandrake, henbane, nightshade or solanum, saffron, hemp-seed, nutmegs, willows, with their seeds, juice, decoctions, distilled waters, &c. Compounds are syrups, or opiates, syrup of poppy, violets, verbasco, which are commonly taken with distilled waters.
Laudanum Paracelsi is prescribed in two or three grains, with a dram of Diascordium, which Oswald. Crollius commends. Opium itself is most part used outwardly, to smell to in a ball, though commonly so taken by the Turks to the same quantity [4350]for a cordial, and at Goa in, the Indies; the dose 40 or 50 grains.
Rulandus calls Requiem Nicholai ultimum refugium, the last refuge; but of this and the rest look for peculiar receipts in Victorius Faventinus, cap. de phrensi. Heurnius cap. de mania. Hildesheim spicel. 4. de somno et vigil. &c. Outwardly used, as oil of nutmegs by extraction, or expression with rosewater to anoint the temples, oils of poppy, nenuphar, mandrake, purslan, violets, all to the same purpose.
Montan. consil. 24 & 25. much commends odoraments of opium, vinegar, and rosewater. Laurentius cap. 9. prescribes pomanders and nodules; see the receipts in him; Codronchus [4351]wormwood to smell to.
Unguentum Alabastritum, populeum are used to anoint the temples, nostrils, or if they be too weak, they mix saffron and opium. Take a grain or two of opium, and dissolve it with three or four drops of rosewater in a spoon, and after mingle with it as much Unguentum populeum as a nut, use it as before: or else take half a dram of opium, Unguentum populeum, oil of nenuphar, rosewater, rose-vinegar, of each half an ounce, with as much virgin wax as a nut, anoint your temples with some of it, ad horam somni.
Sacks of wormwood, [4352]mandrake, [4353]henbane, roses made like pillows and laid under the patient's head, are mentioned by [4354]Cardan and Mizaldus, “to anoint the soles of the feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with ear wax of a dog, swine's gall, hare's ears:” charms, &c.
Frontlets are well known to every good wife, rosewater and vinegar, with a little woman's milk, and nutmegs grated upon a rose-cake applied to both temples.
For an emplaster, take of castorium a dram and a half, of opium half a scruple, mixed both together with a little water of life, make two small plasters thereof, and apply them to the temples.
Rulandus cent. 1. cur. 17. cent. 3. cur. 94. prescribes epithems and lotions of the head, with the decoction of flowers of nymphea, violet-leaves, mandrake roots, henbane, white poppy. Herc. de Saxonia, stillicidia, or droppings, &c. Lotions of the feet do much avail of the said herbs: by these means, saith Laurentius, I think you may procure sleep to the most melancholy man in the world. Some use horseleeches behind the ears, and apply opium to the place.
[4355]Bayerus lib. 2. c. 13. sets down some remedies against fearful dreams, and such as walk and talk in their sleep. Baptista Porta Mag. nat. l. 2. c. 6. to procure pleasant dreams and quiet rest, would have you take hippoglossa, or the herb horsetongue, balm, to use them or their distilled waters after supper, &c. Such men must not eat beans, peas, garlic, onions, cabbage, venison, hare, use black wines, or any meat hard of digestion at supper, or lie on their backs, &c.
Rusticus pudor, bashfulness, flushing in the face, high colour, ruddiness, are common grievances, which much torture many melancholy men, when they meet a man, or come in [4356]company of their betters, strangers, after a meal, or if they drink a cup of wine or strong drink, they are as red and fleet, and sweat as if they had been at a mayor's feast, praesertim si metus accesserit, it exceeds, [4357]they think every man observes, takes notice of it: and fear alone will effect it, suspicion without any other cause. Sckenkius observ. med. lib. 1. speaks of a waiting gentlewoman in the Duke of Savoy's court, that was so much offended with it, that she kneeled down to him, and offered Biarus, a physician, all that she had to be cured of it. And 'tis most true, that [4358]Antony Ludovicus saith in his book de Pudore, “bashfulness either hurts or helps,” such men I am sure it hurts. If it proceed from suspicion or fear, [4359]Felix Plater prescribes no other remedy but to reject and contemn it: Id populus curat scilicet, as a [4360]worthy physician in our town said to a friend of mine in like case, complaining without a cause, suppose one look red, what matter is it, make light of it, who observes it?
If it trouble at or after meals, (as [4361]Jobertus observes med. pract. l. 1. c. 7.) after a little exercise or stirring, for many are then hot and red in the face, or if they do nothing at all, especially women; he would have them let blood in both arms, first one, then another, two or three days between, if blood abound; to use frictions of the other parts, feet especially, and washing of them, because of that consent which is between the head and the feet.[4362]And withal to refrigerate the face, by washing it often with rose, violet, nenuphar, lettuce, lovage waters, and the like: but the best of all is that lac virginale, or strained liquor of litargy: it is diversely prepared; by Jobertus thus; ℞ lithar. argent. unc. j cerussae candidissimae, ℨjjj. caphurae, ℈jj. dissolvantur aquarum solani, lactucae, et nenupharis ana unc. jjj. aceti vini albi. unc. jj. aliquot horas resideat, deinde transmittatur per philt. aqua servetur in vase vitreo, ac ea bis terve facies quotidie irroretur. [4363]Quercetan spagir. phar. cap. 6. commends the water of frog's spawn for ruddiness in the face. [4364]Crato consil. 283. Scoltzii would fain have them use all summer the condite flowers of succory, strawberry water, roses (cupping-glasses are good for the time), consil. 285. et 286. and to defecate impure blood with the infusion of senna, savory, balm water. [4365]Hollerius knew one cured alone with the use of succory boiled, and drunk for five months, every morning in the summer. [4366]It is good overnight to anoint the face with hare's blood, and in the morning to wash it with strawberry and cowslip water, the juice of distilled lemons, juice of cucumbers, or to use the seeds of melons, or kernels of peaches beaten small, or the roots of Aron, and mixed with wheat bran to bake it in an oven, and to crumble it in strawberry water, [4367] or to put fresh cheese curds to a red face.
If it trouble them at meal times that flushing, as oft it doth, with sweating or the like, they must avoid all violent passions and actions, as laughing, &c., strong drink, and drink very little, [4368]one draught, saith Crato, and that about the midst of their meal; avoid at all times indurate salt, and especially spice and windy meat.
[4369]Crato prescribes the condite fruit of wild rose, to a nobleman his patient, to be taken before dinner or supper, to the quantity of a chestnut. It is made of sugar, as that of quinces. The decoction of the roots of sowthistle before meat, by the same author is much approved. To eat of a baked apple some advice, or of a preserved quince, cuminseed prepared with meat instead of salt, to keep down fumes: not to study or to be intentive after meals.
[4370]To apply cupping glasses to the shoulders is very good. For the other kind of ruddiness which is settled in the face with pimples, &c., because it pertains not to my subject, I will not meddle with it. I refer you to Crato's counsels, Arnoldus lib. 1. breviar. cap. 39. 1. Rulande, Peter Forestus de Fuco, lib. 31. obser. 2. To Platerus, Mercurialis, Ulmus, Rondoletius, Heurnius, Menadous, and others that have written largely of it.
Those other grievances and symptoms of headache, palpitation of heart, Vertigo deliquium, &c., which trouble many melancholy men, because they are copiously handled apart in every physician, I do voluntarily omit.
Where the melancholy blood possesseth the whole body with the brain, [4371] it is best to begin with bloodletting. The Greeks prescribe the [4372] median or middle vein to be opened, and so much blood to be taken away as the patient may well spare, and the cut that is made must be wide enough. The Arabians hold it fittest to be taken from that arm on which side there is more pain and heaviness in the head: if black blood issue forth, bleed on; if it be clear and good, let it be instantly suppressed, [4373] “because the malice of melancholy is much corrected by the goodness of the blood.” If the party's strength will not admit much evacuation in this kind at once, it must be assayed again and again: if it may not be conveniently taken from the arm, it must be taken from the knees and ankles, especially to such men or women whose haemorrhoids or months have been stopped. [4374] If the malady continue, it is not amiss to evacuate in a part in the forehead, and to virgins in the ankles, who are melancholy for love matters; so to widows that are much grieved and troubled with sorrow and cares: for bad blood flows in the heart, and so crucifies the mind. The haemorrhoids are to be opened with an instrument or horseleeches, &c. See more in Montaltus, cap. 29. [4375]Sckenkius hath an example of one that was cured by an accidental wound in his thigh, much bleeding freed him from melancholy. Diet, diminutives, alteratives, cordials, correctors as before, intermixed as occasion serves, [4376]“all their study must be to make a melancholy man fat, and then the cure is ended.” Diuretics, or medicines to procure urine, are prescribed by some in this kind, hot and cold: hot where the heat of the liver doth not forbid; cold where the heat of the liver is very great: [4377]amongst hot are parsley roots, lovage, fennel, &c.: cold, melon seeds, &c., with whey of goat's milk, which is the common conveyer.
To purge and [4378]purify the blood, use sowthistle, succory, senna, endive, carduus benedictus, dandelion, hop, maidenhair, fumitory, bugloss, borage, &c., with their juice, decoctions, distilled waters, syrups, &c.
Oswaldus, Crollius, basil Chym. much admires salt of corals in this case, and Aetius, tetrabib. ser. 2. cap. 114. Hieram Archigenis, which is an excellent medicine to purify the blood, “for all melancholy affections, falling sickness, none to be compared to it.”
In this cure, as in the rest, is especially required the rectification of those six non-natural things above all, as good diet, which Montanus, consil. 27. enjoins a French nobleman, “to have an especial care of it, without which all other remedies are in vain.” Bloodletting is not to be used, except the patient's body be very full of blood, and that it be derived from the liver and spleen to the stomach and his vessels, then [4379]to draw it back, to cut the inner vein of either arm, some say the salvatella, and if the malady be continuate, [4380]to open a vein in the forehead.
Preparatives and alteratives may be used as before, saving that there must be respect had as well to the liver, spleen, stomach, hypochondries, as to the heart and brain. To comfort the [4381]stomach and inner parts against wind and obstructions, by Areteus, Galen, Aetius, Aurelianus, &c., and many latter writers, are still prescribed the decoctions of wormwood, centaury, pennyroyal, betony sodden in whey, and daily drunk: many have been cured by this medicine alone.
Prosper Altinus and some others as much magnify the water of Nile against this malady, an especial good remedy for windy melancholy. For which reason belike Ptolemeus Philadelphus, when he married his daughter Berenice to the king of Assyria (as Celsus, lib. 2. records), magnis impensis Nili aquam afferri jussit, to his great charge caused the water of Nile to be carried with her, and gave command, that during her life she should use no other drink. I find those that commend use of apples, in splenetic and this kind of melancholy (lamb's-wool some call it), which howsoever approved, must certainly be corrected of cold rawness and wind.
Codronchus in his book de sale absyn. magnifies the oil and salt of wormwood above all other remedies, [4382]“which works better and speedier than any simple whatsoever, and much to be preferred before all those fulsome decoctions and infusions, which must offend by reason of their quantity; this alone in a small measure taken, expels wind, and that most forcibly, moves urine, cleanseth the stomach of all gross humours, crudities, helps appetite,” &c. Arnoldus hath a wormwood wine which he would have used, which every pharmacopoeia speaks of.
Diminutives and purges may [4383]be taken as before, of hiera, manna, cassia, which Montanus consil. 230. for an Italian abbot, in this kind prefers before all other simples, [4384]“And these must be often used, still abstaining from those which are more violent, lest they do exasperate the stomach, &c., and the mischief by that means be increased.” Though in some physicians I find very strong purgers, hellebore itself prescribed in this affection. If it long continue, vomits may be taken after meat, or otherwise gently procured with warm water, oxymel, &c., now and then. Fuchsius cap. 33. prescribes hellebore; but still take heed in this malady, which I have often warned, of hot medicines, [4385]“because” (as Salvianus adds) “drought follows heat, which increaseth the disease:” and yet Baptista Sylvaticus controv. 32. forbids cold medicines, [4386] “because they increase obstructions and other bad symptoms.” But this varies as the parties do, and 'tis not easy to determine which to use. [4387]“The stomach most part in this infirmity is cold, the liver hot; scarce therefore” (which Montanus insinuates consil. 229. for the Earl of Manfort) “can you help the one and not hurt the other:” much discretion must be used; take no physic at all he concludes without great need. Laelius Aegubinus consil. for an hypochondriacal German prince, used many medicines; “but it was after signified to him in [4388]letters, that the decoction of China and sassafras, and salt of sassafras wrought him an incredible good.” In his 108 consult, he used as happily the same remedies; this to a third might have been poison, by overheating his liver and blood.
For the other parts look for remedies in Savanarola, Gordonius, Massaria, Mercatus, Johnson, &c. One for the spleen, amongst many other, I will not omit, cited by Hildesheim, spicel. 2, prescribed by Mat. Flaccus, and out of the authority of Benevenius. Antony Benevenius in a hypochondriacal passion, [4389]“cured an exceeding great swelling of the spleen with capers alone, a meat befitting that infirmity, and frequent use of the water of a smith's forge; by this physic he helped a sick man, whom all other physicians had forsaken, that for seven years had been splenetic.” And of such force is this water, [4390]“that those creatures as drink of it, have commonly little or no spleen.” See more excellent medicines for the spleen in him and [4391]Lod. Mercatus, who is a great magnifier of this medicine. This Chalybs praeparatus, or steel-drink, is much likewise commended to this disease by Daniel Sennertus l. 1. part. 2. cap. 12. and admired by J. Caesar Claudinus Respons. 29. he calls steel the proper [4392]alexipharmacum of this malady, and much magnifies it; look for receipts in them. Averters must be used to the liver and spleen, and to scour the mesaraic veins: and they are either too open or provoke urine. You can open no place better than the haemorrhoids, “which if by horseleeches they be made to flow, [4393]there may be again such an excellent remedy,” as Plater holds. Sallust. Salvian will admit no other phlebotomy but this; and by his experience in an hospital which he kept, he found all mad and melancholy men worse for other bloodletting. Laurentius cap. 15. calls this of horseleeches a sure remedy to empty the spleen and mesaraic membrane. Only Montanus consil. 241. is against it; [4394] “to other men” (saith he) “this opening of the haemorrhoids seems to be a profitable remedy; for my part I do not approve of it, because it draws away the thinnest blood, and leaves the thickest behind.”
Aetius, Vidus Vidius, Mercurialis, Fuchsius, recommend diuretics, or such things as provoke urine, as aniseeds, dill, fennel, germander, ground pine, sodden in water, or drunk in powder: and yet [4395]P. Bayerus is against them: and so is Hollerius; “All melancholy men” (saith he) “must avoid such things as provoke urine, because by them the subtile or thinnest is evacuated, the thicker matter remains.”
Clysters are in good request. Trincavelius lib. 3. cap. 38. for a young nobleman, esteems of them in the first place, and Hercules de Saxonia Panth. lib. 1. cap. 16. is a great approver of them. [4396]“I have found (saith he) by experience, that many hypochondriacal melancholy men have been cured by the sole use of clysters,” receipts are to be had in him.
Besides those fomentations, irrigations, inunctions, odoraments, prescribed for the head, there must be the like used for the liver, spleen, stomach, hypochondries, &c. [4397]“In crudity” (saith Piso) “'tis good to bind the stomach hard” to hinder wind, and to help concoction.
Of inward medicines I need not speak; use the same cordials as before. In this kind of melancholy, some prescribe [4398]treacle in winter, especially before or after purges, or in the spring, as Avicenna, [4399] Trincavellius mithridate, [4400]Montaltus paeony seed, unicorn's horn; os de corde cervi, &c.
Amongst topics or outward medicines, none are more precious than baths, but of them I have spoken. Fomentations to the hypochondries are very good, of wine and water in which are sodden southernwood, melilot, epithyme, mugwort, senna, polypody, as also [4401]cerotes, [4402]plaisters, liniments, ointments for the spleen, liver, and hypochondries, of which look for examples in Laurentius, Jobertus lib. 3. c. pra. med. Montanus consil. 231. Montaltus cap. 33. Hercules de Saxonia, Faventinus. And so of epithems, digestive powders, bags, oils, Octavius Horatianus lib. 2. c. 5. prescribes calastic cataplasms, or dry purging medicines; Piso [4403]dropaces of pitch, and oil of rue, applied at certain times to the stomach, to the metaphrene, or part of the back which is over against the heart, Aetius sinapisms; Montaltus cap. 35. would have the thighs to be [4404]cauterised, Mercurialis prescribes beneath the knees; Laelius Aegubinus consil. 77. for a hypochondriacal Dutchman, will have the cautery made in the right thigh, and so Montanus consil. 55. The same Montanus consil. 34. approves of issues in the arms or hinder part of the head. Bernardus Paternus in Hildesheim spicel 2. would have [4405] issues made in both the thighs; [4406]Lod. Mercatus prescribes them near the spleen, aut prope ventriculi regimen, or in either of the thighs. Ligatures, frictions, and cupping-glasses above or about the belly, without scarification, which [4407]Felix Platerus so much approves, may be used as before.
In this kind of melancholy one of the most offensive symptoms is wind, which, as in the other species, so in this, hath great need to be corrected and expelled.
The medicines to expel it are either inwardly taken, or outwardly. Inwardly to expel wind, are simples or compounds: simples are herbs, roots, &c., as galanga, gentian, angelica, enula, calamus aromaticus, valerian, zeodoti, iris, condite ginger, aristolochy, cicliminus, China, dittander, pennyroyal, rue, calamint, bay-berries, and bay-leaves, betony, rosemary, hyssop, sabine, centaury, mint, camomile, staechas, agnus castus, broom-flowers, origan, orange-pills, &c.; spices, as saffron, cinnamon, bezoar stone, myrrh, mace, nutmegs, pepper, cloves, ginger, seeds of annis, fennel, amni, cari, nettle, rue, &c., juniper berries, grana paradisi; compounds, dianisum, diagalanga, diaciminum, diacalaminth, electuarium de baccis lauri, benedicta laxativa, pulvis ad status. antid. florent. pulvis carminativus, aromaticum rosatum, treacle, mithridate &c. This one caution of [4408]Gualter Bruell is to be observed in the administering of these hot medicines and dry, “that whilst they covet to expel wind, they do not inflame the blood, and increase the disease; sometimes” (as he saith) “medicines must more decline to heat, sometimes more to cold, as the circumstances require, and as the parties are inclined to heat or cold.”
Outwardly taken to expel winds, are oils, as of camomile, rue, bays, &c.; fomentations of the hypochondries, with the decoctions of dill, pennyroyal, rue, bay leaves, cumin, &c., bags of camomile flowers, aniseed, cumin, bays, rue, wormwood, ointments of the oil of spikenard, wormwood, rue, &c. [4409]Areteus prescribes cataplasms of camomile flowers, fennel, aniseeds, cumin, rosemary, wormwood-leaves, &c.
[4410]Cupping-glasses applied to the hypochondries, without scarification, do wonderfully resolve wind. Fernelius consil. 43. much approves of them at the lower end of the belly; [4411]Lod. Mercatus calls them a powerful remedy, and testifies moreover out of his own knowledge, how many he hath seen suddenly eased by them. Julius Caesar Claudinus respons. med. resp. 33. admires these cupping-glasses, which he calls out of Galen, [4412]“a kind of enchantment, they cause such present help.”
Empirics have a myriad of medicines, as to swallow a bullet of lead, &c., which I voluntarily omit. Amatus Lusitanus, cent. 4. curat. 54. for a hypochondriacal person, that was extremely tormented with wind, prescribes a strange remedy. Put a pair of bellows end into a clyster pipe, and applying it into the fundament, open the bowels, so draw forth the wind, natura non admittit vacuum. He vaunts he was the first invented this remedy, and by means of it speedily eased a melancholy man. Of the cure of this flatuous melancholy, read more in Fienus de Flatibus, cap. 26. et passim alias.
Against headache, vertigo, vapours which ascend forth of the stomach to molest the head, read Hercules de Saxonia, and others.
If costiveness offend in this, or any other of the three species, it is to be corrected with suppositories, clysters or lenitives, powder of senna, condite prunes, &c. ℞ Elect. lenit, e succo rosar. ana ℥ j. misce. Take as much as a nutmeg at a time, half an hour before dinner or supper, or pil. mastichin. ℥ j. in six pills, a pill or two at a time. See more in Montan. consil. 229. Hildesheim spicel. 2. P. Cnemander, and Montanus commend [4413]“Cyprian turpentine, which they would have familiarly taken, to the quantity of a small nut, two or three hours before dinner and supper, twice or thrice a week if need be; for besides that it keeps the belly soluble, it clears the stomach, opens obstructions, cleanseth the liver, provokes urine.”
These in brief are the ordinary medicines which belong to the cure of melancholy, which if they be used aright, no doubt may do much good; Si non levando saltem leniendo valent, peculiaria bene selecta, saith Bessardus, a good choice of particular receipts must needs ease, if not quite cure, not one, but all or most, as occasion serves. Et quae non prosunt singula, multa juvant.
Love and love melancholy, Memb. 1 Sect. 1.
There will not be wanting, I presume, one or other that will much discommend some part of this treatise of love-melancholy, and object (which [4414]Erasmus in his preface to Sir Thomas More suspects of his) “that it is too light for a divine, too comical a subject to speak of love symptoms, too fantastical, and fit alone for a wanton poet, a feeling young lovesick gallant, an effeminate courtier, or some such idle person.” And 'tis true they say: for by the naughtiness of men it is so come to pass, as [4415] Caussinus observes, ut castis auribus vox amoris suspecta sit, et invisa, the very name of love is odious to chaster ears; and therefore some again, out of an affected gravity, will dislike all for the name's sake before they read a word; dissembling with him in [4416]Petronius, and seem to be angry that their ears are violated with such obscene speeches, that so they may be admired for grave philosophers and staid carriage. They cannot abide to hear talk of love toys, or amorous discourses, vultu, gestu, oculis in their outward actions averse, and yet in their cogitations they are all out as bad, if not worse than others.
For my part, saith [4423]Maximus Tyrius, a great Platonist himself, me non tantum admiratio habet, sed eliam stupor, I do not only admire, but stand amazed to read, that Plato and Socrates both should expel Homer from their city, because he writ of such light and wanton subjects, Quod Junonem cum Jove in Ida concumbentes inducit, ab immortali nube contectos, Vulcan's net. Mars and Venus' fopperies before all the gods, because Apollo fled, when he was persecuted by Achilles, the [4424]gods were wounded and ran whining away, as Mars that roared louder than Stentor, and covered nine acres of ground with his fall; Vulcan was a summer's day falling down from heaven, and in Lemnos Isle brake his leg, &c., with such ridiculous passages; when, as both Socrates and Plato, by his testimony, writ lighter themselves: quid enim tam distat (as he follows it) quam amans a temperante, formarum admirator a demente, what can be more absurd than for grave philosophers to treat of such fooleries, to admire Autiloquus, Alcibiades, for their beauties as they did, to run after, to gaze, to dote on fair Phaedrus, delicate Agatho, young Lysis, fine Charmides, haeccine Philosophum decent? Doth this become grave philosophers? Thus peradventure Callias, Thrasimachus, Polus, Aristophanes, or some of his adversaries and emulators might object; but neither they nor [4425]Anytus and Melitus his bitter enemies, that condemned him for teaching Critias to tyrannise, his impiety for swearing by dogs and plain trees, for his juggling sophistry, &c., never so much as upbraided him with impure love, writing or speaking of that subject; and therefore without question, as he concludes, both Socrates and Plato in this are justly to be excused. But suppose they had been a little overseen, should divine Plato be defamed? no, rather as he said of Cato's drunkenness, if Cato were drunk, it should be no vice at all to be drunk. They reprove Plato then, but without cause (as [4426]Ficinus pleads) “for all love is honest and good, and they are worthy to be loved that speak well of love.” Being to speak of this admirable affection of love (saith [4427]Valleriola) “there lies open a vast and philosophical field to my discourse, by which many lovers become mad; let me leave my more serious meditations, wander in these philosophical fields, and look into those pleasant groves of the Muses, where with unspeakable variety of flowers, we may make garlands to ourselves, not to adorn us only, but with their pleasant smell and juice to nourish our souls, and fill our minds desirous of knowledge,” &c. After a harsh and unpleasing discourse of melancholy, which hath hitherto molested your patience, and tired the author, give him leave with [4428]Godefridus the lawyer, and Laurentius (cap. 5.) to recreate himself in this kind after his laborious studies, “since so many grave divines and worthy men have without offence to manners, to help themselves and others, voluntarily written of it.” Heliodorus, a bishop, penned a love story of Theagines and Chariclea, and when some Catos of his time reprehended him for it, chose rather, saith [4429]Nicephorus, to leave his bishopric than his book. Aeneas Sylvius, an ancient divine, and past forty years of age, (as [4430]he confesseth himself, after Pope Pius Secundus) indited that wanton history of Euryalus and Lucretia. And how many superintendents of learning could I reckon up that have written of light fantastical subjects? Beroaldus, Erasmus, Alpheratius, twenty-four times printed in Spanish, &c. Give me leave then to refresh my muse a little, and my weary readers, to expatiate in this delightsome field, hoc deliciarum campo, as Fonseca terms it, to [4431] season a surly discourse with a more pleasing aspersion of love matters: Edulcare vitam convenit, as the poet invites us, curas nugis, &c., 'tis good to sweeten our life with some pleasing toys to relish it, and as Pliny tells us, magna pars studiosorum amaenitates quaerimus, most of our students love such pleasant [4432]subjects. Though Macrobius teach us otherwise, [4433]“that those old sages banished all such light tracts from their studies, to nurse's cradles, to please only the ear;” yet out of Apuleius I will oppose as honourable patrons, Solon, Plato, [4434] Xenophon, Adrian, &c. that as highly approve of these treatises. On the other side methinks they are not to be disliked, they are not so unfit. I will not peremptorily say as one did [4435]tam suavia dicam facinora, ut male sit ei qui talibus non delectetur, I will tell you such pretty stories, that foul befall him that is not pleased with them; Neque dicam ea quae vobis usui sit audivisse, et voluptati meminisse, with that confidence, as Beroaldus doth his enarrations on Propertius. I will not expert or hope for that approbation, which Lipsius gives to his Epictetus; pluris facio quum relego; semper ut novum, et quum repetivi, repetendum, the more I read, the more shall I covet to read. I will not press you with my pamphlets, or beg attention, but if you like them you may. Pliny holds it expedient, and most fit, severitatem jucunditate etiam in scriptis condire, to season our works with some pleasant discourse; Synesius approves it, licet in ludicris ludere, the [4436]poet admires it, Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci; and there be those, without question, that are more willing to read such toys, than [4437]I am to write: “Let me not live,” saith Aretine's Antonia, “If I had not rather hear thy discourse, [4438]than see a play?” No doubt but there be more of her mind, ever have been, ever will be, as [4439]Hierome bears me witness. A far greater part had rather read Apuleius than Plato: Tully himself confesseth he could not understand Plato's Timaeus, and therefore cared less for it: but every schoolboy hath that famous testament of Grunnius Corocotta Porcellus at his fingers' ends. The comical poet,
And thus much I have thought good to say by way of preface, lest any man (which [4453]Godefridus feared in his book) should blame in me lightness, wantonness, rashness, in speaking of love's causes, enticements, symptoms, remedies, lawful and unlawful loves, and lust itself, [4454]I speak it only to tax and deter others from it, not to teach, but to show the vanities and fopperies of this heroical or Herculean love,[4455]and to apply remedies unto it. I will treat of this with like liberty as of the rest.
I am resolved howsoever, velis, nolis, audacter stadium intrare, in the Olympics, with those Aeliensian wrestlers in Philostratus, boldly to show myself in this common stage, and in this tragicomedy of love, to act several parts, some satirically, some comically, some in a mixed tone, as the subject I have in hand gives occasion, and present scene shall require, or offer itself.
“Love's limits are ample and great, and a spacious walk it hath, beset with thorns,” and for that cause, which [4461]Scaliger reprehends in Cardan, “not lightly to be passed over.” Lest I incur the same censure, 1 will examine all the kinds of love, his nature, beginning, difference, objects, how it is honest or dishonest, a virtue or vice, a natural passion, or a disease, his power and effects, how far it extends: of which, although something has been said in the first partition, in those sections of perturbations ([4462] “for love and hatred are the first and most common passions, from which all the rest arise, and are attendant,” as Picolomineus holds, or as Nich. Caussinus, the primum mobile of all other affections, which carry them all about them) I will now more copiously dilate, through all his parts and several branches, that so it may better appear what love is, and how it varies with the objects, how in defect, or (which is most ordinary and common) immoderate, and in excess, causeth melancholy.
Love universally taken, is defined to be a desire, as a word of more ample signification: and though Leon Hebreus, the most copious writer of this subject, in his third dialogue make no difference, yet in his first he distinguisheth them again, and defines love by desire. [4463]“Love is a voluntary affection, and desire to enjoy that which is good. [4464]Desire wisheth, love enjoys; the end of the one is the beginning of the other; that which we love is present; that which we desire is absent.” [4465]“It is worth the labour,” saith Plotinus, “to consider well of love, whether it be a god or a devil, or passion of the mind, or partly god, partly devil, partly passion.” He concludes love to participate of all three, to arise from desire of that which is beautiful and fair, and defines it to be “an action of the mind desiring that which is good.” [4466]Plato calls it the great devil, for its vehemency, and sovereignty over all other passions, and defines it an appetite, [4467]“by which we desire some good to be present.” Ficinus in his comment adds the word fair to this definition. Love is a desire of enjoying that which is good and fair. Austin dilates this common definition, and will have love to be a delectation of the heart, [4468]“for something which we seek to win, or joy to have, coveting by desire, resting in joy.” [4469]Scaliger exerc. 301. taxeth these former definitions, and will not have love to be defined by desire or appetite; “for when we enjoy the things we desire, there remains no more appetite:” as he defines it, “Love is an affection by which we are either united to the thing we love, or perpetuate our union;” which agrees in part with Leon Hebreus.
Now this love varies as its object varies, which is always good, amiable, fair, gracious, and pleasant. [4470]“All things desire that which is good,” as we are taught in the Ethics, or at least that which to them seems to be good; quid enim vis mali (as Austin well infers) dic mihi? puto nihil in omnibus actionibus; thou wilt wish no harm, I suppose, no ill in all thine actions, thoughts or desires, nihil mali vis; [4471]thou wilt not have bad corn, bad soil, a naughty tree, but all good; a good servant, a good horse, a good son, a good friend, a good neighbour, a good wife. From this goodness comes beauty; from beauty, grace, and comeliness, which result as so many rays from their good parts, make us to love, and so to covet it: for were it not pleasing and gracious in our eyes, we should not seek. [4472]“No man loves” (saith Aristotle 9. mor. cap. 5.) “but he that was first delighted with comeliness and beauty.” As this fair object varies, so doth our love; for as Proclus holds, Omne pulchrum amabile, every fair thing is amiable, and what we love is fair and gracious in our eyes, or at least we do so apprehend and still esteem of it. [4473] “Amiableness is the object of love, the scope and end is to obtain it, for whose sake we love, and which our mind covets to enjoy.” And it seems to us especially fair and good; for good, fair, and unity, cannot be separated. Beauty shines, Plato saith, and by reason of its splendour and shining causeth admiration; and the fairer the object is, the more eagerly it is sought. For as the same Plato defines it, [4474]“Beauty is a lively, shining or glittering brightness, resulting from effused good, by ideas, seeds, reasons, shadows, stirring up our minds, that by this good they may be united and made one.” Others will have beauty to be the perfection of the whole composition, [4475]“caused out of the congruous symmetry, measure, order and manner of parts, and that comeliness which proceeds from this beauty is called grace, and from thence all fair things are gracious.” For grace and beauty are so wonderfully annexed, [4476]“so sweetly and gently win our souls, and strongly allure, that they confound our judgment and cannot be distinguished. Beauty and grace are like those beams and shinings that come from the glorious and divine sun,” which are diverse, as they proceed from the diverse objects, to please and affect our several senses. [4477]“As the species of beauty are taken at our eyes, ears, or conceived in our inner soul,” as Plato disputes at large in his Dialogue de pulchro, Phaedro, Hyppias, and after many sophistical errors confuted, concludes that beauty is a grace in all things, delighting the eyes, ears, and soul itself; so that, as Valesius infers hence, whatsoever pleaseth our ears, eyes, and soul, must needs be beautiful, fair, and delightsome to us. [4478]“And nothing can more please our ears than music, or pacify our minds.” Fair houses, pictures, orchards, gardens, fields, a fair hawk, a fair horse is most acceptable unto us; whatsoever pleaseth our eyes and ears, we call beautiful and fair; [4479]“Pleasure belongeth to the rest of the senses, but grace and beauty to these two alone.” As the objects vary and are diverse, so they diversely affect our eyes, ears, and soul itself. Which gives occasion to some to make so many several kinds of love as there be objects. One beauty ariseth from God, of which and divine love S. Dionysius, [4480]with many fathers and neoterics, have written just volumes, De amore Dei, as they term it, many paraenetical discourses; another from his creatures; there is a beauty of the body, a beauty of the soul, a beauty from virtue, formam martyrum, Austin calls it, quam videmus oculis animi, which we see with the eyes of our mind; which beauty, as Tully saith, if we could discern with these corporeal eyes, admirabili sui amores excitaret, would cause admirable affections, and ravish our souls. This other beauty which ariseth from those extreme parts, and graces which proceed from gestures, speeches, several motions, and proportions of creatures, men and women (especially from women, which made those old poets put the three graces still in Venus' company, as attending on her, and holding up her train) are infinite almost, and vary their names with their objects, as love of money, covetousness, love of beauty, lust, immoderate desire of any pleasure, concupiscence, friendship, love, goodwill, &c. and is either virtue or vice, honest, dishonest, in excess, defect, as shall be showed in his place. Heroical love, religious love, &c. which may be reduced to a twofold division, according to the principal parts which are affected, the brain and liver. Amor et amicitia, which Scaliger exercitat. 301. Valesius and Melancthon warrant out of Plato Φιλεῖν and ἐρᾶν from that speech of Pausanias belike, that makes two Veneres and two loves. [4481]“One Venus is ancient without a mother, and descended from heaven, whom we call celestial; the younger, begotten of Jupiter and Dione, whom commonly we call Venus.” Ficinus, in his comment upon this place, cap. 8. following Plato, calls these two loves, two devils, [4482]or good and bad angels according to us, which are still hovering about our souls. [4483]“The one rears to heaven, the other depresseth us to hell; the one good, which stirs us up to the contemplation of that divine beauty for whose sake we perform justice and all godly offices, study philosophy, &c.; the other base, and though bad yet to be respected; for indeed both are good in their own natures: procreation of children is as necessary as that finding out of truth, but therefore called bad, because it is abused, and withdraws our souls from the speculation of that other to viler objects,” so far Ficinus. S. Austin, lib. 15. de civ. Dei et sup. Psal. lxiv., hath delivered as much in effect. [4484]“Every creature is good, and may be loved well or ill:” and [4485]“Two cities make two loves, Jerusalem and Babylon, the love of God the one, the love of the world the other; of these two cities we all are citizens, as by examination of ourselves we may soon find, and of which.” The one love is the root of all mischief, the other of all good. So, in his 15. cap. lib. de amor. Ecclesiae, he will have those four cardinal virtues to be nought else but love rightly composed; in his 15. book de civ. Dei, cap. 22. he calls virtue the order of love, whom Thomas following 1. part. 2. quaest. 55. art. 1. and quaest. 56. 3. quaest. 62. art. 2. confirms as much, and amplifies in many words. [4486]Lucian, to the same purpose, hath a division of his own, “One love was born in the sea, which is as various and raging in young men's breasts as the sea itself, and causeth burning lust: the other is that golden chain which was let down from heaven, and with a divine fury ravisheth our souls, made to the image of God, and stirs us up to comprehend the innate and incorruptible beauty to which we were once created.” Beroaldus hath expressed all this in an epigram of his:
This twofold division of love, Origen likewise follows, in his Comment on the Canticles, one from God, the other from the devil, as he holds (understanding it in the worse sense) which many others repeat and imitate. Both which (to omit all subdivisions) in excess or defect, as they are abused, or degenerate, cause melancholy in a particular kind, as shall be shown in his place. Austin, in another Tract, makes a threefold division of this love, which we may use well or ill: [4487]“God, our neighbour, and the world: God above us, our neighbour next us, the world beneath us. In the course of our desires, God hath three things, the world one, our neighbour two. Our desire to God, is either from God, with God, or to God, and ordinarily so runs. From God, when it receives from him, whence, and for which it should love him: with God, when it contradicts his will in nothing: to God, when it seeks to him, and rests itself in him. Our love to our neighbour may proceed from him, and run with him, not to him: from him, as when we rejoice of his good safety, and well doing: with him, when we desire to have him a fellow and companion of our journey in the way of the Lord: not in him, because there is no aid, hope, or confidence in man. From the world our love comes, when we begin to admire the Creator in his works, and glorify God in his creatures: with the world it should run, if, according to the mutability of all temporalities, it should be dejected in adversity, or over elevated in prosperity: to the world, if it would settle itself in its vain delights and studies.” Many such partitions of love I could repeat, and subdivisions, but least (which Scaliger objects to Cardan, Exercitat. 501.) [4488]“I confound filthy burning lust with pure and divine love,” I will follow that accurate division of Leon Hebreus, dial. 2. betwixt Sophia and Philo, where he speaks of natural, sensible, and rational love, and handleth each apart. Natural love or hatred, is that sympathy or antipathy which is to be seen in animate and inanimate creatures, in the four elements, metals, stones, gravia tendunt deorsum, as a stone to his centre, fire upward, and rivers to the sea. The sun, moon, and stars go still around, [4489]Amantes naturae, debita exercere, for love of perfection. This love is manifest, I say, in inanimate creatures. How comes a loadstone to draw iron to it? jet chaff? the ground to covet showers, but for love? No creature, S. Hierom concludes, is to be found, quod non aliquid amat, no stock, no stone, that hath not some feeling of love, 'Tis more eminent in plants, herbs, and is especially observed in vegetables; as between the vine and elm a great sympathy, between the vine and the cabbage, between the vine and the olive, [4490] Virgo fugit Bromium, between the vine and bays a great antipathy, the vine loves not the bay, [4491]“nor his smell, and will kill him, if he grow near him;” the bur and the lentil cannot endure one another, the olive [4492]and the myrtle embrace each other, in roots and branches if they grow near. Read more of this in Picolomineus grad. 7. cap. 1. Crescentius lib. 5. de agric. Baptista Porta de mag. lib. 1. cap. de plant. dodio et element. sym. Fracastorius de sym. et antip. of the love and hatred of planets, consult with every astrologer. Leon Hebreus gives many fabulous reasons, and moraliseth them withal.
Sensible love is that of brute beasts, of which the same Leon Hebreus dial. 2. assigns these causes. First for the pleasure they take in the act of generation, male and female love one another. Secondly, for the preservation of the species, and desire of young brood. Thirdly, for the mutual agreement, as being of the same kind: Sus sui, canis cani, bos bovi, et asinus asino pulcherrimus videtur, as Epicharmus held, and according to that adage of Diogenianus, Adsidet usque graculus apud graculum, they much delight in one another's company, [4493]Formicae grata est formica, cicada cicadae, and birds of a feather will gather together. Fourthly, for custom, use, and familiarity, as if a dog be trained up with a lion and a bear, contrary to their natures, they will love each other. Hawks, dogs, horses, love their masters and keepers: many stories I could relate in this kind, but see Gillius de hist. anim. lib. 3. cap. 14. those two Epistles of Lipsius, of dogs and horses, Agellius, &c. Fifthly, for bringing up, as if a bitch bring up a kid, a hen ducklings, a hedge-sparrow a cuckoo, &c.
The third kind is Amor cognitionis, as Leon calls it, rational love, Intellectivus amor, and is proper to men, on which I must insist. This appears in God, angels, men. God is love itself, the fountain of love, the disciple of love, as Plato styles him; the servant of peace, the God of love and peace; have peace with all men and God is with you.
The love of angels and living souls is mutual amongst themselves, towards us militant in the church, and all such as love God; as the sunbeams irradiate the earth from those celestial thrones, they by their well wishes reflect on us, [4502]in salute hominum promovenda alacres, et constantes administri, there is joy in heaven for every sinner that repenteth; they pray for us, are solicitous for our good, [4503]Casti genii.
Valesius, lib. 3. contr. 13, defines this love which is in men, “to be [4505]an affection of both powers, appetite and reason.” The rational resides in the brain, the other in the liver (as before hath been said out of Plato and others); the heart is diversely affected of both, and carried a thousand ways by consent. The sensitive faculty most part overrules reason, the soul is carried hoodwinked, and the understanding captive like a beast. [4506]“The heart is variously inclined, sometimes they are merry, sometimes sad, and from love arise hope and fear, jealousy, fury, desperation.” Now this love of men is diverse, and varies, as the object varies, by which they are enticed, as virtue, wisdom, eloquence, profit, wealth, money, fame, honour, or comeliness of person, &c. Leon Hubreus, in his first dialogue, reduceth them all to these three, utile, jucundum, honestum, profitable, pleasant, honest; (out of Aristotle belike 8. moral.) of which he discourseth at large, and whatsoever is beautiful and fair, is referred to them, or any way to be desired. [4507]“To profitable is ascribed health, wealth, honour, &c., which is rather ambition, desire, covetousness, than love:” friends, children, love of women, [4508]all delightful and pleasant objects, are referred to the second. The love of honest things consists in virtue and wisdom, and is preferred before that which is profitable and pleasant: intellectual, about that which is honest. [4509]St. Austin calls “profitable, worldly; pleasant, carnal; honest, spiritual. [4510]Of and from all three, result charity, friendship, and true love, which respects God and our neighbour.” Of each of these I will briefly dilate, and show in what sort they cause melancholy.
Amongst all these fair enticing objects, which procure love, and bewitch the soul of man, there is none so moving, so forcible as profit; and that which carrieth with it a show of commodity. Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we will undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods: restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee, bountiful he is, thankful and beholding to thee; but give him wealth and honour, give him gold, or what shall be for his advantage and preferment, and thou shalt command his affections, oblige him eternally to thee, heart, hand, life, and all is at thy service, thou art his dear and loving friend, good and gracious lord and master, his Mecaenas; he is thy slave, thy vassal, most devote, affectioned, and bound in all duty: tell him good tidings in this kind, there spoke an angel, a blessed hour that brings in gain, he is thy creature, and thou his creator, he hugs and admires thee; he is thine for ever. No loadstone so attractive as that of profit, none so fair an object as this of gold; [4511]nothing wins a man sooner than a good turn, bounty and liberality command body and soul:
Gold of all other is a most delicious object; a sweet light, a goodly lustre it hath; gratius aurum quam solem intuemur, saith Austin, and we had rather see it than the sun. Sweet and pleasant in getting, in keeping; it seasons all our labours, intolerable pains we take for it, base employments, endure bitter flouts and taunts, long journeys, heavy burdens, all are made light and easy by this hope of gain: At mihi plaudo ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca. The sight of gold refresheth our spirits, and ravisheth our hearts, as that Babylonian garment and [4512] golden wedge did Achan in the camp, the very sight and hearing sets on fire his soul with desire of it. It will make a man run to the antipodes, or tarry at home and turn parasite, lie, flatter, prostitute himself, swear and bear false witness; he will venture his body, kill a king, murder his father, and damn his soul to come at it. Formosior auri massa, as [4513] he well observed, the mass of gold is fairer than all your Grecian pictures, that Apelles, Phidias, or any doting painter could ever make: we are enamoured with it,
'Tis the general humour of the world, commodity steers our affections throughout, we love those that are fortunate and rich, that thrive, or by whom we may receive mutual kindness, hope for like courtesies, get any good, gain, or profit; hate those, and abhor on the other side, which are poor and miserable, or by whom we may sustain loss or inconvenience. And even those that were now familiar and dear unto us, our loving and long friends, neighbours, kinsmen, allies, with whom we have conversed, and lived as so many Geryons for some years past, striving still to give one another all good content and entertainment, with mutual invitations, feastings, disports, offices, for whom we would ride, run, spend ourselves, and of whom we have so freely and honourably spoken, to whom we have given all those turgent titles, and magnificent eulogiums, most excellent and most noble, worthy, wise, grave, learned, valiant, &c., and magnified beyond measure: if any controversy arise between us, some trespass, injury, abuse, some part of our goods be detained, a piece of land come to be litigious, if they cross us in our suit, or touch the string of our commodity, we detest and depress them upon a sudden: neither affinity, consanguinity, or old acquaintance can contain us, but [4517]rupto jecore exierit Caprificus. A golden apple sets altogether by the ears, as if a marrowbone or honeycomb were flung amongst bears: father and son, brother and sister, kinsmen are at odds: and look what malice, deadly hatred can invent, that shall be done, Terrible, dirum, pestilens, atrox, ferum, mutual injuries, desire of revenge, and how to hurt them, him and his, are all our studies. If our pleasures be interrupt, we can tolerate it: our bodies hurt, we can put it up and be reconciled: but touch our commodities, we are most impatient: fair becomes foul, the graces are turned to harpies, friendly salutations to bitter imprecations, mutual feastings to plotting villainies, minings and counterminings; good words to satires and invectives, we revile e contra, nought but his imperfections are in our eyes, he is a base knave, a devil, a monster, a caterpillar, a viper, a hog-rubber, &c. Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne;[4518] the scene is altered on a sudden, love is turned to hate, mirth to melancholy: so furiously are we most part bent, our affections fixed upon this object of commodity, and upon money, the desire of which in excess is covetousness: ambition tyranniseth over our souls, as [4519]I have shown, and in defect crucifies as much, as if a man by negligence, ill husbandry, improvidence, prodigality, waste and consume his goods and fortunes, beggary follows, and melancholy, he becomes an abject, [4520]odious and “worse than an infidel, in not providing for his family.”
Pleasant objects are infinite, whether they be such as have life, or be without life; inanimate are countries, provinces, towers, towns, cities, as he said, [4521]Pulcherrimam insulam videmus, etiam cum non videmus we see a fair island by description, when we see it not. The [4522]sun never saw a fairer city, Thessala Tempe, orchards, gardens, pleasant walks, groves, fountains, &c. The heaven itself is said to be [4523]fair or foul: fair buildings, [4524]fair pictures, all artificial, elaborate and curious works, clothes, give an admirable lustre: we admire, and gaze upon them, ut pueri Junonis avem, as children do on a peacock: a fair dog, a fair horse and hawk, &c. [4525]Thessalus amat equum pullinum, buculum Aegyptius, Lacedaemonius Catulum, &c., such things we love, are most gracious in our sight, acceptable unto us, and whatsoever else may cause this passion, if it be superfluous or immoderately loved, as Guianerius observes. These things in themselves are pleasing and good, singular ornaments, necessary, comely, and fit to be had; but when we fix an immoderate eye, and dote on them over much, this pleasure may turn to pain, bring much sorrow and discontent unto us, work our final overthrow, and cause melancholy in the end. Many are carried away with those bewitching sports of gaming, hawking, hunting, and such vain pleasures, as [4526]I have said: some with immoderate desire of fame, to be crowned in the Olympics, knighted in the field, &c., and by these means ruinate themselves. The lascivious dotes on his fair mistress, the glutton on his dishes, which are infinitely varied to please the palate, the epicure on his several pleasures, the superstitious on his idol, and fats himself with future joys, as Turks feed themselves with an imaginary persuasion of a sensual paradise: so several pleasant objects diversely affect diverse men. But the fairest objects and enticings proceed from men themselves, which most frequently captivate, allure, and make them dote beyond all measure upon one another, and that for many respects: first, as some suppose, by that secret force of stars, (quod me tibi temperat astrum?) They do singularly dote on such a man, hate such again, and can give no reason for it. [4527]Non amo te Sabidi, &c. Alexander admired Ephestion, Adrian Antinous, Nero Sporus, &c. The physicians refer this to their temperament, astrologers to trine and sextile aspects, or opposite of their several ascendants, lords of their genitures, love and hatred of planets; [4528] Cicogna, to concord and discord of spirits; but most to outward graces. A merry companion is welcome and acceptable to all men, and therefore, saith [4529]Gomesius, princes and great men entertain jesters and players commonly in their courts. But [4530]Pares cum paribus facillime congregantur, 'tis that [4531]similitude of manners, which ties most men in an inseparable link, as if they be addicted to the same studies or disports, they delight in one another's companies, “birds of a feather will gather together:” if they be of divers inclinations, or opposite in manners, they can seldom agree. Secondly, [4532]affability, custom, and familiarity, may convert nature many times, though they be different in manners, as if they be countrymen, fellow-students, colleagues, or have been fellow-soldiers, [4533]brethren in affliction, ([4534]acerba calamitatum societas, diversi etiam ingenii homines conjungit) affinity, or some such accidental occasion, though they cannot agree amongst themselves, they will stick together like burrs, and bold against a third; so after some discontinuance, or death, enmity ceaseth; or in a foreign place:
Beauty is the common object of all love, [4542]“as jet draws a straw, so doth beauty love:” virtue and honesty are great motives, and give as fair a lustre as the rest, especially if they be sincere and right, not fucate, but proceeding from true form, and an incorrupt judgment; those two Venus' twins, Eros and Anteros, are then most firm and fast. For many times otherwise men are deceived by their flattering gnathos, dissembling camelions, outsides, hypocrites that make a show of great love, learning, pretend honesty, virtue, zeal, modesty, with affected looks and counterfeit gestures: feigned protestations often steal away the hearts and favours of men, and deceive them, specie virtutis et umbra, when as revera and indeed, there is no worth or honesty at all in them, no truth, but mere hypocrisy, subtlety, knavery, and the like. As true friends they are, as he that Caelius Secundus met by the highway side; and hard it is in this temporising age to distinguish such companions, or to find them out. Such gnathos as these for the most part belong to great men, and by this glozing flattery, affability, and such like philters, so dive and insinuate into their favours, that they are taken for men of excellent worth, wisdom, learning, demigods, and so screw themselves into dignities, honours, offices; but these men cause harsh confusion often, and as many times stirs as Rehoboam's counsellors in a commonwealth, overthrew themselves and others. Tandlerus and some authors make a doubt, whether love and hatred may be compelled by philters or characters; Cardan and Marbodius, by precious stones and amulets; astrologers by election of times, &c. as [4543]I shall elsewhere discuss. The true object of this honest love is virtue, wisdom, honesty, [4544]real worth, Interna forma, and this love cannot deceive or be compelled, ut ameris amabilis esto, love itself is the most potent philtrum, virtue and wisdom, gratia gratum faciens, the sole and only grace, not counterfeit, but open, honest, simple, naked, [4545]“descending from heaven,” as our apostle hath it, an infused habit from God, which hath given several gifts, as wit, learning, tongues, for which they shall be amiable and gracious, Eph. iv. 11. as to Saul stature and a goodly presence, 1 Sam. ix. 1. Joseph found favour in Pharaoh's court, Gen. xxxix, for [4546]his person; and Daniel with the princes of the eunuchs, Dan. xix. 19. Christ was gracious with God and men, Luke ii. 52. There is still some peculiar grace, as of good discourse, eloquence, wit, honesty, which is the primum mobile, first mover, and a most forcible loadstone to draw the favours and good wills of men's eyes, ears, and affections unto them. When “Jesus spake, they were all astonished at his answers,” (Luke ii. 47.) “and wondered at his gracious words which proceeded from his mouth.” An orator steals away the hearts of men, and as another Orpheus, quo vult, unde vult, he pulls them to him by speech alone: a sweet voice causeth admiration; and he that can utter himself in good words, in our ordinary phrase, is called a proper man, a divine spirit. For which cause belike, our old poets, Senatus populusque poetarum, made Mercury the gentleman-usher to the Graces, captain of eloquence, and those charities to be Jupiter's and Eurymone's daughters, descended from above. Though they be otherwise deformed, crooked, ugly to behold, those good parts of the mind denominate them fair. Plato commends the beauty of Socrates; yet who was more grim of countenance, stern and ghastly to look upon? So are and have been many great philosophers, as [4547]Gregory Nazianzen observes, “deformed most part in that which is to be seen with the eyes, but most elegant in that which is not to be seen.” Saepe sub attrita latitat sapientia veste. Aesop, Democritus, Aristotle, Politianus, Melancthon, Gesner, &c. withered old men, Sileni Alcibiadis, very harsh and impolite to the eye; but who were so terse, polite, eloquent, generally learned, temperate and modest? No man then living was so fair as Alcibiades, so lovely quo ad superficiem, to the eye, as [4548]Boethius observes, but he had Corpus turpissimum interne, a most deformed soul; honesty, virtue, fair conditions, are great enticers to such as are well given, and much avail to get the favour and goodwill of men. Abdolominus in Curtius, a poor man, (but which mine author notes, [4549]“the cause of this poverty was his honesty”) for his modesty and continency from a private person (for they found him digging in his garden) was saluted king, and preferred before all the magnificoes of his time, injecta ei vestis purpura auroque distincta, “a purple embroidered garment was put upon him, [4550]and they bade him wash himself, and, as he was worthy, take upon him the style and spirit of a king,” continue his continency and the rest of his good parts. Titus Pomponius Atticus, that noble citizen of Rome, was so fair conditioned, of so sweet a carriage, that he was generally beloved of all good men, of Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Tully, of divers sects, &c. multas haereditates ([4551]Cornelius Nepos writes) sola bonitate consequutus. Operae, pretium audire, &c. It is worthy of your attention, Livy cries, [4552]“you that scorn all but riches, and give no esteem to virtue, except they be wealthy withal, Q. Cincinnatus had but four acres, and by the consent of the senate was chosen dictator of Rome.” Of such account were Cato, Fabricius, Aristides, Antonius, Probus, for their eminent worth: so Caesar, Trajan, Alexander, admired for valour, [4553] Haephestion loved Alexander, but Parmenio the king: Titus deliciae humani generis, and which Aurelius Victor hath of Vespasian, the darling of his time, as [4554]Edgar Etheling was in England, for his [4555]excellent virtues: their memory is yet fresh, sweet, and we love them many ages after, though they be dead: Suavem memoriam sui reliquit, saith Lipsius of his friend, living and dead they are all one. [4556]“I have ever loved as thou knowest” (so Tully wrote to Dolabella) “Marcus Brutus for his great wit, singular honesty, constancy, sweet conditions; and believe it” [4557] “there is nothing so amiable and fair as virtue.” “I [4558]do mightily love Calvisinus,” (so Pliny writes to Sossius) “a most industrious, eloquent, upright man, which is all in all with me:” the affection came from his good parts. And as St. Austin comments on the 84th Psalm, [4559]“there is a peculiar beauty of justice, and inward beauty, which we see with the eyes of our hearts, love, and are enamoured with, as in martyrs, though their bodies be torn in pieces with wild beasts, yet this beauty shines, and we love their virtues.” The [4560]stoics are of opinion that a wise man is only fair; and Cato in Tully 3 de Finibus contends the same, that the lineaments of the mind are far fairer than those of the body, incomparably beyond them: wisdom and valour according to [4561]Xenophon, especially deserve the name of beauty, and denominate one fair, et incomparabiliter pulchrior est (as Austin holds) veritas Christianorum quam Helena Graecorum. “Wine is strong, the king is strong, women are strong, but truth overcometh all things,” Esd. i. 3, 10, 11, 12. “Blessed is the man that findeth wisdom, and getteth understanding, for the merchandise thereof is better than silver, and the gain thereof better than gold: it is more precious than pearls, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared to her,” Prov. ii. 13, 14, 15, a wise, true, just, upright, and good man, I say it again, is only fair: [4562]it is reported of Magdalene Queen of France, and wife to Lewis 11th, a Scottish woman by birth, that walking forth in an evening with her ladies, she spied M. Alanus, one of the king's chaplains, a silly, old, [4563]hard-favoured man fast asleep in a bower, and kissed him sweetly; when the young ladies laughed at her for it, she replied, that it was not his person that she did embrace and reverence, but, with a platonic love, the divine beauty of [4564]his soul. Thus in all ages virtue hath been adored, admired, a singular lustre hath proceeded from it: and the more virtuous he is, the more gracious, the more admired. No man so much followed upon earth as Christ himself: and as the Psalmist saith, xlv. 2, “He was fairer than the sons of men.” Chrysostom Hom. 8 in Mat. Bernard Ser. 1. de omnibus sanctis; Austin, Cassiodore, Hier. in 9 Mat. interpret it of the [4565]beauty of his person; there was a divine majesty in his looks, it shined like lightning and drew all men to it: but Basil, Cyril, lib. 6. super. 55. Esay. Theodoret, Arnobius, &c. of the beauty of his divinity, justice, grace, eloquence, &c. Thomas in Psal. xliv. of both; and so doth Baradius and Peter Morales, lib de pulchritud. Jesu et Mariae, adding as much of Joseph and the Virgin Mary,—haec alias forma praecesserit omnes, [4566]according to that prediction of Sibylla Cumea. Be they present or absent, near us, or afar off, this beauty shines, and will attract men many miles to come and visit it. Plato and Pythagoras left their country, to see those wise Egyptian priests: Apollonius travelled into Ethiopia, Persia, to consult with the Magi, Brachmanni, gymnosophists. The Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon; and “many,” saith [4567]Hierom, “went out of Spain and remote places a thousand miles, to behold that eloquent Livy:” [4568]Multi Romam non ut urbem pulcherrimam, aut urbis et orbis dominum Octavianum, sed ut hunc unum inviserent audirentque, a Gadibus profecti sunt. No beauty leaves such an impression, strikes so deep [4569], or links the souls of men closer than virtue.
Besides this love that comes from profit, pleasant, honest (for one good turn asks another in equity), that which proceeds from the law of nature, or from discipline and philosophy, there is yet another love compounded of all these three, which is charity, and includes piety, dilection, benevolence, friendship, even all those virtuous habits; for love is the circle equant of all other affections, of which Aristotle dilates at large in his Ethics, and is commanded by God, which no man can well perform, but he that is a Christian, and a true regenerate man; this is,[4586]“To love God above all, and our neighbour as ourself;” for this love is lychnus accendens et accensus, a communicating light, apt to illuminate itself as well as others. All other objects are fair, and very beautiful, I confess; kindred, alliance, friendship, the love that we owe to our country, nature, wealth, pleasure, honour, and such moral respects, &c., of which read [4587]copious Aristotle in his morals; a man is beloved of a man, in that he is a man; but all these are far more eminent and great, when they shall proceed from a sanctified spirit, that hath a true touch of religion, and a reference to God. Nature binds all creatures to love their young ones; a hen to preserve her brood will run upon a lion, a hind will fight with a bull, a sow with a bear, a silly sheep with a fox. So the same nature urgeth a man to love his parents, ([4588]dii me pater omnes oderint, ni te magis quam oculos amem meos!) and this love cannot be dissolved, as Tully holds, [4589]“without detestable offence:” but much more God's commandment, which enjoins a filial love, and an obedience in this kind. [4590]“The love of brethren is great, and like an arch of stones, where if one be displaced, all comes down,” no love so forcible and strong, honest, to the combination of which, nature, fortune, virtue, happily concur; yet this love comes short of it. [4591]Dulce et decorum pro patria mori, [4592]it cannot be expressed, what a deal of charity that one name of country contains. Amor laudis et patriae pro stipendio est; the Decii did se devovere, Horatii, Curii, Scaevola, Regulus, Codrus, sacrifice themselves for their country's peace and good.
[4599]A faithful friend is better than [4600]gold, a medicine of misery, [4601]an only possession; yet this love of friends, nuptial, heroical, profitable, pleasant, honest, all three loves put together, are little worth, if they proceed not from a true Christian illuminated soul, if it be not done in ordine ad Deum for God's sake. “Though I had the gift of prophecy, spake with tongues of men and angels, though I feed the poor with all my goods, give my body to be burned, and have not this love, it profiteth me nothing,” 1 Cor. xiii. 1, 3. 'tis splendidum peccatum, without charity. This is an all-apprehending love, a deifying love, a refined, pure, divine love, the quintessence of all love, the true philosopher's stone, Non potest enim, as [4602]Austin infers, veraciter amicus esse hominis, nisi fuerit ipsius primitus veritatis, He is no true friend that loves not God's truth. And therefore this is true love indeed, the cause of all good to mortal men, that reconciles all creatures, and glues them together in perpetual amity and firm league; and can no more abide bitterness, hate, malice, than fair and foul weather, light and darkness, sterility and plenty may be together; as the sun in the firmament (I say), so is love in the world; and for this cause 'tis love without an addition, love κατ' ἐξοχὴν, love of God, and love of men. [4603]“The love of God begets the love of man; and by this love of our neighbour, the love of God is nourished and increased.” By this happy union of love, [4604]“all well-governed families and cities are combined, the heavens annexed, and divine souls complicated, the world itself composed, and all that is in it conjoined in God, and reduced to one.” [4605]“This love causeth true and absolute virtues, the life, spirit, and root of every virtuous action, it finisheth prosperity, easeth adversity, corrects all natural encumbrances,” inconveniences, sustained by faith and hope, which with this our love make an indissoluble twist, a Gordian knot, an equilateral triangle, “and yet the greatest of them is love,” 1 Cor. xiii. 13, [4606]“which inflames our souls with a divine heat, and being so inflamed, purged, and so purgeth, elevates to God, makes an atonement, and reconciles us unto him.” [4607] “That other love infects the soul of man, this cleanseth; that depresses, this rears; that causeth cares and troubles, this quietness of mind; this informs, that deforms our life; that leads to repentance, this to heaven.” For if once we be truly linked and touched with this charity, we shall love God above all, our neighbour as ourself, as we are enjoined, Mark xii. 31. Matt. xix. 19. perform those duties and exercises, even all the operations of a good Christian.
“This love suffereth long, it is bountiful, envieth not, boasteth not itself, is not puffed up, it deceiveth not, it seeketh not his own things, is not provoked to anger, it thinketh not evil, it rejoiceth not in iniquity, but in truth. It suffereth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things,” 1 Cor. xiii. 4, 5, 6, 7; “it covereth all trespasses,” Prov, x. 12; “a multitude of sins,” 1 Pet. 4, as our Saviour told the woman in the Gospel, that washed his feet, “many sins were forgiven her, for she loved much,” Luke vii. 47; “it will defend the fatherless and the widow,” Isa. i. 17; “will seek no revenge, or be mindful of wrong,” Levit. xix. 18; “will bring home his brother's ox if he go astray, as it is commanded,” Deut. xxii. 1; “will resist evil, give to him that asketh, and not turn from him that borroweth, bless them that curse him, love his enemy,” Matt. v; “bear his brother's burthen,” Gal. vi. 7. He that so loves will be hospitable, and distribute to the necessities of the saints; he will, if it be possible, have peace with all men, “feed his enemy if he be hungry, if he be athirst give him drink;” he will perform those seven works of mercy, “he will make himself equal to them of the lower sort, rejoice with them that rejoice, weep with them that weep,” Rom. xii; he will speak truth to his neighbour, be courteous and tender-hearted, “forgiving others for Christ's sake, as God forgave him,” Eph. iv. 32; “he will be like minded,” Phil. ii. 2. “Of one judgment; be humble, meek, long-suffering,” Colos. iii. “Forbear, forget and forgive,” xii. 13. 23. and what he doth shall be heartily done to God, and not to men. “Be pitiful and courteous,” 1 Pet. iii. “Seek peace and follow it.” He will love his brother, not in word and tongue, but in deed and truth, John iii. 18. “and he that loves God, Christ will love him that is begotten of him,” John v. 1, &c. Thus should we willingly do, if we had a true touch of this charity, of this divine love, if we could perform this which we are enjoined, forget and forgive, and compose ourselves to those Christian laws of love.
“Angelical souls, how blessed, how happy should we be, so loving, how might we triumph over the devil, and have another heaven upon earth!”But this we cannot do; and which is the cause of all our woes, miseries, discontent, melancholy, [4609]want of this charity. We do invicem angariare, contemn, consult, vex, torture, molest, and hold one another's noses to the grindstone hard, provoke, rail, scoff, calumniate, challenge, hate, abuse (hard-hearted, implacable, malicious, peevish, inexorable as we are), to satisfy our lust or private spleen, for [4610]toys, trifles, and impertinent occasions, spend ourselves, goods, friends, fortunes, to be revenged on our adversary, to ruin him and his. 'Tis all our study, practice, and business how to plot mischief, mine, countermine, defend and offend, ward ourselves, injure others, hurt all; as if we were born to do mischief, and that with such eagerness and bitterness, with such rancour, malice, rage, and fury, we prosecute our intended designs, that neither affinity or consanguinity, love or fear of God or men can contain us: no satisfaction, no composition will be accepted, no offices will serve, no submission; though he shall upon his knees, as Sarpedon did to Glaucus in Homer, acknowledging his error, yield himself with tears in his eyes, beg his pardon, we will not relent, forgive, or forget, till we have confounded him and his, “made dice of his bones,” as they say, see him rot in prison, banish his friends, followers, et omne invisum genus, rooted him out and all his posterity. Monsters of men as we are, dogs, wolves, [4611]tigers, fiends, incarnate devils, we do not only contend, oppress, and tyrannise ourselves, but as so many firebrands, we set on, and animate others: our whole life is a perpetual combat, a conflict, a set battle, a snarling fit. Eris dea is settled in our tents, [4612]Omnia de lite, opposing wit to wit, wealth to wealth, strength to strength, fortunes to fortunes, friends to friends, as at a sea-fight, we turn our broadsides, or two millstones with continual attrition, we fire ourselves, or break another's backs, and both are ruined and consumed in the end. Miserable wretches, to fat and enrich ourselves, we care not how we get it, Quocunque modo rem; how many thousands we undo, whom we oppress, by whose ruin and downfall we arise, whom we injure, fatherless children, widows, common societies, to satisfy our own private lust. Though we have myriads, abundance of wealth and treasure, (pitiless, merciless, remorseless, and uncharitable in the highest degree), and our poor brother in need, sickness, in great extremity, and now ready to be starved for want of food, we had rather, as the fox told the ape, his tail should sweep the ground still, than cover his buttocks; rather spend it idly, consume it with dogs, hawks, hounds, unnecessary buildings, in riotous apparel, ingurgitate, or let it be lost, than he should have part of it; [4613]rather take from him that little which he hath, than relieve him.
Like the dog in the manger, we neither use it ourselves, let others make use of or enjoy it; part with nothing while we live: for want of disposing our household, and setting things in order, set all the world together by the ears after our death. Poor Lazarus lies howling at his gates for a few crumbs, he only seeks chippings, offals; let him roar and howl, famish, and eat his own flesh, he respects him not. A poor decayed kinsman of his sets upon him by the way in all his jollity, and runs begging bareheaded by him, conjuring by those former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, &c., uncle, cousin, brother, father,
In the preceding section mention was made, amongst other pleasant objects, of this comeliness and beauty which proceeds from women, that causeth heroical, or love-melancholy, is more eminent above the rest, and properly called love. The part affected in men is the liver, and therefore called heroical, because commonly gallants. Noblemen, and the most generous spirits are possessed with it. His power and extent is very large, [4630] and in that twofold division of love, φιλεῖν and ἐρᾶν [4631]those two veneries which Plato and some other make mention of it is most eminent, and κατ' ἐξοχὴν called Venus, as I have said, or love itself. Which although it be denominated from men, and most evident in them, yet it extends and shows itself in vegetal and sensible creatures, those incorporeal substances (as shall be specified), and hath a large dominion of sovereignty over them. His pedigree is very ancient, derived from the beginning of the world, as [4632]Phaedrus contends, and his [4633] parentage of such antiquity, that no poet could ever find it out. Hesiod makes [4634]Terra and Chaos to be Love's parents, before the Gods were born: Ante deos omnes primum generavit amorem. Some think it is the self-same fire Prometheus fetched from heaven. Plutarch amator. libello, will have Love to be the son of Iris and Favonius; but Socrates in that pleasant dialogue of Plato, when it came to his turn to speak of love, (of which subject Agatho the rhetorician, magniloquus Agatho, that chanter Agatho, had newly given occasion) in a poetical strain, telleth this tale: when Venus was born, all the gods were invited to a banquet, and amongst the rest, [4635]Porus the god of bounty and wealth; Penia or Poverty came a begging to the door; Porus well whittled with nectar (for there was no wine in those days) walking in Jupiter's garden, in a bower met with Penia, and in his drink got her with child, of whom was born Love; and because he was begotten on Venus's birthday, Venus still attends upon him. The moral of this is in [4636]Ficinus. Another tale is there borrowed out of Aristophanes: [4637]in the beginning of the world, men had four arms and four feet, but for their pride, because they compared themselves with the gods, were parted into halves, and now peradventure by love they hope to be united again and made one. Otherwise thus, [4638]Vulcan met two lovers, and bid them ask what they would and they should have it; but they made answer, O Vulcane faber Deorum, &c. “O Vulcan the gods' great smith, we beseech thee to work us anew in thy furnace, and of two make us one; which he presently did, and ever since true lovers are either all one, or else desire to be united.” Many such tales you shall find in Leon Hebreus, dial. 3. and their moral to them. The reason why Love was still painted young, (as Phornutus [4639]and others will) [4640]“is because young men are most apt to love; soft, fair, and fat, because such folks are soonest taken: naked, because all true affection is simple and open: he smiles, because merry and given to delights: hath a quiver, to show his power, none can escape: is blind, because he sees not where he strikes, whom he hits, &c.” His power and sovereignty is expressed by the [4641]poets, in that he is held to be a god, and a great commanding god, above Jupiter himself; Magnus Daemon, as Plato calls him, the strongest and merriest of all the gods according to Alcinous and [4642]Athenaeus. Amor virorum rex, amor rex et deum, as Euripides, the god of gods and governor of men; for we must all do homage to him, keep a holiday for his deity, adore in his temples, worship his image, (numen enim hoc non est nudum nomen) and sacrifice to his altar, that conquers all, and rules all:
In vegetal creatures what sovereignty love hath, by many pregnant proofs and familiar examples may be proved, especially of palm-trees, which are both he and she, and express not a sympathy but a love-passion, and by many observations have been confirmed.
If such fury be in vegetals, what shall we think of sensible creatures, how much more violent and apparent shall it be in them!
You have heard how this tyrant Love rageth with brute beasts and spirits; now let us consider what passions it causeth amongst men. [4690]Improbe amor quid non mortalia pectora cogis? How it tickles the hearts of mortal men, Horresco referens,—I am almost afraid to relate, amazed, [4691]and ashamed, it hath wrought such stupendous and prodigious effects, such foul offences. Love indeed (I may not deny) first united provinces, built cities, and by a perpetual generation makes and preserves mankind, propagates the church; but if it rage it is no more love, but burning lust, a disease, frenzy, madness, hell. [4692]Est orcus ille, vis est immedicabilis, est rabies insana; 'tis no virtuous habit this, but a vehement perturbation of the mind, a monster of nature, wit, and art, as Alexis in [4693]Athenaeus sets it out, viriliter audax, muliebriter timidium, furore praeceps, labore infractum, mel felleum, blanda percussio, &c. It subverts kingdoms, overthrows cities, towns, families, mars, corrupts, and makes a massacre of men; thunder and lightning, wars, fires, plagues, have not done that mischief to mankind, as this burning lust, this brutish passion. Let Sodom and Gomorrah, Troy, (which Dares Phrygius, and Dictis Cretensis will make good) and I know not how many cities bear record,—et fuit ante Helenam, &c., all succeeding ages will subscribe: Joanna of Naples in Italy, Fredegunde and Brunhalt in France, all histories are full of these basilisks. Besides those daily monomachies, murders, effusion of blood, rapes, riot, and immoderate expense, to satisfy their lusts, beggary, shame, loss, torture, punishment, disgrace, loathsome diseases that proceed from thence, worse than calentures and pestilent fevers, those often gouts, pox, arthritis, palsies, cramps, sciatica, convulsions, aches, combustions, &c., which torment the body, that feral melancholy which crucifies the soul in this life, and everlastingly torments in the world to come.
Notwithstanding they know these and many such miseries, threats, tortures, will surely come upon them, rewards, exhortations, e contra; yet either out of their own weakness, a depraved nature, or love's tyranny, which so furiously rageth, they suffer themselves to be led like an ox to the slaughter: (Facilis descensus Averni) they go down headlong to their own perdition, they will commit folly with beasts, men “leaving the natural use of women,” as [4694]Paul saith, “burned in lust one towards another, and man with man wrought filthiness.”
Semiramis equo, Pasiphae tauro, Aristo Ephesius asinae se commiscuit, Fulvius equae, alii canibus, capris, &c., unde monstra nascuntur aliquando, Centauri, Sylvani, et ad terrorem hominum prodigiosa spectra: Nec cum brutis, sed ipsis hominibus rem habent, quod peccatum Sodomiae vulgo dicitur; et frequens olim vitium apud Orientalis illos fuit, Graecos nimirum, Italos, Afros, Asianos: [4695]Hercules Hylam habuit, Polycletum, Dionem, Perithoonta, Abderum et Phryga; alii et Euristium ab Hercule amatum tradunt. Socrates pulchrorum Adolescentum causa frequens Gymnasium adibat, flagitiosque spectaculo pascebat oculos, quod et Philebus et Phaedon, Rivales, Charmides et [4696]reliqui Platonis Dialogi, satis superque testatum faciunt: quod vero Alcibiades de eodem Socrate loquatur, lubens conticesco, sed et abhorreo; tantum incitamentum praebet libidini. At hunc perstrinxit Theodoretus lib. de curat. graec. affect. cap. ultimo. Quin et ipse Plato suum demiratur Agathonem, Xenophon, Cliniam, Virgilius Alexin, Anacreon Bathyllum: Quod autem de Nerone, Claudio, caeterorumque portentosa libidine memoriae proditum, mallem a Petronio, Suetonio, caeterisque petatis, quando omnem fidem excedat, quam a me expectetis; sed vetera querimur. [4697]Apud Asianos, Turcas, Italos, nunquam frequentius hoc quam hodierno die vitium; Diana Romanorum Sodomia; officinae horum alicubi apud Turcas,—“qui saxis semina mandant”—arenas arantes; et frequentes querelae, etiam inter ipsos conjuges hac de re, “quae virorum concubitum illicitum calceo in oppositam partem verso magistratui indicant”; nullum apud Italos familiare magis peccatum, qui et post [4698]Lucianum et [4699]Tatium, scriptis voluminibis defendunt. Johannes de la Casa, Beventinus Episcopus, divinum opus vocat, suave scelus, adeoque jactat, se non alia, usum Venere. Nihil usitatius apud monachos, Cardinales, sacrificulos, etiam [4700]furor hic ad mortem, ad insaniam. [4701]Angelus Politianus, ob pueri amorem, violentas sibi inanus injecit. Et horrendum sane dictu, quantum apud nos patrum memoria, scelus detestandum hoc saevierit! Quum enim Anno 1538. “prudentissimus Rex Henricus Octavus cucullatorum coenobia, et sacrificorum collegia, votariorum, per venerabiles legum Doctores Thomam Leum, Richardum Laytonum visitari fecerat, &c., tanto numero reperti sunt apud eos scortatores, cinaedi, ganeones, paedicones, puerarii, paederastae, Sodomitae”, ([4702]Balei verbis utor) “Ganimedes, &c. ut in unoquoque eorum novam credideris Gomorrham”. Sed vide si lubet eorundem Catalogum apud eundem Balcum; “Puellae” (inquit) “in lectis dormire non poterant ob fratres necromanticos”. Haec si apud votarios, monachos, sanctos scilicet homunciones, quid in foro, quid in aula factum suspiceris? quid apud nobiles, quid inter fornices, quam non foeditatem, quam non spurcitiem? Sileo interim turpes illas, et ne nominandas quidem monachorum [4703] mastrupationes, masturbatores. [4704]Rodericus a Castro vocat, tum et eos qui se invicem ad Venerem excitandam flagris caedunt, Spintrias, Succubas, Ambubeias, et lasciviente lumbo Tribades illas mulierculas, quae se invicem fricant, et praeter Eunuchos etiam ad Venerem explendam, artificiosa illa veretra habent. Immo quod magis mirere, faemina foeminam Constantinopoli non ita pridem deperiit, ausa rem plane incredibilem, mutato cultu mentita virum de nuptiis sermonem init, et brevi nupta est: sed authorem ipsum consule, Busbequium. Omitto [4705]Salanarios illos Egyptiacos, qui cum formosarum cadaveribus concumbunt; et eorum vesanam libidinem, qui etiam idola et imagines depereunt. Nota est fabula Pigmalionis apud [4706]Ovidium; Mundi et Paulini apud Aegesippum belli Jud. lib. 2. cap. 4. Pontius C. Caesaris legatus, referente Plinio, lib. 35. cap. 3. quem suspicor eum esse qui Christum crucifixit, picturis Atalantae et Helenae adeo libidine incensus, ut tollere eas vellet si natura tectorii permisisset, alius statuam bonae Fortunae deperiit (Aelianus, lib. 9. cap. 37.) alius bonae deae, et ne qua pars probro vacet. [4707]“Raptus ad stupra” (quod ait ille) “et ne [4708]os quidem a libidine exceptum.” Heliogabalus, per omnia cava corporis libidinem recepit, Lamprid. vita ejus. [4709]Hostius quidam specula fecit, et ita disposuit, ut quum virum ipse pateretur, aversus omnes admissarii motus in speculo videret, ac deinde falsa magnitudine ipsius membri tanquam vera gauderet, simul virum et foeminam passus, quod dictu foedum et abominandum. Ut veram plane sit, quod apud [4710]Plutarchum Gryllus Ulyssi objecit. “Ad hunc usque diem apud nos neque mas marem, neque foemina foeminam amavit, qualia multa apud vos memorabiles et praeclari viri fecerunt: ut viles missos faciam, Hercules imberbem sectans socium, amicos deseruit, &c. Vestrae libidines intra suos naturae fines coerceri non possunt, quin instar fluvii exundantis atrocem foeditatum, tumultum, confusionemque naturae gignant in re Venerea: nam et capras, porcos, equos inierunt viri et foeminae, insano bestiarum amore exarserunt, imde Minotauri, Centauri, Sylvani, Sphinges”, &c. Sed ne confutando doceam, aut ea foras efferam, quae, non omnes scire convenit (haec enim doctis solummodo, quod causa non absimili [4711]Rodericus, scripta velim) ne levissomis ingentis et depravatis mentibus focdissimi sceleris notitiam, &c., nolo quem diutius hisce sordibus inquinare.
I come at last to that heroical love which is proper to men and women, is a frequent cause of melancholy, and deserves much rather to be called burning lust, than by such an honourable title. There is an honest love, I confess, which is natural, laqueus occultus captivans corda hominum, ut a mulieribus non possint separari, “a secret snare to captivate the hearts of men,” as [4712]Christopher Fonseca proves, a strong allurement, of a most attractive, occult, adamantine property, and powerful virtue, and no man living can avoid it. [4713]Et qui vim non sensit amoris, aut lapis est, aut bellua. He is not a man but a block, a very stone, aut [4714]Numen, aut Nebuchadnezzar, he hath a gourd for his head, a pepon for his heart, that hath not felt the power of it, and a rare creature to be found, one in an age, Qui nunquam visae flagravit amore puellae; [4715]for semel insanivimus omnes, dote we either young or old, as [4716]he said, and none are excepted but Minerva and the Muses: so Cupid in [4717]Lucian complains to his mother Venus, that amongst all the rest his arrows could not pierce them. But this nuptial love is a common passion, an honest, for men to love in the way of marriage; ut materia appetit formam, sic mulier virum. [4718]You know marriage is honourable, a blessed calling, appointed by God himself in Paradise; it breeds true peace, tranquillity, content, and happiness, qua nulla est aut fuit unquam sanctior conjunctio, as Daphnaeus in [4719]Plutarch could well prove, et quae generi humano immortalitatem parat, when they live without jarring, scolding, lovingly as they should do.
As Seneca lived with his Paulina, Abraham and Sarah, Orpheus and Eurydice, Arria and Poetus, Artemisia and Mausolus, Rubenius Celer, that would needs have it engraven on his tomb, he had led his life with Ennea, his dear wife, forty-three years eight months, and never fell out. There is no pleasure in this world comparable to it, 'tis summum mortalitatis bonum— [4721]hominum divumque voluptas, Alma Venus—latet enim in muliere aliquid majus potentiusque, omnibus aliis humanis voluptatibus, as [4722]one holds, there's something in a woman beyond all human delight; a magnetic virtue, a charming quality, an occult and powerful motive. The husband rules her as head, but she again commands his heart, he is her servant, she is only joy and content: no happiness is like unto it, no love so great as this of man and wife, no such comfort as [4723]placens uxor, a sweet wife: [4724]Omnis amor magnus, sed aperto in conjuge major. When they love at last as fresh as they did at first, [4725]Charaque charo consenescit conjugi, as Homer brings Paris kissing Helen, after they had been married ten years, protesting withal that he loved her as dear as he did the first hour that he was betrothed. And in their old age, when they make much of one another, saying, as he did to his wife in the poet,
'Tis a happy state this indeed, when the fountain is blessed (saith Solomon, Prov. v. 17.) “and he rejoiceth with the wife of his youth, and she is to him as the loving hind and pleasant roe, and he delights in her continually.” But this love of ours is immoderate, inordinate, and not to be comprehended in any bounds. It will not contain itself within the union of marriage, or apply to one object, but is a wandering, extravagant, a domineering, a boundless, an irrefragable, a destructive passion: sometimes this burning lust rageth after marriage, and then it is properly called jealousy; sometimes before, and then it is called heroical melancholy; it extends sometimes to co-rivals, &c., begets rapes, incests, murders: Marcus Antonius compressit Faustinam sororem, Caracalla Juliam Novercam, Nero Matrem, Caligula sorores, Cyneras Myrrham filiam, &c. But it is confined within no terms of blood, years, sex, or whatsoever else. Some furiously rage before they come to discretion, or age. [4730]Quartilla in Petronius never remembered she was a maid; and the wife of Bath, in Chaucer, cracks,
Of women's unnatural, [4737]insatiable lust, what country, what village doth not complain? Mother and daughter sometimes dote on the same man, father and son, master and servant, on one woman.
But to enlarge or illustrate this power and effects of love, is to set a candle in the sun. [4745]It rageth with all sorts and conditions of men, yet is most evident among such as are young and lusty, in the flower of their years, nobly descended, high fed, such as live idly, and at ease; and for that cause (which our divines call burning lust) this [4746]ferinus insanus amor, this mad and beastly passion, as I have said, is named by our physicians heroical love, and a more honourable title put upon it, Amor nobilis, as [4747]Savanarola styles it, because noble men and women make a common practice of it, and are so ordinarily affected with it. Avicenna, lib. 3. Fen, 1. tract. 4. cap. 23. calleth this passion Ilishi, and defines it [4748]“to be a disease or melancholy vexation, or anguish of mind, in which a man continually meditates of the beauty, gesture, manners of his mistress, and troubles himself about it:” desiring, (as Savanarola adds) with all intentions and eagerness of mind, “to compass or enjoy her, [4749]as commonly hunters trouble themselves about their sports, the covetous about their gold and goods, so is he tormented still about his mistress.” Arnoldus Villanovanus, in his book of heroical love, defines it, [4750]“a continual cogitation of that which he desires, with a confidence or hope of compassing it;” which definition his commentator cavils at. For continual cogitation is not the genus but a symptom of love; we continually think of that which we hate and abhor, as well as that which we love; and many things we covet and desire, without all hope of attaining. Carolus a Lorme, in his Questions, makes a doubt, An amor sit morbus, whether this heroical love be a disease: Julius Pollux Onomast. lib. 6. cap. 44. determines it. They that are in love are likewise [4751]sick; lascivus, salax, lasciviens, et qui in venerem furit, vere est aegrotus, Arnoldus will have it improperly so called, and a malady rather of the body than mind. Tully, in his Tusculans, defines it a furious disease of the mind. Plato, madness itself. Ficinus, his Commentator, cap. 12. a species of madness, “for many have run mad for women,” Esdr. iv. 26. But [4752]Rhasis “a melancholy passion:” and most physicians make it a species or kind of melancholy (as will appear by the symptoms), and treat of it apart; whom I mean to imitate, and to discuss it in all his kinds, to examine his several causes, to show his symptoms, indications, prognostics, effect, that so it may be with more facility cured.
The part affected in the meantime, as [4753]Arnoldus supposeth, “is the former part of the head for want of moisture,” which his Commentator rejects. Langius, med. epist. lib. 1. cap. 24. will have this passion seated in the liver, and to keep residence in the heart, [4754]“to proceed first from the eyes so carried by our spirits, and kindled with imagination in the liver and heart;” coget amare jecur, as the saying is. Medium feret per epar, as Cupid in Anacreon. For some such cause belike [4755] Homer feigns Titius' liver (who was enamoured of Latona) to be still gnawed by two vultures day and night in hell, [4756]“for that young men's bowels thus enamoured, are so continually tormented by love.” Gordonius, cap. 2. part. 2. [4757]“will have the testicles an immediate subject or cause, the liver an antecedent.” Fracastorius agrees in this with Gordonius, inde primitus imaginatio venerea, erectio, &c. titillatissimam partem vocat, ita ut nisi extruso semine gestiens voluptas non cessat, nec assidua veneris recordatio, addit Gnastivinius Comment. 4. Sect. prob. 27. Arist. But [4758]properly it is a passion of the brain, as all other melancholy, by reason of corrupt imagination, and so doth Jason Pratensis, c. 19. de morb. cerebri (who writes copiously of this erotical love), place and reckon it amongst the affections of the brain. [4759]Melancthon de anima confutes those that make the liver a part affected, and Guianerius, Tract. 15. cap. 13 et 17. though many put all the affections in the heart, refers it to the brain. Ficinus, cap. 7. in Convivium Platonis, “will have the blood to be the part affected.” Jo. Frietagius, cap. 14. noct. med. supposeth all four affected, heart, liver, brain, blood; but the major part concur upon the brain, [4760]'tis imaginatio laesa; and both imagination and reason are misaffected;, because of his corrupt judgment, and continual meditation of that which he desires, he may truly be said to be melancholy. If it be violent, or his disease inveterate, as I have determined in the precedent partitions, both imagination and reason are misaffected, first one, then the other.
Of all causes the remotest are stars. [4761]Ficinus cap. 19. saith they are most prone to this burning lust, that have Venus in Leo in their horoscope, when the Moon and Venus be mutually aspected, or such as be of Venus' complexion. [4762]Plutarch interprets astrologically that tale of Mars and Venus, “in whose genitures ♂ and ♂ are in conjunction,” they are commonly lascivious, and if women queans; as the good wife of Bath confessed in Chaucer;
His eyes are like a balance, apt to propend each way, and to be weighed down with every wench's looks, his heart a weathercock, his affection tinder, or naphtha itself, which every fair object, sweet smile, or mistress's favour sets on fire. Guianerius tract 15. cap. 14. refers all this [4770]to “the hot temperature of the testicles,” Ferandus a Frenchman in his Erotique Mel. (which [4771]book came first to my hands after the third edition) to certain atomi in the seed, “such as are very spermatic and full of seed.” I find the same in Aristot. sect. 4. prob. 17. si non secernatur semen, cessare tentigines non possunt, as Gaustavinius his commentator translates it: for which cause these young men that be strong set, of able bodies, are so subject to it. Hercules de Saxonia hath the same words in effect. But most part I say, such as are aptest to love that are young and lusty, live at ease, stall-fed, free from cares, like cattle in a rank pasture, idle and solitary persons, they must needs hirquitullire, as Guastavinius recites out of Censorinus.
Idleness overthrows all, Vacuo pectore regnat amor, love tyranniseth in an idle person. Amore abundas Antiphio. If thou hast nothing to do,[4782] Invidia vel amore miser torquebere—Thou shalt be haled in pieces with envy, lust, some passion or other. Homines nihil agendo male agere discunt; 'tis Aristotle's simile, [4783]“as match or touchwood takes fire, so doth an idle person love.” Quaeritur Aegistus quare sit factus adulter, &c., why was Aegistus a whoremaster? You need not ask a reason of it. Ismenedora stole Baccho, a woman forced a man, as [4784]Aurora did Cephalus: no marvel, saith [4785]Plutarch, Luxurians opibus more hominum mulier agit: she was rich, fortunate and jolly, and doth but as men do in that case, as Jupiter did by Europa, Neptune by Amymone. The poets therefore did well to feign all shepherds lovers, to give themselves to songs and dalliances, because they lived such idle lives. For love, as [4786]Theophrastus defines it, is otiosi animi affectus, an affection of an idle mind, or as [4787]Seneca describes it, Juventa gignitur, juxu nutritur, feriis alitur, otioque inter laeta fortunae bonae; youth begets it, riot maintains it, idleness nourisheth it, &c. which makes [4788] Gordonius the physician cap. 20. part. 2. call this disease the proper passion of nobility. Now if a weak judgment and a strong apprehension do concur, how, saith Hercules de Saxonia, shall they resist? Savanarola appropriates it almost to [4789]“monks, friars, and religious persons, because they live solitarily, fair daintily, and do nothing:” and well he may, for how should they otherwise choose?
Diet alone is able to cause it: a rare thing to see a young man or a woman that lives idly and fares well, of what condition soever, not to be in love. [4790]Alcibiades was still dallying with wanton young women, immoderate in his expenses, effeminate in his apparel, ever in love, but why? he was over-delicate in his diet, too frequent and excessive in banquets, Ubicunque securitas, ibi libido dominatur; lust and security domineer together, as St. Hierome averreth. All which the wife of Bath in Chaucer freely justifies,
Many such causes may be reckoned up, but they cannot avail, except opportunity be offered of time, place, and those other beautiful objects, or artificial enticements, as kissing, conference, discourse, gestures concur, with such like lascivious provocations. Kornmannus, in his book de linea amoris, makes five degrees of lust, out of [4805]Lucian belike, which he handles in five chapters, Visus, Colloquium, Convictus, Oscula, Tactus. [4806]Sight, of all other, is the first step of this unruly love, though sometime it be prevented by relation or hearing, or rather incensed. For there be those so apt, credulous, and facile to love, that if they hear of a proper man, or woman, they are in love before they see them, and that merely by relation, as Achilles Tatius observes. [4807]“Such is their intemperance and lust, that they are as much maimed by report, as if they saw them. Callisthenes a rich young gentleman of Byzance in Thrace, hearing of [4808]Leucippe, Sostratus' fair daughter, was far in love with her, and, out of fame and common rumour, so much incensed, that he would needs have her to be his wife.” And sometimes by reading they are so affected, as he in [4809]Lucian confesseth of himself, “I never read that place of Panthea in Xenophon, but I am as much affected as if I were present with her.” Such persons commonly [4810]feign a kind of beauty to themselves; and so did those three gentlewomen in [4811]Balthazar Castilio fall in love with a young man whom they never knew, but only heard him commended: or by reading of a letter; for there is a grace cometh from hearing, [4812] as a moral philosopher informeth us, “as well from sight; and the species of love are received into the fantasy by relation alone:” [4813]ut cupere ab aspectu, sic velle ab auditu, both senses affect. Interdum et absentes amamus, sometimes we love those that are absent, saith Philostratus, and gives instance in his friend Athenodorus, that loved a maid at Corinth whom he never saw; non oculi sed mens videt, we see with the eyes of our understanding.
But the most familiar and usual cause of love is that which comes by sight, which conveys those admirable rays of beauty and pleasing graces to the heart. Plotinus derives love from sight, ἔρος quasi ὅρασις. [4814]Si nescis, oculi sunt in amore duces, “the eyes are the harbingers of love,” and the first step of love is sight, as [4815]Lilius Giraldus proves at large, hist. deor. syntag. 13. they as two sluices let in the influences of that divine, powerful, soul-ravishing, and captivating beauty, which, as [4816]one saith, “is sharper than any dart or needle, wounds deeper into the heart; and opens a gap through our eyes to that lovely wound, which pierceth the soul itself” (Ecclus. 18.) Through it love is kindled like a fire. This amazing, confounding, admirable, amiable beauty, [4817]“than which in all nature's treasure (saith Isocrates) there is nothing so majestical and sacred, nothing so divine, lovely, precious,” 'tis nature's crown, gold and glory; bonum si non summum, de summis tamen non infrequenter triumphans, whose power hence may be discerned; we contemn and abhor generally such things as are foul and ugly to behold, account them filthy, but love and covet that which is fair. 'Tis [4818] beauty in all things which pleaseth and allureth us, a fair hawk, a fine garment, a goodly building, a fair house, &c. That Persian Xerxes when he destroyed all those temples of the gods in Greece, caused that of Diana, in integrum servari, to be spared alone for that excellent beauty and magnificence of it. Inanimate beauty can so command. 'Tis that which painters, artificers, orators, all aim at, as Eriximachus the physician, in Plato contends, [4819]“It was beauty first that ministered occasion to art, to find out the knowledge of carving, painting, building, to find out models, perspectives, rich furnitures, and so many rare inventions.” Whiteness in the lily, red in the rose, purple in the violet, a lustre in all things without life, the clear light of the moon, the bright beams of the sun, splendour of gold, purple, sparkling diamond, the excellent feature of the horse, the majesty of the lion, the colour of birds, peacock's tails, the silver scales of fish, we behold with singular delight and admiration. [4820]“And which is rich in plants, delightful in flowers, wonderful in beasts, but most glorious in men,” doth make us affect and earnestly desire it, as when we hear any sweet harmony, an eloquent tongue, see any excellent quality, curious work of man, elaborate art, or aught that is exquisite, there ariseth instantly in us a longing for the same. We love such men, but most part for comeliness of person, we call them gods and goddesses, divine, serene, happy, &c. And of all mortal men they alone ([4821]Calcagninus holds) are free from calumny; qui divitiis, magistratu et gloria florent, injuria lacessimus, we backbite, wrong, hate renowned, rich, and happy men, we repine at their felicity, they are undeserving we think, fortune is a stepmother to us, a parent to them. “We envy” (saith [4822]Isocrates) “wise, just, honest men, except with mutual offices and kindnesses, some good turn or other, they extort this love from us; only fair persons we love at first sight, desire their acquaintance, and adore them as so many gods: we had rather serve them than command others, and account ourselves the more beholding to them, the more service they enjoin us:” though they be otherwise vicious, dishonest, we love them, favour them, and are ready to do them any good office for their [4823]beauty's sake, though they have no other good quality beside. Dic igitur o fomose, adolescens (as that eloquent Phavorinus breaks out in [4824]Stobeus) dic Autiloque, suavius nectare loqueris; dic o Telemache, vehementius Ulysse dicis; dic Alcibiades utcunque ebrius, libentius tibi licet ebrio auscultabimus. “Speak, fair youth, speak Autiloquus, thy words are sweeter than nectar, speak O Telemachus, thou art more powerful than Ulysses, speak Alcibiades though drunk, we will willingly hear thee as thou art.” Faults in such are no faults: for when the said Alcibiades had stolen Anytus his gold and silver plate, he was so far from prosecuting so foul a fact (though every man else condemned his impudence and insolency) that he wished it had been more, and much better (he loved him dearly) for his sweet sake. “No worth is eminent in such lovely persons, all imperfections hid;” non enim facile de his quos plurimum diligimus, turpitudinem suspicamur, for hearing, sight, touch, &c., our mind and all our senses are captivated, omnes sensus formosus delectat. Many men have been preferred for their person alone, chosen kings, as amongst the Indians, Persians, Ethiopians of old; the properest man of person the country could afford, was elected their sovereign lord; Gratior est pulchro veniens e corpore virtus, [4825]and so have many other nations thought and done, as [4826]Curtius observes: Ingens enim in corporis majestate veneratio est, “for there is a majestical presence in such men;” and so far was beauty adored amongst them, that no man was thought fit to reign, that was not in all parts complete and supereminent. Agis, king of Lacedaemon, had like to have been deposed, because he married a little wife, they would not have their royal issue degenerate. Who would ever have thought that Adrian' the Fourth, an English monk's bastard (as [4827]Papirius Massovius writes in his life), inops a suis relectus, squalidus et miser, a poor forsaken child, should ever come to be pope of Rome? But why was it? Erat acri ingenio, facundia expedita eleganti corpore, facieque laeta ac hilari, (as he follows it out of [4828]Nubrigensis, for he ploughs with his heifer,) “he was wise, learned, eloquent, of a pleasant, a promising countenance, a goodly, proper man; he had, in a word, a winning look of his own,” and that carried it, for that he was especially advanced. So “Saul was a goodly person and a fair.” Maximinus elected emperor, &c. Branchus the son of Apollo, whom he begot of Jance, Succron's daughter (saith Lactantius), when he kept King Admetus' herds in Thessaly, now grown a man, was an earnest suitor to his mother to know his father; the nymph denied him, because Apollo had conjured her to the contrary; yet overcome by his importunity at last she sent him to his father; when he came into Apollo's presence, malas Dei reverenter osculatus, he carried himself so well, and was so fair a young man, that Apollo was infinitely taken with the beauty of his person, he could scarce look off him, and said he was worthy of such parents, gave him a crown of gold, the spirit of divination, and in conclusion made him a demigod. O vis superba formae, a goddess beauty is, whom the very gods adore, nam pulchros dii amant; she is Amoris domina, love's harbinger, love's loadstone, a witch, a charm, &c. Beauty is a dower of itself, a sufficient patrimony, an ample commendation, an accurate epistle, as [4829]Lucian, [4830]Apuleius, Tiraquellus, and some others conclude. Imperio digna forma, beauty deserves a kingdom, saith Abulensis, paradox. 2. cap. 110. immortality; and [4831]“more have got this honour and eternity for their beauty, than for all other virtues besides:” and such as are fair, “are worthy to be honoured of God and men.” That Idalian Ganymede was therefore fetched by Jupiter into heaven, Hephaestion dear to Alexander, Antinous to Adrian. Plato calls beauty for that cause a privilege of nature, Naturae gaudentis opus, nature's masterpiece, a dumb comment; Theophrastus, a silent fraud; still rhetoric Carneades, that persuades without speech, a kingdom without a guard, because beautiful persons command as so many captains; Socrates, a tyranny, “which tyranniseth over tyrants themselves;” which made Diogenes belike call proper women queens, quod facerent homines quae praeciperent, because men were so obedient to their commands. They will adore, cringe, compliment, and bow to a common wench (if she be fair) as if she were a noble woman, a countess, a queen, or a goddess. Those intemperate young men of Greece erected at Delphos a golden image with infinite cost, to the eternal memory of Phryne the courtesan, as Aelian relates, for she was a most beautiful woman, insomuch, saith [4832]Athenaeus, that Apelles and Praxiteles drew Venus's picture from her. Thus young men will adore and honour beauty; nay kings themselves I say will do it, and voluntarily submit their sovereignty to a lovely woman. “Wine is strong, kings are strong, but a woman strongest,” 1 Esd. iv. 10. as Zerobabel proved at large to King Darius, his princes and noblemen. “Kings sit still and command sea and land, &c., all pay tribute to the king; but women make kings pay tribute, and have dominion over them. When they have got gold and silver, they submit all to a beautiful woman, give themselves wholly to her, gape and gaze on her, and all men desire her more than gold or silver, or any precious thing: they will leave father and mother, and venture their lives for her, labour and travel to get, and bring all their gains to women, steal, fight, and spoil for their mistress's sake. And no king so strong, but a fair woman is stronger than he is. All things” (as [4833]he proceeds) “fear to touch the king; yet I saw him and Apame his concubine, the daughter of the famous Bartacus, sitting on the right hand of the king, and she took the crown off his head, and put it on her own, and stroke him with her left hand; yet the king gaped and gazed on her, and when she laughed he laughed, and when she was angry he flattered to be reconciled to her.” So beauty commands even kings themselves; nay whole armies and kingdoms are captivated together with their kings: [4834]Forma vincit armatos, ferrum pulchritudo captivat; vincentur specie, qui non vincentur proelio. And 'tis a great matter saith [4835]Xenophon, “and of which all fair persons may worthily brag, that a strong man must labour for his living if he will have aught, a valiant man must fight and endanger himself for it, a wise man speak, show himself, and toil; but a fair and beautiful person doth all with ease, he compasseth his desire without any pains-taking:” God and men, heaven and earth conspire to honour him; every one pities him above other, if he be in need, [4836]and all the world is willing to do him good. [4837]Chariclea fell into the hand of pirates, but when all the rest were put to the edge of the sword, she alone was preserved for her person. [4838]When Constantinople was sacked by the Turk, Irene escaped, and was so far from being made a captive, that she even captivated the Grand Signior himself. So did Rosamond insult over King Henry the Second.
But this is not the matter in hand; what prerogative this beauty hath, of what power and sovereignty it is, and how far such persons that so much admire, and dote upon it, are to be justified; no man doubts of these matters; the question is, how and by what means beauty produceth this effect? By sight: the eye betrays the soul, and is both active and passive in this business; it wounds and is wounded, is an especial cause and instrument, both in the subject and in the object. [4888]“As tears, it begins in the eyes, descends to the breast;” it conveys these beauteous rays, as I have said, unto the heart. Ut vidi ut perii. [4889]Mars videt hanc, visamque cupit. Schechem saw Dinah the daughter of Leah, and defiled her, Gen. xxxiv. 3. Jacob, Rachel, xxix. 17, “for she was beautiful and fair.” David spied Bathsheba afar off, 2 Sam. xi. 2. The Elders, Susanna, [4890]as that Orthomenian Strato saw fair Aristoclea daughter of Theophanes, bathing herself at that Hercyne well in Lebadea, and were captivated in an instant. Viderunt oculi, rapuerunt pectora flammae; Ammon fell sick for Thamar's sake, 2 Sam. xiii. 2. The beauty of Esther was such, that she found favour not only in the sight of Ahasuerus, “but of all those that looked upon her.” Gerson, Origen, and some others, contended that Christ himself was the fairest of the sons of men, and Joseph next unto him, speciosus prae filiis hominum, and they will have it literally taken; his very person was such, that he found grace and favour of all those that looked upon him. Joseph was so fair, that, as the ordinary gloss hath it, filiae decurrerent per murum, et ad fenestras, they ran to the top of the walls and to the windows to gaze on him, as we do commonly to see some great personage go by: and so Matthew Paris describes Matilda the Empress going through Cullen. [4891]P. Morales the Jesuit saith as much of the Virgin Mary. Antony no sooner saw Cleopatra, but, saith Appian, lib. 1, he was enamoured of her. [4892]Theseus at the first sight of Helen was so besotted, that he esteemed himself the happiest man in the world if he might enjoy her, and to that purpose kneeled down, and made his pathetical prayers unto the gods. [4893]Charicles, by chance, espying that curious picture of smiling Venus naked in her temple, stood a great while gazing, as one amazed; at length, he brake into that mad passionate speech, “O fortunate god Mars, that wast bound in chains, and made ridiculous for her sake!” He could not contain himself, but kissed her picture, I know not how oft, and heartily desired to be so disgraced as Mars was. And what did he that his betters had not done before him?
If you desire to know more particularly what this beauty is, how it doth Influere, how it doth fascinate (for, as all hold, love is a fascination), thus in brief. [4910]“This comeliness or beauty ariseth from the due proportion of the whole, or from each several part.” For an exact delineation of which, I refer you to poets, historiographers, and those amorous writers, to Lucian's Images, and Charidemus, Xenophon's description of Panthea, Petronius Catalectes, Heliodorus Chariclia, Tacius Leucippe, Longus Sophista's Daphnis and Chloe, Theodorus Prodromus his Rhodanthes, Aristaenetus and Philostratus Epistles, Balthazar Castilio, lib. 4. de aulico. Laurentius, cap. 10, de melan. Aeneas Sylvius his Lucretia, and every poet almost, which have most accurately described a perfect beauty, an absolute feature, and that through every member, both in men and women. Each part must concur to the perfection of it; for as Seneca saith, Ep. 33. lib. 4. Non est formosa mulier cujus crus laudatur et brachium, sed illa cujus simul universa facies admirationem singulis partibus dedit; “she is no fair woman, whose arm, thigh, &c. are commended, except the face and all the other parts be correspondent.” And the face especially gives a lustre to the rest: the face is it that commonly denominates a fair or foul: arx formae facies, the face is beauty's tower; and though the other parts be deformed, yet a good face carries it (facies non uxor amatur) that alone is most part respected, principally valued, deliciis suis ferox, and of itself able to captivate.
“Glycera's too fair a face was it that set him on fire, too fine to be beheld.” When [4912]Chaerea saw the singing wench's sweet looks, he was so taken, that he cried out, O faciem pulchram, deleo omnes dehinc ex animo mulieres, taedet quotidianarum harum formarum! “O fair face, I'll never love any but her, look on any other hereafter but her; I am weary of these ordinary beauties, away with them.” The more he sees her, the worse he is,—uritque videndo, as in a burning-glass, the sunbeams are re-collected to a centre, the rays of love are projected from her eyes. It was Aeneas's countenance ravished Queen Dido, Os humerosque Deo similis, he had an angelical face.A little soft hand, pretty little mouth, small, fine, long fingers, Gratiae quae digitis —'tis that which Apollo did admire in Daphne,—laudat digitosque manusque; a straight and slender body, a small foot, and well-proportioned leg, hath an excellent lustre, [4924]Cui totum incumbit corpus uti fundamento aedes. Clearchus vowed to his friend Amyander in [4925]Aristaenetus, that the most attractive part in his mistress, to make him love and like her first, was her pretty leg and foot: a soft and white skin, &c. have their peculiar graces, [4926]Nebula haud est mollior ac hujus cutis est, aedipol papillam bellulam. Though in men these parts are not so much respected; a grim Saracen sometimes,—nudus membra Pyracmon, a martial hirsute face pleaseth best; a black man is a pearl in a fair woman's eye, and is as acceptable as [4927]lame Vulcan was to Venus; for he being a sweaty fuliginous blacksmith, was dearly beloved of her, when fair Apollo, nimble Mercury were rejected, and the rest of the sweet-faced gods forsaken. Many women (as Petronius [4928]observes) sordibus calent (as many men are more moved with kitchen wenches, and a poor market maid, than all these illustrious court and city dames) will sooner dote upon a slave, a servant, a dirt dauber, a brontes, a cook, a player, if they see his naked legs or arms, thorosaque brachia, [4929]&c., like that huntsman Meleager in Philostratus, though he be all in rags, obscene and dirty, besmeared like a ruddleman, a gipsy, or a chimney-sweeper, than upon a noble gallant, Nireus, Ephestion, Alcibiades, or those embroidered courtiers full of silk and gold. [4930]Justine's wife, a citizen of Rome, fell in love with Pylades a player, and was ready to run mad for him, had not Galen himself helped her by chance. Faustina the empress doted on a fencer.
Not one of a thousand falls in love, but there is some peculiar part or other which pleaseth most, and inflames him above the rest. [4931]A company of young philosophers on a time fell at variance, which part of a woman was most desirable and pleased best? some said the forehead, some the teeth, some the eyes, cheeks, lips, neck, chin, &c., the controversy was referred to Lais of Corinth to decide; but she, smiling, said, they were a company of fools; for suppose they had her where they wished, what would they [4932]first seek? Yet this notwithstanding I do easily grant, neque quis vestrum negaverit opinor, all parts are attractive, but especially [4933]the eyes, [4934]
Now last of all, I will show you by what means beauty doth fascinate, bewitch, as some hold, and work upon the soul of a man by the eye. For certainly I am of the poet's mind, love doth bewitch and strangely change us.
Natural beauty is a stronger loadstone of itself, as you have heard, a great temptation, and pierceth to the very heart; [4967]forma verecundae, nocuit mihi visa puellae; but much more when those artificial enticements and provocations of gestures, clothes, jewels, pigments, exornations, shall be annexed unto it; those other circumstances, opportunity of time and place shall concur, which of themselves alone were all sufficient, each one in particular to produce this effect. It is a question much controverted by some wise men, forma debeat plus arti an naturae? Whether natural or artificial objects be more powerful? but not decided: for my part I am of opinion, that though beauty itself be a great motive, and give an excellent lustre in sordibus, in beggary, as a jewel on a dunghill will shine and cast his rays, it cannot be suppressed, which Heliodorus feigns of Chariclia, though she were in beggar's weeds: yet as it is used, artificial is of more force, and much to be preferred.
David so espied Bathsheba, the elders Susanna: [4993]Apelles was enamoured with Campaspe, when he was to paint her naked. Tiberius in Suet. cap. 42. supped with Sestius Gallus an old lecher, libidinoso sene, ea lege ut nudae puellae administrarent; some say as much of Nero, and Pontus Huter of Carolus Pugnax. Amongst the Babylonians, it was the custom of some lascivious queans to dance frisking in that fashion, saith Curtius lib. 5. and Sardus de mor. gent. lib. 1. writes of others to that effect. The [4994]Tuscans at some set banquets had naked women to attend upon them, which Leonicus de Varia hist. lib. 3. cap. 96. confirms of such other bawdy nations. Nero would have filthy pictures still hanging in his chamber, which is too commonly used in our times, and Heliogabalus, etiam coram agentes, ut ad venerem incitarent: So things may be abused. A servant maid in Aristaenetus spied her master and mistress through the key-hole [4995]merrily disposed; upon the sight she fell in love with her master. [4996]Antoninus Caracalla observed his mother-in-law with her breasts amorously laid open, he was so much moved, that he said, Ah si liceret, O that I might; which she by chance overhearing, replied as impudently, [4997]Quicquid libet licet, thou mayst do what thou wilt: and upon that temptation he married her: this object was not in cause, not the thing itself, but that unseemly, indecent carriage of it.
When you have all done, veniunt a veste sagittae the greatest provocations of lust are from our apparel; God makes, they say, man shapes, and there is no motive like unto it;
Why do they keep in so long together, a whole winter sometimes, and will not be seen but by torch or candlelight, and come abroad with all the preparation may be, when they have no business, but only to show themselves? Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae.
“one spent as much as two funerals at once, and with perfumed hairs,” [5027]et rosa canos odorati capillos Assyriaque nardo. What strange thing doth [5028]Sueton. relate in this matter of Caligula's riot? And Pliny, lib. 12. & 13. Read more in Dioscorides, Ulmus, Arnoldus, Randoletius de fuco et decoratione; for it is now an art, as it was of old, (so [5029]Seneca records) officinae, sunt adores coquentium. Women are bad and men worse, no difference at all between their and our times; [5030]“good manners” (as Seneca complains) “are extinct with wantonness, in tricking up themselves men go beyond women, they wear harlots' colours, and do not walk, but jet and dance,” hic mulier, haec vir, more like players, butterflies, baboons, apes, antics, than men. So ridiculous, moreover, we are in our attires, and for cost so excessive, that as Hierome said of old, Uno filio villarum insunt pretia, uno lino decies sestertium inseritur; 'tis an ordinary thing to put a thousand oaks and a hundred oxen into a suit of apparel, to wear a whole manor on his back. What with shoe-ties, hangers, points, caps and feathers, scarves, bands, curls, &c., in a short space their whole patrimonies are consumed. Heliogabalus is taxed by Lampridius, and admired in his age for wearing jewels in his shoes, a common thing in our times, not for emperors and princes, but almost for serving men and tailors; all the flowers, stars, constellations, gold and precious stones do condescend to set out their shoes. To repress the luxury of those Roman matrons, there was [5031]Lex Valeria and Oppia, and a Cato to contradict; but no laws will serve to repress the pride and insolency of our days, the prodigious riot in this kind. Lucullus's wardrobe is put down by our ordinary citizens; and a cobbler's wife in Venice, a courtesan in Florence, is no whit inferior to a queen, if our geographers say true: and why is all this? “Why do they glory in their jewels” (as [5032]he saith) “or exult and triumph in the beauty of clothes? why is all this cost? to incite men the sooner to burning lust.” They pretend decency and ornament; but let them take heed, that while they set out their bodies they do not damn their souls; 'tis [5033]Bernard's counsel: “shine in jewels, stink in conditions; have purple robes, and a torn conscience.” Let them take heed of Isaiah's prophecy, that their slippers and attires be not taken from them, sweet balls, bracelets, earrings, veils, wimples, crisping-pins, glasses, fine linen, hoods, lawns, and sweet savours, they become not bald, burned, and stink upon a sudden. And let maids beware, as [5034]Cyprian adviseth, “that while they wander too loosely abroad, they lose not their virginities:” and like Egyptian temples, seem fair without, but prove rotten carcases within. How much better were it for them to follow that good counsel of Tertullian? [5035]“To have their eyes painted with chastity, the Word of God inserted into their ears, Christ's yoke tied to the hair, to subject themselves to their husbands. If they would do so, they should be comely enough, clothe themselves with the silk of sanctity, damask of devotion, purple of piety and chastity, and so painted, they shall have God himself to be a suitor: let whores and queans prank up themselves, [5036]let them paint their faces with minion and ceruse, they are but fuels of lust, and signs of a corrupt soul: if ye be good, honest, virtuous, and religious matrons, let sobriety, modesty and chastity be your honour, and God himself your love and desire.” Mulier recte olet, ubi nihil olet, then a woman smells best, when she hath no perfume at all; no crown, chain, or jewel (Guivarra adds) is such an ornament to a virgin, or virtuous woman, quam virgini pudor, as chastity is: more credit in a wise man's eye and judgment they get by their plainness, and seem fairer than they that are set out with baubles, as a butcher's meat is with pricks, puffed up, and adorned like so many jays with variety of colours. It is reported of Cornelia, that virtuous Roman lady, great Scipio's daughter, Titus Sempronius' wife, and the mother of the Gracchi, that being by chance in company with a companion, a strange gentlewoman (some light housewife belike, that was dressed like a May lady, and, as most of our gentlewomen are, “was [5037]more solicitous of her head-tire than of her health, that spent her time between a comb and a glass, and had rather be fair than honest” (as Cato said), “and have the commonwealth turned topsy-turvy than her tires marred;” and she did nought but brag of her fine robes and jewels, and provoked the Roman matron to show hers: Cornelia kept her in talk till her children came from school, and these, said she, are my jewels, and so deluded and put off a proud, vain, fantastical, housewife. How much better were it for our matrons to do as she did, to go civilly and decently, [5038]Honestae mulieris instar quae utitur auro pro eo quod est, ad ea tantum quibus opus est, to use gold as it is gold, and for that use it serves, and when they need it, than to consume it in riot, beggar their husbands, prostitute themselves, inveigle others, and peradventure damn their own souls? How much more would it be for their honour and credit? Thus doing, as Hierom said of Blesilla, [5039]“Furius did not so triumph over the Gauls, Papyrius of the Samnites, Scipio of Numantia, as she did by her temperance;” pulla semper veste, &c., they should insult and domineer over lust, folly, vainglory, all such inordinate, furious and unruly passions.
But I am over tedious, I confess, and whilst I stand gaping after fine clothes, there is another great allurement, (in the world's eye at least) which had like to have stolen out of sight, and that is money, veniunt a dote sagittae, money makes the match; [5040]Μονὸν ἄργυρον βλέπουσιν: 'tis like sauce to their meat, cum carne condimentum, a good dowry with a wife. Many men if they do hear but of a great portion, a rich heir, are more mad than if they had all the beauteous ornaments, and those good parts art and nature can afford, they [5041]care not for honesty, bringing up, birth, beauty, person, but for money.
All these allurements hitherto are afar off, and at a distance; I will come nearer to those other degrees of love, which are conference, kissing, dalliance, discourse, singing, dancing, amorous tales, objects, presents, &c., which as so many sirens steal away the hearts of men and women. For, as Tacitus observes, l. 2, [5054]“It is no sufficient trial of a maid's affection by her eyes alone, but you must say something that shall be more available, and use such other forcible engines; therefore take her by the hand, wring her fingers hard, and sigh withal; if she accept this in good part, and seem not to be much averse, then call her mistress, take her about the neck and kiss her, &c.” But this cannot be done except they first get opportunity of living, or coming together, ingress, egress, and regress; letters and commendations may do much, outward gestures and actions: but when they come to live near one another, in the same street, village, or together in a house, love is kindled on a sudden. Many a serving-man by reason of this opportunity and importunity inveigles his master's daughter, many a gallant loves a dowdy, many a gentleman runs upon his wife's maids; many ladies dote upon their men, as the queen in Ariosto did upon the dwarf, many matches are so made in haste, and they are compelled as it were by [5055]necessity so to love, which had they been free, come in company of others, seen that variety which many places afford, or compared them to a third, would never have looked one upon another. Or had not that opportunity of discourse and familiarity been offered, they would have loathed and contemned those whom, for want of better choice and other objects, they are fatally driven on, and by reason of their hot blood, idle life, full diet, &c., are forced to dote upon them that come next. And many times those which at the first sight cannot fancy or affect each other, but are harsh and ready to disagree, offended with each other's carriage, like Benedict and Beatrice in the [5056]comedy, and in whom they find many faults, by this living together in a house, conference, kissing, colling, and such like allurements, begin at last to dote insensibly one upon another.
It was the greatest motive that Potiphar's wife had to dote upon Joseph, and [5057]Clitiphon upon Leucippe his uncle's daughter, because the plague being at Bizance, it was his fortune for a time to sojourn with her, to sit next her at the table, as he tells the tale himself in Tatius, lib. 2. (which, though it be but a fiction, is grounded upon good observation, and doth well express the passions of lovers), he had opportunity to take her by the hand, and after a while to kiss, and handle her paps, &c., [5058] which made him almost mad. Ismenias the orator makes the like confession in Eustathius, lib. 1, when he came first to Sosthene's house, and sat at table with Cratistes his friend, Ismene, Sosthene's daughter, waiting on them “with her breasts open, arms half bare,” [5059]Nuda pedem, discincta sinum, spoliata lacertos; after the Greek fashion in those times,—[5060] nudos media plus parte lacertos, as Daphne was when she fled from Phoebus (which moved him much), was ever ready to give attendance on him, to fill him drink, her eyes were never off him, rogabundi oculi, those speaking eyes, courting eyes, enchanting eyes; but she was still smiling on him, and when they were risen, that she had got a little opportunity, [5061]“she came and drank to him, and withal trod upon his toes, and would come and go, and when she could not speak for the company, she would wring his hand,” and blush when she met him: and by this means first she overcame him (bibens amorem hauriebam simul), she would kiss the cup and drink to him, and smile, “and drink where he drank on that side of the cup,” by which mutual compressions, kissings, wringing of hands, treading of feet, &c. Ipsam mihi videbar sorbillare virginem, I sipped and sipped so long, till at length I was drunk in love upon a sudden. Philocharinus, in [5062] Aristaenetus, met a fair maid by chance, a mere stranger to him, he looked back at her, she looked back at him again, and smiled withal.
This opportunity of time and place, with their circumstances, are so forcible motives, that it is impossible almost for two young folks equal in years to live together, and not be in love, especially in great houses, princes' courts, where they are idle in summo gradu, fare well, live at ease, and cannot tell otherwise how to spend their time. [5065]Illic Hippolitum pone, Priapus erit. Achilles was sent by his mother Thetis to the island of Scyros in the Aegean sea (where Lycomedes then reigned) in his nonage to be brought up; to avoid that hard destiny of the oracle (he should be slain at the siege of Troy): and for that cause was nurtured in Genesco, amongst the king's children in a woman's habit; but see the event: he compressed Deidamia, the king's fair daughter, and had a fine son, called Pyrrhus by her. Peter Abelard the philosopher, as he tells the tale himself, being set by Fulbertus her uncle to teach Heloise his lovely niece, and to that purpose sojourned in his house, and had committed agnam tenellam famelico lupo, I use his own words, he soon got her good will, plura erant oscula quam sententiae and he read more of love than any other lecture; such pretty feats can opportunity plea; primum domo conjuncti, inde animis, &c. But when as I say, nox, vinum, et adolescentia, youth, wine, and night, shall concur, nox amoris et quietis conscia, 'tis a wonder they be not all plunged over head and ears in love; for youth is benigna in amorem, et prona materies, a very combustible matter, naphtha itself, the fuel of love's fire, and most apt to kindle it. If there be seven servants in an ordinary house, you shall have three couple in some good liking at least, and amongst idle persons how should it be otherwise? “Living at [5066]Rome,” saith Aretine's Lucretia, “in the flower of my fortunes, rich, fair, young, and so well brought up, my conversation, age, beauty, fortune, made all the world admire and love me.” Night alone, that one occasion, is enough to set all on fire, and they are so cunning in great houses, that they make their best advantage of it: Many a gentlewoman, that is guilty to herself of her imperfections, paintings, impostures, will not willingly be seen by day, but as [5067]Castilio noteth, in the night, Diem ut glis odit, taedarum lucem super omnia mavult, she hateth the day like a dormouse, and above all things loves torches and candlelight, and if she must come abroad in the day, she covets, as [5068]in a mercer's shop, a very obfuscate and obscure sight. And good reason she hath for it: Nocte latent mendae, and many an amorous gull is fetched over by that means. Gomesius lib. 3. de sale gen. c. 22. gives instance in a Florentine gentleman, that was so deceived with a wife, she was so radiantly set out with rings and jewels, lawns, scarves, laces, gold, spangles, and gaudy devices, that the young man took her to be a goddess (for he never saw her but by torchlight); but after the wedding solemnities, when as he viewed her the next morning without her tires, and in a clear day, she was so deformed, a lean, yellow, shrivelled, &c., such a beastly creature in his eyes, that he could not endure to look upon her. Such matches are frequently made in Italy, where they have no other opportunity to woo but when they go to church, or, as [5069]in Turkey, see them at a distance, they must interchange few or no words, till such time they come to be married, and then as Sardus lib. 1. cap. 3. de morb. gent. and [5070]Bohemus relate of those old Lacedaemonians, “the bride is brought into the chamber, with her hair girt about her, the bridegroom comes in and unties the knot, and must not see her at all by daylight, till such time as he is made a father by her.” In those hotter countries these are ordinary practices at this day; but in our northern parts, amongst Germans, Danes, French, and Britons, the continent of Scandia and the rest, we assume more liberty in such cases; we allow them, as Bohemus saith, to kiss coming and going, et modo absit lascivia, in cauponem ducere, to talk merrily, sport, play, sing, and dance so that it be modestly done, go to the alehouse and tavern together. And 'tis not amiss, though [5071] Chrysostom, Cyprian, Hierome, and some other of the fathers speak bitterly against it: but that is the abuse which is commonly seen at some drunken matches, dissolute meetings, or great unruly feasts. [5072]“A young, pickedevanted, trim-bearded fellow,” saith Hierome, “will come with a company of compliments, and hold you up by the arm as you go, and wringing your fingers, will so be enticed, or entice: one drinks to you, another embraceth, a third kisseth, and all this while the fiddler plays or sings a lascivious song; a fourth singles you out to dance, [5073]one speaks by beck and signs, and that which he dares not say, signifies by passions; amongst so many and so great provocations of pleasure, lust conquers the most hard and crabbed minds, and scarce can a man live honest amongst feastings, and sports, or at such great meetings.” For as he goes on, [5074]“she walks along and with the ruffling of her clothes, makes men look at her, her shoes creak, her paps tied up, her waist pulled in to make her look small, she is straight girded, her hairs hang loose about her ears, her upper garment sometimes falls, and sometimes tarries to show her naked shoulders, and as if she would not be seen, she covers that in all haste, which voluntarily she showed.” And not at feasts, plays, pageants, and such assemblies, [5075]but as Chrysostom objects, these tricks are put in practice “at service time in churches, and at the communion itself.” If such dumb shows, signs, and more obscure significations of love can so move, what shall they do that have full liberty to sing, dance, kiss, coll, to use all manner of discourse and dalliance! What shall he do that is beleaguered of all sides?
[5088]Peter Aretine's Lucretia telleth as much and more of herself, “I counterfeited honesty, as if I had been virgo virginissima, more than a vestal virgin, I looked like a wife, I was so demure and chaste, I did add such gestures, tunes, speeches, signs and motions upon all occasions, that my spectators and auditors were stupefied, enchanted, fastened all to their places, like so many stocks and stones.” Many silly gentlewomen are fetched over in like sort, by a company of gulls and swaggering companions, that frequently belie noblemen's favours, rhyming Coribantiasmi, Thrasonean Rhadomantes or Bombomachides, that have nothing in them but a few player's ends and compliments, vain braggadocians, impudent intruders, that can discourse at table of knights and lords' combats, like [5089]Lucian's Leonitiscus, of other men's travels, brave adventures, and such common trivial news, ride, dance, sing old ballad tunes, and wear their clothes in fashion, with a good grace; a fine sweet gentleman, a proper man, who could not love him! She will have him though all her friends say no, though she beg with him. Some again are incensed by reading amorous toys, Amadis de Gaul, Palmerin de Oliva, the Knight of the Sun, &c., or hearing such tales of [5090]lovers, descriptions of their persons, lascivious discourses, such as Astyanassa, Helen's waiting-woman, by the report of Suidas, writ of old, de variis concubitus modis, and after her Philenis and Elephantine; or those light tracts of[5091]Aristides Milesius (mentioned by Plutarch) and found by the Persians in Crassus' army amongst the spoils, Aretine's dialogues, with ditties, love songs, &c., must needs set them on fire, with such like pictures, as those of Aretine, or wanton objects of what kind soever; “no stronger engine than to hear or read of love toys, fables and discourses” ([5092]one saith) “and many by this means are quite mad.” At Abdera in Thrace (Andromeda one of Euripides' tragedies being played) the spectators were so much moved with the object, and those pathetical love speeches of Perseus, amongst the rest, “O Cupid, Prince of Gods and men,” &c. that every man almost a good while after spake pure iambics, and raved still on Perseus' speech, “O Cupid, Prince of Gods and men.” As carmen, boys and apprentices, when a new song is published with us, go singing that new tune still in the streets, they continually acted that tragical part of Perseus, and in every man's mouth was “O Cupid,” in every street, “O Cupid,” in every house almost, “O Cupid, Prince of Gods and men,” pronouncing still like stage-players, “O Cupid;” they were so possessed all with that rapture, and thought of that pathetical love speech, they could not a long time after forget, or drive it out of their minds, but “O Cupid, Prince of Gods and men,” was ever in their mouths. This belike made Aristotle, Polit. lib. 7. cap. 18. forbid young men to see comedies, or to hear amorous tales.
To kiss and be kissed, which, amongst other lascivious provocations, is as a burden in a song, and a most forcible battery, as infectious, [5096] Xenophon thinks, as the poison of a spider; a great allurement, a fire itself, prooemium aut anticoenium, the prologue of burning lust (as Apuleius adds), lust itself, [5097]Venus quinta parte sui nectaris imbuit, a strong assault, that conquers captains, and those all commanding forces, ([5098]Domasque ferro sed domaris osculo). [5099]Aretine's Lucretia, when she would in kindness overcome a suitor of hers, and have her desire of him, “took him about the neck, and kissed him again and again,” and to that, which she could not otherwise effect, she made him so speedily and willingly condescend. And 'tis a continual assault,—[5100]hoc non deficit incipitque semper, always fresh, and ready to [5101]begin as at first, basium nullo fine terminatur, sed semper recens est, and hath a fiery touch with it.
That which I aim at, is to show you the progress of this burning lust; to epitomise therefore all this which I have hitherto said, with a familiar example out of that elegant Musaeus, observe but with me those amorous proceedings of Leander and Hero: they began first to look one on another with a lascivious look,
Many such allurements there are, nods, jests, winks, smiles, wrestlings, tokens, favours, symbols, letters, valentines, &c. For which cause belike, Godfridus lib. 2. de amor. would not have women learn to write. Many such provocations are used when they come in presence, [5123]10 they will and will not,
It is reported of Decius, and Valerianus, those two notorious persecutors of the church, that when they could enforce a young Christian by no means (as [5136]Hierome records) to sacrifice to their idols, by no torments or promises, they took another course to tempt him: they put him into a fair garden, and set a young courtesan to dally with him, [5137]“took him about the neck and kissed him, and that which is not to be named,” manibusque attrectare, &c., and all those enticements which might be used, that whom torments could not, love might batter and beleaguer. But such was his constancy, she could not overcome, and when this last engine would take no place, they left him to his own ways. At [5138]Berkley in Gloucestershire, there was in times past a nunnery (saith Gualterus Mapes, an old historiographer, that lived 400 years since), “of which there was a noble and a fair lady abbess: Godwin, that subtile Earl of Kent, travelling that way, (seeking not her but hers) leaves a nephew of his, a proper young gallant (as if he had been sick) with her, till he came back again, and gives the young man charge so long to counterfeit, till he had deflowered the abbess, and as many besides of the nuns as he could, and leaves him withal rings, jewels, girdles, and such toys to give them still, when they came to visit him. The young man, willing to undergo such a business, played his part so well, that in short space he got up most of their bellies, and when he had done, told his lord how he had sped: [5139]his lord made instantly to the court, tells the king how such a nunnery was become a bawdy-house, procures a visitation, gets them to be turned out, and begs the lands to his own use.” This story I do therefore repeat, that you may see of what force these enticements are, if they be opportunely used, and how hard it is even for the most averse and sanctified souls to resist such allurements. John Major in the life of John the monk, that lived in the days of Theodosius, commends the hermit to have been a man of singular continency, and of a most austere life; but one night by chance the devil came to his cell in the habit of a young market wench that had lost her way, and desired for God's sake some lodging with him. [5140]“The old man let her in, and after some common conference of her mishap, she began to inveigle him with lascivious talk and jests, to play with his beard, to kiss him, and do worse, till at last she overcame him. As he went to address himself to that business, she vanished on a sudden, and the devils in the air laughed him to scorn.” Whether this be a true story, or a tale, I will not much contend, it serves to illustrate this which I have said.
Yet were it so, that these of which I have hitherto spoken, and such like enticing baits, be not sufficient, there be many others, which will of themselves intend this passion of burning lust, amongst which, dancing is none of the least; and it is an engine of such force, I may not omit it. Incitamentum libidinis, Petrarch calls it, the spur of lust. “A [5141] circle of which the devil himself is the centre. [5142]Many women that use it, have come dishonest home, most indifferent, none better.” [5143] Another terms it “the companion of all filthy delights and enticements, and 'tis not easily told what inconveniences come by it, what scurrile talk, obscene actions,” and many times such monstrous gestures, such lascivious motions, such wanton tunes, meretricious kisses, homely embracings.
If these allurements do not take place, for [5167]Simierus, that great master of dalliance, shall not behave himself better, the more effectually to move others, and satisfy their lust, they will swear and lie, promise, protest, forge, counterfeit, brag, bribe, flatter and dissemble of all sides. 'Twas Lucretia's counsel in Aretine, Si vis amica frui, promitte, finge, jura, perjura, jacta, simula, mentire; and they put it well in practice, as Apollo to Daphne,
When all other engines fail, that they can proceed no farther of themselves, their last refuge is to fly to bawds, panders, magical philters, and receipts; rather than fail, to the devil himself. Flectere si nequeunt superos, Acheronta movebunt. And by those indirect means many a man is overcome, and precipitated into this malady, if he take not good heed. For these bawds, first, they are everywhere so common, and so many, that, as he said of old [5204]Croton, omnes hic aut captantur, aut captant, either inveigle or be inveigled, we may say of most of our cities, there be so many professed, cunning bawds in them. Besides, bawdry is become an art, or a liberal science, as Lucian calls it; and there be such tricks and subtleties, so many nurses, old women, panders, letter carriers, beggars, physicians, friars, confessors, employed about it, that nullus tradere stilus sufficiat, one saith,
The last battering engines are philters, amulets, spells, charms, images, and such unlawful means: if they cannot prevail of themselves by the help of bawds, panders, and their adherents, they will fly for succour to the devil himself. I know there be those that deny the devil can do any such thing (Crato epist. 2. lib. med.), and many divines, there is no other fascination than that which comes by the eyes, of which I have formerly spoken, and if you desire to be better informed, read Camerarius, oper subcis. cent. 2. c. 5. It was given out of old, that a Thessalian wench had bewitched King Philip to dote upon her, and by philters enforced his love; but when Olympia, the Queen, saw the maid of an excellent beauty, well brought up, and qualified—these, quoth she, were the philters which inveigled King Philip; those the true charms, as Henry to Rosamond,
Symptoms are either of body or mind; of body, paleness, leanness, dryness, &c. [5238]Pallidus omnis amans, color hic est aptus amanti, as the poet describes lovers: fecit amor maciem, love causeth leanness. [5239] Avicenna de Ilishi, c. 33. “makes hollow eyes, dryness, symptoms of this disease, to go smiling to themselves, or acting as if they saw or heard some delectable object.” Valleriola, lib. 3. observat. cap. 7. Laurentius, cap. 10. Aelianus Montaltus de Her. amore. Langius, epist. 24. lib. 1. epist. med. deliver as much, corpus exangue pallet, corpus gracile, oculi cavi, lean, pale,—ut nudis qui pressit calcibus anguem, “as one who trod with naked foot upon a snake,” hollow-eyed, their eyes are hidden in their heads,—[5240]Tenerque nitidi corposis cecidit decor, they pine away, and look ill with waking, cares, sighs.
Accius Sanazarius Egloga 2. de Galatea, in the same manner feigns his Lychoris [5249]tormenting herself for want of sleep, sighing, sobbing, and lamenting; and Eustathius in his Ismenias much troubled, and [5250] “panting at heart, at the sight of his mistress,” he could not sleep, his bed was thorns. [5251]All make leanness, want of appetite, want of sleep ordinary symptoms, and by that means they are brought often so low, so much altered and changed, that as [5252]he jested in the comedy, “one scarce know them to be the same men.”
But the symptoms of the mind in lovers are almost infinite, and so diverse, that no art can comprehend them; though they be merry sometimes, and rapt beyond themselves for joy: yet most part, love is a plague, a torture, a hell, a bitter sweet passion at last; [5295]Amor melle et felle est faecundissimus, gustum dat dulcem et amarum. 'Tis suavis amaricies, dolentia delectabilis, hilare tormentum;
Every poet is full of such catalogues of love symptoms; but fear and sorrow may justly challenge the chief place. Though Hercules de Saxonia, cap. 3. Tract. de melanch. will exclude fear from love melancholy, yet I am otherwise persuaded. [5302]Res est solliciti plena timoris amor. 'Tis full of fear, anxiety, doubt, care, peevishness, suspicion; it turns a man into a woman, which made Hesiod belike put Fear and Paleness Venus' daughters,
He is then too confident and rapt beyond himself, as if he had heard the nightingale in the spring before the cuckoo, or as [5312]Calisto was at Malebaeas' presence, Quis unquam hac mortali vita, tam gloriosum corpus vidit? humanitatem transcendere videor., &c. who ever saw so glorious a sight, what man ever enjoyed such delight? More content cannot be given of the gods, wished, had or hoped of any mortal man. There is no happiness in the world comparable to his, no content, no joy to this, no life to love, he is in paradise.
Morning, evening, all is alike with me, I have restless thoughts, [5338] Te vigilans oculis, animo te nocte requiro. Still I think on thee. Anima non est ubi animat, sed ubi amat. I live and breathe in thee, I wish for thee.
Now if this passion of love can produce such effects, if it be pleasantly intended, what bitter torments shall it breed, when it is with fear and continual sorrow, suspicion, care, agony, as commonly it is, still accompanied, what an intolerable [5343]pain must it be?
Now to this end and purpose, if there be any hope of obtaining his suit, to prosecute his cause, he will spend himself, goods, fortunes for her, and though he lose and alienate all his friends, be threatened, be cast off, and disinherited; for as the poet saith, Amori quis legem det?[5375] though he be utterly undone by it, disgraced, go a begging, yet for her sweet sake, to enjoy her, he will willingly beg, hazard all he hath, goods, lands, shame, scandal, fame, and life itself.
Undoubtedly this may be pronounced of them all, they are very slaves, drudges for the time, madmen, fools, dizzards, atrabilarii[5380], beside themselves, and as blind as beetles. Their dotage [5381]is most eminent, Amore simul et sapere ipsi Jovi non datur, as Seneca holds, Jupiter himself cannot love and be wise both together; the very best of them, if once they be overtaken with this passion, the most staid, discreet, grave, generous and wise, otherwise able to govern themselves, in this commit many absurdities, many indecorums, unbefitting their gravity and persons.
The major part of lovers are carried headlong like so many brute beasts, reason counsels one way, thy friends, fortunes, shame, disgrace, danger, and an ocean of cares that will certainly follow; yet this furious lust precipitates, counterpoiseth, weighs down on the other; though it be their utter undoing, perpetual infamy, loss, yet they will do it, and become at last insensati, void of sense; degenerate into dogs, hogs, asses, brutes; as Jupiter into a bull, Apuleius an ass, Lycaon a wolf, Tereus a lapwing,[5387]Calisto a bear, Elpenor and Grillus info swine by Circe. For what else may we think those ingenious poets to have shadowed in their witty fictions and poems but that a man once given over to his lust (as [5388]Fulgentius interprets that of Apuleius, Alciat of Tereus) “is no better than a beast.”
To thy thinking she is a most loathsome creature; and as when a country fellow discommended once that exquisite picture of Helen, made by Zeuxis, [5406]for he saw no such beauty in it; Nichomachus a lovesick spectator replied, Sume tibi meos oculos et deam existimabis, take mine eyes, and thou wilt think she is a goddess, dote on her forthwith, count all her vices virtues; her imperfections infirmities, absolute and perfect: if she be flat-nosed, she is lovely; if hook-nosed, kingly; if dwarfish and little, pretty; if tall, proper and man-like, our brave British Boadicea; if crooked, wise; if monstrous, comely; her defects are no defects at all, she hath no deformities. Immo nec ipsum amicae stercus foetet, though she be nasty, fulsome, as Sostratus' bitch, or Parmeno's sow; thou hadst as live have a snake in thy bosom, a toad in thy dish, and callest her witch, devil, hag, with all the filthy names thou canst invent; he admires her on the other side, she is his idol, lady, mistress, [5407]venerilla, queen, the quintessence of beauty, an angel, a star, a goddess.
They are commonly slaves, captives, voluntary servants, Amator amicae mancipium, as [5420]Castilio terms him, his mistress' servant, her drudge, prisoner, bondman, what not? “He composeth himself wholly to her affections to please her, and, as Aemelia said, makes himself her lackey. All his cares, actions, all his thoughts, are subordinate to her will and commandment:” her most devote, obsequious, affectionate servant and vassal. “For love” (as [5421]Cyrus in Xenophon well observed) “is a mere tyranny, worse than any disease, and they that are troubled with it desire to be free and cannot, but are harder bound than if they were in iron chains.” What greater captivity or slavery can there be (as [5422]Tully expostulates) than to be in love? “Is he a free man over whom a woman domineers, to whom she prescribes laws, commands, forbids what she will herself; that dares deny nothing she demands; she asks, he gives; she calls, he comes; she threatens, he fears; Nequissimum hunc servum puto, I account this man a very drudge.” And as he follows it, [5423]“Is this no small servitude for an enamourite to be every hour combing his head, stiffening his beard, perfuming his hair, washing his face with sweet water, painting, curling, and not to come abroad but sprucely crowned, decked, and apparelled?” Yet these are but toys in respect, to go to the barber, baths, theatres, &c., he must attend upon her wherever she goes, run along the streets by her doors and windows to see her, take all opportunities, sleeveless errands, disguise, counterfeit shapes, and as many forms as Jupiter himself ever took; and come every day to her house (as he will surely do if he be truly enamoured) and offer her service, and follow her up and down from room to room, as Lucretia's suitors did, he cannot contain himself but he will do it, he must and will be where she is, sit next her, still talking with her. [5424]“If I did but let my glove fall by chance,” (as the said Aretine's Lucretia brags,) “I had one of my suitors, nay two or three at once ready to stoop and take it up, and kiss it, and with a low conge deliver it unto me; if I would walk, another was ready to sustain me by the arm. A third to provide fruits, pears, plums, cherries, or whatsoever I would eat or drink.” All this and much more he doth in her presence, and when he comes home, as Troilus to his Cressida, 'tis all his meditation to recount with himself his actions, words, gestures, what entertainment he had, how kindly she used him in such a place, how she smiled, how she graced him, and that infinitely pleased him; and then he breaks out, O sweet Areusa, O my dearest Antiphila, O most divine looks, O lovely graces, and thereupon instantly he makes an epigram, or a sonnet to five or seven tunes, in her commendation, or else he ruminates how she rejected his service, denied him a kiss, disgraced him, &c., and that as effectually torments him. And these are his exercises between comb and glass, madrigals, elegies, &c., these his cogitations till he see her again. But all this is easy and gentle, and the least part of his labour and bondage, no hunter will take such pains for his game, fowler for his sport, or soldier to sack a city, as he will for his mistress' favour.
The very carrier that comes from him to her is a most welcome guest; and if he bring a letter, she will read it twenty times over, and as [5456] Lucretia did by Euryalus, “kiss the letter a thousand times together, and then read it:” And [5457]Chelidonia by Philonius, after many sweet kisses, put the letter in her bosom,
Yet for all this, amongst so many irksome, absurd, troublesome symptoms, inconveniences, fantastical fits and passions which are usually incident to such persons, there be some good and graceful qualities in lovers, which this affection causeth. “As it makes wise men fools, so many times it makes fools become wise; [5486]it makes base fellows become generous, cowards courageous,” as Cardan notes out of Plutarch; “covetous, liberal and magnificent; clowns, civil; cruel, gentle; wicked, profane persons, to become religious; slovens, neat; churls, merciful; and dumb dogs, eloquent; your lazy drones, quick and nimble.” Feras mentes domat cupido, that fierce, cruel and rude Cyclops Polyphemus sighed, and shed many a salt tear for Galatea's sake. No passion causeth greater alterations, or more vehement of joy or discontent. Plutarch. Sympos. lib. 5. quaest. 1, [5487] saith, “that the soul of a man in love is full of perfumes and sweet odours, and all manner of pleasing tones and tunes, insomuch that it is hard to say (as he adds) whether love do mortal men more harm than good.” It adds spirits and makes them, otherwise soft and silly, generous and courageous, [5488]Audacem faciebat amor. Ariadne's love made Theseus so adventurous, and Medea's beauty Jason so victorious; expectorat amor timorem. [5489]Plato is of opinion that the love of Venus made Mars so valorous. “A young man will be much abashed to commit any foul offence that shall come to the hearing or sight of his mistress.” As [5490]he that desired of his enemy now dying, to lay him with his face upward, ne amasius videret eum a tergo vulneratum, lest his sweetheart should say he was a coward. “And if it were [5491]possible to have an army consist of lovers, such as love, or are beloved, they would be extraordinary valiant and wise in their government, modesty would detain them from doing amiss, emulation incite them to do that which is good and honest, and a few of them would overcome a great company of others.” There is no man so pusillanimous, so very a dastard, whom love would not incense, make of a divine temper, and an heroical spirit. As he said in like case, [5492] Tota ruat caeli moles, non terreor, &c. Nothing can terrify, nothing can dismay them. But as Sir Blandimor and Paridel, those two brave fairy knights, fought for the love of fair Florimel in presence—
Not courage only doth love add, but as I said, subtlety, wit, and many pretty devices, [5501]Namque dolos inspirat amor, fraudesque ministrat, [5502]Jupiter in love with Leda, and not knowing how to compass his desire, turned himself into a swan, and got Venus to pursue him in the likeness of an eagle; which she doing, for shelter, he fled to Leda's lap, et in ejus gremio se collocavit, Leda embraced him, and so fell fast asleep, sed dormientem Jupiter compressit, by which means Jupiter had his will. Infinite such tricks love can devise, such fine feats in abundance, with wisdom and wariness, [5503]quis fallere possit amantem. All manner of civility, decency, compliment and good behaviour, plus solis et leporis, polite graces and merry conceits. Boccaccio hath a pleasant tale to this purpose, which he borrowed from the Greeks, and which Beroaldus hath turned into Latin, Bebelius in verse, of Cymon and Iphigenia. This Cymon was a fool, a proper man of person, and the governor of Cyprus' son. but a very ass, insomuch that his father being ashamed of him, sent him to a farmhouse he had in the country, to be brought up. Where by chance, as his manner was, walking alone, he espied a gallant young gentlewoman, named Iphigenia, a burgomaster's daughter of Cyprus, with her maid, by a brook side in a little thicket, fast asleep in her smock, where she had newly bathed herself: “When [5504]Cymon saw her, he stood leaning on his staff, gaping on her immovable, and in amaze;” at last he fell so far in love with the glorious object, that he began to rouse himself up, to bethink what he was, would needs follow her to the city, and for her sake began to be civil, to learn to sing and dance, to play on instruments, and got all those gentlemanlike qualities and compliments in a short space, which his friends were most glad of. In brief, he became, from an idiot and a clown, to be one of the most complete gentlemen in Cyprus, did many valorous exploits, and all for the love of mistress Iphigenia. In a word, I may say thus much of them all, let them be never so clownish, rude and horrid, Grobians and sluts, if once they be in love they will be most neat and spruce; for, [5505]Omnibus rebus, et nitidis nitoribus antevenit amor, they will follow the fashion, begin to trick up, and to have a good opinion of themselves, venustatem enim mater Venus; a ship is not so long a rigging as a young gentlewoman a trimming up herself against her sweetheart comes. A painter's shop, a flowery meadow, no so gracious aspect in nature's storehouse as a young maid, nubilis puella, a Novitsa or Venetian bride, that looks for a husband, or a young man that is her suitor; composed looks, composed gait, clothes, gestures, actions, all composed; all the graces, elegances in the world are in her face. Their best robes, ribands, chains, jewels, lawns, linens, laces, spangles, must come on, [5506]praeter quam res patitur student elegantiae, they are beyond all measure coy, nice, and too curious on a sudden; 'tis all their study, all their business, how to wear their clothes neat, to be polite and terse, and to set out themselves. No sooner doth a young man see his sweetheart coming, but he smugs up himself, pulls up his cloak now fallen about his shoulders, ties his garters, points, sets his band, cuffs, slicks his hair, twires his beard, &c. When Mercury was to come before his mistress,
Salmacis would not be seen of Hermaphroditus, till she had spruced up herself first,
Venus had so ordered the matter, that when her son [5509]Aeneas was to appear before Queen Dido, he was
'Tis the common humour of all suitors to trick up themselves, to be prodigal in apparel, pure lotus, neat, combed, and curled, with powdered hair, comptus et calimistratus, with a long love-lock, a flower in his ear, perfumed gloves, rings, scarves, feathers, points, &c. as if he were a prince's Ganymede, with everyday new suits, as the fashion varies; going as if he trod upon eggs, as Heinsius writ to Primierus, [5512]“if once he be besotten on a wench, he must like awake at nights, renounce his book, sigh and lament, now and then weep for his hard hap, and mark above all things what hats, bands, doublets, breeches, are in fashion, how to cut his beard, and wear his locks, to turn up his mustachios, and curl his head, prune his pickedevant, or if he wear it abroad, that the east side be correspondent to the west;” he may be scoffed at otherwise, as Julian that apostate emperor was for wearing a long hirsute goatish beard, fit to make ropes with, as in his Mysopogone, or that apologetical oration he made at Antioch to excuse himself, he doth ironically confess, it hindered his kissing, nam non licuit inde pura puris, eoque suavioribus labra labris adjungere, but he did not much esteem it, as it seems by the sequel, de accipiendis dandisve osculis non laboro, yet (to follow mine author) it may much concern a young lover, he must be more respectful in this behalf, “he must be in league with an excellent tailor, barber,”
Amongst other good qualities an amorous fellow is endowed with, he must learn to sing and dance, play upon some instrument or other, as without all doubt he will, if he be truly touched with this loadstone of love. For as [5514]Erasmus hath it, Musicam docet amor et Poesia, love will make them musicians, and to compose ditties, madrigals, elegies, love sonnets, and sing them to several pretty tunes, to get all good qualities may be had. [5515]Jupiter perceived Mercury to be in love with Philologia, because he learned languages, polite speech, (for Suadela herself was Venus' daughter, as some write) arts and sciences, quo virgini placeret, all to ingratiate himself, and please his mistress. 'Tis their chiefest study to sing, dance; and without question, so many gentlemen and gentlewomen would not be so well qualified in this kind, if love did not incite them. [5516]“Who,” saith Castilio, “would learn to play, or give his mind to music, learn to dance, or make so many rhymes, love-songs, as most do, but for women's sake, because they hope by that means to purchase their good wills, and win their favour?” We see this daily verified in our young women and wives, they that being maids took so much pains to sing, play, and dance, with such cost and charge to their parents, to get those graceful qualities, now being married will scarce touch an instrument, they care not for it. Constantine agricult. lib. 11. cap. 18, makes Cupid himself to be a great dancer; by the same token as he was capering amongst the gods, [5517]“he flung down a bowl of nectar, which distilling upon the white rose, ever since made it red:” and Calistratus, by the help of Dedalus, about Cupid's statue [5518]made a many of young wenches still a dancing, to signify belike that Cupid was much affected with it, as without all doubt he was. For at his and Psyche's wedding, the gods being present to grace the feast, Ganymede filled nectar in abundance (as [5519]Apuleius describes it), Vulcan was the cook, the Hours made all fine with roses and flowers, Apollo played on the harp, the Muses sang to it, sed suavi Musicae super ingressa Venus saltavit, but his mother Venus danced to his and their sweet content. Witty [5520]Lucian in that pathetical love passage, or pleasant description of Jupiter's stealing of Europa, and swimming from Phoenicia to Crete, makes the sea calm, the winds hush, Neptune and Amphitrite riding in their chariot to break the waves before them, the tritons dancing round about, with every one a torch, the sea-nymphs half naked, keeping time on dolphins' backs, and singing Hymeneus, Cupid nimbly tripping on the top of the waters, and Venus herself coming after in a shell, strewing roses and flowers on their heads. Praxiteles, in all his pictures of love, feigns Cupid ever smiling, and looking upon dancers; and in St. Mark's in Rome (whose work I know not), one of the most delicious pieces, is a many of [5521]satyrs dancing about a wench asleep. So that dancing still is as it were a necessary appendix to love matters. Young lasses are never better pleased than when as upon a holiday, after evensong, they may meet their sweethearts, and dance about a maypole, or in a town-green under a shady elm. Nothing so familiar in. [5522]France, as for citizens' wives and maids to dance a round in the streets, and often too, for want of better instruments, to make good music of their own voices, and dance after it. Yea many times this love will make old men and women that have more toes than teeth, dance,—“John, come kiss me now,” mask and mum; for Comus and Hymen love masks, and all such merriments above measure, will allow men to put on women's apparel in some cases, and promiscuously to dance, young and old, rich and poor, generous and base, of all sorts. Paulus Jovius taxeth Augustine Niphus the philosopher, [5523]“for that being an old man, and a public professor, a father of many children, he was so mad for the love of a young maid (that which many of his friends were ashamed to see), an old gouty fellow, yet would dance after fiddlers.” Many laughed him to scorn for it, but this omnipotent love would have it so.
But above all the other symptoms of lovers, this is not lightly to be overpassed, that likely of what condition soever, if once they be in love, they turn to their ability, rhymers, ballad makers, and poets. For as Plutarch saith, [5529]“They will be witnesses and trumpeters of their paramours' good parts, bedecking them with verses and commendatory songs, as we do statues with gold, that they may be remembered and admired of all.” Ancient men will dote in this kind sometimes as well as the rest; the heat of love will thaw their frozen affections, dissolve the ice of age, and so far enable them, though they be sixty years of age above the girdle, to be scarce thirty beneath. Jovianus Pontanus makes an old fool rhyme, and turn poetaster to please his mistress.
What fires, torments, cares, jealousies, suspicions, fears, griefs, anxieties, accompany such as are in love, I have sufficiently said: the next question is, what will be the event of such miseries, what they foretell. Some are of opinion that this love cannot be cured, Nullis amor est medicabilis herbis, it accompanies them to the [5559]last, Idem amor exitio est pecori pecorisque magistro. “The same passion consume both the sheep and the shepherd,” and is so continuate, that by no persuasion almost it may be relieved. [5560]“Bid me not love,” said Euryalus, “bid the mountains come down into the plains, bid the rivers run back to their fountains; I can as soon leave to love, as the sun leave his course;”
Although it be controverted by some, whether love-melancholy may be cured, because it is so irresistible and violent a passion; for as you know,
If there be any need of physic, that the humours be altered, or any new matter aggregated, they must be cured as melancholy men. Carolus a Lorme, amongst other questions discussed for his degree at Montpelier in France, hath this, An amantes et amantes iisdem remediis curentur? Whether lovers and madmen be cured by the same remedies? he affirms it; for love extended is mere madness. Such physic then as is prescribed, is either inward or outward, as hath been formerly handled in the precedent partition in the cure of melancholy. Consult with Valleriola observat. lib. 2. observ. 7. Lod. Mercatus lib. 2. cap. 4. de mulier. affect. Daniel Sennertus lib. 1. part. 2. cap. 10. [5629]Jacobus Ferrandus the Frenchman, in his Tract de amore Erotique, Forestus lib. 10. observ. 29 and 30, Jason Pratensis and others for peculiar receipts. [5630]Amatus Lusitanus cured a young Jew, that was almost mad for love, with the syrup of hellebore, and such other evacuations and purges which are usually prescribed to black choler: [5631]Avicenna confirms as much if need require, and [5632]“bloodletting above the rest,” which makes amantes ne sint amentes, lovers to come to themselves, and keep in their right minds. 'Tis the same which Schola Salernitana, Jason Pratensis, Hildesheim, &c., prescribe bloodletting to be used as a principal remedy. Those old Scythians had a trick to cure all appetite of burning lust, by [5633] letting themselves blood under the ears, and to make both men and women barren, as Sabellicus in his Aeneades relates of them. Which Salmuth. Tit. 10. de Herol. comment. in Pancirol. de nov. report. Mercurialis, var. lec. lib. 3. cap. 7. out of Hippocrates and Benzo say still is in use amongst the Indians, a reason of which Langius gives lib. 1. epist. 10.
Huc faciunt medicamenta venerem sopientia, “ut camphora pudendis alligata, et in bracha gestata” (quidam ait) “membrum flaccidum reddit. Laboravit hoc morbo virgo nobilis, cui inter caetera praescripsit medicus, ut laminam plumbeam multis foraminibus pertusam ad dies viginti portaret in dorso; ad exiccandum vero sperma jussit eam quam parcissime cibari, et manducare frequentur coriandrum praeparatum, et semen lactucae, et acetosae, et sic eam a morbo liberavit”. Porro impediunt et remittunt coitum folia salicis trita et epota, et si frequentius usurpentur ipsa in totum auferunt. Idem praestat Topatius annulo gestatus, dexterum lupi testiculum attritum, et oleo vel aqua rosata exhibitum veneris taedium inducere scribit Alexander Benedictus: lac butyri commestum et semen canabis, et camphora exhibita idem praestant. Verbena herba gestata libidinem extinguit, pulvisquae ranae decollatae et exiccatae. Ad extinguendum coitum, ungantur membra genitalia, et renes et pecten aqua in qua opium Thebaicum sit dissolutum; libidini maxime contraria camphora est, et coriandrum siccum frangit coitum, et erectionem virgae impedit; idem efficit synapium ebibitum. “Da verbenam in potu et non erigetur virga sex diebus; utere mentha sicca cum aceto, genitalia illinita succo hyoscyami aid cicutae, coitus appelitum sedant, &c. ℞. seminis lactuc. portulac. coriandri an. ℨj. menthae siccae ℨß. sacchari albiss. ℥iiij. pulveriscentur omnia subtiliter, et post ea simul misce aqua neunpharis, f. confec. solida in morsulis. Ex his sumat mane unum quum surgat”. Innumera fere his similia petas ab Hildeshemo loco praedicto, Mizaldo, Porta, caeterisque.
Other good rules and precepts are enjoined by our physicians, which, if not alone, yet certainly conjoined, may do much; the first of which is obstare principiis, to withstand the beginning,[5634]Quisquis in primo obstitit, Pepulitque amorem tutus ac victor fuit, he that will but resist at first, may easily be a conqueror at the last. Balthazar Castilio, l. 4. urgeth this prescript above the rest, [5635]“when he shall chance” (saith he) “to light upon a woman that hath good behaviour joined with her excellent person, and shall perceive his eyes with a kind of greediness to pull unto them this image of beauty, and carry it to the heart: shall observe himself to be somewhat incensed with this influence, which moveth within: when he shall discern those subtle spirits sparkling in her eyes, to administer more fuel to the fire, he must wisely withstand the beginnings, rouse up reason, stupefied almost, fortify his heart by all means, and shut up all those passages, by which it may have entrance.” 'Tis a precept which all concur upon,
But, forasmuch as few men are free, so discreet lovers, or that can contain themselves, and moderate their passions, to curb their senses, as not to see them, not to look lasciviously, not to confer with them, such is the fury of this headstrong passion of raging lust, and their weakness, ferox ille ardor a natura insitus, [5663]as he terms it “such a furious desire nature hath inscribed, such unspeakable delight.”
If so be (which is seldom) that change of place will not effect this alteration, then other remedies are to be annexed, fair and foul means, as to persuade, promise, threaten, terrify, or to divert by some contrary passion, rumour, tales, news, or some witty invention to alter his affection, [5674]“by some greater sorrow to drive out the less,” saith Gordonius, as that his house is on fire, his best friends dead, his money stolen. [5675]“That he is made some great governor, or hath some honour, office, some inheritance is befallen him.” He shall be a knight, a baron; or by some false accusation, as they do to such as have the hiccup, to make them forget it. St. Hierome, lib. 2. epist. 16. to Rusticus the monk, hath an instance of a young man of Greece, that lived in a monastery in Egypt, [5676]“that by no labour, no continence, no persuasion, could be diverted, but at last by this trick he was delivered. The abbot sets one of his convent to quarrel with him, and with some scandalous reproach or other to defame him before company, and then to come and complain first, the witnesses were likewise suborned for the plaintiff. The young man wept, and when all were against him, the abbot cunningly took his part, lest he should be overcome with immoderate grief: but what need many words? by this invention he was cured, and alienated from his pristine love-thoughts”—Injuries, slanders, contempts, disgraces—spretaeque injuria formae, “the insult of her slighted beauty,” are very forcible means to withdraw men's affections, contumelia affecti amatores amare desinunt, as [5677]Lucian saith, lovers reviled or neglected, contemned or misused, turn love to hate; [5678]redeam? Non si me obsecret, “I'll never love thee more.” Egone illam, quae illum, quae me, quae non? So Zephyrus hated Hyacinthus because he scorned him, and preferred his co-rival Apollo (Palephaetus fab. Nar.), he will not come again though he be invited. Tell him but how he was scoffed at behind his back, ('tis the counsel of Avicenna), that his love is false, and entertains another, rejects him, cares not for him, or that she is a fool; a nasty quean, a slut, a vixen, a scold, a devil, or, which Italians commonly do, that he or she hath some loathsome filthy disease, gout, stone, strangury, falling sickness, and that they are hereditary, not to be avoided, he is subject to a consumption, hath the pox, that he hath three or four incurable tetters, issues; that she is bald, her breath stinks, she is mad by inheritance, and so are all the kindred, a hair-brain, with many other secret infirmities, which I will not so much as name, belonging to women. That he is a hermaphrodite, an eunuch, imperfect, impotent, a spendthrift, a gamester, a fool, a gull, a beggar, a whoremaster, far in debt, and not able to maintain her, a common drunkard, his mother was a witch, his father hanged, that he hath a wolf in his bosom, a sore leg, he is a leper, hath some incurable disease, that he will surely beat her, he cannot hold his water, that he cries out or walks in the night, will stab his bedfellow, tell all his secrets in his sleep, and that nobody dare lie with him, his house is haunted with spirits, with such fearful and tragical things, able to avert and terrify any man or woman living, Gordonius, cap. 20. part. 2. hunc in modo consulit; Paretur aliqua vetula turpissima aspectu, cum turpi et vili habitu: et portet subtus gremium pannum menstrualem, et dicat quod amica sua sit ebriosa, et quod mingat in lecto, et quod est epileptica et impudicia; et quod in corpore suo sunt excrescentiae enormes, cum faetore anhelitus, et aliae enormitates, quibus vetulae sunt edoctae: si nolit his persuaderi, subito extrahat [5679]pannum menstrualem, coram facie portando, exclamando, talis est amica tua; et si ex his non demiserit, non est homo, sed diabolus incarnatus. Idem fere, Avicenna, cap. 24, de cura Elishi, lib. 3, Fen. 1. Tract. 4. Narrent res immundas vetulae, ex quibus abominationem incurrat, et res [5680]sordidas et, hoc assiduent. Idem Arculanus cap. 16. in 9. Rhasis, &c.
Withal as they do discommend the old, for the better effecting a more speedy alteration, they must commend another paramour, alteram inducere, set him or her to be wooed, or woo some other that shall be fairer, of better note, better fortune, birth, parentage, much to be preferred, [5681] Invenies alium si te hic fastidit Alexis, by this means, which Jason Pratensis wisheth, to turn the stream of affection another way, Successore novo truditur omnis amor; or, as Valesius adviseth, by [5682]subdividing to diminish it, as a great river cut into many channels runs low at last. [5683]Hortor et ut pariter binas habeatis amicas, &c. If you suspect to be taken, be sure, saith the poet, to have two mistresses at once, or go from one to another: as he that goes from a good fire in cold weather is both to depart from it, though in the next room there be a better which will refresh him as much; there's as much difference of haec as hac ignis; or bring him to some public shows, plays, meetings, where he may see variety, and he shall likely loathe his first choice: carry him but to the next town, yea peradventure to the next house, and as Paris lost Oenone's love by seeing Helen, and Cressida forsook Troilus by conversing with Diomede, he will dislike his former mistress, and leave her quite behind him, as [5684]Theseus left Ariadne fast asleep in the island of Dia, to seek her fortune, that was erst his loving mistress. [5685]Nunc primum Dorida vetus amator contempsi, as he said, Doris is but a dowdy to this. As he that looks himself in a glass forgets his physiognomy forthwith, this flattering glass of love will be diminished by remove; after a little absence it will be remitted, the next fair object will likely alter it. A young man in [5686]Lucian was pitifully in love, he came to the theatre by chance, and by seeing other fair objects there, mentis sanitatem recepit, was fully recovered, [5687] “and went merrily home, as if he had taken a dram of oblivion.” [5688]A mouse (saith an apologer) was brought up in a chest, there fed with fragments of bread and cheese, though there could be no better meat, till coming forth at last, and feeding liberally of other variety of viands, loathed his former life: moralise this fable by thyself. Plato, in. his seventh book De Legibus, hath a pretty fiction of a city under ground, [5689]to which by little holes some small store of light came; the inhabitants thought there could not be a better place, and at their first coming abroad they might not endure the light, aegerrime solem intueri; but after they were accustomed a little to it, [5690]“they deplored their fellows' misery that lived under ground.” A silly lover is in like state, none so fair as his mistress at first, he cares for none but her; yet after a while, when he hath compared her with others, he abhors her name, sight, and memory. 'Tis generally true; for as he observes, [5691]Priorem flammam novus ignis extrudit; et ea multorum natura, ut praesentes maxime ament, one fire drives out another; and such is women's weakness, that they love commonly him that is present. And so do many men; as he confessed, he loved Amye, till he saw Florial, and when he saw Cynthia, forgat them both: but fair Phillis was incomparably beyond, them all, Cloris surpassed her, and yet when he espied Amaryllis, she was his sole mistress; O divine Amaryllis: quam procera, cupressi ad instar, quam elegans, quam decens, &c. How lovely, how tall, how comely she was (saith Polemius) till he saw another, and then she was the sole subject of his thoughts. In conclusion, her he loves best he saw last. [5692]Triton, the sea-god, first loved Leucothoe, till he came in presence of Milaene, she was the commandress of his heart, till he saw Galatea: but (as [5693]she complains) he loved another eftsoons, another, and another. 'Tis a thing which, by Hierom's report, hath been usually practised. [5694]“Heathen philosophers drive out one love with another, as they do a peg, or pin with a pin. Which those seven Persian princes did to Ahasuerus, that they might requite the desire of Queen Vashti with the love of others.” Pausanias in Eliacis saith, that therefore one Cupid was painted to contend with another, and to take the garland from him, because one love drives out another, [5695]Alterius vires subtrahit alter amor; and Tully, 3. Nat. Deor. disputing with C. Cotta, makes mention of three several Cupids, all differing in office. Felix Plater, in the first book of his observations, boasts how he cured a widower in Basil, a patient of his, by this stratagem alone, that doted upon a poor servant his maid, when friends, children, no persuasion could serve to alienate his mind: they motioned him to another honest man's daughter in the town, whom he loved, and lived with long after, abhorring the very name and sight of the first. After the death of Lucretia, [5696]Euryalus would admit of no comfort, till the Emperor Sigismund married him to a noble lady of his court, and so in short space he was freed.
As there be divers causes of this burning lust, or heroical love, so there be many good remedies to ease and help; amongst which, good counsel and persuasion, which I should have handled in the first place, are of great moment, and not to be omitted. Many are of opinion, that in this blind headstrong passion counsel can do no good.
If he love at all, she is either an honest woman or a whore. If dishonest, let him read or inculcate to him that 5. of Solomon's Proverbs, Ecclus. 26. Ambros. lib. 1. cap. 4. in his book of Abel and Cain, Philo Judeus de mercede mer. Platina's dial. in Amores, Espencaeus, and those three books of Pet. Haedus de contem. amoribus, Aeneas Sylvius' tart Epistle, which he wrote to his friend Nicholas of Warthurge, which he calls medelam illiciti amoris &c. [5702]“For what's a whore,” as he saith, “but a poller of youth, a [5703]ruin of men, a destruction, a devourer of patrimonies, a downfall of honour, fodder for the devil, the gate of death, and supplement of hell?” [5704]Talis amor est laqueus animae, &c., a bitter honey, sweet poison, delicate destruction, a voluntary mischief, commixtum coenum, sterquilinium. And as [5705]Pet. Aretine's Lucretia, a notable quean, confesseth: “Gluttony, anger, envy, pride, sacrilege, theft, slaughter, were all born that day that a whore began her profession; for,” as she follows it, “her pride is greater than a rich churl's, she is more envious than the pox, as malicious as melancholy, as covetous as hell. If from the beginning of the world any were mala, pejor, pessima, bad in the superlative degree, 'tis a whore; how many have I undone, caused to be wounded, slain! O Antonia, thou seest [5706]what I am without, but within, God knows, a puddle of iniquity, a sink of sin, a pocky quean.” Let him now that so dotes meditate on this; let him see the event and success of others, Samson, Hercules, Holofernes, &c. Those infinite mischiefs attend it: if she be another man's wife he loves, 'tis abominable in the sight of God and men; adultery is expressly forbidden in God's commandment, a mortal sin, able to endanger his soul: if he be such a one that fears God, or have any religion, he will eschew it, and abhor the loathsomeness of his own fact. If he love an honest maid, 'tis to abuse or marry her; if to abuse, 'tis fornication, a foul fact (though some make light of it), and almost equal to adultery itself. If to marry, let him seriously consider what he takes in hand, look before ye leap, as the proverb is, or settle his affections, and examine first the party, and condition of his estate and hers, whether it be a fit match, for fortunes, years, parentage, and such other circumstances, an sit sitae Veneris. Whether it be likely to proceed: if not, let him wisely stave himself off at the first, curb in his inordinate passion, and moderate his desire, by thinking of some other subject, divert his cogitations. Or if it be not for his good, as Aeneas, forewarned by Mercury in a dream, left Dido's love, and in all haste got him to sea,
Some are of opinion, that to see a woman naked is able of itself to alter his affection; and it is worthy of consideration, saith [5718]Montaigne the Frenchman in his Essays, that the skilfulest masters of amorous dalliance, appoint for a remedy of venerous passions, a full survey of the body; which the poet insinuates,
Yea, but you will infer, your mistress is complete, of a most absolute form in all men's opinions, no exceptions can be taken at her, nothing may be added to her person, nothing detracted, she is the mirror of women for her beauty, comeliness and pleasant grace, inimitable, merae deliciae, meri lepores, she is Myrothetium Veneris, Gratiarum pixis, a mere magazine of natural perfections, she hath all the Veneres and Graces,—mille faces et mille figuras, in each part absolute and complete, [5726]Laeta genas laeta os roseum, vaga lumina laeta: to be admired for her person, a most incomparable, unmatchable piece, aurea proles, ad simulachrum alicujus numinis composita, a Phoenix, vernantis aetatulae Venerilla, a nymph, a fairy, [5727]like Venus herself when she was a maid, nulli secunda, a mere quintessence, flores spirans et amaracum, foeminae prodigium: put case she be, how long will she continue? [5728]Florem decoris singuli carpunt dies: “Every day detracts from her person,” and this beauty is bonum fragile, a mere flash, a Venice glass, quickly broken,
To conclude with Chrysostom, [5743]“When thou seest a fair and beautiful person, a brave Bonaroba, a bella donna, quae salivam moveat, lepidam puellam et quam tu facile ames, a comely woman, having bright eyes, a merry countenance, a shining lustre in her look, a pleasant grace, wringing thy soul, and increasing thy concupiscence; bethink with thyself that it is but earth thou lovest, a mere excrement, which so vexeth thee, which thou so admirest, and thy raging soul will be at rest. Take her skin from her face, and thou shalt see all loathsomeness under it, that beauty is a superficial skin and bones, nerves, sinews: suppose her sick, now rivelled, hoary-headed, hollow-cheeked, old; within she is full of filthy phlegm, stinking, putrid, excremental stuff: snot and snivel in her nostrils, spittle in her mouth, water in her eyes, what filth in her brains,” &c. Or take her at best, and look narrowly upon her in the light, stand near her, nearer yet, thou shalt perceive almost as much, and love less, as [5744] Cardan well writes, minus amant qui acute vident, though Scaliger deride him for it: if he see her near, or look exactly at such a posture, whosoever he is, according to the true rules of symmetry and proportion, those I mean of Albertus Durer, Lomatius and Tasnier, examine him of her. If he be elegans formarum spectator he shall find many faults in physiognomy, and ill colour: if form, one side of the face likely bigger than the other, or crooked nose, bad eyes, prominent veins, concavities about the eyes, wrinkles, pimples, red streaks, freckles, hairs, warts, neves, inequalities, roughness, scabredity, paleness, yellowness, and as many colours as are in a turkeycock's neck, many indecorums in their other parts; est quod desideres, est quod amputes, one leers, another frowns, a third gapes, squints, &c. And 'tis true that he saith, [5745]Diligenter consideranti raro facies absoluta, et quae vitio caret, seldom shall you find an absolute face without fault, as I have often observed; not in the face alone is this defect or disproportion to be found; but in all the other parts, of body and mind; she is fair, indeed, but foolish; pretty, comely, and decent, of a majestical presence, but peradventure, imperious, dishonest, acerba, iniqua, self-willed: she is rich, but deformed; hath a sweet face, but bad carriage, no bringing up, a rude and wanton flirt; a neat body she hath, but it is a nasty quean otherwise, a very slut, of a bad kind. As flowers in a garden have colour some, but no smell, others have a fragrant smell, but are unseemly to the eye; one is unsavoury to the taste as rue, as bitter as wormwood, and yet a most medicinal cordial flower, most acceptable to the stomach; so are men and women; one is well qualified, but of ill proportion, poor and base: a good eye she hath, but a bad hand and foot, foeda pedes et foeda manus, a fine leg, bad teeth, a vast body, &c. Examine all parts of body and mind, I advise thee to inquire of all. See her angry, merry, laugh, weep, hot, cold, sick, sullen, dressed, undressed, in all attires, sites, gestures, passions, eat her meals, &c., and in some of these you will surely dislike. Yea, not her only let him observe, but her parents how they carry themselves: for what deformities, defects, encumbrances of body or mind be in them at such an age, they will likely be subject to, be molested in like manner, they will patrizare or matrizare. And withal let him take notice of her companions, in convictu (as Quiverra prescribes), et quibuscum conversetur, whom she converseth with. Noscitur ex comite, qui non cognoscitur ex se. [5746]According to Thucydides, she is commonly the best, de quo minimus foras habetur sermo, that is least talked of abroad. For if she be a noted reveller, a gadder, a singer, a pranker or dancer, than take heed of her. For what saith Theocritus?
I will say nothing of the vices of their minds, their pride, envy, inconstancy, weakness, malice, selfwill, lightness, insatiable lust, jealousy, Ecclus. v. 14. “No malice to a woman's, no bitterness like to hers,” Eccles. vii. 21. and as the same author urgeth, Prov. xxxi. 10. “Who shall find a virtuous woman?” He makes a question of it. Neque jus neque bonum, neque aequum sciunt, melius pejus, prosit, obsit, nihil vident, nisi quod libido suggerit. “They know neither good nor bad, be it better or worse” (as the comical poet hath it), “beneficial or hurtful, they will do what they list.”
But to my purpose: If women in general be so bad (and men worse than they) what a hazard is it to marry? where shall a man find a good wife, or a woman a good husband? A woman a man may eschew, but not a wife: wedding is undoing (some say) marrying marring, wooing woeing: [5759]“a wife is a fever hectic,” as Scaliger calls her, “and not be cured but by death,” as out of Menander, Athenaeus adds,
Being that men and women are so irreligious, depraved by nature, so wandering in their affections, so brutish, so subject to disagreement, so unobservant of marriage rites, what shall I say? If thou beest such a one, or thou light on such a wife, what concord can there be, what hope of agreement? 'tis not conjugium but conjurgium, as the Reed and Fern in the [5783]Emblem, averse and opposite in nature: 'tis twenty to one thou wilt not marry to thy contentment: but as in a lottery forty blanks were drawn commonly for one prize, out of a multitude you shall hardly choose a good one: a small ease hence then, little comfort,
Consider withal how free, how happy, how secure, how heavenly, in respect, a single man is, [5803]as he said in the comedy, Et isti quod fortunatum esse autumant, uxorem nunquam habui, and that which all my neighbours admire and applaud me for, account so great a happiness, I never had a wife; consider how contentedly, quietly, neatly, plentifully, sweetly, and how merrily he lives! he hath no man to care for but himself, none to please, no charge, none to control him, is tied to no residence, no cure to serve, may go and come, when, whither, live where he will, his own master, and do what he list himself. Consider the excellency of virgins, [5804] Virgo coelum meruit, marriage replenisheth the earth, but virginity Paradise; Elias, Eliseus, John Baptist, were bachelors: virginity is a precious jewel, a fair garland, a never-fading flower; [5805]for why was Daphne turned to a green bay-tree, but to show that virginity is immortal?
Where persuasions and other remedies will not take place, many fly to unlawful means, philters, amulets, magic spells, ligatures, characters, charms, which as a wound with the spear of Achilles, if so made and caused, must so be cured. If forced by spells and philters, saith Paracelsus, it must be eased by characters, Mag. lib. 2. cap 28. and by incantations. Fernelius Path. lib. 6. cap. 13. [5817]Skenkius lib. 4. observ. med. hath some examples of such as have been so magically caused, and magically cured, and by witchcraft: so saith Baptista Codronchus, lib. 3. cap. 9. de mor. ven. Malleus malef. cap. 6. 'Tis not permitted to be done, I confess; yet often attempted: see more in Wierus lib. 3. cap. 18. de praestig. de remediis per philtra. Delrio tom. 2. lib. 2. quaest. 3. sect. 3. disquisit. magic. Cardan lib. 16. cap. 90. reckons up many magnetical medicines, as to piss through a ring, &c. Mizaldus cent. 3. 30, Baptista Porta, Jason Pratensis, Lobelius pag. 87, Matthiolus, &c., prescribe many absurd remedies. Radix mandragora ebibitae, Annuli ex ungulis Asini, Stercus amatae sub cervical positum, illa nesciente, &c., quum odorem foeditatis sentit, amor solvitur. Noctuae ocum abstemios facit comestum, ex consilio Jarthae Indorum gymnosophistae apud Philostratum lib. 3. Sanguis amasiae, ebibitus omnem amoris sensum tollit: Faustinam Marci Aurelii uxorem, gladiatoris amore captam, ita penitus consilio Chaldaeorum liberatam, refert Julius Capitolinus. Some of our astrologers will effect as much by characteristical images, ex sigillis Hermetis, Salomonis, Chaelis, &c. mulieris imago habentis crines sparsos, &c. Our old poets and fantastical writers have many fabulous remedies for such as are lovesick, as that of Protesilaus' tomb in Philostratus, in his dialogue between Phoenix and Vinitor: Vinitor, upon occasion discoursing of the rare virtues of that shrine, telleth him that Protesilaus' altar and tomb [5818]“cures almost all manner of diseases, consumptions, dropsies, quartan-agues, sore eyes: and amongst the rest, such as are lovesick shall there be helped.” But the most famous is [5819]Leucata Petra, that renowned rock in Greece, of which Strabo writes, Geog. lib. 10. not far from St. Maures, saith Sands, lib. 1. from which rock if any lover flung himself down headlong, he was instantly cured. Venus after the death of Adonis, “when she could take no rest for love,” [5820]Cum vesana suas torreret flamma medullas, came to the temple of Apollo to know what she should do to be eased of her pain: Apollo sent her to Leucata Petra, where she precipitated herself, and was forthwith freed; and when she would needs know of him a reason of it, he told her again, that he had often observed [5821]Jupiter, when he was enamoured on Juno, thither go to ease and wash himself, and after him divers others. Cephalus for the love of Protela, Degonetus' daughter, leaped down here, that Lesbian Sappho for Phaon, on whom she miserably doted. [5822]Cupidinis aestro percita e summo praeceps ruit, hoping thus to ease herself, and to be freed of her love pangs.
The last refuge and surest remedy, to be put in practice in the utmost place, when no other means will take effect, is to let them go together, and enjoy one another: potissima cura est ut heros amasia sua potiatur, saith Guianerius, cap. 15. tract. 15. Aesculapius himself, to this malady, cannot invent a better remedy, quam ut amanti cedat amatum, [5829](Jason Pratensis) than that a lover have his desire.
Yea, but hic labor, hoc opus, this cannot conveniently be done, by reason of many and several impediments. Sometimes both parties themselves are not agreed: parents, tutors, masters, guardians, will not give consent; laws, customs, statutes hinder: poverty, superstition, fear and suspicion: many men dote on one woman, semel et simul: she dotes as much on him, or them, and in modesty must not, cannot woo, as unwilling to confess as willing to love: she dare not make it known, show her affection, or speak her mind. “And hard is the choice” (as it is in Euphues) “when one is compelled either by silence to die with grief, or by speaking to live with shame.” In this case almost was the fair lady Elizabeth, Edward the Fourth his daughter, when she was enamoured on Henry the Seventh, that noble young prince, and new saluted king, when she broke forth into that passionate speech, [5836] “O that I were worthy of that comely prince! but my father being dead, I want friends to motion such a matter! What shall I say? I am all alone, and dare not open my mind to any. What if I acquaint my mother with it? bashfulness forbids. What if some of the lords? audacity wants. O that I might but confer with him, perhaps in discourse I might let slip such a word that might discover mine intention!” How many modest maids may this concern, I am a poor servant, what shall I do? I am a fatherless child, and want means, I am blithe and buxom, young and lusty, but I have never a suitor, Expectant stolidi ut ego illos rogatum veniam, as [5837]she said, A company of silly fellows look belike that I should woo them and speak first: fain they would and cannot woo,—[5838]quae primum exordia sumam? being merely passive they may not make suit, with many such lets and inconveniences, which I know not; what shall we do in such a case? sing “Fortune my foe?”———
Some are so curious in this behalf, as those old Romans, our modern Venetians, Dutch and French, that if two parties clearly love, the one noble, the other ignoble, they may not by their laws match, though equal otherwise in years, fortunes, education, and all good affection. In Germany, except they can prove their gentility by three descents, they scorn to match with them. A nobleman must marry a noblewoman: a baron, a baron's daughter; a knight, a knight's; a gentleman, a gentleman's: as slaters sort their slates, do they degrees and families. If she be never so rich, fair, well qualified otherwise, they will make him forsake her. The Spaniards abhor all widows; the Turks repute them old women, if past five-and-twenty. But these are too severe laws, and strict customs, dandum aliquid amori, we are all the sons of Adam, 'tis opposite to nature, it ought not to be so. Again: he loves her most impotently, she loves not him, and so e contra. [5839]Pan loved Echo, Echo Satyrus, Satyrus Lyda.
And 'tis most true, many gentlewomen are so nice, they scorn all suitors, crucify their poor paramours, and think nobody good enough for them, as dainty to please as Daphne herself.
Many such inconveniences, lets, and hindrances there are, which cross their projects and crucify poor lovers, which sometimes may, sometimes again cannot be so easily removed. But put case they be reconciled all, agreed hitherto, suppose this love or good liking be between two alone, both parties well pleased, there is mutuus amor, mutual love and great affection; yet their parents, guardians, tutors, cannot agree, thence all is dashed, the match is unequal: one rich, another poor: durus pater, a hard-hearted, unnatural, a covetous father will not marry his son, except he have so much money, ita in aurum omnes insaniunt, as [5857]Chrysostom notes, nor join his daughter in marriage, to save her dowry, or for that he cannot spare her for the service she doth him, and is resolved to part with nothing whilst he lives, not a penny, though he may peradventure well give it, he will not till he dies, and then as a pot of money broke, it is divided amongst them that gaped after it so earnestly. Or else he wants means to set her out, he hath no money, and though it be to the manifest prejudice of her body and soul's health, he cares not, he will take no notice of it, she must and shall tarry. Many slack and careless parents, iniqui patres, measure their children's affections by their own, they are now cold and decrepit themselves, past all such youthful conceits, and they will therefore starve their children's genus, have them a pueris [5858] illico nasci senes, they must not marry, nec earum affines esse rerum quas secum fert adolescentia: ex sua libidine moderatur quae est nunc, non quae olim fuit: as he said in the comedy: they will stifle nature, their young bloods must not participate of youthful pleasures, but be as they are themselves old on a sudden. And 'tis a general fault amongst most parents in bestowing of their children, the father wholly respects wealth, when through his folly, riot, indiscretion, he hath embezzled his estate, to recover himself, he confines and prostitutes his eldest son's love and affection to some fool, or ancient, or deformed piece for money.
Now for such as have free liberty to bestow themselves, I could wish that good counsel of the comical old man were put in practice,
Another let or hindrance is strict and severe discipline, laws and rigorous customs, that forbid men to marry at set times, and in some places; as apprentices, servants, collegiates, states of lives in copyholds, or in some base inferior offices, [5896]Velle licet in such cases, potiri non licet, as he said. They see but as prisoners through a grate, they covet and catch, but Tantalus a labris, &c. Their love is lost, and vain it is in such an estate to attempt. [5897]Gravissimum est adamare nec potiri, 'tis a grievous thing to love and not enjoy. They may, indeed, I deny not, marry if they will, and have free choice, some of them; but in the meantime their case is desperate, Lupum auribus tenent, they hold a wolf by the ears, they must either burn or starve. 'Tis cornutum sophisma, hard to resolve, if they marry they forfeit their estates, they are undone, and starve themselves through beggary and want: if they do not marry, in this heroical passion they furiously rage, are tormented, and torn in pieces by their predominate affections. Every man hath not the gift of continence, let him [5898]pray for it then, as Beza adviseth in his Tract de Divortiis, because God hath so called him to a single life, in taking away the means of marriage. [5899]Paul would have gone from Mysia to Bithynia, but the spirit suffered him not, and thou wouldst peradventure be a married man with all thy will, but that protecting angel holds it not fit. The devil too sometimes may divert by his ill suggestions, and mar many good matches, as the same [5900]Paul was willing to see the Romans, but hindered of Satan he could not. There be those that think they are necessitated by fate, their stars have so decreed, and therefore they grumble at their hard fortune, they are well inclined to marry, but one rub or other is ever in the way; I know what astrologers say in this behalf, what Ptolemy quadripartit. Tract. 4. cap. 4. Skoner lib. 1. cap. 12. what Leovitius genitur. exempl. 1. which Sextus ab Heminga takes to be the horoscope of Hieronymus Wolfius, what Pezelius, Origanaus and Leovitius his illustrator Garceus, cap. 12. what Junctine, Protanus, Campanella, what the rest, (to omit those Arabian conjectures a parte conjugii, a parte lasciviae, triplicitates veneris, &c., and those resolutions upon a question, an amica potiatur, &c.) determine in this behalf, viz. an sit natus conjugem habiturus, facile an difficulter sit sponsam impetraturus, quot conjuges, quo tempore, quales decernantur nato uxores, de mutuo amore conjugem, both in men's and women's genitures, by the examination of the seventh house the almutens, lords and planets there, a ☉d et ☾a &c., by particular aphorisms, Si dominus 7mae in 7ma vel secunda nobilem decernit uxorem, servam aut ignobilem si duodecima. Si Venus in 12ma, &c., with many such, too tedious to relate. Yet let no man be troubled, or find himself grieved with such predictions, as Hier. Wolfius well saith in his astrological [5901]dialogue, non sunt praetoriana decreta, they be but conjectures, the stars incline, but not enforce,
Of like nature is superstition, those rash vows of monks and friars, and such as live in religious orders, but far more tyrannical and much worse. Nature, youth, and his furious passion forcibly inclines, and rageth on the one side; but their order and vow checks them on the other. [5905]Votoque suo sua forma repugnat. What merits and indulgences they heap unto themselves by it, what commodities, I know not; but I am sure, from such rash vows, and inhuman manner of life, proceed many inconveniences, many diseases, many vices, mastupration, satyriasis, [5906]priapismus, melancholy, madness, fornication, adultery, buggery, sodomy, theft, murder, and all manner of mischiefs: read but Bale's Catalogue of Sodomites, at the visitation of abbeys here in England, Henry Stephan. his Apol. for Herodotus, that which Ulricus writes in one of his epistles, [5907]“that Pope Gregory when he saw 600 skulls and bones of infants taken out of a fishpond near a nunnery, thereupon retracted that decree of priests' marriages, which was the cause of such a slaughter, was much grieved at it, and purged himself by repentance.” Read many such, and then ask what is to be done, is this vow to be broke or not? No, saith Bellarmine, cap. 38. lib. de Monach. melius est scortari et uri quam de voto coelibatus ad nuptias transire, better burn or fly out, than to break thy vow. And Coster in his Enchirid. de coelibat. sacerdotum, saith it is absolutely gravius peccatum, [5908]“a greater sin for a priest to marry, than to keep a concubine at home.” Gregory de Valence, cap. 6. de coelibat. maintains the same, as those of Essei and Montanists of old. Insomuch that many votaries, out of a false persuasion of merit and holiness in this kind, will sooner die than marry, though it be to the saving of their lives. [5909]Anno 1419. Pius 2, Pope, James Rossa, nephew to the King of Portugal, and then elect Archbishop of Lisbon, being very sick at Florence, [5910]“when his physicians told him, that his disease was such, he must either lie with a wench, marry, or die, cheerfully chose to die.” Now they commended him for it; but St. Paul teacheth otherwise, “Better marry than burn,” and as St. Hierome gravely delivers it, Aliae, sunt leges Caesarum, aliae Christi, aliud Papinianus, aliud Paulus noster praecipit, there's a difference betwixt God's ordinances and men's laws: and therefore Cyprian Epist. 8. boldly denounceth, impium est, adulterum est, sacrilegum est, quodcunque humano furore statuitur, ut dispositio divina violetur, it is abominable, impious, adulterous, and sacrilegious, what men make and ordain after their own furies to cross God's laws. [5911]Georgius Wicelius, one of their own arch divines (Inspect. eccles. pag. 18) exclaims against it, and all such rash monastical vows, and would have such persons seriously to consider what they do, whom they admit, ne in posterum querantur de inanibus stupris, lest they repent it at last. For either, as he follows it, [5912]you must allow them concubines, or suffer them to marry, for scarce shall you find three priests of three thousand, qui per aetatem non ament, that are not troubled with burning lust. Wherefore I conclude it is an unnatural and impious thing to bar men of this Christian liberty, too severe and inhuman an edict.
Yet, notwithstanding, many with us are of the opposite part, they are married themselves, and for others, let them burn, fire and flame, they care not, so they be not troubled with them. Some are too curious, and some too covetous, they may marry when they will both for ability and means, but so nice, that except as Theophilus the emperor was presented, by his mother Euprosune, with all the rarest beauties of the empire in the great chamber of his palace at once, and bid to give a golden apple to her he liked best. If they might so take and choose whom they list out of all the fair maids their nation affords, they could happily condescend to marry: otherwise, &c., why should a man marry, saith another epicurean rout, what's matrimony but a matter of money? why should free nature be entrenched on, confined or obliged, to this or that man or woman, with these manacles of body and goods? &c. There are those too that dearly love, admire and follow women all their lives long, sponsi Penelopes, never well but in their company, wistly gazing on their beauties, observing close, hanging after them, dallying still with them, and yet dare not, will not marry. Many poor people, and of the meaner sort, are too distrustful of God's providence, “they will not, dare not for such worldly respects,” fear of want, woes, miseries, or that they shall light, as [5928]“Lemnius saith, on a scold, a slut, or a bad wife.” And therefore, [5929]Tristem Juventam venere deserta colunt, they are resolved to live single, as [5930]Epaminondas did, [5931]Nil ait esse prius, melius nil coelibe vita, and ready with Hippolitus to abjure all women, [5932]Detestor omnes, horreo, fugio, execror, &c. But,
But what do I trouble myself, to find arguments to persuade to, or commend marriage? behold a brief abstract of all that which I have said, and much more, succinctly, pithily, pathetically, perspicuously, and elegantly delivered in twelve motions to mitigate the miseries of marriage, by [5957] Jacobus de Voragine,
1. Res est? habes quae tucatur et augeat.—2. Non est? habes quae quaerat.—3. Secundae res sunt? felicitas duplicatur.—4. Adversae sunt? Consolatur, adsidet, onus participat ut tolerabile fiat.—5. Domi es? solitudinis taedium pellit.—6. Foras? Discendentem visu prosequitur, absentem desiderat, redeuntem laeta excipit.—7. Nihil jucundum absque societate? Nulla societas matrimonio suavior.—8. Vinculum conjugalis charitatis adamentinum.—9. Accrescit dulcis affinium turba, duplicatur numerus parentum, fratrum, sororum, nepotum.—10. Pulchra sis prole parens.—11. Lex Mosis sterilitatem matrimonii execratur, quanto amplius coelibatum?—12. Si natura poenam non effugit, ne voluntas quidem effugiet.
1. Hast thou means? thou hast none to keep and increase it.—2. Hast none? thou hast one to help to get it.—3. Art in prosperity? thine happiness is doubled.—4. Art in adversity? she'll comfort, assist, bear a part of thy burden to make it more tolerable.—5. Art at home? she'll drive away melancholy.—6. Art abroad? she looks after thee going from home, wishes for thee in thine absence, and joyfully welcomes thy return.—7. There's nothing delightsome without society, no society so sweet as matrimony.—8. The band of conjugal love is adamantine.—9. The sweet company of kinsmen increaseth, the number of parents is doubled, of brothers, sisters, nephews.—10. Thou art made a father by a fair and happy issue.—11. Moses curseth the barrenness of matrimony, how much more a single life?—12. If nature escape not punishment, surely thy will shall not avoid it.
All this is true, say you, and who knows it not? but how easy a matter is it to answer these motives, and to make an Antiparodia quite opposite unto it? To exercise myself I will essay:
1. Hast thou means? thou hast one to spend it.—2. Hast none? thy beggary is increased.—3. Art in prosperity? thy happiness is ended.—4. Art in adversity? like Job's wife she'll aggravate thy misery, vex thy soul, make thy burden intolerable.—5. Art at home? she'll scold thee out of doors.—6. Art abroad? If thou be wise keep thee so, she'll perhaps graft horns in thine absence, scowl on thee coming home.—7. Nothing gives more content than solitariness, no solitariness like this of a single life,—8. The band of marriage is adamantine, no hope of losing it, thou art undone.—9. Thy number increaseth, thou shalt be devoured by thy wife's friends.—10. Thou art made a cornuto by an unchaste wife, and shalt bring up other folks' children instead of thine own.—11. Paul commends marriage, yet he prefers a single life.—12. Is marriage honourable? What an immortal crown belongs to virginity?
So Siracides himself speaks as much as may be for and against women, so doth almost every philosopher plead pro and con, every poet thus argues the case (though what cares vulgus nominum what they say?): so can I conceive peradventure, and so canst thou: when all is said, yet since some be good, some bad, let's put it to the venture. I conclude therefore with Seneca,
Since then this of marriage is the last and best refuge, and cure of heroical love, all doubts are cleared, and impediments removed; I say again, what remains, but that according to both their desires, they be happily joined, since it cannot otherwise be helped? God send us all good wives, every man his wish in this kind, and me mine!
Feliciter nuptis, God give them joy together. [5972]Hymen O Hymenae, Hymen ades O Hymenaee! Bonum factum, 'tis well done, Haud equidem sine mente reor, sine numine Divum, 'tis a happy conjunction, a fortunate match, an even couple,
Atque haec de amore dixisse sufficiat, sub correctione, [5980]quod ait ille, cujusque melius sentientis. Plura qui volet de remediis amoris, legat Jasonem Pratensem, Arnoldum, Montaltum, Savanarolum, Langium, Valescum, Crimisonum, Alexandrum Benedictum, Laurentium, Valleriolam, e Poetis Nasonem, e nostratibus Chaucerum, &c., with whom I conclude,
Valescus de Taranta cap. de Melanchol. Aelian Montaltus, Felix Platerus, Guianerius, put jealousy for a cause of melancholy, others for a symptom; because melancholy persons amongst these passions and perturbations of the mind, are most obnoxious to it. But methinks for the latitude it hath, and that prerogative above other ordinary symptoms, it ought to be treated of as a species apart, being of so great and eminent note, so furious a passion, and almost of as great extent as love itself, as [5982]Benedetto Varchi holds, “no love without a mixture of jealousy,” qui non zelat, non amat. For these causes I will dilate, and treat of it by itself, as a bastard-branch or kind of love-melancholy, which, as heroical love goeth commonly before marriage, doth usually follow, torture, and crucify in like sort, deserves therefore to be rectified alike, requires as much care and industry, in setting out the several causes of it, prognostics and cures. Which I have more willingly done, that he that is or hath been jealous, may see his error as in a glass; he that is not, may learn to detest, avoid it himself, and dispossess others that are anywise affected with it.
Jealousy is described and defined to be [5983]“a certain suspicion which the lover hath of the party he chiefly loveth, lest he or she should be enamoured of another:” or any eager desire to enjoy some beauty alone, to have it proper to himself only: a fear or doubt, lest any foreigner should participate or share with him in his love. Or (as [5984]Scaliger adds) “a fear of losing her favour whom he so earnestly affects.” Cardan calls it “a [5985]zeal for love, and a kind of envy lest any man should beguile us.” [5986]Ludovicus Vives defines it in the very same words, or little differing in sense.
There be many other jealousies, but improperly so called all; as that of parents, tutors, guardians over their children, friends whom they love, or such as are left to their wardship or protection.
But this furious passion is most eminent in men, and is as well amongst bachelors as married men. If it appear amongst bachelors, we commonly call them rivals or co-rivals, a metaphor derived from a river, rivales, a [6022]rivo; for as a river, saith Acron in Hor. Art. Poet. and Donat in Ter. Eunuch. divides a common ground between two men, and both participate of it, so is a woman indifferent between two suitors, both likely to enjoy her; and thence comes this emulation, which breaks out many times into tempestuous storms, and produceth lamentable effects, murder itself, with much cruelty, many single combats. They cannot endure the least injury done unto them before their mistress, and in her defence will bite off one another's noses; they are most impatient of any flout, disgrace, lest emulation or participation in that kind. [6023]Lacerat lacerium Largi mordax Memnius. Memnius the Roman (as Tully tells the story, de oratore, lib. 2.), being co-rival with Largus Terracina, bit him by the arm, which fact of his was so famous, that it afterwards grew to a proverb in those parts. [6024]Phaedria could not abide his co-rival Thraso; for when Parmeno demanded, numquid aliud imperas? whether he would command him any more service: “No more” (saith he) “but to speak in his behalf, and to drive away his co-rival if he could.” Constantine, in the eleventh book of his husbandry, cap. 11, hath a pleasant tale of the pine-tree; [6025]she was once a fair maid, whom Pineus and Boreas, two co-rivals, dearly sought; but jealous Boreas broke her neck, &c. And in his eighteenth chapter he telleth another tale of [6026]Mars, that in his jealousy slew Adonis. Petronius calleth this passion amantium furiosum aemulationem, a furious emulation; and their symptoms are well expressed by Sir Geoffrey Chaucer in his first Canterbury Tale. It will make the nearest and dearest friends fall out; they will endure all other things to be common, goods, lands, moneys, participate of each pleasure, and take in good part any disgraces, injuries in another kind; but as Propertius well describes it in an elegy of his, in this they will suffer nothing, have no co-rivals.
Astrologers make the stars a cause or sign of this bitter passion, and out of every man's horoscope will give a probable conjecture whether he will be jealous or no, and at what time, by direction of the significators to their several promissors: their aphorisms are to be read in Albubater, Pontanus, Schoner, Junctine, &c. Bodine, cap. 5. meth. hist. ascribes a great cause to the country or clime, and discourseth largely there of this subject, saying, that southern men are more hot, lascivious, and jealous, than such as live in the north; they can hardly contain themselves in those hotter climes, but are most subject to prodigious lust. Leo Afer telleth incredible things almost, of the lust and jealousy of his countrymen of Africa, and especially such as live about Carthage, and so doth every geographer of them in [6030]Asia, Turkey, Spaniards, Italians. Germany hath not so many drunkards, England tobacconists, France dancers, Holland mariners, as Italy alone hath jealous husbands. And in [6031]Italy some account them of Piacenza more jealous than the rest. In [6032]Germany, France, Britain, Scandia, Poland, Muscovy, they are not so troubled with this feral malady, although Damianus a Goes, which I do much wonder at, in his topography of Lapland, and Herbastein of Russia, against the stream of all other geographers, would fasten it upon those northern inhabitants. Altomarius Poggius, and Munster in his description of Baden, reports that men and women of all sorts go commonly into the baths together, without all suspicion, “the name of jealousy” (saith Munster) “is not so much as once heard of among them.” In Friesland the women kiss him they drink to, and are kissed again of those they pledge. The virgins in Holland go hand in hand with young men from home, glide on the ice, such is their harmless liberty, and lodge together abroad without suspicion, which rash Sansovinus an Italian makes a great sign of unchastity. In France, upon small acquaintance, it is usual to court other men's wives, to come to their houses, and accompany them arm in arm in the streets, without imputation. In the most northern countries young men and maids familiarly dance together, men and their wives, [6033]which, Siena only excepted, Italians may not abide. The [6034]Greeks, on the other side, have their private baths for men and women, where they must not come near, nor so much as see one another: and as [6035]Bodine observes lib. 5. de repub. “the Italians could never endure this,” or a Spaniard, the very conceit of it would make him mad: and for that cause they lock up their women, and will not suffer them to be near men, so much as in the [6036]church, but with a partition between. He telleth, moreover, how that “when he was ambassador in England, he heard Mendoza the Spanish legate finding fault with it, as a filthy custom for men and women to sit promiscuously in churches together; but Dr. Dale the master of the requests told him again, that it was indeed a filthy custom in Spain, where they could not contain themselves from lascivious thoughts in their holy places, but not with us.” Baronius in his Annals, out of Eusebius, taxeth Licinius the emperor for a decree of his made to this effect, Jubens ne viri simul cum mulieribus in ecclesia interessent: for being prodigiously naught himself, aliorum naturam ex sua vitiosa mente spectavit, he so esteemed others. But we are far from any such strange conceits, and will permit our wives and daughters to go to the tavern with a friend, as Aubanus saith, modo absit lascivia, and suspect nothing, to kiss coming and going, which, as Erasmus writes in one of his epistles, they cannot endure. England is a paradise for women, and hell for horses: Italy a paradise for horses, hell for women, as the diverb goes. Some make a question whether this headstrong passion rage more in women than men, as Montaigne l. 3. But sure it is more outrageous in women, as all other melancholy is, by reason of the weakness of their sex. Scaliger Poet. lib. cap. 13. concludes against women: [6037]“Besides their inconstancy, treachery, suspicion, dissimulation, superstition, pride,” (for all women are by nature proud) “desire of sovereignty, if they be great women,” (he gives instance in Juno) “bitterness and jealousy are the most remarkable affections.”
More particular causes be these which follow. Impotency first, when a man is not able of himself to perform those dues which he ought unto his wife: for though he be an honest liver, hurt no man, yet Trebius the lawyer may make a question, an suum cuique tribuat, whether he give every one their own; and therefore when he takes notice of his wants, and perceives her to be more craving, clamorous, insatiable and prone to lust than is fit, he begins presently to suspect, that wherein he is defective, she will satisfy herself, she will be pleased by some other means. Cornelius Gallus hath elegantly expressed this humour in an epigram to his Lychoris.
A fourth eminent cause of jealousy may be this, when he that is deformed, and as Pindarus of Vulcan, sine gratiis natus, hirsute, ragged, yet virtuously given, will marry some fair nice piece, or light housewife, begins to misdoubt (as well he may) she doth not affect him. [6066]Lis est cum forma magna pudicitiae, beauty and honesty have ever been at odds. Abraham was jealous of his wife because she was fair: so was Vulcan of his Venus, when he made her creaking shoes, saith [6067]Philostratus, ne maecharetur, sandalio scilicet deferente, that he might hear by them when she stirred, which Mars indigne ferre, [6068]was not well pleased with. Good cause had Vulcan to do as he did, for she was no honester than she should be. Your fine faces have commonly this fault; and it is hard to find, saith Francis Philelphus in an epistle to Saxola his friend, a rich man honest, a proper woman not proud or unchaste. “Can she be fair and honest too?”
[6071]Nevisanus, lib. 4. num. 72, will have barrenness to be a main cause of jealousy. If her husband cannot play the man, some other shall, they will leave no remedies unessayed, and thereupon the good man grows jealous; I could give an instance, but be it as it is.
I find this reason given by some men, because they have been formerly naught themselves, they think they may be so served by others, they turned up trump before the cards were shuffled; they shall have therefore legem talionis, like for like.
Or that they care little for their own ladies, and fear no laws, they dare freely keep whores at their wives' noses. 'Tis too frequent with noblemen to be dishonest; Pielas, probitas, fides, privata bona sunt, as [6083]he said long since, piety, chastity, and such like virtues are for private men: not to be much looked after in great courts: and which Suetonius of the good princes of his time, they might be all engraven in one ring, we may truly hold of chaste potentates of our age. For great personages will familiarly run out in this kind, and yield occasion of offence. [6084] Montaigne, in his Essays, gives instate in Caesar, Mahomet the Turk, that sacked Constantinople, and Ladislaus, king of Naples, that besieged Florence: great men, and great soldiers, are commonly great, &c., probatum est, they are good doers. Mars and Venus are equally balanced in their actions,
How, on the other side, shall a poor man contain himself from this feral malady, when he shall see so manifest signs of his wife's inconstancy? when, as Milo's wife, she dotes upon every young man she sees, or, as [6092]Martial's Sota,—deserto sequitur Clitum marito, “deserts her husband and follows Clitus.” Though her husband be proper and tall, fair and lovely to behold, able to give contentment to any one woman, yet she will taste of the forbidden fruit: Juvenal's Iberina to a hair, she is as well pleased with one eye as one man. If a young gallant come by chance into her presence, a fastidious brisk, that can wear his clothes well in fashion, with a lock, jingling spur, a feather, that can cringe, and withal compliment, court a gentlewoman, she raves upon him, “O what a lovely proper man he was,” another Hector, an Alexander, a goodly man, a demigod, how sweetly he carried himself, with how comely a grace, sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat, how neatly he did wear his clothes! [6093] Quam sese ore ferens, quam forti pectore et armis, how bravely did he discourse, ride, sing, and dance, &c., and then she begins to loathe her husband, repugnans osculatur, to hate him and his filthy beard, his goatish complexion, as Doris said of Polyphemus, [6094]totus qui saniem, totus ut hircus olet, he is a rammy fulsome fellow, a goblin-faced fellow, he smells, he stinks, Et caepas simul alliumque ructat [6095]—si quando ad thalamum, &c., how like a dizzard, a fool, an ass, he looks, how like a clown he behaves himself! [6096]she will not come near him by her own good will, but wholly rejects him, as Venus did her fuliginous Vulcan, at last, Nec Deus hunc mensa, Dea nec dignata cubili est. [6097]So did Lucretia, a lady of Senae, after she had but seen Euryalus, in Eurialum tota ferebatur, domum reversa, &c., she would not hold her eyes off him in his presence,— [6098]tantum egregio decus enitet ore, and in his absence could think of none but him, odit virum, she loathed her husband forthwith, might not abide him:
Now when those other circumstances of time and place, opportunity and importunity shall concur, what will they not effect?
Of all passions, as I have already proved, love is most violent, and of those bitter potions which this love-melancholy affords, this bastard jealousy is the greatest, as appears by those prodigious symptoms which it hath, and that it produceth. For besides fear and sorrow, which is common to all melancholy, anxiety of mind, suspicion, aggravation, restless thoughts, paleness, meagreness, neglect of business, and the like, these men are farther yet misaffected, and in a higher strain. 'Tis a more vehement passion, a more furious perturbation, a bitter pain, a fire, a pernicious curiosity, a gall corrupting the honey of our life, madness, vertigo, plague, hell, they are more than ordinarily disquieted, they lose bonum pacis, as [6125]Chrysostom observes; and though they be rich, keep sumptuous tables, be nobly allied, yet miserrimi omnium sunt, they are most miserable, they are more than ordinarily discontent, more sad, nihil tristius, more than ordinarily suspicious. Jealousy, saith [6126]Vives, “begets unquietness in the mind, night and day: he hunts after every word he hears, every whisper, and amplifies it to himself” (as all melancholy men do in other matters) “with a most unjust calumny of others, he misinterprets everything is said or done, most apt to mistake or misconstrue,” he pries into every corner, follows close, observes to a hair. 'Tis proper to jealousy so to do,
Those which are jealous, most part, if they be not otherwise relieved, [6155]“proceed from suspicion to hatred, from hatred to frenzy, madness, injury, murder and despair.”
[6163]Paulus Aemilius, in his history of France, hath a tragical story of Chilpericus the First his death, made away by Ferdegunde his queen. In a jealous humour he came from hunting, and stole behind his wife, as she was dressing and combing her head in the sun, gave her a familiar touch with his wand, which she mistaking for her lover, said, “Ah Landre, a good knight should strike before, and not behind:” but when she saw herself betrayed by his presence, she instantly took order to make him away. Hierome Osorius, in his eleventh book of the deeds of Emanuel King of Portugal, to this effect hath a tragical narration of one Ferdinandus Chalderia, that wounded Gotherinus, a noble countryman of his, at Goa in the East Indies, [6164]“and cut off one of his legs, for that he looked as he thought too familiarly upon his wife, which was afterwards a cause of many quarrels, and much bloodshed.” Guianerius cap. 36. de aegritud. matr. speaks of a silly jealous fellow, that seeing his child new-born included in a caul, thought sure a [6165]Franciscan that used to come to his house, was the father of it, it was so like the friar's cowl, and thereupon threatened the friar to kill him: Fulgosus of a woman in Narbonne, that cut off her husband's privities in the night, because she thought he played false with her. The story of Jonuses Bassa, and fair Manto his wife, is well known to such as have read the Turkish history; and that of Joan of Spain, of which I treated in my former section. Her jealousy, saith Gomesius, was the cause of both their deaths: King Philip died for grief a little after, as [6166]Martian his physician gave it out, “and she for her part after a melancholy discontented life, misspent in lurking-holes and corners, made an end of her miseries.” Felix Plater, in the first book of his observations, hath many such instances, of a physician of his acquaintance, [6167]“that was first mad through jealousy, and afterwards desperate:” of a merchant [6168]“that killed his wife in the same humour, and after precipitated himself:” of a doctor of law that cut off his man's nose: of a painter's wife in Basil, anno 1600, that was mother of nine children and had been twenty-seven years married, yet afterwards jealous, and so impatient that she became desperate, and would neither eat nor drink in her own house, for fear her husband should poison her. 'Tis a common sign this; for when once the humours are stirred, and the imagination misaffected, it will vary itself in divers forms; and many such absurd symptoms will accompany, even madness itself. Skenkius observat. lib. 4. cap. de Uter. hath an example of a jealous woman that by this means had many fits of the mother: and in his first book of some that through jealousy ran mad: of a baker that gelded himself to try his wife's honesty, &c. Such examples are too common.
As of all other melancholy, some doubt whether this malady may be cured or no, they think 'tis like the [6169]gout, or Switzers, whom we commonly call Walloons, those hired soldiers, if once they take possession of a castle, they can never be got out.
Yea but thou repliest, 'tis not the like reason betwixt man and woman, through her fault my children are bastards, I may not endure it; [6187]Sit amarulenta, sit imperiosa prodiga, &c. Let her scold, brawl, and spend, I care not, modo sit casta, so she be honest, I could easily bear it; but this I cannot, I may not, I will not; “my faith, my fame, mine eye must not be touched,” as the diverb is, Non patitur tactum fama, fides, oculus. I say the same of my wife, touch all, use all, take all but this. I acknowledge that of Seneca to be true, Nullius boni jucunda possessio sine socio, there is no sweet content in the possession of any good thing without a companion, this only excepted, I say, “This.” And why this? Even this which thou so much abhorrest, it may be for thy progeny's good, [6188] better be any man's son than thine, to be begot of base Irus, poor Seius, or mean Mevius, the town swineherd's, a shepherd's son: and well is he, that like Hercules he hath any two fathers; for thou thyself hast peradventure more diseases than a horse, more infirmities of body and mind, a cankered soul, crabbed conditions, make the worst of it, as it is vulnus insanabile, sic vulnus insensibile, as it is incurable, so it is insensible. But art thou sure it is so? [6189]res agit ille tuas? “doth he so indeed?” It may be thou art over-suspicious, and without a cause as some are: if it be octimestris partus, born at eight months, or like him, and him, they fondly suspect he got it; if she speak or laugh familiarly with such or such men, then presently she is naught with them; such is thy weakness; whereas charity, or a well-disposed mind, would interpret all unto the best. St. Francis, by chance seeing a friar familiarly kissing another man's wife, was so far from misconceiving it, that he presently kneeled down and thanked God there was so much charity left: but they on the other side will ascribe nothing to natural causes, indulge nothing to familiarity, mutual society, friendship: but out of a sinister suspicion, presently lock them close, watch them, thinking by those means to prevent all such inconveniences, that's the way to help it; whereas by such tricks they do aggravate the mischief. 'Tis but in vain to watch that which will away.
Of such medicines as conduce to the cure of this malady, I have sufficiently treated; there be some good remedies remaining, by way of prevention, precautions, or admonitions, which if rightly practised, may do much good. Plato, in his Commonwealth, to prevent this mischief belike, would have all things, wives and children, all as one: and which Caesar in his Commentaries observed of those old Britons, that first inhabited this land, they had ten or twelve wives allotted to such a family, or promiscuously to be used by so many men; not one to one, as with us, or four, five, or six to one, as in Turkey. The [6217]Nicholaites, a set that sprang, saith Austin, from Nicholas the deacon, would have women indifferent; and the cause of this filthy sect, was Nicholas the deacon's jealousy, for which when he was condemned to purge himself of his offence, he broached his heresy, that it was lawful to lie with one another's wives, and for any man to lie with his: like to those [6218]Anabaptists in Munster, that would consort with other men's wives as the spirit moved them: or as [6219]Mahomet, the seducing prophet, would needs use women as he list himself, to beget prophets; two hundred and five, their Alcoran saith, were in love with him, and [6220]he as able as forty men. Amongst the old Carthaginians, as [6221]Bohemus relates out of Sabellicus., the king of the country lay with the bride the first night, and once in a year they went promiscuously all together. Munster Cosmog. lib. 3. cap. 497. ascribes the beginning of this brutish custom (unjustly) to one Picardus, a Frenchman, that invented a new sect of Adamites, to go naked as Adam did, and to use promiscuous venery at set times. When the priest repeated that of Genesis, “Increase and multiply,” out [6222]went the candles in the place where they met, “and without all respect of age, persons, conditions, catch that catch may, every man took her that came next,” &c.; some fasten this on those ancient Bohemians and Russians: [6223]others on the inhabitants of Mambrium, in the Lucerne valley in Piedmont; and, as I read, it was practised in Scotland amongst Christians themselves, until King Malcolm's time, the king or the lord of the town had their maidenheads. In some parts of [6224]India in our age, and those [6225]islanders, [6226]as amongst the Babylonians of old, they will prostitute their wives and daughters (which Chalcocondila, a Greek modern writer, for want of better intelligence, puts upon us Britons) to such travellers or seafaring men as come amongst them by chance, to show how far they were from this feral vice of jealousy, and how little they esteemed it. The kings of Calecut, as [6227]Lod. Vertomannus relates, will not touch their wives, till one of their Biarmi or high priests have lain first with them, to sanctify their wombs. But those Esai and Montanists, two strange sects of old, were in another extreme, they would not marry at all, or have any society with women, [6228]“because of their intemperance they held them all to be naught.” Nevisanus the lawyer, lib. 4. num. 33. sylv. nupt. would have him that is inclined to this malady, to prevent the worst, marry a quean, Capiens meretricem, hoc habet saltem boni quod non decipitur, quia scit eam sic esse, quod non contingit aliis. A fornicator in Seneca constuprated two wenches in a night; for satisfaction, the one desired to hang him, the other to marry him. [6229] Hierome, king of Syracuse in Sicily, espoused himself to Pitho, keeper of the stews; and Ptolemy took Thais a common whore to be his wife, had two sons, Leontiscus and Lagus by her, and one daughter Irene: 'tis therefore no such unlikely thing. [6230]A citizen of Engubine gelded himself to try his wife's honesty, and to be freed from jealousy; so did a baker in [6231] Basil, to the same intent. But of all other precedents in this kind, that of [6232]Combalus is most memorable; who to prevent his master's suspicion, for he was a beautiful young man, and sent by Seleucus his lord and king, with Stratonice the queen to conduct her into Syria, fearing the worst, gelded himself before he went, and left his genitals behind him in a box sealed up. His mistress by the way fell in love with him, but he not yielding to her, was accused to Seleucus of incontinency, (as that Bellerophon was in like case, falsely traduced by Sthenobia, to King Praetus her husband, cum non posset ad coitum inducere) and that by her, and was therefore at his corning home cast into prison: the day of hearing appointed, he was sufficiently cleared and acquitted, by showing his privities, which to the admiration of the beholders he had formerly cut off. The Lydians used to geld women whom they suspected, saith Leonicus var. hist. Tib. 3. cap. 49. as well as men. To this purpose [6233]Saint Francis, because he used to confess women in private, to prevent suspicion, and prove himself a maid, stripped himself before the Bishop of Assise and others: and Friar Leonard for the same cause went through Viterbium in Italy, without any garments.
Our pseudo-Catholics, to help these inconveniences which proceed from jealousy, to keep themselves and their wives honest, make severe laws; against adultery present death; and withal fornication, a venal sin, as a sink to convey that furious and swift stream of concupiscence, they appoint and permit stews, those punks and pleasant sinners, the more to secure their wives in all populous cities, for they hold them as necessary as churches; and howsoever unlawful, yet to avoid a greater mischief, to be tolerated in policy, as usury, for the hardness of men's hearts; and for this end they have whole colleges of courtesans in their towns and cities. Of [6234]Cato's mind belike, that would have his servants (cum ancillis congredi coitus causa, definito aere, ut graviora facinora evitarent, caeteris interim interdicens) familiar with some such feminine creatures, to avoid worse mischiefs in his house, and made allowance for it. They hold it impossible for idle persons, young, rich, and lusty, so many servants, monks, friars, to live honest, too tyrannical a burden to compel them to be chaste, and most unfit to suffer poor men, younger brothers and soldiers at all to marry, as those diseased persons, votaries, priests, servants. Therefore, as well to keep and ease the one as the other, they tolerate and wink at these kind of brothel-houses and stews. Many probable arguments they have to prove the lawfulness, the necessity, and a toleration of them, as of usury; and without question in policy they are not to be contradicted: but altogether in religion. Others prescribe filters, spells, charms to keep men and women honest. [6235]Mulier ut alienum virum non admittat praeter suum: Accipe fel hirci, et adipem, et exsicca, calescat in oleo, &c., et non alium praeter et amabit. In Alexi. Porta, &c., plura invenies, et multo his absurdiora, uti et in Rhasi, ne mulier virum admittat, et maritum solum diligat, &c. But these are most part Pagan, impious, irreligious, absurd, and ridiculous devices.
The best means to avoid these and like inconveniences are, to take away the causes and occasions. To this purpose [6236]Varro writ Satyram Menippeam, but it is lost. [6237]Patritius prescribes four rules to be observed in choosing of a wife (which who so will may read); Fonseca, the Spaniard, in his 45. c. Amphitheat. Amoris, sets down six special cautions for men, four for women; Sam. Neander out of Shonbernerus, five for men, five for women; Anthony Guivarra many good lessons; [6238]Cleobulus two alone, others otherwise; as first to make a good choice in marriage, to invite Christ to their wedding, and which [6239]St. Ambrose adviseth, Deum conjugii praesidem habere, and to pray to him for her, A Domino enim datur uxor prudens, Prov. xix. ) not to be too rash and precipitate in his election, to run upon the first he meets, or dote on every stout fair piece he sees, but to choose her as much by his ears as eyes, to be well advised whom he takes, of what age, &c., and cautelous in his proceedings. An old man should not marry a young woman, nor a young woman an old man, [6240] Quam male inaequales veniunt ad arata juvenci! such matches must needs minister a perpetual cause of suspicion, and be distasteful to each other.
Seneca therefore disallows all such unseasonable matches, habent enim maledicti locum crebrae nuptiae. And as [6245]Tully farther inveighs, “'tis unfit for any, but ugly and filthy in old age.” Turpe senilis amor, one of the three things [6246]God hateth. Plutarch, in his book contra Coleten, rails downright at such kind of marriages, which are attempted by old men, qui jam corpore impotenti, et a voluptatibus deserti, peccant animo, and makes a question whether in some cases it be tolerable at least for such a man to marry,—qui Venerem affectat sine viribus, “that is now past those venerous exercises,” “as a gelded man lies with a virgin and sighs,” Ecclus. xxx. 20, and now complains with him in Petronius, funerata est haec pars jam, quad fuit olim Achillea, he is quite done,
Another main caution fit to be observed is this, that though they be equal in years, birth, fortunes, and other conditions, yet they do not omit virtue and good education, which Musonius and Antipater so much inculcate in Stobeus:
If, as Plutarch adviseth, one must eat modium salis, a bushel of salt with him, before he choose his friend, what care should be had in choosing a wife, his second self, how solicitous should he be to know her qualities and behaviour; and when he is assured of them, not to prefer birth, fortune, beauty, before bringing up, and good conditions. [6263]Coquage god of cuckolds, as one merrily said, accompanies the goddess Jealousy, both follow the fairest, by Jupiter's appointment, and they sacrifice to them together: beauty and honesty seldom agree; straight personages have often crooked manners; fair faces, foul vices; good complexions, ill conditions. Suspicionis plena res est, et insidiarum, beauty (saith [6264]Chrysostom) is full of treachery and suspicion: he that hath a fair wife, cannot have a worse mischief, and yet most covet it, as if nothing else in marriage but that and wealth were to be respected. [6265]Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, was so curious in this behalf, that he would not marry the Duke of Mantua's daughter, except he might see her naked first: which Lycurgus appointed in his laws, and Morus in his Utopian Commonwealth approves. [6266]In Italy, as a traveller observes, if a man have three or four daughters, or more, and they prove fair, they are married eftsoons: if deformed, they change their lovely names of Lucia, Cynthia, Camaena, call them Dorothy, Ursula, Bridget, and so put them into monasteries, as if none were fit for marriage, but such as are eminently fair: but these are erroneous tenets: a modest virgin well conditioned, to such a fair snout-piece, is much to be preferred. If thou wilt avoid them, take away all causes of suspicion and jealousy, marry a coarse piece, fetch her from Cassandra's [6267]temple, which was wont in Italy to be a sanctuary of all deformed maids, and so shalt thou be sure that no man will make thee cuckold, but for spite. A citizen of Bizance in France had a filthy, dowdy, deformed slut to his wife, and finding her in bed with another man, cried out as one amazed; O miser! quae te necessitas huc adegit? O thou wretch, what necessity brought thee hither? as well he might; for who can affect such a one? But this is warily to be understood, most offend in another extreme, they prefer wealth before beauty, and so she be rich, they care not how she look; but these are all out as faulty as the rest. Attendenda uxoris forma, as [6268]Salisburiensis adviseth, ne si alteram aspexeris, mox eam sordere putes, as the Knight in Chaucer, that was married to an old woman,Howsoever, quod iterum maneo, I would advise thee thus much, be she fair or foul, to choose a wife out of a good kindred, parentage, well brought up, in an honest place.
And therefore I know not what philosopher he was, that would have women come but thrice abroad all their time, [6284]“to be baptised, married, and buried;” but he was too strait-laced. Let them have their liberty in good sort, and go in good sort, modo non annos viginti aetatis suae domi relinquant, as a good fellow said, so that they look not twenty years younger abroad than they do at home, they be not spruce, neat, angels abroad, beasts, dowdies, sluts at home; but seek by all means to please and give content to their husbands: to be quiet above all things, obedient, silent and patient; if they be incensed, angry, chid a little, their wives must not [6285]cample again, but take it in good part. An honest woman, I cannot now tell where she dwelt, but by report an honest woman she was, hearing one of her gossips by chance complain of her husband's impatience, told her an excellent remedy for it, and gave her withal a glass of water, which when he brawled she should hold still in her mouth, and that toties quoties, as often as he chid; she did so two or three times with good success, and at length seeing her neighbour, gave her great thanks for it, and would needs know the ingredients, [6286]she told her in brief what it was, “fair water,” and no more: for it was not the water, but her silence which performed the cure. Let every froward woman imitate this example, and be quiet within doors, and (as [6287]M. Aurelius prescribes) a necessary caution it is to be observed of all good matrons that love their credits, to come little abroad, but follow their work at home, look to their household affairs and private business, oeconomiae incumbentes, be sober, thrifty, wary, circumspect, modest, and compose themselves to live to their husbands' means, as a good housewife should do,
These cautions concern him; and if by those or his own discretion otherwise he cannot moderate himself, his friends must not be wanting by their wisdom, if it be possible, to give the party grieved satisfaction, to prevent and remove the occasions, objects, if it may be to secure him. If it be one alone, or many, to consider whom he suspects or at what times, in what places he is most incensed, in what companies. [6290]Nevisanus makes a question whether a young physician ought to be admitted in cases of sickness, into a new-married man's house, to administer a julep, a syrup, or some such physic. The Persians of old would not suffer a young physician to come amongst women. [6291]Apollonides Cous made Artaxerxes cuckold, and was after buried alive for it. A goaler in Aristaenetus had a fine young gentleman to his prisoner; [6292]in commiseration of his youth and person he let him loose, to enjoy the liberty of the prison, but he unkindly made him a cornuto. Menelaus gave good welcome to Paris a stranger, his whole house and family were at his command, but he ungently stole away his best beloved wife. The like measure was offered to Agis king of Lacedaemon, by [6293] Alcibiades an exile, for his good entertainment, he was too familiar with Timea his wife, begetting a child of her, called Leotichides: and bragging moreover when he came home to Athens, that he had a son should be king of the Lacedaemonians. If such objects were removed, no doubt but the parties might easily be satisfied, or that they could use them gently and entreat them well, not to revile them, scoff at, hate them, as in such cases commonly they do, 'tis a human infirmity, a miserable vexation, and they should not add grief to grief, nor aggravate their misery, but seek to please, and by all means give them content, by good counsel, removing such offensive objects, or by mediation of some discreet friends. In old Rome there was a temple erected by the matrons to that [6294]Viriplaca Dea, another to Venus verticorda, quae maritos uxoribus reddebat benevolos, whither (if any difference happened between man and wife) they did instantly resort: there they did offer sacrifice, a white hart, Plutarch records, sine felle, without the gall, (some say the like of Juno's temple) and make their prayers for conjugal peace; before some [6295] indifferent arbitrators and friends, the matter was heard between man and wife, and commonly composed. In our times we want no sacred churches, or good men to end such controversies, if use were made, of them. Some say that precious stone called [6296]beryllus, others a diamond, hath excellent virtue, contra hostium injurias, et conjugatos invicem conciliare, to reconcile men and wives, to maintain unity and love; you may try this when you will, and as you see cause. If none of all these means and cautions will take place, I know not what remedy to prescribe, or whither such persons may go for ease, except they can get into the same [6297]Turkey paradise, “Where they shall have as many fair wives as they will themselves, with clear eyes, and such as look on none but their own husbands,” no fear, no danger of being cuckolds; or else I would have them observe that strict rule of [6298]Alphonsus, to marry a deaf and dumb man to a blind woman. If this will not help, let them, to prevent the worst, consult with an [6299]astrologer, and see whether the significators in her horoscope agree with his, that they be not in signis et partibus odiose intuentibus aut imperantibus, sed mutuo et amice antisciis et obedientibus, otherwise (as they hold) there will be intolerable enmities between them: or else get them sigillum veneris, a characteristical seal stamped in the day and hour of Venus, when she is fortunate, with such and such set words and charms, which Villanovanus and Leo Suavius prescribe, ex sigillis magicis Salomonis, Hermetis, Raguelis, &c., with many such, which Alexis, Albertus, and some of our natural magicians put upon us: ut mulier cum aliquo adulterare non possit, incide de capillis ejus, &c., and he shall surely be gracious in all women's eyes, and never suspect or disagree with his own wife so long as he wears it. If this course be not approved, and other remedies may not be had, they must in the last place sue for a divorce; but that is somewhat difficult to effect, and not all out so fit. For as Felisacus in his tract de justa uxore urgeth, if that law of Constantine the Great, or that of Theodosius and Valentinian, concerning divorce, were in use in our times, innumeras propemodum viduas haberemus, et coelibes viros, we should have almost no married couples left. Try therefore those former remedies; or as Tertullian reports of Democritus, that put out his eyes, [6300]because he could not look upon a woman without lust, and was much troubled to see that which he might not enjoy; let him make himself blind, and so he shall avoid that care and molestation of watching his wife. One other sovereign remedy I could repeat, an especial antidote against jealousy, an excellent cure, but I am not now disposed to tell it, not that like a covetous empiric I conceal it for any gain, but some other reasons, I am not willing to publish it: if you be very desirous to know it, when I meet you next I will peradventure tell you what it is in your ear. This is the best counsel I can give; which he that hath need of, as occasion serves, may apply unto himself. In the mean time,—dii talem terris avertite pestem, [6301]as the proverb is, from heresy, jealousy and frenzy, good Lord deliver us.
That there is such a distinct species of love melancholy, no man hath ever yet doubted: but whether this subdivision of [6302]Religious Melancholy be warrantable, it may be controverted.
Give me but a little leave, and I will set before your eyes in brief a stupendous, vast, infinite ocean of incredible madness and folly: a sea full of shelves and rocks, sands, gulfs, euripes and contrary tides, full of fearful monsters, uncouth shapes, roaring waves, tempests, and siren calms, halcyonian seas, unspeakable misery, such comedies and tragedies, such absurd and ridiculous, feral and lamentable fits, that I know not whether they are more to be pitied or derided, or may be believed, but that we daily see the same still practised in our days, fresh examples, nova novitia, fresh objects of misery and madness, in this kind that are still represented unto us, abroad, at home, in the midst of us, in our bosoms.
But before I can come to treat of these several errors and obliquities, their causes, symptoms, affections, &c., I must say something necessarily of the object of this love, God himself, what this love is, how it allureth, whence it proceeds, and (which is the cause of all our miseries) how we mistake, wander and swerve from it.
Amongst all those divine attributes that God doth vindicate to himself, eternity, omnipotency, immutability, wisdom, majesty, justice, mercy, &c., his [6312]beauty is not the least, one thing, saith David, have I desired of the Lord, and that I will still desire, to behold the beauty of the Lord, Psal. xxvii. 4. And out of Sion, which is the perfection of beauty, hath God shined, Psal. 1. 2. All other creatures are fair, I confess, and many other objects do much enamour us, a fair house, a fair horse, a comely person. [6313]“I am amazed,” saith Austin, “when 1 look up to heaven and behold the beauty of the stars, the beauty of angels, principalities, powers, who can express it? who can sufficiently commend, or set out this beauty which appears in us? so fair a body, so fair a face, eyes, nose, cheeks, chin, brows, all fair and lovely to behold; besides the beauty of the soul which cannot be discerned. If we so labour and be so much affected with the comeliness of creatures, how should we be ravished with that admirable lustre of God himself?” If ordinary beauty have such a prerogative and power, and what is amiable and fair, to draw the eyes and ears, hearts and affections of all spectators unto it, to move, win, entice, allure: how shall this divine form ravish our souls, which is the fountain and quintessence of all beauty? Coelum pulchrum, sed pulchrior coeli fabricator; if heaven be so fair, the sun so fair, how much fairer shall he be, that made them fair? “For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures, proportionally, the maker of them is seen,” Wisd. xiii. 5. If there be such pleasure in beholding a beautiful person alone, and as a plausible sermon, he so much affect us, what shall this beauty of God himself, that is infinitely fairer than all creatures, men, angels, &c. [6314] Omnis pulchritudo florem, hominum, angelorum, et rerum omnium pulcherrimarum ad Dei pulchritudinem collata, nox est et tenebrae, all other beauties are night itself, mere darkness to this our inexplicable, incomprehensible, unspeakable, eternal, infinite, admirable and divine beauty. This lustre, pulchritudo omnium pulcherrima. This beauty and [6315] “splendour of the divine Majesty,” is it that draws all creatures to it, to seek it, love, admire, and adore it; and those heathens, pagans, philosophers, out of those relics they have yet left of God's image, are so far forth incensed, as not only to acknowledge a God; but, though after their own inventions, to stand in admiration of his bounty, goodness, to adore and seek him; the magnificence and structure of the world itself, and beauty of all his creatures, his goodness, providence, protection, enforceth them to love him, seek him, fear him, though a wrong way to adore him: but for us that are Christians, regenerate, that are his adopted sons, illuminated by his word, having the eyes of our hearts and understandings opened; how fairly doth he offer and expose himself? Ambit nos Deus (Austin saith) donis et forma sua, he woos us by his beauty, gifts, promises, to come unto him; [6316]“the whole Scripture is a message, an exhortation, a love letter to this purpose;” to incite us, and invite us, [6317]God's epistle, as Gregory calls it, to his creatures. He sets out his son and his church in that epithalamium or mystical song of Solomon, to enamour us the more, comparing his head “to fine gold, his locks curled and black as a raven,” Cant. iv. 5. “his eyes like doves on rivers of waters, washed with milk, his lips as lilies, drooping down pure juice, his hands as rings of gold set with chrysolite: and his church to a vineyard, a garden enclosed, a fountain of living waters, an orchard of pomegranates, with sweet scents of saffron, spike, calamus and cinnamon, and all the trees of incense, as the chief spices, the fairest amongst women, no spot in her, [6318]his sister, his spouse, undefiled, the only daughter of her mother, dear unto her, fair as the moon, pure as the sun, looking out as the morning;” that by these figures, that glass, these spiritual eyes of contemplation, we might perceive some resemblance of his beauty, the love between his church and him. And so in the xlv. Psalm this beauty of his church is compared to a “queen in a vesture of gold of Ophir, embroidered raiment of needlework, that the king might take pleasure in her beauty.” To incense us further yet, [6319]John, in his apocalypse, makes a description of that heavenly Jerusalem, the beauty, of it, and in it the maker of it; “Likening it to a city of pure gold, like unto clear glass, shining and garnished with all manner of precious stones, having no need of sun or moon: for the lamb is the light of it, the glory of God doth illuminate it: to give us to understand the infinite glory, beauty and happiness of it.” Not that it is no fairer than these creatures to which it is compared, but that this vision of his, this lustre of his divine majesty, cannot otherwise be expressed to our apprehensions, “no tongue can tell, no heart can conceive it,” as Paul saith. Moses himself, Exod. xxxiii. 18. when he desired to see God in his glory, was answered that he might not endure it, no man could see his face and live. Sensibile forte destruit sensum, a strong object overcometh the sight, according to that axiom in philosophy: fulgorem solis ferre non potes, multo magis creatoris; if thou canst not endure the sunbeams, how canst thou endure that fulgor and brightness of him that made the sun? The sun itself and all that we can imagine, are but shadows of it, 'tis visio praecellens, as [6320]Austin calls it, the quintessence of beauty this, “which far exceeds the beauty of heavens, sun and moon, stars, angels, gold and silver, woods, fair fields, and whatsoever is pleasant to behold.” All those other beauties fail, vary, are subject to corruption, to loathing; [6321]“But this is an immortal vision, a divine beauty, an immortal love, an indefatigable love and beauty, with sight of which we shall never be tired nor wearied, but still the more we see the more we shall covet him.” [6322]“For as one saith, where this vision is, there is absolute beauty; and where is that beauty, from the same fountain comes all pleasure and happiness; neither can beauty, pleasure, happiness, be separated from his vision or sight, or his vision, from beauty, pleasure, happiness.” In this life we have but a glimpse of this beauty and happiness: we shall hereafter, as John saith, see him as he is: thine eyes, as Isaiah promiseth, xxxiii. 17. “shall behold the king in his glory,” then shall we be perfectly enamoured, have a full fruition of it, desire, [6323]behold and love him alone as the most amiable and fairest object, or summum bonum, or chiefest good.
This likewise should we now have done, had not our will been corrupted; and as we are enjoined to love God with all our heart, and all our soul: for to that end were we born, to love this object, as [6324]Melancthon discourseth, and to enjoy it. “And him our will would have loved and sought alone as our summum bonum, or principal good, and all other good things for God's sake: and nature, as she proceeded from it, would have sought this fountain; but in this infirmity of human nature this order is disturbed, our love is corrupt:” and a man is like that monster in [6325]Plato, composed of a Scylla, a lion and a man; we are carried away headlong with the torrent of our affections: the world, and that infinite variety of pleasing objects in it, do so allure and enamour us, that we cannot so much as look towards God, seek him, or think on him as we should: we cannot, saith Austin, Rempub. coelestem cogitare, we cannot contain ourselves from them, their sweetness is so pleasing to us. Marriage, saith [6326] Gualter, detains many; “a thing in itself laudable, good and necessary, but many, deceived and carried away with the blind love of it, have quite laid aside the love of God, and desire of his glory. Meat and drink hath overcome as many, whilst they rather strive to please, satisfy their guts and belly, than to serve God and nature.” Some are so busied about merchandise to get money, they lose their own souls, whilst covetously carried, and with an insatiable desire of gain, they forget God; as much we may say of honour, leagues, friendships, health, wealth, and all other profits or pleasures in this life whatsoever. [6327]“In this world there be so many beautiful objects, splendours and brightness of gold, majesty of glory, assistance of friends, fair promises, smooth words, victories, triumphs, and such an infinite company of pleasing beauties to allure us, and draw us from God, that we cannot look after him.” And this is it which Christ himself, those prophets and apostles so much thundered against, 1 John, xvii. 15, dehort us from; “love not the world, nor the things that are in the world: if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” 16. “For all that is in the world, as lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world: and the world passeth away and the lust thereof; but he that fulfilleth the will of God abideth for ever. No man, saith our Saviour, can serve two masters, but he must love the one and hate the other,” &c., bonos vel malos mores, boni vel mali faciunt amores, Austin well infers: and this is that which all the fathers inculcate. He cannot ([6328]Austin admonisheth) be God's friend, that is delighted with the pleasures of the world: “make clean thine heart, purify thine heart; if thou wilt see this beauty, prepare thyself for it. It is the eye of contemplation by which we must behold it, the wing of meditation which lifts us up and rears our souls with the motion of our hearts, and sweetness of contemplation:” so saith Gregory cited by [6329]Bonaventure. And as [6330]Philo Judeus seconds him, “he that loves God, will soar aloft and take him wings; and leaving the earth fly up to heaven, wander with sun and moon, stars, and that heavenly troop, God himself being his guide.” If we desire to see him, we must lay aside all vain objects, which detain us and dazzle our eyes, and as [6331]Ficinus adviseth us, “get us solar eyes, spectacles as they that look on the sun: to see this divine beauty, lay aside all material objects, all sense, and then thou shalt see him as he is.” Thou covetous wretch, as [6332]Austin expostulates, “why dost thou stand gaping on this dross, muck-hills, filthy excrements? behold a far fairer object, God himself woos thee; behold him, enjoy him, he is sick for love.” Cant. v. he invites thee to his sight, to come into his fair garden, to eat and drink with him, to be merry with him, to enjoy his presence for ever. [6333]Wisdom cries out in the streets besides the gates, in the top of high places, before the city, at the entry of the door, and bids them give ear to her instruction, which is better than gold or precious stones; no pleasures can be compared to it: leave all then and follow her, vos exhortor o amici et obsecro. In. [6334]Ficinus's words, “I exhort and beseech you, that you would embrace and follow this divine love with all your hearts and abilities, by all offices and endeavours make this so loving God propitious unto you.” For whom alone, saith [6335]Plotinus, “we must forsake the kingdoms and empires of the whole earth, sea, land, and air, if we desire to be engrafted into him, leave all and follow him.”
Now, forasmuch as this love of God is a habit infused of God, as [6336] Thomas holds, l. 2. quaest. 23. “by which a man is inclined to love God above all, and his neighbour as himself,” we must pray to God that he will open our eyes, make clear our hearts, that we may be capable of his glorious rays, and perform those duties that he requires of us, Deut. vi. and Josh. xxiii. “to love God above all, and our neighbour as ourself, to keep his commandments.” “In this we know,” saith John, c. v. 2, “we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments.” “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; he that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love,” cap. iv. 8, “and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him;” for love pre-supposeth knowledge, faith, hope, and unites us to God himself, as [6337]Leon Hebreus delivereth unto us, and is accompanied with the fear of God, humility, meekness, patience, all those virtues, and charity itself. For if we love God, we shall love our neighbour, and perform the duties which are required at our hands, to which we are exhorted, 1 Cor. xv. 4, 5; Ephes. iv.; Colos. iii.; Rom. xii. We shall not be envious or puffed up, or boast, disdain, think evil, or be provoked to anger, “but suffer all things; endeavour to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” Forbear one another, forgive one another, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and perform all those works of mercy, which [6338]Clemens Alexandrinus calls amoris et amicitiae, impletionem et extentionem, the extent and complement of love; and that not for fear or worldly respects, but ordine ad Deum, for the love of God himself. This we shall do if we be truly enamoured; but we come short in both, we neither love God nor our neighbour as we should. Our love in spiritual things is too [6339]defective, in worldly things too excessive, there is a jar in both. We love the world too much; God too little; our neighbour not at all, or for our own ends. Vulgus amicitias utilitate probat. “The chief thing we respect is our commodity;” and what we do is for fear of worldly punishment, for vainglory, praise of men, fashion, and such by respects, not for God's sake. We neither know God aright, nor seek, love or worship him as we should. And for these defects, we involve ourselves into a multitude of errors, we swerve from this true love and worship of God: which is a cause unto us of unspeakable miseries; running into both extremes, we become fools, madmen, without sense, as now in the next place 1 will show you.
The parties affected are innumerable almost, and scattered over the face of the earth, far and near, and so have been in all precedent ages, from the beginning of the world to these times, of all sorts and conditions. For method's sake I will reduce them to a twofold division, according to those two extremes of excess and defect, impiety and superstition, idolatry and atheism. Not that there is any excess of divine worship or love of God; that cannot be, we cannot love God too much, or do our duty as we ought, as Papists hold, or have any perfection in this life, much less supererogate: when we have all done, we are unprofitable servants. But because we do aliud agere, zealous without knowledge, and too solicitous about that which is not necessary, busying ourselves about impertinent, needless, idle, and vain ceremonies, populo ut placerent, as the Jews did about sacrifices, oblations, offerings, incense, new moons, feasts, &c., but Isaiah taxeth them, i. 12, “who required this at your hands?” We have too great opinion of our own worth, that we can satisfy the law: and do more than is required at our hands, by performing those evangelical counsels, and such works of supererogation, merit for others, which Bellarmine, Gregory de Valentia, all their Jesuits and champions defend, that if God should deal in rigour with them, some of their Franciscans and Dominicans are so pure, that nothing could be objected to them. Some of us again are too dear, as we think, more divine and sanctified than others, of a better mettle, greater gifts, and with that proud Pharisee, contemn others in respect of ourselves, we are better Christians, better learned, choice spirits, inspired, know more, have special revelation, perceive God's secrets, and thereupon presume, say and do that many times which is not befitting to be said or done. Of this number are all superstitious idolaters, ethnics, Mahometans, Jews, heretics, [6340]enthusiasts, divinators, prophets, sectaries, and schismatics. Zanchius reduceth such infidels to four chief sects; but I will insist and follow mine own intended method: all which with many other curious persons, monks, hermits, &c., may be ranged in this extreme, and fight under this superstitious banner, with those rude idiots, and infinite swarms of people that are seduced by them. In the other extreme or in defect, march those impious epicures, libertines, atheists, hypocrites, infidels, worldly, secure, impenitent, unthankful, and carnal-minded men, that attribute all to natural causes, that will acknowledge no supreme power; that have cauterised consciences, or live in a reprobate sense; or such desperate persons as are too distrustful of his mercies. Of these there be many subdivisions, diverse degrees of madness and folly, some more than other, as shall be shown in the symptoms: and yet all miserably out, perplexed, doting, and beside themselves for religion's sake. For as [6341]Zanchy well distinguished, and all the world knows religion is twofold, true or false; false is that vain superstition of idolaters, such as were of old, Greeks, Romans, present Mahometans, &c. Timorem deorum inanem, [6342]Tully could term it; or as Zanchy defines it, Ubi falsi dii, aut falso cullu colitur Deus, when false gods, or that God is falsely worshipped. And 'tis a miserable plague, a torture of the soul, a mere madness, Religiosa insania, [6343]Meteran calls it, or insanus error, as [6344]Seneca, a frantic error; or as Austin, Insanus animi morbus, a furious disease of the soul; insania omnium insanissima, a quintessence of madness; [6345]for he that is superstitious can never be quiet. 'Tis proper to man alone, uni superbia, avaritia, superstitio, saith Plin. lib. 7. cap. 1. atque etiam post saevit de futuro, which wrings his soul for the present, and to come: the greatest misery belongs to mankind, a perpetual servitude, a slavery, [6346]Ex timore timor, a heavy yoke, the seal of damnation, an intolerable burden. They that are superstitious are still fearing, suspecting, vexing themselves with auguries, prodigies, false tales, dreams, idle, vain works, unprofitable labours, as [6347]Boterus observes, cura mentis ancipite versantur: enemies to God and to themselves. In a word, as Seneca concludes, Religio Deum colit, superstitio destruit, superstition destroys, but true religion honours God. True religion, ubi verus Deus vere colitur, where the true God is truly worshipped, is the way to heaven, the mother of virtues, love, fear, devotion, obedience, knowledge, &c. It rears the dejected soul of man, and amidst so many cares, miseries, persecutions, which this world affords, it is a sole ease, an unspeakable comfort, a sweet reposal, Jugum suave, et leve, a light yoke, an anchor, and a haven. It adds courage, boldness, and begets generous spirits: although tyrants rage, persecute, and that bloody Lictor or sergeant be ready to martyr them, aut lita, aut morere, (as in those persecutions of the primitive Church, it was put in practice, as you may read in Eusebius and others) though enemies be now ready to invade, and all in an uproar, [6348]Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidos ferient ruinae, though heaven should fall on his head, he would not be dismayed. But as a good Christian prince once made answer to a menacing Turk, facile scelerata hominum arma contemnit, qui del praesidio tutus est: or as [6349] Phalaris writ to Alexander in a wrong cause, he nor any other enemy could terrify him, for that he trusted in God. Si Deus nobiscum, quis contra nos? In all calamities, persecutions whatsoever, as David did, 2 Sam. ii. 22, he will sing with him, “the Lord is my rock, my fortress, my strength, my refuge, the tower and horn of my salvation,” &c. In all troubles and adversities, Psal. xlvi. 1. “God is my hope and help, still ready to be found, I will not therefore fear,” &c., 'tis a fear expelling fear; he hath peace of conscience, and is full of hope, which is (saith [6350]Austin) vita vitae mortalis, the life of this our mortal life, hope of immortality, the sole comfort of our misery: otherwise, as Paul saith, we of all others were most wretched, but this makes us happy, counterpoising our hearts in all miseries; superstition torments, and is from the devil, the author of lies; but this is from God himself, as Lucian, that Antiochian priest, made his divine confession in [6351]Eusebius, Auctor nobis de Deo Deus est, God is the author of our religion himself, his word is our rule, a lantern to us, dictated by the Holy Ghost, he plays upon our hearts as many harpstrings, and we are his temples, he dwelleth in us, and we in him.
The part affected of superstition, is the brain, heart, will, understanding, soul itself, and all the faculties of it, totum compositum, all is mad and dotes: now for the extent, as I say, the world itself is the subject of it, (to omit that grand sin of atheism,) all times have been misaffected, past, present, “there is not one that doth good, no not one, from the prophet to the priest, &c.” A lamentable thing it is to consider, how many myriads of men this idolatry and superstition (for that comprehends all) hath infatuated in all ages, besotted by this blind zeal, which is religion's ape, religion's bastard, religion's shadow, false glass. For where God hath a temple, the devil will have a chapel: where God hath sacrifices, the devil will have his oblations: where God hath ceremonies, the devil will have his traditions: where there is any religion, the devil will plant superstition; and 'tis a pitiful sight to behold and read, what tortures, miseries, it hath procured, what slaughter of souls it hath made, how it rageth amongst those old Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Tuscans, Gauls, Germans, Britons, &c. Britannia jam hodie celebrat tam attonite, saith [6352]Pliny, tantis ceremoniis (speaking of superstition) ut dedisse Persis videri possit. The Britons are so stupendly superstitious in their ceremonies, that they go beyond those Persians. He that shall but read in Pausanias alone, those gods, temples, altars, idols, statues, so curiously made with such infinite cost and charge, amongst those old Greeks, such multitudes of them and frequent varieties, as [6353]Gerbelius truly observes, may stand amazed, and never enough wonder at it; and thank God withal, that by the light of the Gospel, we are so happily freed from that slavish idolatry in these our days. But heretofore, almost in all countries, in all places, superstition hath blinded the hearts of men; in all ages what a small portion hath the true church ever been! Divisum imperium cum Jove Daemon habet. [6354]The patriarchs and their families, the Israelites a handful in respect, Christ and his apostles, and not all of them, neither. Into what straits hath it been compinged, a little flock! how hath superstition on the other side dilated herself, error, ignorance, barbarism, folly, madness, deceived, triumphed, and insulted over the most wise discreet, and understanding man, philosophers, dynasts, monarchs, all were involved and overshadowed in this mist, in more than Cimmerian darkness. [6355]Adeo ignara superstitio mentes hominum depravat, et nonnunquam sapientum animos transversos agit. At this present, quota pars! How small a part is truly religious! How little in respect! Divide the world into six parts, and one, or not so much, as Christians; idolaters and Mahometans possess almost Asia, Africa, America, Magellanica. The kings of China, great Cham, Siam, and Borneo, Pegu, Deccan, Narsinga, Japan, &c., are gentiles, idolaters, and many other petty princes in Asia, Monomotopa, Congo, and I know not how many Negro princes in Africa, all Terra Australis incognita most of America pagans, differing all in their several superstitions; and yet all idolaters. The Mahometans extend themselves over the great Turk's dominions in Europe, Africa, Asia, to the Xeriffes in Barbary, and its territories in Fez, Sus, Morocco, &c. The Tartar, the great Mogor, the Sophy of Persia, with most of their dominions and subjects, are at this day Mahometans. See how the devil rageth: those at odds, or differing among themselves, some for [6356]Ali, some Enbocar, for Acmor, and Ozimen, those four doctors, Mahomet's successors, and are subdivided into seventy-two inferior sects, as [6357]Leo Afer reports. The Jews, as a company of vagabonds, are scattered over all parts; whose story, present estate, progress from time to time, is fully set down by [6358]Mr. Thomas Jackson, Doctor of Divinity, in his comment on the creed. A fifth part of the world, and hardly that, now professeth CHRIST, but so inlarded and interlaced with several superstitions, that there is scarce a sound part to be found, or any agreement amongst them. Presbyter John, in Africa, lord of those Abyssinians, or Ethiopians, is by his profession a Christian, but so different from us, with such new absurdities and ceremonies, such liberty, such a mixture of idolatry and paganism, [6359]that they keep little more than a bare title of Christianity. They suffer polygamy, circumcision, stupend fastings, divorce as they will themselves, &c., and as the papists call on the Virgin Mary, so do they on Thomas Didymus before Christ. [6360]The Greek or Eastern Church is rent from this of the West, and as they have four chief patriarchs, so have they four subdivisions, besides those Nestorians, Jacobins, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, &c., scattered over Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, &c., Greece, Walachia, Circassia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Albania, Illyricum, Sclavonia, Croatia, Thrace, Servia, Rascia, and a sprinkling amongst the Tartars, the Russians, Muscovites, and most of that great duke's (czar's) subjects, are part of the Greek Church, and still Christians: but as [6361]one saith, temporis successu multas illi addiderunt superstitiones. In process of time they have added so many superstitions, they be rather semi-Christians than otherwise. That which remains is the Western Church with us in Europe, but so eclipsed with several schisms, heresies and superstitions, that one knows not where to find it. The papists have Italy, Spain, Savoy, part of Germany, France, Poland, and a sprinkling in the rest of Europe. In America, they hold all that which Spaniards inhabit, Hispania Nova, Castella Aurea, Peru, &c. In the East Indies, the Philippines, some small holds about Goa, Malacca, Zelan, Ormus, &c., which the Portuguese got not long since, and those land-leaping Jesuits have essayed in China, Japan, as appears by their yearly letters; in Africa they have Melinda, Quiloa, Mombaze, &c., and some few towns, they drive out one superstition with another. Poland is a receptacle of all religions, where Samosetans, Socinians, Photinians (now protected in Transylvania and Poland), Arians, Anabaptists are to be found, as well as in some German cities. Scandia is Christian, but [6362]Damianus A-Goes, the Portugal knight, complains, so mixed with magic, pagan rites and ceremonies, they may be as well counted idolaters: what Tacitus formerly said of a like nation, is verified in them, [6363]“A people subject to superstition, contrary to religion.” And some of them as about Lapland and the Pilapians, the devil's possession to this day, Misera haec gens (saith mine [6364]author) Satanae hactenus possessio,—et quod maxime mirandum et dolendum, and which is to be admired and pitied; if any of them be baptised, which the kings of Sweden much labour, they die within seven or nine days after, and for that cause they will hardly be brought to Christianity, but worship still the devil, who daily appears to them. In their idolatrous courses, Gandentibus diis patriis, quos religiose colunt, &c. Yet are they very superstitious, like our wild Irish: though they of the better note, the kings of Denmark and Sweden themselves, that govern them, be Lutherans; the remnant are Calvinists, Lutherans, in Germany equally mixed. And yet the emperor himself, dukes of Lorraine, Bavaria, and the princes, electors, are most part professed papists. And though some part of France and Ireland, Great Britain, half the cantons in Switzerland, and the Low Countries, be Calvinists, more defecate than the rest, yet at odds amongst themselves, not free from superstition. And which [6365]Brochard, the monk, in his description of the Holy Land, after he had censured the Greek church, and showed their errors, concluded at last, Faxit Deus ne Latinis multa irrepserint stultifies, I say God grant there be no fopperies in our church. As a dam of water stopped in one place breaks out into another, so doth superstition. I say nothing of Anabaptists, Socinians, Brownists, Familists, &c. There is superstition in our prayers, often in our hearing of sermons, bitter contentions, invectives, persecutions, strange conceits, besides diversity of opinions, schisms, factions, &c. But as the Lord (Job xlii. cap. 7. v.) said to Eliphaz, the Temanite, and his two friends, “his wrath was kindled against them, for they had not spoken of him things that were right:” we may justly of these schismatics and heretics, how wise soever in their own conceits, non recte loquuntur de Deo, they speak not, they think not, they write not well of God, and as they ought. And therefore, Quid quaeso mi Dorpi, as Erasmus concludes to Dorpius, hisce Theologis faciamus, aut quid preceris, nisi forte fidelem medicum, qui cerebro medeatur? What shall we wish them, but sanam mentem, and a good physician? But more of their differences, paradoxes, opinions, mad pranks, in the symptoms: I now hasten to the causes.
We are taught in Holy Scripture, that the “Devil rangeth abroad like a roaring lion, still seeking whom he may devour:” and as in several shapes, so by several engines and devices he goeth about to seduce us; sometimes he transforms himself into an angel of light; and is so cunning that he is able, if it were possible, to deceive the very elect. He will be worshipped as [6366]God himself, and is so adored by the heathen, and esteemed. And in imitation of that divine power, as [6367]Eusebius observes, [6368]to abuse or emulate God's glory, as Dandinus adds, he will have all homage, sacrifices, oblations, and whatsoever else belongs to the worship of God, to be done likewise unto him, similis erit altissimo, and by this means infatuates the world, deludes, entraps, and destroys many a thousand souls. Sometimes by dreams, visions (as God to Moses by familiar conference), the devil in several shapes talks with them: in the [6369]Indies it is common, and in China nothing so familiar as apparitions, inspirations, oracles, by terrifying them with false prodigies, counterfeit miracles, sending storms, tempests, diseases, plagues (as of old in Athens there was Apollo, Alexicacus, Apollo λόιμιος, pestifer et malorum depulsor), raising wars, seditions by spectrums, troubling their consciences, driving them to despair, terrors of mind, intolerable pains; by promises, rewards, benefits, and fair means, he raiseth such an opinion of his deity and greatness, that they dare not do otherwise than adore him, do as he will have them, they dare not offend him. And to compel them more to stand in awe of him, [6370]“he sends and cures diseases, disquiets their spirits” (as Cyprian saith), “torments and terrifies their souls, to make them adore him: and all his study, all his endeavour is to divert them from true religion to superstition: and because he is damned himself, and in an error, he would have all the world participate of his errors, and be damned with him.” The primum mobile, therefore, and first mover of all superstition, is the devil, that great enemy of mankind, the principal agent, who in a thousand several, shapes, after diverse fashions, with several engines, illusions, and by several names hath deceived the inhabitants of the earth, in several places and countries, still rejoicing at their falls. “All the world over before Christ's time, he freely domineered, and held the souls of men in most slavish subjection” (saith [6371]Eusebius) “in diverse forms, ceremonies, and sacrifices, till Christ's coming,” as if those devils of the air had shared the earth amongst them, which the Platonists held for gods ([6372]Ludus deorum sumus), and were our governors and keepers. In several places, they had several rites, orders, names, of which read Wierus de praestigiis daemonum, lib. 1. cap. 5. [6373]Strozzius Cicogna, and others; Adonided amongst the Syrians; Adramalech amongst the Capernaites, Asiniae amongst the Emathites; Astartes with the Sidonians; Astaroth with the Palestines; Dagon with the Philistines; Tartary with the Hanaei; Melchonis amongst the Ammonites: Beli the Babylonians; Beelzebub and Baal with the Samaritans and Moabites; Apis, Isis, and Osiris amongst the Egyptians; Apollo Pythius at Delphos, Colophon, Ancyra, Cuma, Erythra; Jupiter in Crete, Venus at Cyprus, Juno at Carthage, Aesculapius at Epidaurus, Diana at Ephesus, Pallas at Athens, &c. And even in these our days, both in the East and West Indies, in Tartary, China, Japan, &c., what strange idols, in what prodigious forms, with what absurd ceremonies are they adored? What strange sacraments, like ours of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, what goodly temples, priests, sacrifices they had in America, when the Spaniards first landed there, let Acosta the Jesuit relate, lib. 5. cap. 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., and how the devil imitated the Ark and the children of Israel's coming out of Egypt; with many such. For as Lipsius well discourseth out of the doctrine of the Stoics, maxime cupiunt adorationem hominum, now and of old, they still and most especially desire to be adored by men. See but what Vertomannus, l. 5. c. 2. Marcus Polus, Lerius, Benzo, P. Martyr in his Ocean Decades, Acosta, and Mat. Riccius expedit. Christ. in Sinus, lib. 1. relate. [6374]Eusebius wonders how that wise city of Athens, and flourishing kingdoms of Greece, should be so besotted; and we in our times, how. those witty Chinese, so perspicacious in all other things should be so gulled, so tortured with superstition, so blind as to worship stocks and stones. But it is no marvel, when we see all out as great effects amongst Christians themselves; how are those Anabaptists, Arians, and Papists above the rest, miserably infatuated! Mars, Jupiter, Apollo, and Aesculapius, have resigned their interest, names, and offices to Saint George.
His ordinary instruments or factors which he useth, as God himself, did good kings, lawful magistrates, patriarchs, prophets, to the establishing of his church, [6385]are politicians, statesmen, priests, heretics, blind guides, impostors, pseudoprophets, to propagate his superstition. And first to begin of politicians, it hath ever been a principal axiom with them to maintain religion or superstition, which they determine of, alter and vary upon all occasions, as to them seems best, they make religion mere policy, a cloak, a human invention, nihil aeque valet ad regendos vulgi animos ac superstitio, as [6386]Tacitus and [6387]Tully hold. Austin, l. 4. de civitat. Dei. c. 9. censures Scaevola saying and acknowledging expedire civitates religione falli, that it was a fit thing cities should be deceived by religion, according to the diverb, Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur, if the world will be gulled, let it be gulled, 'tis good howsoever to keep it in subjection. 'Tis that [6388]Aristotle and [6389]Plato inculcate in their politics, “Religion neglected, brings plague to the city, opens a gap to all naughtiness.” 'Tis that which all our late politicians ingeminate. Cromerus, l. 2. pol. hist. Boterus, l. 3. de incrementis urbium. Clapmarius, l. 2. c. 9. de Arcanis rerump. cap. 4. lib. 2. polit. Captain Machiavel will have a prince by all means to counterfeit religion, to be superstitious in show at least, to seem to be devout, frequent holy exercises, honour divines, love the church, affect priests, as Numa, Lycurgus, and such lawmakers were and did, non ut his fidem habeant, sed ut subditos religionis metu facilius in officio contineant, to keep people in obedience. [6390]Nam naturaliter (as Cardan writes) lex Christiana lex est pietatis, justitiae, fidei, simplicitatis, &c. But this error of his, Innocentius Jentilettus, a French lawyer, theorem. 9. comment. 1. de Relig, and Thomas Bozius in his book de ruinis gentium et Regnorum have copiously confuted. Many politicians, I dare not deny, maintain religion as a true means, and sincerely speak of it without hypocrisy, are truly zealous and religious themselves. Justice and religion are the two chief props and supporters of a well-governed commonwealth: but most of them are but Machiavellians, counterfeits only for political ends; for solus rex (which Campanella, cap. 18. atheismi triumphali observes), as amongst our modern Turks, reipub. Finis, as knowing [6391]magnus ejus in animos imperium; and that, as [6392]Sabellicus delivers, “A man without religion, is like a horse without a bridle.” No way better to curb than superstition, to terrify men's consciences, and to keep them in awe: they make new laws, statutes, invent new religions, ceremonies, as so many stalking horses, to their ends. [6393]Haec enim (religio) si falsa sit, dummodo vera credatur, animorum ferociam domat, libidines coercet, subditos principi obsequentes efficit. [6394]Therefore (saith [6395]Polybius of Lycurgus), “did he maintain ceremonies, not that he was superstitious himself, but that he had perceived mortal men more apt to embrace paradoxes than aught else, and durst attempt no evil things for fear of the gods.” This was Zamolcus's stratagem amongst the Thracians, Numa's plot, when he said he had conference with the nymph Aegeria, and that of Sertorius with a hart; to get more credit to their decrees, by deriving them from the gods; or else they did all by divine instinct, which Nicholas Damascen well observes of Lycurgus, Solon, and Minos, they had their laws dictated, monte sacro, by Jupiter himself. So Mahomet referred his new laws to the [6396]angel Gabriel, by whose direction he gave out they were made. Caligula in Dion feigned himself to be familiar with Castor and Pollux, and many such, which kept those Romans under (who, as Machiavel proves, lib. 1. disput. cap. 11. et 12. were Religione maxime moti, most superstitious): and did curb the people more by this means, than by force of arms, or severity of human laws. Sola plebecula eam agnoscebat (saith Vaninus, dial. 1. lib. 4. de admirandis naturae arcanis) speaking of religion, que facile decipitur, magnates vero et philosophi nequaquam, your grandees and philosophers had no such conceit, sed ad imperii conformationem et amplificationem quam sine praetextu religionis tueri non poterant; and many thousands in all ages have ever held as much, Philosophers especially, animadvertebant hi semper haec esse fabellas, attamen ob metum publicae potestatis silere cogebantur they were still silent for fear of laws, &c. To this end that Syrian Phyresides, Pythagoras his master, broached in the East amongst the heathens, first the immortality of the soul, as Trismegistus did in Egypt, with a many of feigned gods. Those French and Briton Druids in the West first taught, saith [6397]Caesar, non interire animas (that souls did not die), “but after death to go from one to another, that so they might encourage them to virtue.” 'Twas for a politic end, and to this purpose the old [6398]poets feigned those elysian fields, their Aeacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, their infernal judges, and those Stygian lakes, fiery Phlegethons, Pluto's kingdom, and variety of torments after death. Those that had done well, went to the elysian fields, but evil doers to Cocytus, and to that burning lake of [6399]hell with fire, and brimstone for ever to be tormented. 'Tis this which [6400]Plato labours for in his Phaedon, et 9. de rep. The Turks in their Alcoran, when they set down rewards, and several punishments for every particular virtue and vice, [6401]when they persuade men, that they that die in battle shall go directly to heaven, but wicked livers to eternal torment, and all of all sorts (much like our papistical purgatory), for a set time shall be tortured in their graves, as appears by that tract which John Baptista Alfaqui, that Mauritanian priest, now turned Christian, hath written in his confutation of the Alcoran. After a man's death two black angels, Nunquir and Nequir (so they call them) come to him to his grave and punish him for his precedent sins; if he lived well, they torture him the less; if ill, per indesinentes cruciatus ad diem fudicii, they incessantly punish him to the day of judgment, Nemo viventium qui ad horum mentionem non totus horret et contremiscit, the thought of this crucifies them all their lives long, and makes them spend their days in fasting and prayer, ne mala haec contingant, &c. A Tartar prince, saith Marcus Polus, lib. 1. cap. 23. called Senex de Montibus, the better to establish his government amongst his subjects, and to keep them in awe, found a convenient place in a pleasant valley, environed with hills, in [6402]“which he made a delicious park full of odoriferous flowers and fruits, and a palace of all worldly contents,” that could possibly be devised, music, pictures, variety of meats, &c., and chose out a certain young man, whom with a [6403]soporiferous potion he so benumbed, that he perceived nothing: “and so fast asleep as he was, caused him to be conveyed into this fair garden:” where after he had lived awhile in all such pleasures a sensual man could desire, [6404]“He cast him into a sleep again, and brought him forth, that when he awaked he might tell others he had been in Paradise.” The like he did for hell, and by this means brought his people to subjection. Because heaven and hell are mentioned in the scriptures, and to be believed necessary by Christians: so cunningly can the devil and his ministers, in imitation of true religion, counterfeit and forge the like, to circumvent and delude his superstitious followers. Many such tricks and impostures are acted by politicians, in China especially, but with what effect I will discourse in the symptoms.
Next to politicians, if I may distinguish them, are some of our priests (who make religion policy), if not far beyond them, for they domineer over princes and statesmen themselves. Carnificinam exercent, one saith they tyrannise over men's consciences more than any other tormentors whatsoever, partly for their commodity and gain; Religionem enim omnium abusus (as [6405]Postellus holds), quaestus scilicet sacrificum in causa est: for sovereignty, credit, to maintain their state and reputation, out of ambition and avarice, which are their chief supporters: what have they not made the common people believe? Impossibilities in nature, incredible things; what devices, traditions, ceremonies, have they not invented in all ages to keep men in obedience, to enrich themselves? Quibus quaestui sunt capti superstitione animi, as [6406]Livy saith. Those Egyptian priests of old got all the sovereignty into their hands, and knowing, as [6407]Curtius insinuates, nulla res efficacius multitudinem regit quam superstitio; melius vatibus quam ducibus parent, vana religione capti, etiam impotentes faeminae; the common people will sooner obey priests than captains, and nothing so forcible as superstition, or better than blind zeal to rule a multitude; have so terrified and gulled them, that it is incredible to relate. All nations almost have been besotted in this kind; amongst our Britons and old Gauls the Druids; magi in Persia; philosophers in Greece; Chaldeans amongst the Oriental; Brachmanni in India; Gymnosophists in Ethiopia; the Turditanes in Spain; Augurs in Rome, have insulted; Apollo's priests in Greece, Phaebades and Pythonissae, by their oracles and phantasms; Amphiaraus and his companions; now Mahometan and pagan priests, what can they not effect? How do they not infatuate the world? Adeo ubique (as [6408]Scaliger writes of the Mahometan priests), tum gentium tum locorum, gens ista sacrorum ministra, vulgi secat spes, ad ea quae ipsi fingunt somnia, “so cunningly can they gull the commons in all places and countries.” But above all others, that high priest of Rome, the dam of that monstrous and superstitious brood, the bull-bellowing pope, which now rageth in the West, that three-headed Cerberus hath played his part. [6409] “Whose religion at this day is mere policy, a state wholly composed of superstition and wit, and needs nothing but wit and superstition to maintain it, that useth colleges and religious houses to as good purpose as forts and castles, and doth more at this day” by a company of scribbling parasites, fiery-spirited friars, zealous anchorites, hypocritical confessors, and those praetorian soldiers, his Janissary Jesuits, and that dissociable society, as [6410]Languis terms it, postremus diaboli conatus et saeculi excrementum, that now stand in the fore front of the battle, will have a monopoly of, and engross all other learning, but domineer in divinity, [6411]Excipiunt soli totius vulnera belli, and fight alone almost (for the rest are but his dromedaries and asses), than ever he could have done by garrisons and armies. What power of prince, or penal law, be it never so strict, could enforce men to do that which for conscience' sake they will voluntarily undergo? And as to fast from all flesh, abstain from marriage, rise to their prayers at midnight, whip themselves, with stupendous fasting and penance, abandon the world, wilful poverty, perform canonical and blind obedience, to prostrate their goods, fortunes, bodies, lives, and offer up themselves at their superior's feet, at his command? What so powerful an engine as superstition? which they right well perceiving, are of no religion at all themselves: Primum enim (as Calvin rightly suspects, the tenor and practice of their life proves), arcanae illius theologiae, quod apud eos regnat, caput est, nullum esse deum, they hold there is no God, as Leo X. did, Hildebrand the magician, Alexander VI., Julius II., mere atheists, and which the common proverb amongst them approves, [6412]“The worst Christians of Italy are the Romans, of the Romans the priests are wildest, the lewdest priests are preferred to be cardinals, and the baddest men amongst the cardinals is chosen to be pope,” that is an epicure, as most part the popes are, infidels and Lucianists, for so they think and believe; and what is said of Christ to be fables and impostures, of heaven and hell, day of judgment, paradise, immortality of the soul, are all,
Now for their authority, what by auricular confession, satisfaction, penance, Peter's keys, thunderings, excommunications, &c., roaring bulls, this high priest of Rome, shaking his Gorgon's head, hath so terrified the soul of many a silly man, insulted over majesty itself, and swaggered generally over all Europe for many ages, and still doth to some, holding them as yet in slavish subjection, as never tyrannising Spaniards did by their poor Negroes, or Turks by their galley-slaves. [6427]“The bishop of Rome” (saith Stapleton, a parasite of his, de mag. Eccles. lib. 2. cap. 1.) “hath done that without arms, which those Roman emperors could never achieve with forty legions of soldiers,” deposed kings, and crowned them again with his foot, made friends, and corrected at his pleasure, &c. [6428] “'Tis a wonder,” saith Machiavel, Florentinae, his. lib. 1. “what slavery King Henry II. endured for the death of Thomas a Beckett, what things he was enjoined by the Pope, and how he submitted himself to do that which in our times a private man would not endure,” and all through superstition. [6429]Henry IV. disposed of his empire, stood barefooted with his wife at the gates of Canossus. [6430]Frederic the Emperor was trodden on by Alexander III., another held Adrian's stirrup, King John kissed the knees of Pandulphos the Pope's legate, See. What made so many thousand Christians travel from France, Britain, &c., into the Holy Land, spend such huge sums of money, go a pilgrimage so familiarly to Jerusalem, to creep and crouch, but slavish superstition? What makes them so freely venture their lives, to leave their native countries, to go seek martyrdom in the Indies, but superstition? to be assassins, to meet death, murder kings, but a false persuasion of merit, of canonical or blind obedience which they instil into them, and animate them by strange illusions, hope of being martyrs and saints: such pretty feats can the devil work by priests, and so well for their own advantage can they play their parts. And if it were not yet enough, by priests and politicians to delude mankind, and crucify the souls of men, he hath more actors in his tragedy, more irons in the fire, another scene of heretics, factious, ambitious wits, insolent spirits, schismatics, impostors, false prophets, blind guides, that out of pride, singularity, vainglory, blind zeal, cause much more madness yet, set all in an uproar by their new doctrines, paradoxes, figments, crotchets, make new divisions, subdivisions, new sects, oppose one superstition to another, one kingdom to another, commit prince and subjects, brother against brother, father against son, to the ruin and destruction of a commonwealth, to the disturbance of peace, and to make a general confusion of all estates. How did those Arians rage of old? how many did they circumvent? Those Pelagians, Manichees, &c., their names alone would make a just volume. How many silly souls have impostors still deluded, drawn away, and quite alienated from Christ! Lucian's Alexander Simon Magus, whose statue was to be seen and adored in Rome, saith Justin Martyr, Simoni deo sancto, &c., after his decease. [6431]Apollonius Tianaeus, Cynops, Eumo, who by counterfeiting some new ceremonies and juggling tricks of that Dea Syria, by spitting fire, and the like, got an army together of 40,000 men, and did much harm: with Eudo de stellis, of whom Nubrigensis speaks, lib. 1. cap. 19. that in King Stephen's days imitated most of Christ's miracles, fed I know not how many people in the wilderness, and built castles in the air, &c., to the seducing of multitudes of poor souls. In Franconia, 1476, a base illiterate fellow took upon him to be a prophet, and preach, John Beheim by name, a neatherd at Nicholhausen, he seduced 30,000 persons, and was taken by the commonalty to be a most holy man, come from heaven. [6432] “Tradesmen left their shops, women their distaffs, servants ran from their masters, children from their parents, scholars left their tutors, all to hear him, some for novelty, some for zeal. He was burnt at last by the Bishop of Wartzburg, and so he and his heresy vanished together.” How many such impostors, false prophets, have lived in every king's reign? what chronicles will not afford such examples? that as so many ignes fatui, have led men out of the way, terrified some, deluded others, that are apt to be carried about by the blast of every wind, a rude inconstant multitude, a silly company of poor souls, that follow all, and are cluttered together like so many pebbles in a tide. What prodigious follies, madness, vexations, persecutions, absurdities, impossibilities, these impostors, heretics, &c., have thrust upon the world, what strange effects shall be shown in the symptoms.
Now the means by which, or advantages the devil and his infernal ministers take, so to delude and disquiet the world with such idle ceremonies, false doctrines, superstitious fopperies, are from themselves, innate fear, ignorance, simplicity, hope and fear, those two battering cannons and principal engines, with their objects, reward and punishment, purgatory, Limbus Patrum, &c. which now more than ever tyrannise; [6433]“for what province is free from atheism, superstition, idolatry, schism, heresy, impiety, their factors and followers?” thence they proceed, and from that same decayed image of God, which is yet remaining in us.
To these advantages of hope and fear, ignorance and simplicity, he hath several engines, traps, devices, to batter and enthral, omitting no opportunities, according to men's several inclinations, abilities, to circumvent and humour them, to maintain his superstitions, sometimes to stupefy, besot them: sometimes again by oppositions, factions, to set all at odds and in an uproar; sometimes he infects one man, and makes him a principal agent; sometimes whole cities, countries. If of meaner sort, by stupidity, canonical obedience, blind zeal, &c. If of better note, by pride, ambition, popularity, vainglory. If of the clergy and more eminent, of better parts than the rest, more learned, eloquent, he puffs them up with a vain conceit of their own worth, scientia inflati, they begin to swell, and scorn all the world in respect of themselves, and thereupon turn heretics, schismatics, broach new doctrines, frame new crotchets and the like; or else out of too much learning become mad, or out of curiosity they will search into God's secrets, and eat of the forbidden fruit; or out of presumption of their holiness and good gifts, inspirations, become prophets, enthusiasts, and what not? Or else if they be displeased, discontent, and have not (as they suppose) preferment to their worth, have some disgrace, repulse, neglected, or not esteemed as they fondly value themselves, or out of emulation, they begin presently to rage and rave, coelum terrae, miscent, they become so impatient in an instant, that a whole kingdom cannot contain them, they will set all in a combustion, all at variance, to be revenged of their adversaries. [6449]Donatus, when he saw Cecilianus preferred before him in the bishopric of Carthage, turned heretic, and so did Arian, because Alexander was advanced: we have examples at home, and too many experiments of such persons. If they be laymen of better note, the same engines of pride, ambition, emulation and jealousy, take place, they will be gods themselves: [6450]Alexander in India, after his victories, became so insolent, he would be adored for a god: and those Roman emperors came to that height of madness, they must have temples built to them, sacrifices to their deities, Divus Augustus, D. Claudius, D. Adrianus: [6451]Heliogabalus, “put out that vestal fire at Rome, expelled the virgins, and banished all other religions all over the world, and would be the sole God himself.” Our Turks, China kings, great Chams, and Mogors do little less, assuming divine and bombast titles to themselves; the meaner sort are too credulous, and led with blind zeal, blind obedience, to prosecute and maintain whatsoever their sottish leaders shall propose, what they in pride and singularity, revenge, vainglory, ambition, spleen, for gain, shall rashly maintain and broach, their disciples make a matter of conscience, of hell and damnation, if they do it not, and will rather forsake wives, children, house and home, lands, goods, fortunes, life itself, than omit or abjure the least tittle of it, and to advance the common cause, undergo any miseries, turn traitors, assassins, pseudomartyrs, with full assurance and hope of reward in that other world, that they shall certainly merit by it, win heaven, be canonised for saints.
Now when they are truly possessed with blind zeal, and misled with superstition, he hath many other baits to inveigle and infatuate them farther yet, to make them quite mortified and mad, and that under colour of perfection, to merit by penance, going woolward, whipping, alms, fastings, &c. An. 1320. there was a sect of [6452]whippers in Germany, that, to the astonishment of the beholders, lashed, and cruelly tortured themselves. I could give many other instances of each particular. But these works so done are meritorious, ex opere operato, ex condigno, for themselves and others, to make them macerate and consume their bodies, specie virtutis et umbra, those evangelical counsels are propounded, as our pseudo-Catholics call them, canonical obedience, wilful poverty, [6453]vows of chastity, monkery, and a solitary life, which extend almost to all religions and superstitions, to Turks, Chinese, Gentiles, Abyssinians, Greeks, Latins, and all countries. Amongst the rest, fasting, contemplation, solitariness, are as it were certain rams by which the devil doth batter and work upon the strongest constitutions. Nonnulli (saith Peter Forestus) ob longas inedias, studia et meditationes coelestes, de rebus sacris et religione semper agitant, by fasting overmuch, and divine meditations, are overcome. Not that fasting is a thing of itself to be discommended, for it is an excellent means to keep the body in subjection, a preparative to devotion, the physic of the soul, by which chaste thoughts are engendered, true zeal, a divine spirit, whence wholesome counsels do proceed, concupiscence is restrained, vicious and predominant lusts and humours are expelled. The fathers are very much in commendation of it, and, as Calvin notes, “sometimes immoderate. [6454]The mother of health, key of heaven, a spiritual wing to arear us, the chariot of the Holy Ghost, banner of faith,” &c. And 'tis true they say of it, if it be moderately and seasonably used, by such parties as Moses, Elias, Daniel, Christ, and his [6455]apostles made use of it; but when by this means they will supererogate, and as [6456]Erasmus well taxeth, Coelum non sufficere putant suis meritis. Heaven is too small a reward for it; they make choice of times and meats, buy and sell their merits, attribute more to them than to the ten Commandments, and count it a greater sin to eat meat in Lent, than to kill a man, and as one sayeth, Plus respiciunt assum piscem, quam Christum crucifixum, plus salmonem quam Solomonem, quibus in ore Christus, Epicurus in corde, “pay more respect to a broiled fish than to Christ crucified, more regard to salmon than to Solomon, have Christ on their lips, but Epicurus in their hearts,” when some counterfeit, and some attribute more to such works of theirs than to Christ's death and passion; the devil sets in a foot, strangely deludes them, and by that means makes them to overthrow the temperature of their bodies, and hazard their souls. Never any strange illusions of devils amongst hermits, anchorites, never any visions, phantasms, apparitions, enthusiasms, prophets, any revelations, but immoderate fasting, bad diet, sickness, melancholy, solitariness, or some such things, were the precedent causes, the forerunners or concomitants of them. The best opportunity and sole occasion the devil takes to delude them. Marcilius Cognatus, lib. 1. cont. cap. 7. hath many stories to this purpose, of such as after long fasting have been seduced by devils; and [6457]“'tis a miraculous thing to relate” (as Cardan writes) “what strange accidents proceed from fasting; dreams, superstition, contempt of torments, desire of death, prophecies, paradoxes, madness; fasting naturally prepares men to these things.” Monks, anchorites, and the like, after much emptiness, become melancholy, vertiginous, they think they hear strange noises, confer with hobgoblins, devils, rivel up their bodies, et dum hostem insequimur, saith Gregory, civem quem diligimus, trucidamus, they become bare skeletons, skin and bones; Carnibus abstinentes proprias carnes devorant, ut nil praeter cutem et ossa sit reliquum. Hilarion, as [6458]Hierome reports in his life, and Athanasius of Antonius, was so bare with fasting, “that the skin did scarce stick to the bones; for want of vapours he could not sleep, and for want of sleep became idleheaded, heard every night infants cry, oxen low, wolves howl, lions roar” (as he thought), “clattering of chains, strange voices, and the like illusions of devils.” Such symptoms are common to those that fast long, are solitary, given to contemplation, overmuch solitariness and meditation. Not that these things (as I said of fasting) are to be discommended of themselves, but very behoveful in some cases and good: sobriety and contemplation join our souls to God, as that heathen [6459]Porphyry can tell us. [6460]“Ecstasy is a taste of future happiness, by which we are united unto God, a divine melancholy, a spiritual wing,” Bonaventure terms it, to lift us up to heaven; but as it is abused, a mere dotage, madness, a cause and symptom of religious melancholy. [6461]“If you shall at any time see” (saith Guianerius) “a religious person over-superstitious, too solitary, or much given to fasting, that man will certainly be melancholy, thou mayst boldly say it, he will be so.” P. Forestus hath almost the same words, and [6462]Cardan subtil, lib. 18. et cap. 40. lib. 8. de rerum varietate, “solitariness, fasting, and that melancholy humour, are the causes of all hermits' illusions.” Lavater, de spect. cap. 19. part. 1. and part. 1. cap. 10. puts solitariness a main cause of such spectrums and apparitions; none, saith he, so melancholy as monks and hermits, the devil's hath melancholy; [6463]“none so subject to visions and dotage in this kind, as such as live solitary lives, they hear and act strange things in their dotage.” [6464]Polydore Virgil, lib. 2. prodigiis, “holds that those prophecies and monks' revelations? nuns, dreams, which they suppose come from God, to proceed wholly ab instinctu daemonum, by the devil's means;” and so those enthusiasts, Anabaptists, pseudoprophets from the same cause. [6465]Fracastorius, lib. 2. de intellect, will have all your pythonesses, sibyls, and pseudoprophets to be mere melancholy, so doth Wierus prove, lib. 1. cap. 8. et l. 3. cap. 7. and Arculanus in 9 Rhasis, that melancholy is a sole cause, and the devil together, with fasting and solitariness, of such sibylline prophecies, if there were ever such, which with [6466]Casaubon and others I justly except at; for it is not likely that the Spirit of God should ever reveal such manifest revelations and predictions of Christ, to those Pythonissae witches, Apollo's priests, the devil's ministers, (they were no better) and conceal them from his own prophets; for these sibyls set down all particular circumstances of Christ's coming, and many other future accidents far more perspicuous and plain than ever any prophet did. But, howsoever, there be no Phaebades or sibyls, I am assured there be other enthusiasts, prophets, dii Fatidici, Magi, (of which read Jo. Boissardus, who hath laboriously collected them into a great [6467]volume of late, with elegant pictures, and epitomised their lives) &c., ever have been in all ages, and still proceeding from those causes, [6468]qui visiones suas enarrant, somniant futura, prophetisant, et ejusmodi deliriis agitati, Spiritum Sanctum sibi communicari putant. That which is written of Saint Francis' five wounds, and other such monastical effects, of him and others, may justly be referred to this our melancholy; and that which Matthew Paris relates of the [6469]monk of Evesham, who saw heaven and hell in a vision; of [6470]Sir Owen, that went down into Saint Patrick's purgatory in King Stephen's days, and saw as much; Walsingham of him that showed as much by Saint Julian. Beda, lib. 5. cap. 13. 14. 15. et 20. reports of King Sebba, lib. 4. cap. 11. eccles. hist. that saw strange [6471]visions; and Stumphius Helvet Cornic, a cobbler of Basle, that beheld rare apparitions at Augsburg, [6472]in Germany. Alexander ab Alexandro, gen. dier. lib. 6. cap. 21. of an enthusiastical prisoner, (all out as probable as that of Eris Armenius, in Plato's tenth dialogue de Repub. that revived again ten days after he was killed in a battle, and told strange wonders, like those tales Ulysses related to Alcinous in Homer, or Lucian's vera historia itself) was still after much solitariness, fasting, or long sickness, when their brains were addled, and their bellies as empty of meat as their heads of wit. Florilegus hath many such examples, fol. 191. one of Saint Gultlake of Crowald that fought with devils, but still after long fasting, overmuch solitariness, [6473]the devil persuaded him therefore to fast, as Moses and Elias did, the better to delude him. [6474]In the same author is recorded Carolus Magnus vision an. 185. or ecstasies, wherein he saw heaven and hell after much fasting and meditation. So did the devil of old with Apollo's priests. Amphiaraus and his fellows, those Egyptians, still enjoin long fasting before he would give any oracles, triduum a cibo et vino abstinerent, [6475]before they gave any answers, as Volateran lib. 13. cap. 4. records, and Strabo Geog. lib. 14. describes Charon's den, in the way between Tralles and Nissum, whither the priests led sick and fanatic men: but nothing performed without long fasting, no good to be done. That scoffing [6476]Lucian conducts his Menippus to hell by the directions of that Chaldean Mithrobarzanes, but after long fasting, and such like idle preparation. Which the Jesuits right well perceiving of what force this fasting and solitary meditation is, to alter men's minds, when they would make a man mad, ravish him, improve him beyond himself, to undertake some great business of moment, to kill a king, or the like, [6477]they bring him into a melancholy dark chamber, where he shall see no light for many days together, no company, little meat, ghastly pictures of devils all about him, and leave him to lie as he will himself, on the bare floor in this chamber of meditation, as they call it, on his back, side, belly, till by this strange usage they make him quite mad and beside himself. And then after some ten days, as they find him animated and resolved, they make use of him. The devil hath many such factors, many such engines, which what effect they produce, you shall hear in the following symptoms.
Fleat Heraclitus, an rideat Democritus? in attempting to speak of these symptoms, shall I laugh with Democritus, or weep with Heraclitus? they are so ridiculous and absurd on the one side, so lamentable and tragical on the other: a mixed scene offers itself, so full of errors and a promiscuous variety of objects, that I know not in what strain to represent it. When I think of the Turkish paradise, those Jewish fables, and pontifical rites, those pagan superstitions, their sacrifices, and ceremonies, as to make images of all matter, and adore them when they have done, to see them, kiss the pyx, creep to the cross, &c. I cannot choose but laugh with Democritus: but when I see them whip and torture themselves, grind their souls for toys and trifles, desperate, and now ready to die, I cannot but weep with Heraclitus. When I see a priest say mass, with all those apish gestures, murmurings, &c. read the customs of the Jews' synagogue, or Mahometa Meschites, I must needs [6478]laugh at their folly, risum teneatis amici? but when I see them make matters of conscience of such toys and trifles, to adore the devil, to endanger their souls, to offer their children to their idols, &c. I must needs condole their misery. When I see two superstitious orders contend pro aris et focis, with such have and hold, de lana, caprina, some write such great volumes to no purpose, take so much pains to so small effect, their satires, invectives, apologies, dull and gross fictions; when I see grave learned men rail and scold like butter-women, methinks 'tis pretty sport, and fit [6479]for Calphurnius and Democritus to laugh at. But when I see so much blood spilt, so many murders and massacres, so many cruel battles fought, &c. 'tis a fitter subject for Heraclitus to lament. [6480]As Merlin when he sat by the lake side with Vortigern, and had seen the white and red dragon fight, before he began to interpret or to speak, in fletum prorupit, fell a weeping, and then proceeded to declare to the king what it meant. I should first pity and bewail this misery of human kind with some passionate preface, wishing mine eyes a fountain of tears, as Jeremiah did, and then to my task. For it is that great torture, that infernal plague of mortal men, omnium pestium pestilentissima superstitio, and able of itself alone to stand in opposition to all other plagues, miseries and calamities whatsoever; far more cruel, more pestiferous, more grievous, more general, more violent, of a greater extent. Other fears and sorrows, grievances of body and mind, are troublesome for the time; but this is for ever, eternal damnation, hell itself, a plague, a fire: an inundation hurts one province alone, and the loss may be recovered; but this superstition involves all the world almost, and can never be remedied. Sickness and sorrows come and go, but a superstitious soul hath no rest; [6481]superstitione imbutus animus nunquam quietus esse potest, no peace, no quietness. True religion and superstition are quite opposite, longe diversa carnificina et pietas, as Lactantius describes, the one erects, the other dejects; illorum pietas, mera impietus; the one is an easy yoke, the other an intolerable burden, an absolute tyranny; the one a sure anchor, a haven; the other a tempestuous ocean; the one makes, the other mars; the one is wisdom, the other is folly, madness, indiscretion; the one unfeigned, the other a counterfeit; the one a diligent observer, the other an ape; one leads to heaven, the other to hell. But these differences will more evidently appear by their particular symptoms. What religion is, and of what parts it doth consist, every catechism will tell you, what symptoms it hath, and what effects it produceth: but for their superstitions, no tongue can tell them, no pen express, they are so many, so diverse, so uncertain, so inconstant, and so different from themselves. Tot mundi superstitiones quot coelo stellae, one saith, there be as many superstitions in the world, as there be stars in heaven, or devils themselves that are the first founders of them: with such ridiculous, absurd symptoms and signs, so many several rites, ceremonies, torments and vexations accompanying, as may well express and beseem the devil to be the author and maintainer of them. I will only point at some of them, ex ungue leonem guess at the rest, and those of the chief kinds of superstition, which beside us Christians now domineer and crucify the world, Gentiles, Mahometans, Jews, &c.
Of these symptoms some be general, some particular to each private sect: general to all, are, an extraordinary love and affection they bear and show to such as are of their own sect, and more than Vatinian hate to such as are opposite in religion, as they call it, or disagree from them in their superstitious rites, blind zeal, (which is as much a symptom as a cause,) vain fears, blind obedience, needless works, incredibilities, impossibilities, monstrous rites and ceremonies, wilfulness, blindness, obstinacy, &c. For the first, which is love and hate, as [6482]Montanus saith, nulla firmior amicitia quam quae contrahitur hinc; nulla discordia major, quam quae a religione fit; no greater concord, no greater discord than that which proceeds from religion, it is incredible to relate, did not our daily experience evince it, what factions, quam teterrimae factiones, (as [6483]Rich. Dinoth writes) have been of late for matters of religion in France, and what hurlyburlies all over Europe for these many years. Nihil est quod tam impotentur rapiat homines, quam suscepta de salute opinio; siquidem pro ea omnes gentes corpora et animas devovere solent, et arctissimo necessitudinis vinculo se invicem colligare. We are all brethren in Christ, servants of one Lord, members of one body, and therefore are or should be at least dearly beloved, inseparably allied in the greatest bond of love and familiarity, united partakers not only of the same cross, but coadjutors, comforters, helpers, at all times, upon all occasions: as they did in the primitive church, Acts the 5. they sold their patrimonies, and laid them at the apostles' feet, and many such memorable examples of mutual love we have had under the ten general persecutions, many since. Examples on the other side of discord none like, as our Saviour saith, he came therefore into the world to set father against son, &c. In imitation of whom the devil belike ([6484]nam superstitio irrepsit verae religionis imitatrix, superstition is still religion's ape, as in all other things, so in this) doth so combine and glue together his superstitious followers in love and affection, that they will live and die together: and what an innate hatred hath he still inspired to any other superstition opposite? How those old Romans were affected, those ten persecutions may be a witness, and that cruel executioner in Eusebius, aut lita aut morere, sacrifice or die. No greater hate, more continuate, bitter faction, wars, persecution in all ages, than for matters of religion, no such feral opposition, father against son, mother against daughter, husband against wife, city against city, kingdom against kingdom: as of old at Tentira and Combos:
Of such symptoms as properly belong to superstition, or that irreligious religion, I may say as of the rest, some are ridiculous, some again feral to relate. Of those ridiculous, there can be no better testimony than the multitude of their gods, those absurd names, actions, offices they put upon them, their feasts, holy days, sacrifices, adorations, and the like. The Egyptians that pretended so great antiquity, 300 kings before Amasis: and as Mela writes, 13,000 years from the beginning of their chronicles, that bragged so much of their knowledge of old, for they invented arithmetic, astronomy, geometry: of their wealth and power, that vaunted of 20,000 cities: yet at the same time their idolatry and superstition was most gross: they worshipped, as Diodorus Siculus records, sun and moon under the name of Isis and Osiris, and after, such men as were beneficial to them, or any creature that did them good. In the city of Bubasti they adored a cat, saith Herodotus. Ibis and storks, an ox: (saith Pliny) [6502]leeks and onions, Macrobius,
In this superstitious row, Jews for antiquity may go next to Gentiles: what of old they have done, what idolatries they have committed in their groves and high places, what their Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Essei, and such sectaries have maintained, I will not so much as mention: for the present, I presume no nation under heaven can be more sottish, ignorant, blind, superstitious, wilful, obstinate, and peevish, tiring themselves with vain ceremonies to no purpose; he that shall but read their Rabbins' ridiculous comments, their strange interpretation of scriptures, their absurd ceremonies, fables, childish tales, which they steadfastly believe, will think they be scarce rational creatures; their foolish [6548]customs, when they rise in the morning, and how they prepare themselves to prayer, to meat, with what superstitious washings, how to their Sabbath, to their other feasts, weddings, burials, &c. Last of all, the expectation of their Messiah, and those figments, miracles, vain pomp that shall attend him, as how he shall terrify the Gentiles, and overcome them by new diseases; how Michael the archangel shall sound his trumpet, how he shall gather all the scattered Jews in the Holy Land, and there make them a great banquet, [6549] “Wherein shall be all the birds, beasts, fishes, that ever God made, a cup of wine that grew in Paradise, and that hath been kept in Adam's cellar ever since.” At the first course shall be served in that great ox in Job iv. 10., “that every day feeds on a thousand hills,” Psal. 1. 10., that great Leviathan, and a great bird, that laid an egg so big, [6550]“that by chance tumbling out of the nest, it knocked down three hundred tall cedars, and breaking as it fell, drowned one hundred and sixty villages:” this bird stood up to the knees in the sea, and the sea was so deep, that a hatchet would not fall to the bottom in seven years: of their Messiah's [6551]wives and children; Adam and Eve, &c., and that one stupend fiction amongst the rest: when a Roman prince asked of rabbi Jehosua ben Hanania, why the Jews' God was compared to a lion; he made answer, he compared himself to no ordinary lion, but to one in the wood Ela, which, when he desired to see, the rabbin prayed to God he might, and forthwith the lion set forward. [6552] “But when he was four hundred miles from Rome he so roared that all the great-bellied women in Rome made abortions, the city walls fell down, and when he came a hundred miles nearer, and roared the second time, their teeth fell out of their heads, the emperor himself fell down dead, and so the lion went back.” With an infinite number of such lies and forgeries, which they verily believe, feed themselves with vain hope, and in the mean time will by no persuasions be diverted, but still crucify their souls with a company of idle ceremonies, live like slaves and vagabonds, will not be relieved or reconciled.
Mahometans are a compound of Gentiles, Jews, and Christians, and so absurd in their ceremonies, as if they had taken that which is most sottish out of every one of them, full of idle fables in their superstitious law, their Alcoran itself a gallimaufry of lies, tales, ceremonies, traditions, precepts, stolen from other sects, and confusedly heaped up to delude a company of rude and barbarous clowns. As how birds, beasts, stones, saluted Mahomet when he came from Mecca, the moon came down from heaven to visit him, [6553]how God sent for him, spake to him, &c., with a company of stupend figments of the angels, sun, moon, and stars, &c. Of the day of judgment, and three sounds to prepare to it, which must last fifty thousand years of Paradise, which wholly consists in coeundi et comedendi voluptate, and pecorinis hominibus scriptum, bestialis beatitudo, is so ridiculous, that Virgil, Dante, Lucian, nor any poet can be more fabulous. Their rites and ceremonies are most vain and superstitious, wine and swine's flesh are utterly forbidden by their law, [6554]they must pray five times a day; and still towards the south, wash before and after all their bodies over, with many such. For fasting, vows, religious orders, peregrinations, they go far beyond any papists, [6555]they fast a month together many times, and must not eat a bit till sun be set. Their kalendars, dervises, and torlachers, &c. are more [6556]abstemious some of them, than Carthusians, Franciscans, Anchorites, forsake all, live solitary, fare hard, go naked, &c. [6557]Their pilgrimages are as far as to the river [6558]Ganges (which the Gentiles of those tracts likewise do), to wash themselves, for that river as they hold hath a sovereign virtue to purge them of all sins, and no man can be saved that hath not been washed in it. For which reason they come far and near from the Indies; Maximus gentium omnium confluxus est; and infinite numbers yearly resort to it. Others go as far as Mecca to Mahomet's tomb, which journey is both miraculous and meritorious. The ceremonies of flinging stones to stone the devil, of eating a camel at Cairo by the way; their fastings, their running till they sweat, their long prayers, Mahomet's temple, tomb, and building of it, would ask a whole volume to dilate: and for their pains taken in this holy pilgrimage, all their sins are forgiven, and they reputed for so many saints. And diverse of them with hot bricks, when they return, will put out their eyes, [6559]“that they never after see any profane thing, bite out their tongues,” &c. They look for their prophet Mahomet as Jews do for their Messiah. Read more of their customs, rites, ceremonies, in Lonicerus Turcic. hist. tom. 1. from the tenth to the twenty-fourth chapter. Bredenbachius, cap. 4, 5, 6. Leo Afer, lib. 1. Busbequius Sabellicus, Purchas, lib. 3. cap. 3, et 4, 5. Theodorus Bibliander, &c. Many foolish ceremonies you shall find in them; and which is most to be lamented, the people are generally so curious in observing of them, that if the least circumstance be omitted, they think they shall be damned, 'tis an irremissible offence, and can hardly be forgiven. I kept in my house amongst my followers (saith Busbequius, sometime the Turk's orator in Constantinople) a Turkey boy, that by chance did eat shellfish, a meat forbidden by their law, but the next day when he knew what he had done, he was not only sick to cast and vomit, but very much troubled in mind, would weep and [6560]grieve many days after, torment himself for his foul offence. Another Turk being to drink a cup of wine in his cellar, first made a huge noise and filthy faces, [6561]“to warn his soul, as he said, that it should not be guilty of that foul fact which he was to commit.” With such toys as these are men kept in awe, and so cowed, that they dare not resist, or offend the least circumstance of their law, for conscience' sake misled by superstition, which no human edict otherwise, no force of arms, could have enforced.
In the last place are pseudo-Christians, in describing of whose superstitious symptoms, as a mixture of the rest, I may say that which St. Benedict once saw in a vision, one devil in the marketplace, but ten in a monastery, because there was more work; in populous cities they would swear and forswear, lie, falsify, deceive fast enough of themselves, one devil could circumvent a thousand; but in their religious houses a thousand devils could scarce tempt one silly monk. All the principal devils, I think, busy themselves in subverting Christians; Jews, Gentiles, and Mahometans, are extra caulem, out of the fold, and need no such attendance, they make no resistance, [6562]eos enim pulsare negligit, quos quieto jure possidere se sentit, they are his own already: but Christians have that shield of faith, sword of the Spirit to resist, and must have a great deal of battery before they can be overcome. That the devil is most busy amongst us that are of the true church, appears by those several oppositions, heresies, schisms, which in all ages he hath raised to subvert it, and in that of Rome especially, wherein Antichrist himself now sits and plays his prize. This mystery of iniquity began to work even in the Apostles' time, many Antichrists and heretics' were abroad, many sprung up since, many now present, and will be to the world's end, to dementate men's minds, to seduce and captivate their souls. Their symptoms I know not how better to express, than in that twofold division, of such as lead, and are led. Such as lead are heretics, schismatics, false prophets, impostors, and their ministers: they have some common symptoms, some peculiar. Common, as madness, folly, pride, insolency, arrogancy, singularity, peevishness, obstinacy, impudence, scorn and contempt of all other sects: Nullius addicti jurare in verba magistri; [6563]they will approve of nought but what they first invent themselves, no interpretation good but what their infallible spirit dictates: none shall be in secundis, no not in tertiis, they are only wise, only learned in the truth, all damned but they and their followers, caedem scripturarum faciunt ad materiam suam, saith Tertullian, they make a slaughter of Scriptures, and turn it as a nose of wax to their own ends. So irrefragable, in the mean time, that what they have once said, they must and will maintain, in whole tomes, duplications, triplications, never yield to death, so self-conceited, say what you can. As [6564]Bernard (erroneously some say) speaks of P. Aliardus, omnes patres sic, atque ego sic. Though all the Fathers, Councils, the whole world contradict it, they care not, they are all one: and as [6565] Gregory well notes “of such as are vertiginous, they think all turns round and moves, all err: when as the error is wholly in their own brains.” Magallianus, the Jesuit, in his Comment on 1 Tim. xvi. 20, and Alphonsus de castro lib. 1. adversus haereses, gives two more eminent notes or probable conjectures to know such men by, (they might have taken themselves by the noses when they said it) [6566]“First they affect novelties and toys, and prefer falsehood before truth; [6567]secondly, they care not what they say, that which rashness and folly hath brought out, pride afterward, peevishness and contumacy shall maintain to the last gasp.” Peculiar symptoms are prodigious paradoxes, new doctrines, vain phantasms, which are many and diverse as they themselves. [6568]Nicholaites of old, would have wives in common: Montanists will not marry at all, nor Tatians, forbidding all flesh, Severians wine; Adamians go naked, [6569]because Adam did so in Paradise; and some [6570]barefoot all their lives, because God, Exod. iii. and Joshua v. bid Moses so to do; and Isaiah xx. was bid put off his shoes; Manichees hold that Pythagorean transmigration of souls from men to beasts; [6571]“the Circumcellions in Africa, with a mad cruelty made away themselves, some by fire, water, breaking their necks, and seduced others to do the like, threatening some if they did not,” with a thousand such; as you may read in [6572]Austin (for there were fourscore and eleven heresies in his times, besides schisms and smaller factions) Epiphanius, Alphonsus de Castro, Danaeus, Gab, Prateolus, &c. Of prophets, enthusiasts and impostors, our Ecclesiastical stories afford many examples; of Elias and Christs, as our [6573]Eudo de stellis, a Briton in King Stephen's time, that went invisible, translated himself from one to another in a moment, fed thousands with good cheer in the wilderness, and many such; nothing so common as miracles, visions, revelations, prophecies. Now what these brain-sick heretics once broach, and impostors set on foot, be it never so absurd, false, and prodigious, the common people will follow and believe. It will run along like murrain in cattle, scab in sheep. Nulla scabies, as [6574]he said, superstitione scabiosior; as he that is bitten with a mad dog bites others, and all in the end become mad; either out of affection of novelty, simplicity, blind zeal, hope and fear, the giddy-headed multitude will embrace it, and without further examination approve it.
Sed vetera querimur, these are old, haec prius fuere. In our days we have a new scene of superstitious impostors and heretics. A new company of actors, of Antichrists, that great Antichrist himself: a rope of hopes, that by their greatness and authority bear down all before them: who from that time they proclaimed themselves universal bishops, to establish their own kingdom, sovereignty, greatness, and to enrich themselves, brought in such a company of human traditions, purgatory, Limbus Patrum, Infantum, and all that subterranean geography, mass, adoration of saints, alms, fastings, bulls, indulgences, orders, friars, images, shrines, musty relics, excommunications, confessions, satisfactions, blind obediences, vows, pilgrimages, peregrinations, with many such curious toys, intricate subtleties, gross errors, obscure questions, to vindicate the better and set a gloss upon them, that the light of the Gospel was quite eclipsed, darkness over all, the Scriptures concealed, legends brought in, religion banished, hypocritical superstition exalted, and the Church itself [6575] obscured and persecuted: Christ and his members crucified more, saith Benzo, by a few necromantical, atheistical popes, than ever it was by [6576] Julian the Apostate, Porphyrius the Platonist, Celsus the physician, Libanius the Sophister; by those heathen emperors, Huns, Goths, and Vandals. What each of them did, by what means, at what times, quibus auxiliis, superstition climbed to this height, tradition increased, and Antichrist himself came to his estate, let Magdeburgenses, Kemnisius, Osiander, Bale, Mornay, Fox, Usher, and many others relate. In the mean time, he that shall but see their profane rites and foolish customs, how superstitiously kept, how strictly observed, their multitude of saints, images, that rabble of Romish deities, for trades, professions, diseases, persons, offices, countries, places; St. George for England; St. Denis for France, Patrick, Ireland; Andrew, Scotland; Jago, Spain; &c. Gregory for students; Luke for painters; Cosmus and Damian for philosophers; Crispin, shoemakers; Katherine, spinners; &c. Anthony for pigs; Gallus, geese; Wenceslaus, sheep; Pelagius, oxen; Sebastian, the plague; Valentine, falling sickness; Apollonia, toothache; Petronella for agues; and the Virgin Mary for sea and land, for all parties, offices: he that shall observe these things, their shrines, images, oblations, pendants, adorations, pilgrimages they make to them, what creeping to crosses, our Lady of Loretto's rich [6577]gowns, her donaries, the cost bestowed on images, and number of suitors; St. Nicholas Burge in France; our St. Thomas's shrine of old at Canterbury; those relics at Rome, Jerusalem, Genoa, Lyons, Pratum, St. Denis; and how many thousands come yearly to offer to them, with what cost, trouble, anxiety, superstition (for forty several masses are daily said in some of their [6578]churches, and they rise at all hours of the night to mass, come barefoot, &c.), how they spend themselves, times, goods, lives, fortunes, in such ridiculous observations; their tales and figments, false miracles, buying and selling of pardons, indulgences for 40,000 years to come, their processions on set days, their strict fastings, monks, anchorites, friar mendicants, Franciscans, Carthusians, &c. Their vigils and fasts, their ceremonies at Christmas, Shrovetide, Candlemas, Palm Sunday, Blaise, St. Martin, St. Nicholas' day; their adorations, exorcisms, &c., will think all those Grecian, Pagan, Mahometan superstitions, gods, idols, and ceremonies, the name, time and place, habit only altered, to have degenerated into Christians. Whilst they prefer traditions before Scriptures; those Evangelical Councils, poverty, obedience, vows, alms, fasting, supererogations, before God's Commandments; their own ordinances instead of his precepts, and keep them in ignorance, blindness, they have brought the common people into such a case by their cunning conveyances, strict discipline, and servile education, that upon pain of damnation they dare not break the least ceremony, tradition, edict; hold it a greater sin to eat a bit of meat in Lent, than kill a man: their consciences are so terrified, that they are ready to despair if a small ceremony be omitted; and will accuse their own father, mother, brother, sister, nearest and dearest friends of heresy, if they do not as they do, will be their chief executioners, and help first to bring a faggot to burn them. What mulct, what penance soever is enjoined, they dare not but do it, tumble with St. Francis in the mire amongst hogs, if they be appointed, go woolward, whip themselves, build hospitals, abbeys, &c., go to the East or West Indies, kill a king, or run upon a sword point: they perform all, without any muttering or hesitation, believe all.
You may guess at the prognostics by the symptoms. What can these signs fore tell otherwise than folly, dotage, madness, gross ignorance, despair, obstinacy, a reprobate sense, [6590]a bad end? What else can superstition, heresy produce, but wars, tumults, uproars, torture of souls, and despair, a desolate land, as Jeremy teacheth, cap. vii. 34. when they commit idolatry, and walk after their own ways? how should it be otherwise with them? what can they expect but “blasting, famine, dearth,” and all the plagues of Egypt, as Amos denounceth, cap. iv. vers. 9. 10. to be led into captivity? If our hopes be frustrate, “we sow much and bring in little, eat and have not enough, drink and are not filled, clothe and be not warm,” &c. Haggai i. 6. “we look for much and it comes to little, whence is it? His house was waste, they came to their own houses,” vers. 9. “therefore the heaven stayed his dew, the earth his fruit.” Because we are superstitious, irreligious, we do not serve God as we ought, all these plagues and miseries come upon us; what can we look for else but mutual wars, slaughters, fearful ends in this life, and in the life to come eternal damnation? What is it that hath caused so many feral battles to be fought, so much Christian blood shed, but superstition! That Spanish inquisition, racks, wheels, tortures, torments, whence do they proceed? from superstition. Bodine the Frenchman, in his [6591]method. hist. accounts Englishmen barbarians, for their civil wars: but let him read those Pharsalian fields [6592]fought of late in France for their religion, their massacres, wherein by their own relations in twenty-four years, I know not how many millions have been consumed, whole families and cities, and he shall find ours to be but velitations to theirs. But it hath ever been the custom of heretics and idolaters, when they are plagued for their sins, and God's just judgments come upon them, not to acknowledge any fault in themselves, but still impute it unto others. In Cyprian's time it was much controverted between him and Demetrius an idolater, who should be the cause of those present calamities. Demetrius laid all the fault on Christians, (and so they did ever in the primitive church, as appears by the first book of [6593]Arnobius), [6594]“that there were not such ordinary showers in winter, the ripening heat in summer, so seasonable springs, fruitful autumns, no marble mines in the mountains, less gold and silver than of old; that husbandmen, seamen, soldiers, all were scanted, justice, friendship, skill in arts, all was decayed,” and that through Christians' default, and all their other miseries from them, quod dii nostri a vobis non colantur, because they did not worship their gods. But Cyprian retorts all upon him again, as appears by his tract against him. 'Tis true the world is miserably tormented and shaken with wars, dearth, famine, fire, inundations, plagues, and many feral diseases rage amongst us, sed non ut tu quereris ista accidunt quod dii vestri a nobis non colantur, sed quod a vobis non colatur Deus, a quibus nec quaeritur, nec timetur, not as thou complainest, that we do not worship your Gods, but because you are idolaters, and do not serve the true God, neither seek him, nor fear him as you ought. Our papists object as much to us, and account us heretics, we them; the Turks esteem of both as infidels, and we them as a company of pagans, Jews against all; when indeed there is a general fault in us all, and something in the very best, which may justly deserve God's wrath, and pull these miseries upon our heads. I will say nothing here of those vain cares, torments, needless works, penance, pilgrimages, pseudomartyrdom, &c. We heap upon ourselves unnecessary troubles, observations; we punish our bodies, as in Turkey (saith [6595]Busbequius leg. Turcic. ep. 3.) “one did, that was much affected with music, and to hear boys sing, but very superstitious; an old sibyl coming to his house, or a holy woman,” (as that place yields many) “took him down for it, and told him, that in that other world he should suffer for it; thereupon he flung his rich and costly instruments which he had bedecked with jewels, all at once into the fire. He was served in silver plate, and had goodly household stuff: a little after, another religious man reprehended him in like sort, and from thenceforth he was served in earthen vessels, last of all a decree came forth, because Turks might not drink wine themselves, that neither Jew nor Christian then living in Constantinople, might drink any wine at all.” In like sort amongst papists, fasting at first was generally proposed as a good thing; after, from such meats at set times, and then last of all so rigorously proposed, to bind the consciences upon pain of damnation. “First Friday,” saith Erasmus, “then Saturday,” et nunc periclitatur dies Mercurii) and Wednesday now is in danger of a fast. [6596]“And for such like toys, some so miserably afflict themselves, to despair, and death itself, rather than offend, and think themselves good Christians in it, when as indeed they are superstitious Jews.” So saith Leonardus Fuchsius, a great physician in his time. [6597]“We are tortured in Germany with these popish edicts, our bodies so taken down, our goods so diminished, that if God had not sent Luther, a worthy man, in time, to redress these mischiefs, we should have eaten hay with our horses before this.” [6598]As in fasting, so in all other superstitious edicts, we crucify one another without a cause, barring ourselves of many good and lawful things, honest disports, pleasures and recreations; for wherefore did God create them but for our use? Feasts, mirth, music, hawking, hunting, singing, dancing, &c. non tam necessitatibus nostris Deus inservit, sed in delicias amamur, as Seneca notes, God would have it so. And as Plato 2. de legibus gives out, Deos laboriosam hominum vitam miseratos, the gods in commiseration of human estate sent Apollo, Bacchus, and the Muses, qui cum voluptate tripudia et soltationes nobis ducant, to be merry with mortals, to sing and dance with us. So that he that will not rejoice and enjoy himself, making good use of such things as are lawfully permitted, non est temperatus, as he will, sed superstitiosus. “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour,” Eccles. ii. 24. And as [6599]one said of hawking and hunting, tot solatia in hac aegri orbis calamitate, mortalibus taediis deus objecit, I say of all honest recreations, God hath therefore indulged them to refresh, ease, solace and comfort us. But we are some of us too stern, too rigid, too precise, too grossly superstitious, and whilst we make a conscience of every toy, with touch not, taste not, &c., as those Pythagoreans of old, and some Indians now, that will eat no flesh, or suffer any living creature to be killed, the Bannians about Guzzerat; we tyrannise over our brother's soul, lose the right use of many good gifts; honest [6600]sports, games and pleasant recreations, [6601]punish ourselves without a cause, lose our liberties, and sometimes our lives. Anno 1270, at [6602]Magdeburg in Germany, a Jew fell into a privy upon a Saturday, and without help could not possibly get out; he called to his fellows for succour, but they denied it, because it was their Sabbath, non licebat opus manuum exercere; the bishop hearing of it, the next day forbade him to be pulled out, because it was our Sunday. In the mean time the wretch died before Monday. We have myriads of examples in this kind amongst those rigid Sabbatarians, and therefore not without good cause, [6603]Intolerabilem pertubationem Seneca calls it, as well he might, an intolerable perturbation, that causeth such dire events, folly, madness, sickness, despair, death of body and soul, and hell itself.
To purge the world of idolatry and superstition, will require some monster-taming Hercules, a divine Aesculapius, or Christ himself to come in his own person, to reign a thousand years on earth before the end, as the Millenaries will have him. They are generally so refractory, self-conceited, obstinate, so firmly addicted to that religion in which they have been bred and brought up, that no persuasion, no terror, no persecution, can divert them. The consideration of which, hath induced many commonwealths to suffer them to enjoy their consciences as they will themselves: a toleration of Jews is in most provinces of Europe. In Asia they have their synagogues: Spaniards permit Moors to live amongst them: the Mogullians, Gentiles: the Turks all religions. In Europe, Poland and Amsterdam are the common sanctuaries. Some are of opinion, that no man ought to be compelled for conscience' sake, but let him be of what religion he will, he may be saved, as Cornelius was formerly accepted, Jew, Turks, Anabaptists, &c. If he be an honest man, live soberly, and civilly in his profession, (Volkelius, Crellius, and the rest of the Socinians, that now nestle themselves about Krakow and Rakow in Poland, have renewed this opinion) serve his own God, with that fear and reverence as he ought. Sua cuique civitati (Laeli) religio sit, nostra nobis, Tully thought fit every city should be free in this behalf, adore their own Custodes et Topicos Deos, tutelar and local gods, as Symmachus calls them. Isocrates adviseth Demonicus, “when he came to a strange city, to [6604]worship by all means the gods of the place,” et unumquemque, Topicum deum sic coli oportere, quomodo ipse praeceperit: which Cecilius in [6605]Minutius labours, and would have every nation sacrorum ritus gentiles habere et deos colere municipes, keep their own ceremonies, worship their peculiar gods, which Pomponius Mela reports of the Africans, Deos suos patrio more venerantur, they worship their own gods according to their own ordination. For why should any one nation, as he there pleads, challenge that universality of God, Deum suum quem nec ostendunt, nec vident, discurrantem silicet et ubique praesentem, in omnium mores, actus, et occultas, cogitationes inquirentem, &c., as Christians do: let every province enjoy their liberty in this behalf, worship one God, or all as they will, and are informed. The Romans built altars Diis Asiae, Europae, Lybiae, diis ignotis et peregrinis: others otherwise, &c. Plinius Secundus, as appears by his Epistle to Trajan, would not have the Christians so persecuted, and in some time of the reign of Maximinus, as we find it registered in Eusebius lib. 9. cap. 9. there was a decree made to this purpose, Nullus cogatur invitus ad hunc vel illum deorum cultum, “let no one be compelled against his will to worship any particular deity,” and by Constantine in the 19th year of his reign as [6606]Baronius informeth us, Nemo alteri exhibeat molestiam, quod cujusque animus vult, hoc quisque transigat, new gods, new lawgivers, new priests, will have new ceremonies, customs and religions, to which every wise man as a good formalist should accommodate himself.
In that other extreme or defect of this love of God, knowledge, faith, fear, hope, &c. are such as err both in doctrine and manners, Sadducees, Herodians, libertines, politicians: all manner of atheists, epicures, infidels, that are secure, in a reprobate sense, fear not God at all, and such are too distrustful and timorous, as desperate persons be. That grand sin of atheism or impiety, [6617]Melancthon calls it monstrosam melancholiam, monstrous melancholy; or venenatam melancholiam, poisoned melancholy. A company of Cyclops or giants, that war with the gods, as the poets feigned, antipodes to Christians, that scoff at all religion, at God himself, deny him and all his attributes, his wisdom, power, providence, his mercy and judgment.
Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis.[6628] For the rest of heaven and hell, let children and superstitious fools believe it: for their parts, they are so far from trembling at the dreadful day of judgment that they wish with Nero, Me vivo fiat, let it come in their times: so secure, so desperate, so immoderate in lust and pleasure, so prone to revenge that, as Paterculus said of some caitiffs in his time in Rome, Quod nequiter ausi, fortiter executi: it shall not be so wickedly attempted, but as desperately performed, whatever they take in hand. Were it not for God's restraining grace, fear and shame, temporal punishment, and their own infamy, they would. Lycaon-like exenterate, as so many cannibals eat up, or Cadmus' soldiers consume one another. These are most impious, and commonly professed atheists, that never use the name of God but to swear by it; that express nought else but epicurism in their carriage, or hypocrisy; with Pentheus they neglect and contemn these rites and religious ceremonies of the gods; they will be gods themselves, or at least socii deorum. Divisum imperium cum Jove Caesar habet. “Caesar divides the empire with Jove.” Aproyis, an Egyptian tyrant, grew, saith [6629]Herodotus, to that height of pride, insolency of impiety, to that contempt of Gods and men, that he held his kingdom so sure, ut a nemine deorum aut hominum sibi eripi posset, neither God nor men could take it from him. [6630]A certain blasphemous king of Spain (as [6631]Lansius reports) made an edict, that no subject of his, for ten years' space, should believe in, call on, or worship any god. And as [6632]Jovius relates of “Mahomet the Second, that sacked Constantinople, he so behaved himself, that he believed neither Christ nor Mahomet; and thence it came to pass, that he kept his word and promise no farther than for his advantage, neither did he care to commit any offence to satisfy his lust.” I could say the like of many princes, many private men (our stories are full of them) in times past, this present age, that love, fear, obey, and perform all civil duties as they shall find them expedient or behoveful to their own ends. Securi adversus Deos, securi adversus homines, votis non est opus, which [6633] Tacitus reports of some Germans, they need not pray, fear, hope, for they are secure, to their thinking, both from Gods and men. Bulco Opiliensis, sometime Duke of [6634]Silesia, was such a one to a hair; he lived (saith [6635]Aeneas Sylvius) at [6636]Vratislavia, “and was so mad to satisfy his lust, that he believed neither heaven nor hell, or that the soul was immortal, but married wives, and turned them up as he thought fit, did murder and mischief, and what he list himself.” This duke hath too many followers in our days: say what you can, dehort, exhort, persuade to the contrary, they are no more moved,—quam si dura, silex aut stet Marpesia cautes, than so many stocks, and stones; tell them of heaven and hell, 'tis to no purpose, laterem lavas, they answer as Ataliba that Indian prince did friar Vincent, [6637]“when he brought him a book, and told him all the mysteries of salvation, heaven and hell, were contained in it: he looked upon it, and said he saw no such matter, asking withal, how he knew it:” they will but scoff at it, or wholly reject it. Petronius in Tacitus, when he was now by Nero's command bleeding to death, audiebat amicos nihil referentes de immortalitate animae, aut sapientum placitis, sed levia carmina et faciles versus; instead of good counsel and divine meditations, he made his friends sing him bawdy verses and scurrilous songs. Let them take heaven, paradise, and that future happiness that will, bonum est esse hic, it is good being here: there is no talking to such, no hope of their conversion, they are in a reprobate sense, mere carnalists, fleshly minded men, which howsoever they may be applauded in this life by some few parasites, and held for worldly wise men. [6638]“They seem to me” (saith Melancthon) “to be as mad as Hercules was when he raved and killed his wife and children.” A milder sort of these atheistical spirits there are that profess religion, but timide et haesitanter, tempted thereunto out of that horrible consideration of diversity of religions, which are and have been in the world (which argument Campanella, Atheismi Triumphati, cap. 9. both urgeth and answers), besides the covetousness, imposture, and knavery of priests, quae faciunt (as [6639]Postellus observes) ut rebus sacris minus faciant fidem; and those religions some of them so fantastical, exorbitant, so violently maintained with equal constancy and assurance; whence they infer, that if there be so many religious sects, and denied by the rest, why may they not be all false? or why should this or that be preferred before the rest? The sceptics urge this, and amongst others it is the conclusion of Sextus Empericus, lib. 3. advers. Mathematicos: after many philosophical arguments and reasons pro and con that there are gods, and again that there are no gods, he so concludes, cum tot inter se pugnent, &c. Una tantum potest esse vera, as Tully likewise disputes: Christians say, they alone worship the true God, pity all other sects, lament their case; and yet those old Greeks and Romans that worshipped the devil, as the Chinese now do, aut deos topicos, their own gods; as Julian the apostate, [6640]Cecilius in Minutius, Celsus and Porphyrius the philosopher object: and as Machiavel contends, were much more noble, generous, victorious, had a more flourishing commonwealth, better cities, better soldiers, better scholars, better wits. Their gods overcame our gods, did as many miracles, &c. Saint Cyril, Arnobius, Minutius, with many other ancients of late, Lessius, Morneus, Grotius de Verit. Relig. Christianae, Savanarola de Verit. Fidei Christianae, well defend; but Zanchius, [6641]Campanella, Marinus Marcennus, Bozius, and Gentillettus answer all these atheistical arguments at large. But this again troubles many as of old, wicked men generally thrive, professed atheists thrive,
Cousin-germans to these men are many of our great philosophers and deists, who, though they be more temperate in this life, give many good moral precepts, honest, upright, and sober in their conversation, yet in effect they are the same (accounting no man a good scholar that is not an atheist), nimis altum sapiunt, too much learning makes them mad. Whilst they attribute all to natural causes, [6646]contingence of all things, as Melancthon calls them, Pertinax hominum genus, a peevish generation of men, that misled by philosophy, and the devil's suggestion, their own innate blindness, deny God as much as the rest, hold all religion a fiction, opposite to reason and philosophy, though for fear of magistrates, saith [6647]Vaninus, they durst not publicly profess it. Ask one of them of what religion he is, he scoffingly replies, a philosopher, a Galenist, an [6648]Averroist, and with Rabelais a physician, a peripatetic, an epicure. In spiritual things God must demonstrate all to sense, leave a pawn with them, or else seek some other creditor. They will acknowledge Nature and Fortune, yet not God: though in effect they grant both: for as Scaliger defines, Nature signifies God's ordinary power; or, as Calvin writes, Nature is God's order, and so things extraordinary may be called unnatural: Fortune his unrevealed will; and so we call things changeable that are beside reason and expectation. To this purpose [6649]Minutius in Octavio, and [6650] Seneca well discourseth with them, lib. 4. de beneficiis, cap. 5, 6, 7. “They do not understand what they say; what is Nature but God? call him what thou wilt, Nature, Jupiter, he hath as many names as offices: it comes all to one pass, God is the fountain of all, the first Giver and Preserver, from whom all things depend,” [6651]a quo, et per quem omnia, Nam quocunque vides Deus est, quocunque moveris, “God is all in all, God is everywhere, in every place.” And yet this Seneca, that could confute and blame them, is all out as much to be blamed and confuted himself, as mad himself; for he holds fatum Stoicum, that inevitable Necessity in the other extreme, as those Chaldean astrologers of old did, against whom the prophet Jeremiah so often thunders, and those heathen mathematicians, Nigidius Figulus, magicians, and Priscilianists, whom St. Austin so eagerly confutes, those Arabian questionaries, Novem Judices, Albumazer, Dorotheus, &c., and our countryman [6652]Estuidus, that take upon them to define out of those great conjunction of stars, with Ptolomeus, the periods of kingdoms, or religions, of all future accidents, wars, plagues, schisms, heresies, and what not? all from stars, and such things, saith Maginus, Quae sibi et intelligentiis suis reservavit Deus, which God hath reserved to himself and his angels, they will take upon them to foretell, as if stars were immediate, inevitable causes of all future accidents. Caesar Vaninus, in his book de admirandis naturae Arcanis, dial. 52. de oraculis, is more free, copious, and open, in this explication of this astrological tenet of Ptolemy, than any of our modern writers, Cardan excepted, a true disciple of his master Pomponatius; according to the doctrine of Peripatetics, he refers all apparitions, prodigies, miracles, oracles, accidents, alterations of religions, kingdoms, &c. (for which he is soundly lashed by Marinus Mercennus, as well he deserves), to natural causes (for spirits he will not acknowledge), to that light, motion, influences of heavens and stars, and to the intelligences that move the orbs. Intelligentia quae, movet orbem mediante coelo, &c. Intelligences do all: and after a long discourse of miracles done of old, si haec daemones possint, cur non et intelligentiae, coelorum motrices? And as these great conjunctions, aspects of planets, begin or end, vary, are vertical and predominant, so have religions, rites, ceremonies, and kingdoms their beginning, progress, periods, in urbibus, regibus, religionibus, ac in particularibus hominibus, haec vera ac manifesta, sunt, ut Aristoteles innuere videtur, et quotidiana docet experientia, ut historias perlegens videbit; quid olim in Gentili lege Jove sanctius et illustrius? quid nunc vile magis et execrandum? Ita coelestia corpora pro mortalium beneficio religiones aedificant, et cum cessat influxus, cessat lex,[6653] &c. And because, according to their tenets, the world is eternal, intelligences eternal, influences of stars eternal, kingdoms, religions, alterations shall be likewise eternal, and run round after many ages; Atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles; renascentur religiones, et ceremoniae, res humanae in idem recident, nihil nunc quod non olim fuit, et post saeculorum revolutiones alias est, erit,[6654]&c. idem specie, saith Vaninus, non individuo quod Plato significavit. These (saith mine [6655]author), these are the decrees of Peripatetics, which though I recite, in obsequium Christianae fidei detestor, as I am a Christian I detest and hate. Thus Peripatetics and astrologians held in former times, and to this effect of old in Rome, saith Dionysius Halicarnassus, lib. 7, when those meteors and prodigies appeared in the air, after the banishment of Coriolanus, [6656] “Men were diversely affected: some said they were God's just judgments for the execution of that good man, some referred all to natural causes, some to stars, some thought they came by chance, some by necessity” decreed ab initio, and could not be altered. The two last opinions of necessity and chance were, it seems, of greater note than the rest.
For the first of chance, as [6658]Sallust likewise informeth us, those old Romans generally received; “They supposed fortune alone gave kingdoms and empires, wealth, honours, offices: and that for two causes; first, because every wicked base unworthy wretch was preferred, rich, potent, &c.; secondly, because of their uncertainty, though never so good, scarce any one enjoyed them long: but after, they began upon better advice to think otherwise, that every man made his own fortune.” The last of Necessity was Seneca's tenet, that God was alligatus causis secundis, so tied to second causes, to that inexorable Necessity, that he could alter nothing of that which was once decreed; sic erat in fatis, it cannot be altered, semel jussit, semper paret Deus, nulla vis rumpit, nullae preces, nec ipsum fulmen, God hath once said it, and it must for ever stand good, no prayers, no threats, nor power, nor thunder itself can alter it. Zeno, Chrysippus, and those other Stoics, as you may read in Tully 2. de divinatione, Gellius, lib. 6. cap. 2. &c., maintained as much. In all ages, there have been such, that either deny God in all, or in part; some deride him, they could have made a better world, and ruled it more orderly themselves, blaspheme him, derogate at their pleasure from him. 'Twas so in [6659]Plato's time, “Some say there be no gods, others that they care not for men, a middle sort grant both.” Si non sit Deus, unde mala? si sit Deus, unde mala? So Cotta argues in Tully, why made he not all good, or at least tenders not the welfare of such as are good? As the woman told Alexander, if he be not at leisure to hear causes, and redress them, why doth he reign? [6660]Sextus Empericus hath many such arguments. Thus perverse men cavil. So it will ever be, some of all sorts, good, bad, indifferent, true, false, zealous, ambidexters, neutralists, lukewarm, libertines, atheists, &c. They will see these religious sectaries agree amongst themselves, be reconciled all, before they will participate with, or believe any: they think in the meantime (which [6661]Celsus objects, and whom Origen confutes), “We Christians adore a person put to [6662]death with no more reason than the barbarous Getes worshipped Zamolxis, the Cilicians Mopsus, the Thebans Amphiaraus, and the Lebadians Trophonius; one religion is as true as another, new fangled devices, all for human respects;” great-witted Aristotle's works are as much authentical to them as Scriptures, subtle Seneca's Epistles as canonical as St. Paul's, Pindarus' Odes as good as the Prophet David's Psalms, Epictetus' Enchiridion equivalent to wise Solomon's Proverbs. They do openly and boldly speak this and more, some of them, in all places and companies. [6663]“Claudius the emperor was angry with Heaven, because it thundered, and challenged Jupiter into the field; with what madness! saith Seneca; he thought Jupiter could not hurt him, but he could hurt Jupiter.” Diagoras, Demonax, Epicurus, Pliny, Lucian, Lucretius,—Contemptorque Deum Mezentius, “professed atheists all” in their times: though not simple atheists neither, as Cicogna proves, lib. 1. cap. 1. they scoffed only at those Pagan gods, their plurality, base and fictitious offices. Gilbertus Cognatus labours much, and so doth Erasmus, to vindicate Lucian from scandal, and there be those that apologise for Epicurus, but all in vain; Lucian scoffs at all, Epicurus he denies all, and Lucretius his scholar defends him in it:
To these professed atheists, we may well add that impious and carnal crew of worldly-minded men, impenitent sinners, that go to hell in a lethargy, or in a dream; who though they be professed Christians, yet they will nulla pallescere culpa, make a conscience of nothing they do, they have cauterised consciences, and are indeed in a reprobate sense, “past all feeling, have given themselves over to wantonness, to work all manner of uncleanness even with greediness,” Ephes. iv. 19. They do know there is a God, a day of judgment to come, and yet for all that, as Hugo saith, ita comedunt ac dormiunt, ac si diem judicii evasissent; ita ludunt ac rident, ac si in coelis cum Deo regnarent: they are as merry for all the sorrow, as if they had escaped all dangers, and were in heaven already:
Some are of opinion, that it is in vain to dispute with such atheistical spirits in the meantime, 'tis not the best way to reclaim them. Atheism, idolatry, heresy, hypocrisy, though they have one common root, that is indulgence to corrupt affection, yet their growth is different, they have divers symptoms, occasions, and must have several cures and remedies. 'Tis true some deny there is any God, some confess, yet believe it not; a third sort confess and believe, but will not live after his laws, worship and obey him: others allow God and gods subordinate, but not one God, no such general God, non talem deum, but several topic gods for several places, and those not to persecute one another for any difference, as Socinus will, but rather love and cherish.
To describe them in particular, to produce their arguments and reasons, would require a just volume, I refer them therefore that expect a more ample satisfaction, to those subtle and elaborate treatises, devout and famous tracts of our learned divines (schoolmen amongst the rest, and casuists) that have abundance of reasons to prove there is a God, the immortality of the soul, &c., out of the strength of wit and philosophy bring irrefragable arguments to such as are ingenuous and well disposed; at the least, answer all cavils and objections to confute their folly and madness, and to reduce them, si fieri posset, ad sanam mentem, to a better mind, though to small purpose many times. Amongst others consult with Julius Caesar Lagalla, professor of philosophy in Rome, who hath written a large volume of late to confute atheists: of the immortality of the soul, Hierom. Montanus de immortalitate Animae: Lelius Vincentius of the same subject: Thomas Giaminus, and Franciscus Collius de Paganorum animabus post mortem, a famous doctor of the Ambrosian College in Milan. Bishop Fotherby in his Atheomastix, Doctor Dove, Doctor Jackson, Abernethy, Corderoy, have written well of this subject in our mother tongue: in Latin, Colerus, Zanchius, Palearius, Illyricus, [6682]Philippus, Faber Faventinus, &c. But instar omnium, the most copious confuter of atheists is Marinus Mercennus in his Commentaries on Genesis: [6683]with Campanella's Atheismus Triumphatus. He sets down at large the causes of this brutish passion, (seventeen in number I take it) answers all their arguments and sophisms, which he reduceth to twenty-six heads, proving withal his own assertion; “There is a God, such a God, the true and sole God,” by thirty-five reasons. His Colophon is how to resist and repress atheism, and to that purpose he adds four especial means or ways, which who so will may profitably peruse.
There be many kinds of desperation, whereof some be holy, some unholy, as [6684]one distinguisheth; that unholy he defines out of Tully to be Aegritudinem animi sine ulla rerum expectatione meliore, a sickness of the soul without any hope or expectation of amendment; which commonly succeeds fear; for whilst evil is expected, we fear: but when it is certain, we despair. According to Thomas 2. 2ae. distinct. 40. art. 4. it is Recessus a re desiderata, propter impossibilitatem existimatam, a restraint from the thing desired, for some impossibility supposed. Because they cannot obtain what they would, they become desperate, and many times either yield to the passion by death itself, or else attempt impossibilities, not to be performed by men. In some cases, this desperate humour is not much to be discommended, as in wars it is a cause many times of extraordinary valour; as Joseph, lib. 1. de bello Jud. cap. 14. L. Danaeus in Aphoris. polit. pag. 226. and many politicians hold. It makes them improve their worth beyond itself, and of a forlorn impotent company become conquerors in a moment. Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem, “the only hope for the conquered is despair.” In such courses when they see no remedy, but that they must either kill or be killed, they take courage, and oftentimes, praeter spem, beyond all hope vindicate themselves. Fifteen thousand Locrenses fought against a hundred thousand Crotonienses, and seeing now no way but one, they must all die, [6685]thought they would not depart unrevenged, and thereupon desperately giving an assault, conquered their enemies. Nec alia causa victoriae, (saith Justin mine author) quam quod desperaverant. William the Conqueror, when he first landed in England, sent back his ships, that his soldiers might have no hope of retiring back. [6686]Bodine excuseth his countrymen's overthrow at that famous battle at Agincourt, in Henry the Fifth his time, (cui simile, saith Froissard, tota historia producere non possit, which no history can parallel almost, wherein one handful of Englishmen overthrew a royal army of Frenchmen) with this refuge of despair, pauci desperati, a few desperate fellows being compassed in by their enemies, past all hope of life, fought like so many devils; and gives a caution, that no soldiers hereafter set upon desperate persons, which [6687]after Frontinus and Vigetius, Guicciardini likewise admonisheth, Hypomnes. part. 2. pag. 25. not to stop an enemy that is going his way. Many such kinds there are of desperation, when men are past hope of obtaining any suit, or in despair of better fortune; Desperatio facit monachum, as the saying is, and desperation causeth death itself; how many thousands in such distress have made away themselves, and many others? For he that cares not for his own, is master of another man's life. A Tuscan soothsayer, as [6688]Paterculus tells the story, perceiving himself and Fulvius Flaccus his dear friend, now both carried to prison by Opimius, and in despair of pardon, seeing the young man weep, quin tu potius hoc inquit facis, do as I do; and with that knocked out his brains against the door-cheek, as he was entering into prison, protinusque illiso capite in capite in carceris januam effuso cerebro expiravit, and so desperate died. But these are equivocal, improper. “When I speak of despair,” saith [6689]Zanchie, “I speak not of every kind, but of that alone which concerns God. It is opposite to hope, and a most pernicious sin, wherewith the devil seeks to entrap men.” Musculus makes four kinds of desperation, of God, ourselves, our neighbour, or anything to be done; but this division of his may be reduced easily to the former: all kinds are opposite to hope, that sweet moderator of passions, as Simonides calls it; I do not mean that vain hope which fantastical fellows feign to themselves, which according to Aristotle is insomnium vigilantium, a waking dream; but this divine hope which proceeds from confidence, and is an anchor to a floating soul; spes alit agricolas, even in our temporal affairs, hope revives us, but in spiritual it farther animateth; and were it not for hope, “we of all others were the most miserable,” as Paul saith, in this life; were it not for hope, the heart would break; “for though they be punished in the sight of men,” (Wisdom iii. 4.) yet is “their hope full of immortality:” yet doth it not so rear, as despair doth deject; this violent and sour passion of despair, is of all perturbations most grievous, as [6690]Patritius holds. Some divide it into final and temporal; [6691]final is incurable, which befalleth reprobates; temporal is a rejection of hope and comfort for a time, which may befall the best of God's children, and it commonly proceeds [6692]“from weakness of faith,” as in David when he was oppressed he cried out, “O Lord, thou hast forsaken me,” but this for a time. This ebbs and flows with hope and fear; it is a grievous sin howsoever: although some kind of despair be not amiss, when, saith Zanchius, we despair of our own means, and rely wholly upon God: but that species is not here meant. This pernicious kind of desperation is the subject of our discourse, homicida animae, the murderer of the soul, as Austin terms it, a fearful passion, wherein the party oppressed thinks he can get no ease but by death, and is fully resolved to offer violence unto himself; so sensible of his burthen, and impatient of his cross, that he hopes by death alone to be freed of his calamity (though it prove otherwise), and chooseth with Job vi. 8. 9. xvii. 5. “Rather to be strangled and die, than to be in his bonds.” [6693]The part affected is the whole soul, and all the faculties of it; there is a privation of joy, hope, trust, confidence, of present and future good, and in their place succeed fear, sorrow, &c. as in the symptoms shall be shown. The heart is grieved, the conscience wounded, the mind eclipsed with black fumes arising from those perpetual terrors.
The principal agent and procurer of this mischief is the devil; those whom God forsakes, the devil by his permission lays hold on. Sometimes he persecutes them with that worm of conscience, as he did Judas, [6694]Saul, and others. The poets call it Nemesis, but it is indeed God's just judgment, sero sed serio, he strikes home at last, and setteth upon them “as a thief in the night,” 1 Thes. ii. [6695]This temporary passion made David cry out, “Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thine heavy displeasure; for thine arrows have light upon me, &c. there is nothing sound in my flesh, because of thine anger.” Again, I roar for the very grief of my heart: and Psalm xxii. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, and art so far from my health, and the words of my crying? I am like to water poured out, my bones are out of joint, mine heart is like wax, that is molten in the midst of my bowels.” So Psalm lxxxviii. 15 and 16 vers. and Psalm cii. “I am in misery at the point of death, from my youth I suffer thy terrors, doubting for my life; thine indignations have gone over me, and thy fear hath cut me off.” Job doth often complain in this kind; and those God doth not assist, the devil is ready to try and torment, “still seeking whom he may devour.” If he find them merry, saith Gregory, “he tempts them forthwith to some dissolute act; if pensive and sad, to a desperate end.” Aut suadendo blanditur, aut minando terret, sometimes by fair means, sometimes again by foul, as he perceives men severally inclined. His ordinary engine by which he produceth this effect, is the melancholy humour itself, which is balneum diaboli, the devil's bath; and as in Saul, those evil spirits get in [6696]as it were, and take possession of us. Black choler is a shoeing-horn, a bait to allure them, insomuch that many writers make melancholy an ordinary cause, and a symptom of despair, for that such men are most apt, by reason of their ill-disposed temper, to distrust, fear, grief, mistake, and amplify whatsoever they preposterously conceive, or falsely apprehend. Conscientia scrupulosa nascitur ex vitio naturali, complexione melancholica (saith Navarrus cap. 27. num. 282. tom. 2. cas. conscien.) The body works upon the mind, by obfuscating the spirits and corrupted instruments, which [6697]Perkins illustrates by simile of an artificer, that hath a bad tool, his skill is good, ability correspondent, by reason of ill tools his work must needs be lame and imperfect. But melancholy and despair, though often, do not always concur; there is much difference: melancholy fears without a cause, this upon great occasion; melancholy is caused by fear and grief, but this torment procures them and all extremity of bitterness; much melancholy is without affliction of conscience, as [6698]Bright and Perkins illustrate by four reasons; and yet melancholy alone may be sometimes a sufficient cause of this terror of conscience. [6699]Felix Plater so found it in his observations, e melancholicis alii damnatos se putant, Deo curae, non sunt, nec praedestinati, &c. “They think they are not predestinate, God hath forsaken them;” and yet otherwise very zealous and religious; and 'tis common to be seen, “melancholy for fear of God's judgment and hell-fire, drives men to desperation; fear and sorrow, if they be immoderate, end often with it.” Intolerable pain and anguish, long sickness, captivity, misery, loss of goods, loss of friends, and those lesser griefs, do sometimes effect it, or such dismal accidents. Si non statim relevantur, [6700]Mercennus, dubitant an sit Deus, if they be not eased forthwith, they doubt whether there be any God, they rave, curse, “and are desperately mad because good men are oppressed, wicked men flourish, they have not as they think to their desert,” and through impatience of calamities are so misaffected. Democritus put out his eyes, ne malorum civium prosperos videret successus, because he could not abide to see wicked men prosper, and was therefore ready to make away himself, as [6701]Agellius writes of him. Felix Plater hath a memorable example in this kind, of a painter's wife in Basil, that was melancholy for her son's death, and for melancholy became desperate; she thought God would not pardon her sins, [6702]“and for four months still raved, that she was in hell-fire, already damned.” When the humour is stirred up, every small object aggravates and incenseth it, as the parties are addicted. [6703]The same author hath an example of a merchant man, that for the loss of a little wheat, which he had over long kept, was troubled in conscience, for that he had not sold it sooner, or given it to the poor, yet a good scholar and a great divine; no persuasion would serve to the contrary, but that for this fact he was damned: in other matters Very judicious and discreet. Solitariness, much fasting, divine meditation, and contemplations of God's judgments, most part accompany this melancholy, and are main causes, as [6704]Navarrus holds; to converse with such kinds of persons so troubled, is sufficient occasion of trouble to some men. Nonnulli ob longas inedias, studia et meditationes coelestes, de rebus sacris et religione semper agitant, &c. Many, (saith P. Forestus) through long fasting, serious meditations of heavenly things, fall into such fits; and as Lemnius adds, lib. 4. cap. 21, [6705]“If they be solitary given, superstitious, precise, or very devout: seldom shall you find a merchant, a soldier, an innkeeper, a bawd, a host, a usurer, so troubled in mind, they have cheverel consciences that will stretch, they are seldom moved in this kind or molested: young men and middle age are more wild and less apprehensive; but old folks, most part, such as are timorous and religiously given.” Pet. Forestus observat. lib. 10. cap. 12. de morbis cerebri, hath a fearful example of a minister, that through precise fasting in Lent, and overmuch meditation, contracted this mischief, and in the end became desperate, thought he saw devils in his chamber, and that he could not be saved; he smelled nothing, as he said, but fire and brimstone, was already in hell, and would ask them, still, if they did not [6706]smell as much. I told him he was melancholy, but he laughed me to scorn, and replied that he saw devils, talked with them in good earnest, Would spit in my face, and ask me if 1 did not smell brimstone, but at last he was by him cured. Such another story I find in Plater observat. lib. 1. A poor fellow had done some foul offence, and for fourteen days would eat no meat, in the end became desperate, the divines about him could not ease him, [6707]but so he died. Continual meditation of God's judgments troubles many, Multi ob timorem futuri judicii, saith Guatinerius cap. 5. tract. 15. et suspicionem desperabundi sunt. David himself complains that God's judgments terrified his soul, Psalm cxix. part. 16. vers. 8. “My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments.” Quoties diem illum cogito (saith [6708]Hierome) toto corpore contremisco, I tremble as often as I think of it. The terrible meditation of hell-fire and eternal punishment much torments a sinful silly soul. What's a thousand years to eternity? Ubi moeror, ubi fletus, ubi dolor sempiternus. Mors sine morte, finis sine fine; a finger burnt by chance we may not endure, the pain is so grievous, we may not abide an hour, a night is intolerable; and what shall this unspeakable fire then be that burns for ever, innumerable infinite millions of years, in omne aevum in aeternum. O eternity!
This meditation terrifies these poor distressed souls, especially if their bodies be predisposed by melancholy, they religiously given, and have tender consciences, every small object affrights them, the very inconsiderate reading of Scripture itself, and misinterpretation of some places of it; as, “Many are called, few are chosen. Not every one that saith Lord. Fear not little flock. He that stands, let him take heed lest he fall. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, That night two shall be in a bed, one received, the other left. Strait is the way that leads to heaven, and few there are that enter therein.” The parable of the seed and of the sower, “some fell on barren ground, some was choked. Whom he hath predestinated he hath chosen. He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy.” Non est volentis nec currentis, sed miserentis Dei. These and the like places terrify the souls of many; election, predestination, reprobation, preposterously conceived, offend divers, with a deal of foolish presumption, curiosity, needless speculation, contemplation, solicitude, wherein they trouble and puzzle themselves about those questions of grace, free will, perseverance, God's secrets; they will know more than is revealed of God in his word, human capacity, or ignorance can apprehend, and too importunate inquiry after that which is revealed; mysteries, ceremonies, observation of Sabbaths, laws, duties, &c., with many such which the casuists discuss, and schoolmen broach, which divers mistake, misconstrue, misapply to themselves, to their own undoing, and so fall into this gulf. “They doubt of their election, how they shall know, it, by what signs. And so far forth,” saith Luther, “with such nice points, torture and crucify themselves, that they are almost mad, and all they get by it is this, they lay open a gap to the devil by desperation to carry them to hell;” but the greatest harm of all proceeds from those thundering ministers, a most frequent cause they are of this malady: [6710]“and do more harm in the church” (saith Erasmus) “than they that flatter; great danger on both sides, the one lulls them asleep in carnal security, the other drives them to despair.” Whereas, [6711]St. Bernard well adviseth, “We should not meddle with the one without the other, nor speak of judgment without mercy; the one alone brings desperation, the other security.” But these men are wholly for judgment; of a rigid disposition themselves, there is no mercy with them, no salvation, no balsam for their diseased souls, they can speak of nothing but reprobation, hell-fire, and damnation; as they did Luke xi. 46. lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, which they themselves touch not with a finger. 'Tis familiar with our papists to terrify men's souls with purgatory, tales, visions, apparitions, to daunt even the most generous spirits, “to [6712]require charity,” as Brentius observes, “of others, bounty, meekness, love, patience, when they themselves breathe nought but lust, envy, covetousness.” They teach others to fast, give alms, do penance, and crucify their mind with superstitious observations, bread and water, hair clothes, whips, and the like, when they themselves have all the dainties the world can afford, lie on a down-bed with a courtesan in their arms: Heu quantum patimur pro Christo, as [6713]he said, what a cruel tyranny is this, so to insult over and terrify men's souls! Our indiscreet pastors many of them come not far behind, whilst in their ordinary sermons they speak so much of election, predestination, reprobation, ab aeterno, subtraction of grace, preterition, voluntary permission, &c., by what signs and tokens they shall discern and try themselves, whether they be God's true children elect, an sint reprobi, praedestinati, &c., with such scrupulous points, they still aggravate sin, thunder out God's judgments without respect, intempestively rail at and pronounce them damned in all auditories, for giving so much to sports and honest recreations, making every small fault and thing indifferent an irremissible offence, they so rent, tear and wound men's consciences, that they are almost mad, and at their wits' end.
“These bitter potions” (saith [6714]Erasmus) “are still in their mouths, nothing but gall and horror, and a mad noise, they make all their auditors desperate:” many are wounded by this means, and they commonly that are most devout and precise, have been formerly presumptuous, and certain of their salvation; they that have tender consciences, that follow sermons, frequent lectures, that have indeed least cause, they are most apt to mistake, and fall into these miseries. I have heard some complain of Parson's Resolution, and other books of like nature (good otherwise), they are too tragical, too much dejecting men, aggravating offences: great care and choice, much discretion is required in this kind.
The last and greatest cause of this malady, is our own conscience, sense of our sins, and God's anger justly deserved, a guilty conscience for some foul offence formerly committed,—[6715]O miser Oreste, quid morbi te perdit? Or: Conscientia, Sum enim mihi conscius de malis perpetratis.[6716] “A good conscience is a continual feast,” but a galled conscience is as great a torment as can possibly happen, a still baking oven, (so Pierius in his Hieroglyph, compares it) another hell. Our conscience, which is a great ledger book, wherein are written all our offences, a register to lay them up, (which those [6717]Egyptians in their hieroglyphics expressed by a mill, as well for the continuance, as for the torture of it) grinds our souls with the remembrance of some precedent sins, makes us reflect upon, accuse and condemn our own selves. [6718]“Sin lies at door,” &c. I know there be many other causes assigned by Zanchius, [6719]Musculus, and the rest; as incredulity, infidelity, presumption, ignorance, blindness, ingratitude, discontent, those five grand miseries in Aristotle, ignominy, need, sickness, enmity, death, &c.; but this of conscience is the greatest, [6720]Instar ulceris corpus jugiter percellens: The scrupulous conscience (as [6721]Peter Forestus calls it) which tortures so many, that either out of a deep apprehension of their unworthiness, and consideration of their own dissolute life, “accuse themselves and aggravate every small offence, when there is no such cause, misdoubting in the meantime God's mercies, they fall into these inconveniences.” The poet calls them [6722]furies dire, but it is the conscience alone which is a thousand witnesses to accuse us, [6723] Nocte dieque suum gestant in pectore testem. A continual tester to give in evidence, to empanel a jury to examine us, to cry guilty, a persecutor with hue and cry to follow, an apparitor to summon us, a bailiff to carry us, a serjeant to arrest, an attorney to plead against us, a gaoler to torment, a judge to condemn, still accusing, denouncing, torturing and molesting. And as the statue of Juno in that holy city near Euphrates in [6724]Assyria will look still towards you, sit where you will in her temple, she stares full upon you, if you go by, she follows with her eye, in all sites, places, conventicles, actions, our conscience will be still ready to accuse us. After many pleasant days, and fortunate adventures, merry tides, this conscience at last doth arrest us. Well he may escape temporal punishment, [6725]bribe a corrupt judge, and avoid the censure of law, and flourish for a time; “for [6726]who ever saw” (saith Chrysostom) “a covetous man troubled in mind when he is telling of his money, an adulterer mourn with his mistress in his arms? we are then drunk with pleasure, and perceive nothing:” yet as the prodigal son had dainty fare, sweet music at first, merry company, jovial entertainment, but a cruel reckoning in the end, as bitter as wormwood, a fearful visitation commonly follows. And the devil that then told thee that it was a light sin, or no sin at all, now aggravates on the other side, and telleth thee, that it is a most irremissible offence, as he did by Cain and Judas, to bring them to despair; every small circumstance before neglected and contemned, will now amplify itself, rise up in judgment, and accuse the dust of their shoes, dumb creatures, as to Lucian's tyrant, lectus et candela, the bed and candle did bear witness, to torment their souls for their sins past. Tragical examples in this kind are too familiar and common: Adrian, Galba, Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Caracalla, were in such horror of conscience for their offences committed, murders, rapes, extortions, injuries, that they were weary of their lives, and could get nobody to kill them. [6727]Kennetus, King of Scotland, when he had murdered his nephew Malcom, King Duffe's son, Prince of Cumberland, and with counterfeit tears and protestations dissembled the matter a long time, [6728]“at last his conscience accused him, his unquiet soul could not rest day or night, he was terrified with fearful dreams, visions, and so miserably tormented all his life.” It is strange to read what [6729]Cominaeus hath written of Louis XI. that French King; of Charles VIII.; of Alphonsus, King of Naples; in the fury of his passion how he came into Sicily, and what pranks he played. Guicciardini, a man most unapt to believe lies, relates how that Ferdinand his father's ghost who before had died for grief, came and told him, that he could not resist the French King, he thought every man cried France, France; the reason of it (saith Cominseus) was because he was a vile tyrant, a murderer, an oppressor of his subjects, he bought up all commodities, and sold them at his own price, sold abbeys to Jews and Falkoners; both Ferdinand his father, and he himself never made conscience of any committed sin; and to conclude, saith he, it was impossible to do worse than they did. Why was Pausanias the Spartan tyrant, Nero, Otho, Galba, so persecuted with spirits in every house they came, but for their murders which they had committed? [6730]Why doth the devil haunt many men's houses after their deaths, appear to them living, and take possession of their habitations, as it were, of their palaces, but because of their several villainies? Why had Richard the Third such fearful dreams, saith Polydore, but for his frequent murders? Why was Herod so tortured in his mind? because he had made away Mariamne his wife. Why was Theodoric, the King of the Goths, so suspicious, and so affrighted with a fish head alone, but that he had murdered Symmachus, and Boethius his son-in-law, those worthy Romans? Caelius, lib. 27. cap. 22. See more in Plutarch, in his tract De his qui sero a Numine puniuntur, and in his book De tranquillitate animi, &c. Yea, and sometimes GOD himself hath a hand in it, to show his power, humiliate, exercise, and to try their faith, (divine temptation, Perkins calls it, Cas. cons. lib. 1. cap. 8. sect. 1.) to punish them for their sins. God the avenger, as [6731]David terms him, ultor a tergo Deus, his wrath is apprehended of a guilty, soul, as by Saul and Judas, which the poets expressed by Adrastia, or Nemesis:
And yet for all these terrors of conscience, affrighting punishments which are so frequent, or whatsoever else may cause or aggravate this fearful malady in other religions, I see no reason at all why a papist at any time should despair, or be troubled for his sins; for let him be never so dissolute a caitiff so notorious a villain, so monstrous a sinner, out of that treasure of indulgences and merits of which the pope is dispensator, he may have free pardon and plenary remission of all his sins. There be so many general pardons for ages to come, forty thousand years to come, so many jubilees, so frequent gaol-deliveries out of purgatory for all souls, now living, or after dissolution of the body, so many particular masses daily said in several churches, so many altars consecrated to this purpose, that if a man have either money or friends, or will take any pains to come to such an altar, hear a mass, say so many paternosters, undergo such and such penance, he cannot do amiss, it is impossible his mind should be troubled, or he have any scruple to molest him. Besides that Taxa Camerae Apostolicae, which was first published to get money in the days of Leo Decimus, that sharking pope, and since divulged to the same ends, sets down such easy rates and dispensations for all offences, for perjury, murder, incest, adultery, &c., for so many grosses or dollars (able to invite any man to sin, and provoke him to offend, methinks, that otherwise would not) such comfortable remission, so gentle and parable a pardon, so ready at hand, with so small cost and suit obtained, that I cannot see how he that hath any friends amongst them (as I say) or money in his purse, or will at least to ease himself, can any way miscarry or be misaffected, how he should be desperate, in danger of damnation, or troubled in mind. Their ghostly fathers can so readily apply remedies, so cunningly string and unstring, wind and unwind their devotions, play upon their consciences with plausible speeches and terrible threats, for their best advantage settle and remove, erect with such facility and deject, let in and out, that I cannot perceive how any man amongst them should much or often labour of this disease, or finally miscarry. The causes above named must more frequently therefore take hold in others.
As shoemakers do when they bring home shoes, still cry leather is dearer and dearer, may I justly say of those melancholy symptoms: these of despair are most violent, tragical, and grievous, far beyond the rest, not to be expressed but negatively, as it is privation of all happiness, not to be endured; “for a wounded spirit who can bear it?” Prov. xviii. 19. What, therefore, [6736]Timanthes did in his picture of Iphigenia, now ready to be sacrificed, when he had painted Chalcas mourning, Ulysses sad, but most sorrowful Menelaus; and showed all his art in expressing a variety of affections, he covered the maid's father Agamemnon's head with a veil, and left it to every spectator to conceive what he would himself; for that true passion and sorrow in summo gradu, such as his was, could not by any art be deciphered. What he did in his picture, I will do in describing the symptoms of despair; imagine what thou canst, fear, sorrow, furies, grief, pain, terror, anger, dismal, ghastly, tedious, irksome, &c. it is not sufficient, it comes far short, no tongue can tell, no heart conceive it. 'Tis an epitome of hell, an extract, a quintessence, a compound, a mixture of all feral maladies, tyrannical tortures, plagues, and perplexities. There is no sickness almost but physic provideth a remedy for it; to every sore chirurgery will provide a slave; friendship helps poverty; hope of liberty easeth imprisonment; suit and favour revoke banishment; authority and time wear away reproach: but what physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favour, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all them, but all they cannot comfort a distressed soul: who can put to silence the voice of desperation? All that is single in other melancholy, Horribile, dirum, pestilens, atrox, ferum, concur in this, it is more than melancholy in the highest degree; a burning fever of the soul; so mad, saith [6737]Jacchinus, by this misery; fear, sorrow, and despair, he puts for ordinary symptoms of melancholy. They are in great pain and horror of mind, distraction of soul, restless, full of continual fears, cares, torments, anxieties, they can neither eat, drink, nor sleep for them, take no rest,
Most part these kind of persons make [6749]away themselves, some are mad, blaspheme, curse, deny God, but most offer violence to their own persons, and sometimes to others. “A wounded spirit who can bear?” Prov. xviii. 14. As Cain, Saul, Achitophel, Judas, blasphemed and died. Bede saith, Pilate died desperate eight years after Christ. [6750]Felix Plater hath collected many examples. [6751]A merchant's wife that was long troubled with such temptations, in the night rose from her bed, and out of the window broke her neck into the street: another drowned himself desperate as he was in the Rhine: some cut their throats, many hang themselves. But this needs no illustration. It is controverted by some, whether a man so offering violence to himself, dying desperate, may be saved, ay or no? If they die so obstinately and suddenly, that they cannot so much as wish for mercy, the worst is to be suspected, because they die impenitent. [6752]If their death had been a little more lingering, wherein they might have some leisure in their hearts to cry for mercy, charity may judge the best; divers have been recovered out of the very act of hanging and drowning themselves, and so brought ad sanam mentem, they have been very penitent, much abhorred their former act, confessed that they have repented in an instant, and cried for mercy in their hearts. If a man put desperate hands upon himself, by occasion of madness or melancholy, if he have given testimony before of his regeneration, in regard he doth this not so much out of his will, as ex vi morbi, we must make the best construction of it, as [6753]Turks do, that think all fools and madmen go directly to heaven.
Experience teacheth us, that though many die obstinate and wilful in this malady, yet multitudes again are able to resist and overcome, seek for help and find comfort, are taken e faucibus Erebi, from the chops of hell, and out of the devil's paws, though they have by [6754]obligation, given themselves to him. Some out of their own strength, and God's assistance, “Though He kill me,” (saith Job,) “yet will I trust in Him,” out of good counsel, advice and physic. [6755]Bellovacus cured a monk by altering his habit, and course of life: Plater many by physic alone. But for the most part they must concur; and they take a wrong course that think to overcome this feral passion by sole physic; and they are as much out, that think to work this effect by good service alone, though both be forcible in themselves, yet vis unita fortior, “they must go hand in hand to this disease:”—alterius sic altera poscit opem. For physic the like course is to be taken with this as in other melancholy: diet, air, exercise, all those passions and perturbations of the mind, &c. are to be rectified by the same means. They must not be left solitary, or to themselves, never idle, never out of company. Counsel, good comfort is to be applied, as they shall see the parties inclined, or to the causes, whether it be loss, fear, be grief, discontent, or some such feral accident, a guilty conscience, or otherwise by frequent meditation, too grievous an apprehension, and consideration of his former life; by hearing, reading of Scriptures, good divines, good advice and conference, applying God's word to their distressed souls, it must be corrected and counterpoised. Many excellent exhortations, phraenetical discourses, are extant to this purpose, for such as are any way troubled in mind: Perkins, Greenham, Hayward, Bright, Abernethy, Bolton, Culmannus, Helmingius, Caelius Secundus, Nicholas Laurentius, are copious on this subject: Azorius, Navarrus, Sayrus, &c., and such as have written cases of conscience amongst our pontifical writers. But because these men's works are not to all parties at hand, so parable at all times, I will for the benefit and ease of such as are afflicted, at the request of some [6756]friends, recollect out of their voluminous treatises, some few such comfortable speeches, exhortations, arguments, advice, tending to this subject, and out of God's word, knowing, as Culmannus saith upon the like occasion, [6757]“how unavailable and vain men's councils are to comfort an afflicted conscience, except God's word concur and be annexed, from which comes life, ease, repentance,” &c. Presupposing first that which Beza, Greenham, Perkins, Bolton, give in charge, the parties to whom counsel is given be sufficiently prepared, humbled for their sins, fit for comfort, confessed, tried how they are more or less afflicted, how they stand affected, or capable of good advice, before any remedies be applied: to such therefore as are so thoroughly searched and examined, I address this following discourse.
Two main antidotes, [6758]Hemmingius observes, opposite to despair, good hope out of God's word, to be embraced; perverse security and presumption from the devil's treachery, to be rejected; Illa solus animae, haec pestis; one saves, the other kills, occidit animam, saith Austin, and doth as much harm as despair itself, [6759]Navarrus the casuist reckons up ten special cures out of Anton. 1. part. Tit. 3. cap. 10. 1. God. 2. Physic. 3. [6760]Avoiding such objects as have caused it. 4. Submission of himself to other men's judgments. 5. Answer of all objections, &c. All which Cajetan, Gerson, lib. de vit. spirit. Sayrus, lib. 1. cons. cap. 14. repeat and approve out of Emanuel Roderiques, cap. 51 et 52. Greenham prescribes six special rules, Culmannus seven. First, to acknowledge all help come from God. 2. That the cause of their present misery is sin. 3. To repent and be heartily sorry for their sins. 4. To pray earnestly to God they may be eased. 5. To expect and implore the prayers of the church, and good men's advice. 6. Physic. 7. To commend themselves to God, and rely upon His mercy: others, otherwise, but all to this effect. But forasmuch as most men in this malady are spiritually sick, void of reason almost, overborne by their miseries, and too deep an apprehension of their sins, they cannot apply themselves to good counsel, pray, believe, repent, we must, as much as in us lies, occur and help their peculiar infirmities, according to their several causes and symptoms, as we shall find them distressed and complain.
The main matter which terrifies and torments most that are troubled in mind, is the enormity of their offences, the intolerable burthen of their sins, God's heavy wrath and displeasure so deeply apprehended, that they account themselves reprobates, quite forsaken of God, already damned, past all hope of grace, incapable of mercy, diaboli mancipia, slaves of sin, and their offences so great they cannot be forgiven. But these men must know there is no sin so heinous which is not pardonable in itself, no crime so great but by God's mercy it may be forgiven. “Where sin aboundeth, grace aboundeth much more,” Rom. v. 20. And what the Lord said unto Paul in his extremity, 2 Cor. xi. 9. “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my power is made perfect through weakness:” concerns every man in like case. His promises are made indefinite to all believers, generally spoken to all touching remission of sins that are truly penitent, grieved for their offences, and desire to be reconciled, Matt. ix. 12, 13, “I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance,” that is, such as are truly touched in conscience for their sins. Again, Matt. xi. 28, “Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will ease you.” Ezek. xviii. 27, “At what time soever a sinner shall repent him of his sins from the bottom of his heart, I will blot out all his wickedness out of my remembrance saith the Lord.” Isaiah xliii. 25, “I, even I, am He that put away thine iniquity for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” “As a father” (saith David Psal. ciii. 13) “hath compassion on his children, so hath the Lord compassion on them that fear him.” And will receive them again as the prodigal son was entertained, Luke xv., if they shall so come with tears in their eyes, and a penitent heart. Peccator agnoscat, Deus ignoscit. “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger, of great kindness,” Psal. ciii. 8. “He will not always chide, neither keep His anger for ever,” 9. “As high as the heaven is above the earth, so great is His mercy towards them that fear Him,” 11. “As far as the East is from the West, so far hath He removed our sins from us,” 12. Though Cain cry out in the anguish of his soul, my punishment is greater than I can bear, 'tis not so; thou liest, Cain (saith Austin), “God's mercy is greater than thy sins. His mercy is above all His works,” Psal. cxlv. 9, able to satisfy for all men's sins, antilutron, 1 Tim. ii. 6. His mercy is a panacea, a balsam for an afflicted soul, a sovereign medicine, an alexipharmacum for all sins, a charm for the devil; his mercy was great to Solomon, to Manasseh, to Peter, great to all offenders, and whosoever thou art, it may be so to thee. For why should God bid us pray (as Austin infers) “Deliver us from all evil,” nisi ipse misericors perseveraret, if He did not intend to help us? He therefore that [6761]doubts of the remission of his sins, denies God's mercy, and doth Him injury, saith Austin. Yea, but thou repliest, I am a notorious sinner, mine offences are not so great as infinite. Hear Fulgentius, [6762]“God's invincible goodness cannot be overcome by sin, His infinite mercy cannot be terminated by any: the multitude of His mercy is equivalent to His magnitude.” Hear [6763]Chrysostom, “Thy malice may be measured, but God's mercy cannot be defined; thy malice is circumscribed, His mercies infinite.” As a drop of water is to the sea, so are thy misdeeds to His mercy: nay, there is no such proportion to be given; for the sea, though great, yet may be measured, but God's mercy cannot be circumscribed. Whatsoever thy sins be then in quantity or quality, multitude or magnitude, fear them not, distrust not. I speak not this, saith [6764]Chrysostom, “to make thee secure and negligent, but to cheer thee up.” Yea but, thou urgest again, I have little comfort of this which is said, it concerns me not: Inanis poenitentia quam sequens culpa coinquinat, 'tis to no purpose for me to repent, and to do worse than ever I did before, to persevere in sin, and to return to my lusts as a dog to his vomit, or a swine to the mire: [6765]to what end is it to ask forgiveness of my sins, and yet daily to sin again and again, to do evil out of a habit? I daily and hourly offend in thought, word, and deed, in a relapse by mine own weakness and wilfulness: my bonus genius, my good protecting angel is gone, I am fallen from that I was or would be, worse and worse, “my latter end is worse than my beginning:” Si quotidiae peccas, quotidie, saith Chrysostom, poenitentiam age, if thou daily offend, daily repent: [6766]“if twice, thrice, a hundred, a hundred thousand times, twice, thrice, a hundred thousand times repent.” As they do by an old house that is out of repair, still mend some part or other; so do by thy soul, still reform some vice, repair it by repentance, call to Him for grace, and thou shalt have it; “For we are freely justified by His grace,” Rom. iii. 24. If thine enemy repent, as our Saviour enjoined Peter, forgive him seventy-seven times; and why shouldst thou think God will not forgive thee? Why should the enormity of thy sins trouble thee? God can do it, he will do it. “My conscience” (saith [6767]Anselm) “dictates to me that I deserve damnation, my repentance will not suffice for satisfaction: but thy mercy, O Lord, quite overcometh all my transgressions.” The gods once (as the poets feign) with a gold chain would pull Jupiter out of heaven, but all they together could not stir him, and yet he could draw and turn them as he would himself; maugre all the force and fury of these infernal fiends, and crying sins, “His grace is sufficient.” Confer the debt and the payment; Christ and Adam; sin, and the cure of it; the disease and the medicine; confer the sick man to his physician, and thou shalt soon perceive that his power is infinitely beyond it. God is better able, as [6768]Bernard informeth us, “to help, than sin to do us hurt; Christ is better able to save, than the devil to destroy.” [6769]If he be a skilful Physician, as Fulgentius adds, “he can cure all diseases; if merciful, he will.” Non est perfecta bonitas a qua non omnis malitia vincitur, His goodness is not absolute and perfect, if it be not able to overcome all malice. Submit thyself unto Him, as St. Austin adviseth, [6770]“He knoweth best what he doth; and be not so much pleased when he sustains thee, as patient when he corrects thee; he is omnipotent, and can cure all diseases when he sees his own time.” He looks down from heaven upon earth, that he may hear the “mourning of prisoners, and deliver the children of death,” Psal. cii. 19. 20. “And though our sins be as red as scarlet, He can make them as white as snow,” Isai. i. 18. Doubt not of this, or ask how it shall be done: He is all-sufficient that promiseth; qui fecit mundum de immundo, saith Chrysostom, he that made a fair world of nought, can do this and much more for his part: do thou only believe, trust in him, rely on him, be penitent and heartily sorry for thy sins. Repentance is a sovereign remedy for all sins, a spiritual wing to rear us, a charm for our miseries, a protecting amulet to expel sin's venom, an attractive loadstone to draw God's mercy and graces unto us. [6771]Peccatum vulnus, poenitentia medicinam: sin made the breach, repentance must help it; howsoever thine offence came, by error, sloth, obstinacy, ignorance, exitur per poenitentiam, this is the sole means to be relieved. [6772]Hence comes our hope of safety, by this alone sinners are saved, God is provoked to mercy. “This unlooseth all that is bound, enlighteneth darkness, mends that is broken, puts life to that which was desperately dying:” makes no respect of offences, or of persons. [6773]“This doth not repel a fornicator, reject a drunkard, resist a proud fellow, turn away an idolater, but entertains all, communicates itself to all.” Who persecuted the church more than Paul, offended more than Peter? and yet by repentance (saith Curysologus) they got both Magisterium et ministerium sanctitatis, the Magistery of holiness. The prodigal son went far, but by repentance he came home at last. [6774]“This alone will turn a wolf into a sheep, make a publican a preacher, turn a thorn into an olive, make a debauched fellow religious,” a blasphemer sing halleluja, make Alexander the coppersmith truly devout, make a devil a saint. [6775]“And him that polluted his mouth with calumnies, lying, swearing, and filthy tunes and tones, to purge his throat with divine Psalms.” Repentance will effect prodigious cures, make a stupend metamorphosis. “A hawk came into the ark, and went out again a hawk; a lion came in, went out a lion; a bear, a bear; a wolf, a wolf; but if a hawk came into this sacred temple of repentance, he will go forth a dove” (saith [6776]Chrysostom), “a wolf go out a sheep, a lion a lamb. [6777]This gives sight to the blind, legs to the lame, cures all diseases, confers grace, expels vice, inserts virtue, comforts and fortifies the soul.” Shall I say, let thy sin be what it will, do but repent, it is sufficient. [6778]Quem poenitet peccasse pene est innocens. 'Tis true indeed and all-sufficient this, they do confess, if they could repent; but they are obdurate, they have cauterised consciences, they are in a reprobate sense, they cannot think a good thought, they cannot hope for grace, pray, believe, repent, or be sorry for their sins, they find no grief for sin in themselves, but rather a delight, no groaning of spirit, but are carried headlong to their own destruction, “heaping wrath to themselves against the day of wrath,” Rom. ii. 5. 'Tis a grievous case this I do yield, and yet not to be despaired; God of his bounty and mercy calls all to repentance, Rom. ii. 4, thou mayst be called at length, restored, taken to His grace, as the thief upon the cross, at the last hour, as Mary Magdalene and many other sinners have been, that were buried in sin. “God” (saith [6779]Fulgentius) “is delighted in the conversion of a sinner, he sets no time;” prolixitas temporis Deo non praejudicat, aut gravitas peccati, deferring of time or grievousness of sin, do not prejudicate his grace, things past and to come are all one to Him, as present: 'tis never too late to repent. [6780]“This heaven of repentance is still open for all distressed souls;” and howsoever as yet no signs appear, thou mayst repent in good time. Hear a comfortable speech of St. Austin, [6781]“Whatsoever thou shall do, how great a sinner soever, thou art yet living; if God would not help thee, he would surely take thee away; but in sparing thy life, he gives thee leisure, and invites thee to repentance.” Howsoever as yet, I say, thou perceivest no fruit, no feeling, findest no likelihood of it in thyself, patiently abide the Lord's good leisure, despair not, or think thou art a reprobate; He came to call sinners to repentance, Luke v. 32, of which number thou art one; He came to call thee, and in his time will surely call thee. And although as yet thou hast no inclination to pray, to repent, thy faith be cold and dead, and thou wholly averse from all Divine functions, yet it may revive, as trees are dead in winter, but flourish in the spring! these virtues may lie hid in thee for the present, yet hereafter show themselves, and peradventure already bud, howsoever thou dost not perceive. 'Tis Satan's policy to plead against, suppress and aggravate, to conceal those sparks of faith in thee. Thou dost not believe, thou sayest, yet thou wouldst believe if thou couldst, 'tis thy desire to believe; then pray, [6782]“Lord help mine unbelief:” and hereafter thou shall certainly believe: [6783]Dabitur sitienti, it shall be given to him that thirsteth. Thou canst not yet repent, hereafter thou shall; a black cloud of sin as yet obnubilates thy soul, terrifies thy conscience, but this cloud may conceive a rainbow at the last, and be quite dissipated by repentance. Be of good cheer; a child is rational in power, not in act; and so art thou penitent in affection, though not yet in action. 'Tis thy desire to please God, to be heartily sorry; comfort thyself, no time is overpast, 'tis never too late. A desire to repent is repentance itself, though not in nature, yet in God's acceptance; a willing mind is sufficient. “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness,” Matt. v. 6. He that is destitute of God's grace, and wisheth for it, shall have it. “The Lord” (saith David, Psal. x. 17) “will hear the desire of the poor,” that is, such as are in distress of body and mind. 'Tis true thou canst not as yet grieve for thy sin, thou hast no feeling of faith, I yield; yet canst thou grieve thou dost not grieve? It troubles thee, I am sure, thine heart should be so impenitent and hard, thou wouldst have it otherwise; 'tis thy desire to grieve, to repent, and to believe. Thou lovest God's children and saints in the meantime, hatest them not, persecutest them not, but rather wishest thyself a true professor, to be as they are, as thou thyself hast been heretofore; which is an evident token thou art in no such desperate case. 'Tis a good sign of thy conversion, thy sins are pardonable, thou art, or shalt surely be reconciled. “The Lord is near them that are of a contrite heart,” Luke iv. 18. [6784]A true desire of mercy in the want of mercy, is mercy itself; a desire of grace in the want of grace, is grace itself; a constant and earnest desire to believe, repent, and to be reconciled to God, if it be in a touched heart, is an acceptation of God, a reconciliation, faith and repentance itself. For it is not thy faith and repentance, as [6785]Chrysostom truly teacheth, that is available, but God's mercy that is annexed to it, He accepts the will for the deed: so that I conclude, to feel in ourselves the want of grace, and to be grieved for it, is grace itself. I am troubled with fear my sins are not forgiven, Careless objects: but Bradford answers they are; “For God hath given thee a penitent and believing heart, that is, a heart which desireth to repent and believe; for such an one is taken of him (he accepting the will for the deed) for a truly penitent and believing heart.”
All this is true thou repliest, but yet it concerns not thee, 'tis verified in ordinary offenders, in common sins, but thine are of a higher strain, even against the Holy Ghost himself, irremissible sins, sins of the first magnitude, written with a pen of iron, engraven with a point of a diamond. Thou art worse than a pagan, infidel, Jew, or Turk, for thou art an apostate and more, thou hast voluntarily blasphemed, renounced God and all religion, thou art worse than Judas himself, or they that crucified Christ: for they did offend out of ignorance, but thou hast thought in thine heart there is no God. Thou hast given thy soul to the devil, as witches and conjurors do, explicite and implicite, by compact, band and obligation (a desperate, a fearful case) to satisfy thy lust, or to be revenged of thine enemies, thou didst never pray, come to church, hear, read, or do any divine duties with any devotion, but for formality and fashion's sake, with a kind of reluctance, 'twas troublesome and painful to thee to perform any such thing, praeter voluntatem, against thy will. Thou never mad'st any conscience of lying, swearing, bearing false witness, murder, adultery, bribery, oppression, theft, drunkenness, idolatry, but hast ever done all duties for fear of punishment, as they were most advantageous, and to thine own ends, and committed all such notorious sins, with an extraordinary delight, hating that thou shouldst love, and loving that thou shouldst hate. Instead of faith, fear and love of God, repentance, &c., blasphemous thoughts have been ever harboured in his mind, even against God himself, the blessed Trinity; the [6786]Scripture false, rude, harsh, immethodical: heaven, hell, resurrection, mere toys and fables, [6787]incredible, impossible, absurd, vain, ill contrived; religion, policy, and human invention, to keep men in obedience, or for profit, invented by priests and lawgivers to that purpose. If there be any such supreme power, he takes no notice of our doings, hears not our prayers, regardeth them not, will not, cannot help, or else he is partial, an excepter of persons, author of sin, a cruel, a destructive God, to create our souls, and destinate them to eternal damnation, to make us worse than our dogs and horses, why doth he not govern things better, protect good men, root out wicked livers? why do they prosper and flourish? as she raved in the [6788]tragedy—pellices caelum tenent, there they shine, Suasque Perseus aureas stellas habet, where is his providence? how appears it?
These are abominable, unspeakable offences, and most opposite to God, tentationes foedae, et impiae, yet in this case, he or they that shall be tempted and so affected, must know, that no man living is free from such thoughts in part, or at some times, the most divine spirits have been so tempted in some sort, evil custom, omission of holy exercises, ill company, idleness, solitariness, melancholy, or depraved nature, and the devil is still ready to corrupt, trouble, and divert our souls, to suggest such blasphemous thoughts into our fantasies, ungodly, profane, monstrous and wicked conceits: If they come from Satan, they are more speedy, fearful and violent, the parties cannot avoid them: they are more frequent, I say, and monstrous when they come; for the devil he is a spirit, and hath means and opportunities to mingle himself with our spirits, and sometimes more slyly, sometimes more abruptly and openly, to suggest such devilish thoughts into our hearts; he insults and domineers in melancholy distempered fantasies and persons especially; melancholy is balneum, diaboli, as Serapio holds, the devil's bath, and invites him to come to it. As a sick man frets, raves in his fits, speaks and doth he knows not what, the devil violently compels such crazed souls to think such damned thoughts against their wills, they cannot but do it; sometimes more continuate, or by fits, he takes his advantage, as the subject is less able to resist, he aggravates, extenuates, affirms, denies, damns, confounds the spirits, troubles heart, brain, humours, organs, senses, and wholly domineers in their imaginations. If they proceed from themselves, such thoughts, they are remiss and moderate, not so violent and monstrous, not so frequent. The devil commonly suggests things opposite to nature, opposite to God and his word, impious, absurd, such as a man would never of himself, or could not conceive, they strike terror and horror into the parties' own hearts. For if he or they be asked whether they do approve of such like thoughts or no, they answer (and their own souls truly dictate as much) they abhor them as much as hell and the devil himself, they would fain think otherwise if they could; he hath thought otherwise, and with all his soul desires so to think again; he doth resist, and hath some good motions intermixed now and then: so that such blasphemous, impious, unclean thoughts, are not his own, but the devil's; they proceed not from him, but from a crazed phantasy, distempered humours, black fumes which offend his brain: [6792]they are thy crosses, the devil's sins, and he shall answer for them, he doth enforce thee to do that which thou dost abhor, and didst never give consent to: and although he hath sometimes so slyly set upon thee, and so far prevailed, as to make thee in some sort to assent to such wicked thoughts, to delight in, yet they have not proceeded from a confirmed will in thee, but are of that nature which thou dost afterwards reject and abhor. Therefore be not overmuch troubled and dismayed with such kind of suggestions, at least if they please thee not, because they are not thy personal sins, for which thou shalt incur the wrath of God, or his displeasure: contemn, neglect them, let them go as they come, strive not too violently, or trouble thyself too much, but as our Saviour said to Satan in like case, say thou, avoid Satan, I detest thee and them. Satanae est mala ingerere (saith Austin) nostrum non consentire: as Satan labours to suggest, so must we strive not to give consent, and it will be sufficient: the more anxious and solicitous thou art, the more perplexed, the more thou shalt otherwise be troubled and entangled. Besides, they must know this, all so molested and distempered, that although these be most execrable and grievous sins, they are pardonable yet, through God's mercy and goodness, they may be forgiven, if they be penitent and sorry for them. Paul himself confesseth, Rom. xvii. 19. “He did not the good he would do, but the evil which he would not do; 'tis not I, but sin that dwelleth in me.” 'Tis not thou, but Satan's suggestions, his craft and subtlety, his malice: comfort thyself then if thou be penitent and grieved, or desirous to be so, these heinous sins shall not be laid to thy charge; God's mercy is above all sins, which if thou do not finally contemn, without doubt thou shalt be saved. [6793]“No man sins against the Holy Ghost, but he that wilfully and finally renounceth Christ, and contemneth him and his word to the last, without which there is no salvation, from which grievous sin, God of his infinite mercy deliver us.” Take hold of this to be thy comfort, and meditate withal on God's word, labour to pray, to repent, to be renewed in mind, “keep thine heart with all diligence.” Prov. iv. 13, resist the devil, and he will fly from thee, pour out thy soul unto the Lord with sorrowful Hannah, “pray continually,” as Paul enjoins, and as David did, Psalm i. “meditate on his law day and night.”
Yea, but this meditation is that mars all, and mistaken makes many men far worse, misconceiving all they read or hear, to their own overthrow; the more they search and read Scriptures, or divine treatises, the more they puzzle themselves, as a bird in a net, the more they are entangled and precipitated into this preposterous gulf: “Many are called, but few are chosen,” Matt. xx. 16. and xxii. 14. with such like places of Scripture misinterpreted strike them with horror, they doubt presently whether they be of this number or no: God's eternal decree of predestination, absolute reprobation, and such fatal tables, they form to their own ruin, and impinge upon this rock of despair. How shall they be assured of their salvation, by what signs? “If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinners appear?” 1 Pet. iv. 18. Who knows, saith Solomon, whether he be elect? This grinds their souls, how shall they discern they are not reprobates? But I say again, how shall they discern they are? From the devil can be no certainty, for he is a liar from the beginning; if he suggests any such thing, as too frequently he doth, reject him as a deceiver, an enemy of human kind, dispute not with him, give no credit to him, obstinately refuse him, as St. Anthony did in the wilderness, whom the devil set upon in several shapes, or as the collier did, so do thou by him. For when the devil tempted him with the weakness of his faith, and told him he could not be saved, as being ignorant in the principles of religion, and urged him moreover to know what he believed, what he thought of such and such points and mysteries: the collier told him, he believed as the church did; but what (said the devil again) doth the church believe? as I do (said the collier); and what's that thou believest? as the church doth, &c., when the devil could get no other answer, he left him. If Satan summon thee to answer, send him to Christ: he is thy liberty, thy protector against cruel death, raging sin, that roaring lion, he is thy righteousness, thy Saviour, and thy life. Though he say, thou art not of the number of the elect, a reprobate, forsaken of God, hold thine own still, hic murus aheneus esto, let this be as a bulwark, a brazen wall to defend thee, stay thyself in that certainty of faith; let that be thy comfort, Christ will protect thee, vindicate thee, thou art one of his flock, he will triumph over the law, vanquish death, overcome the devil, and destroy hell. If he say thou art none of the elect, no believer, reject him, defy him, thou hast thought otherwise, and mayst so be resolved again; comfort thyself; this persuasion cannot come from the devil, and much less can it be grounded from thyself? men are liars, and why shouldst thou distrust? A denying Peter, a persecuting Paul, an adulterous cruel David, have been received; an apostate Solomon may be converted; no sin at all but impenitency, can give testimony of final reprobation. Why shouldst thou then distrust, misdoubt thyself, upon what ground, what suspicion? This opinion alone of particularity? Against that, and for the certainty of election and salvation on the other side, see God's good will toward men, hear how generally his grace is proposed to him, and him, and them, each man in particular, and to all. 1 Tim. ii. 4. “God will that all men be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.” 'Tis a universal promise, “God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved.” John iii. 17. “He that acknowledged himself a man in the world, must likewise acknowledge he is of that number that is to be saved.” Ezek. xxxiii. 11, “I will not the death of a sinner, but that he repent and live:” But thou art a sinner; therefore he will not thy death. “This is the will of him that sent me, that every man that believeth in the Son, should have everlasting life.” John vi. 40. “He would have no man perish, but all come to repentance,” 2 Pet. iii. 9. Besides, remission of sins is to be preached, not to a few, but universally to all men, “Go therefore and tell all nations, baptising them,” &c. Matt. xxviii. 19. “Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,” Mark xvi. 15. Now there cannot be contradictory wills in God, he will have all saved, and not all, how can this stand together? be secure then, believe, trust in him, hope well and be saved. Yea, that's the main matter, how shall I believe or discern my security from carnal presumption? my faith is weak and faint, I want those signs and fruits of sanctification, [6794]sorrow for sin, thirsting for grace, groanings of the spirit, love of Christians as Christians, avoiding occasion of sin, endeavour of new obedience, charity, love of God, perseverance. Though these signs be languishing in thee, and not seated in thine heart, thou must not therefore be dejected or terrified; the effects of the faith and spirit are not yet so fully felt in thee; conclude not therefore thou art a reprobate, or doubt of thine election, because the elect themselves are without them, before their conversion. Thou mayst in the Lord's good time be converted; some are called at the eleventh hour. Use, I say, the means of thy conversion, expect the Lord's leisure, if not yet called, pray thou mayst be, or at least wish and desire thou. mayst be.
Notwithstanding all this which might be said to this effect, to ease their afflicted minds, what comfort our best divines can afford in this case, Zanchius, Beza, &c. This furious curiosity, needless speculation, fruitless meditation about election, reprobation, free will, grace, such places of Scripture preposterously conceived, torment still, and crucify the souls of too many, and set all the world together by the ears. To avoid which inconveniences, and to settle their distressed minds, to mitigate those divine aphorisms, (though in another extreme some) our late Arminians have revived that plausible doctrine of universal grace, which many fathers, our late Lutheran and modern papists do still maintain, that we have free will of ourselves, and that grace is common to all that will believe. Some again, though less orthodoxal, will have a far greater part saved than shall be damned, (as [6795]Caelius Secundus stiffly maintains in his book, De amplitudine regni coelestis, or some impostor under his name) beatorum numerus multo major quam damnatorum. [6796]He calls that other tenet of special [6797]“election and reprobation, a prejudicate, envious and malicious opinion, apt to draw all men to desperation. Many are called, few chosen,” &c. He opposeth some opposite parts of Scripture to it, “Christ came into the world to save sinners,” &c. And four especial arguments he produceth, one from God's power. If more be damned than saved, he erroneously concludes, [6798]the devil hath the greater sovereignty! for what is power but to protect? and majesty consists in multitude. “If the devil have the greater part, where is his mercy, where is his power? how is he Deus Optimus Maximus, misericors? &c., where is his greatness, where his goodness?” He proceeds, [6799]“We account him a murderer that is accessory only, or doth not help when he can; which may not be supposed of God without great offence, because he may do what he will, and is otherwise accessory, and the author of sin. The nature of good is to be communicated, God is good, and will not then be contracted in his goodness: for how is he the father of mercy and comfort, if his good concern but a few? O envious and unthankful men to think otherwise! [6800]Why should we pray to God that are Gentiles, and thank him for his mercies and benefits, that hath damned us all innocuous for Adam's offence, one man's offence, one small offence, eating of an apple? why should we acknowledge him for our governor that hath wholly neglected the salvation of our souls, contemned us, and sent no prophets or instructors to teach us, as he hath done to the Hebrews?” So Julian the apostate objects. Why should these Christians (Caelius urgeth) reject us and appropriate God unto themselves, Deum illum suum unicum, &c. But to return to our forged Caelius. At last he comes to that, he will have those saved that never heard of, or believed in Christ, ex puris naturalibus, with the Pelagians, and proves it out of Origen and others. “They” (saith [6801]Origen) “that never heard God's word, are to be excused for their ignorance; we may not think God will be so hard, angry, cruel or unjust as to condemn any man indicta causa.” They alone (he holds) are in the state of damnation that refuse Christ's mercy and grace, when it is offered. Many worthy Greeks and Romans, good moral honest men, that kept the law of nature, did to others as they would be done to themselves, as certainly saved, he concludes, as they were that lived uprightly before the law of Moses. They were acceptable in. God's sight, as Job was, the Magi, the queen of Sheba, Darius of Persia, Socrates, Aristides, Cato, Curius, Tully, Seneca, and many other philosophers, upright livers, no matter of what religion, as Cornelius, out of any nation, so that he live honestly, call on God, trust in him, fear him, he shall be saved. This opinion was formerly maintained by the Valentinian and Basiledian heretics, revived of late in [6802]Turkey, of what sect Rustan Bassa was patron, defended by [6803]Galeatius [6804]Erasmus, by Zuinglius in exposit. fidei ad Regem Galliae, whose tenet Bullinger vindicates, and Gualter approves in a just apology with many arguments. There be many Jesuits that follow these Calvinists in this behalf, Franciscus Buchsius Moguntinus, Andradius Consil. Trident, many schoolmen that out of the 1 Rom. v. 18. 19. are verily persuaded that those good works of the Gentiles did so far please God, that they might vitam aeternam promereri, and be saved in the end. Sesellius, and Benedictus Justinianus in his comment on the first of the Romans, Mathias Ditmarsh the politician, with many others, hold a mediocrity, they may be salute non indigni but they will not absolutely decree it. Hofmannus, a Lutheran professor of Helmstad, and many of his followers, with most of our church, and papists, are stiff against it. Franciscus Collius hath fully censured all opinions in his Five Books, de Paganorum animabus post mortem, and amply dilated this question, which whoso will may peruse. But to return to my author, his conclusion is, that not only wicked livers, blasphemers, reprobates, and such as reject God's grace, “but that the devils themselves shall be saved at last,” as [6805]Origen himself long since delivered in his works, and our late [6806]Socinians defend, Ostorodius, cap. 41. institut. Smaltius, &c. Those terms of all and for ever in Scripture, are not eternal, but only denote a longer time, which by many examples they prove. The world shall end like a comedy, and we shall meet at last in heaven, and live in bliss altogether, or else in conclusion, in nihil evanescere. For how can he be merciful that shall condemn any creature to eternal unspeakable punishment, for one small temporary fault, all posterity, so many myriads for one and another man's offence, quid meruistis oves? But these absurd paradoxes are exploded by our church, we teach otherwise. That this vocation, predestination, election, reprobation, non ex corrupta massa, praeviso, fide, as our Arminians, or ex praevisis operibus, as our papists, non ex praeteritione, but God's absolute decree ante mundum creatum, (as many of our church hold) was from the beginning, before the foundation of the world was laid, or homo conditus, (or from Adam's fall, as others will, homo lapsus objectum est reprobationis) with perseverantia sanctorum, we must be certain of our salvation, we may fall but not finally, which our Arminians will not admit. According to his immutable, eternal, just decree and counsel of saving men and angels, God calls all, and would have all to be saved according to the efficacy of vocation: all are invited, but only the elect apprehended: the rest that are unbelieving, impenitent, whom God in his just judgment leaves to be punished for their sins, are in a reprobate sense; yet we must not determine who are such, condemn ourselves or others, because we have a universal invitation; all are commanded to believe, and we know not how soon or how late our end may be received. I might have said more of this subject; but forasmuch as it is a forbidden question, and in the preface or declaration to the articles of the church, printed 1633, to avoid factions and altercations, we that are university divines especially, are prohibited “all curious search, to print or preach, or draw the article aside by our own sense and comments upon pain of ecclesiastical censure.” I will surcease, and conclude with [6807]Erasmus of such controversies: Pugnet qui volet, ego censeo leges majorum reverenter suscipiendas, et religiose observandas, velut a Deo profectas; nec esse tutum, nec esse pium, de potestate publica sinistram concipere aut serere suspicionem. Et siquid est tyrannidis, quod tamen non cogat ad impietatem, satius est ferre, quam seditiose reluctari.
But to my former task. The last main torture and trouble of a distressed mind, is not so much this doubt of election, and that the promises of grace are smothered and extinct in them, nay quite blotted out, as they suppose, but withal God's heavy wrath, a most intolerable pain and grief of heart seizeth on them: to their thinking they are already damned, they suffer the pains of hell, and more than possibly can be expressed, they smell brimstone, talk familiarly with devils, hear and see chimeras, prodigious, uncouth shapes, bears, owls, antiques, black dogs, fiends, hideous outcries, fearful noises, shrieks, lamentable complaints, they are possessed, [6808]and through impatience they roar and howl, curse, blaspheme, deny God, call his power in question, abjure religion, and are still ready to offer violence unto themselves, by hanging, drowning, &c. Never any miserable wretch from the beginning of the world was in such a woeful case. To such persons I oppose God's mercy and his justice; Judicia Dei occulta, non injusta: his secret counsel and just judgment, by which he spares some, and sore afflicts others again in this life; his judgment is to be adored, trembled at, not to be searched or inquired after by mortal men: he hath reasons reserved to himself, which our frailty cannot apprehend. He may punish all if he will, and that justly for sin; in that he doth it in some, is to make a way for his mercy that they repent and be saved, to heal them, to try them, exercise their patience, and make them call upon him, to confess their sins and pray unto him, as David did, Psalm cxix. 137. “Righteous art thou, O Lord, and just are thy judgments.” As the poor publican, Luke xviii. 13. “Lord have mercy upon me a miserable sinner.” To put confidence and have an assured hope in him, as Job had, xiii. 15. “Though he kill me I will trust In him:” Ure, seca, occide O Domine, (saith Austin) modo serves animam, kill, cut in pieces, burn my body (O Lord) to save my soul. A small sickness; one lash of affliction, a little misery, many times will more humiliate a man, sooner convert, bring him home to know himself, than all those paraenetical discourses, the whole theory of philosophy, law, physic, and divinity, or a world of instances and examples. So that this, which they take to be such an insupportable plague, is an evident sign of God's mercy and justice, of His love and goodness: periissent nisi periissent, had they not thus been undone, they had finally been undone. Many a carnal man is lulled asleep in perverse security, foolish presumption, is stupefied in his sins, and hath no feeling at all of them: “I have sinned” (he saith) “and what evil shall come unto me,” Eccles. v. 4, and “Tush, how shall God know it?” and so in a reprobate sense goes down to hell. But here, Cynthius aurem vellit, God pulls them by the ear, by affliction, he will bring them to heaven and happiness; “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,” Matt. v. 4, a blessed and a happy state, if considered aright, it is, to be so troubled. “It is good for me that I have been afflicted,” Psal. cxix. “before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Thy word.” “Tribulation works patience, patience hope,” Rom. v. 4, and by such like crosses and calamities we are driven from the stake of security. So that affliction is a school or academy, wherein the best scholars are prepared to the commencements of the Deity. And though it be most troublesome and grievous for the time, yet know this, it comes by God's permission and providence; He is a spectator of thy groans and tears, still present with thee, the very hairs of thy head are numbered, not one of them can fall to the ground without the express will of God: he will not suffer thee to be tempted above measure, he corrects us all, [6809]numero, pondere, et mensura, the Lord will not quench the smoking flax, or break the bruised reed, Tentat (saith Austin) non ut obruat, sed ut coronet he suffers thee to be tempted for thy good. And as a mother doth handle her child sick and weak, not reject it, but with all tenderness observe and keep it, so doth God by us, not forsake us in our miseries, or relinquish us for our imperfections, but with all pity and compassion support and receive us; whom he loves, he loves to the end. Rom. viii. “Whom He hath elected, those He hath called, justified, sanctified, and glorified.” Think not then thou hast lost the Spirit, that thou art forsaken of God, be not overcome with heaviness of heart, but as David said, “I will not fear though I walk in the shadows of death.” We must all go, non a deliciis ad delicias, [6810]but from the cross to the crown, by hell to heaven, as the old Romans put Virtue's temple in the way to that of Honour; we must endure sorrow and misery in this life. 'Tis no new thing this, God's best servants and dearest children have been so visited and tried. Christ in the garden cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” His son by nature, as thou art by adoption and grace. Job, in his anguish, said, “The arrows of the Almighty God were in him,” Job vi. 4. “His terrors fought against him, the venom drank up his spirit,” cap. xiii. 26. He saith, “God was his enemy, writ bitter things against him” (xvi. 9.) “hated him.” His heavy wrath had so seized on his soul. David complains, “his eyes were eaten up, sunk into his head,” Ps. vi. 7, “his moisture became as the drought in summer, his flesh was consumed, his bones vexed:” yet neither Job nor David did finally despair. Job would not leave his hold, but still trust in Him, acknowledging Him to be his good God. “The Lord gives, the Lord takes, blessed be the name of the Lord,” Job. i. 21. “Behold I am vile, I abhor myself, repent in dust and ashes,” Job xxxix. 37. David humbled himself, Psal. xxxi. and upon his confession received mercy. Faith, hope, repentance, are the sovereign cures and remedies, the sole comforts in this case; confess, humble thyself, repent, it is sufficient. Quod purpura non potest, saccus potest, saith Chrysostom; the king of Nineveh's sackcloth and ashes “did that which his purple robes and crown could not effect;” Quod diadema non potuit, cinis perfecit. Turn to Him, he will turn to thee; the Lord is near those that are of a contrite heart, and will save such as be afflicted in spirit, Ps. xxxiv. 18. “He came to the lost sheep of Israel,” Matt. xv. 14. Si cadentem intuetur, clementiae manum protendit, He is at all times ready to assist. Nunquam spernit Deus Poenitentiam si sincere et simpliciter offeratur, He never rejects a penitent sinner, though he have come to the full height of iniquity, wallowed and delighted in sin; yet if he will forsake his former ways, libenter amplexatur, He will receive him. Parcam huic homini, saith [6811]Austin, (ex persona Dei) quia sibi ipsi non pepercit; ignoscam quia peccatum agnovit. I will spare him because he hath not spared himself; I will pardon him because he doth acknowledge his offence: let it be never so enormous a sin, “His grace is sufficient,” 2 Cor. xii. 9. Despair not then, faint not at all, be not dejected, but rely on God, call on him an thy trouble, and he will hear thee, he will assist, help, and deliver thee: “Draw near to Him, he will draw near to thee,” James iv. 8. Lazarus was poor and full of boils, and yet still he relied upon God, Abraham did hope beyond hope.
Thou exceptest, these were chief men, divine spirits, Deo cari, beloved of God, especially respected; but I am a contemptible and forlorn wretch, forsaken of God, and left to the merciless fury of evil spirits. I cannot hope, pray, repent, &c. How often shall I say it? thou mayst perform all those duties, Christian offices, and be restored in good time. A sick man loseth his appetite, strength and ability, his disease prevaileth so far, that all his faculties are spent, hand and foot perform not their duties, his eyes are dim, hearing dull, tongue distastes things of pleasant relish, yet nature lies hid, recovereth again, and expelleth all those feculent matters by vomit, sweat, or some such like evacuations. Thou art spiritually sick, thine heart is heavy, thy mind distressed, thou mayst happily recover again, expel those dismal passions of fear and grief; God did not suffer thee to be tempted above measure; whom he loves (I say) he loves to the end; hope the best. David in his misery prayed to the Lord, remembering how he had formerly dealt with him; and with that meditation of God's mercy confirmed his faith, and pacified his own tumultuous heart in his greatest agony. “O my soul, why art thou so disquieted within me,” &c. Thy soul is eclipsed for a time, I yield, as the sun is shadowed by a cloud; no doubt but those gracious beams of God's mercy will shine upon thee again, as they have formerly done: those embers of faith, hope and repentance, now buried in ashes, will flame out afresh, and be fully revived. Want of faith, no feeling of grace for the present, are not fit directions; we must live by faith, not by feeling; 'tis the beginning of grace to wish for grace: we must expect and tarry. David, a man after God's own heart, was so troubled himself; “Awake, why sleepest thou? O Lord, arise, cast me not off; wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest mine affliction and oppression? My soul is bowed down to the dust. Arise, redeem us,” &c., Ps. xliv. 22. He prayed long before he was heard, expectans expectavit; endured much before he was relieved. Psal. lxix. 3, he complains, “I am weary of crying, and my throat is dry, mine eyes fail, whilst I wait on the Lord;” and yet he perseveres. Be not dismayed, thou shalt be respected at last. God often works by contrarieties, he first kills and then makes alive, he woundeth first and then healeth, he makes man sow in tears that he may reap in joy; 'tis God's method: he that is so visited, must with patience endure and rest satisfied for the present. The paschal lamb was eaten with sour herbs; we shall feel no sweetness of His blood, till we first feel the smart of our sins. Thy pains are great, intolerable for the time; thou art destitute of grace and comfort, stay the Lord's leisure, he will not (I say) suffer thee to be tempted above that thou art able to bear, 1 Cor. x. 13. but will give an issue to temptation. He works all for the best to them that love God, Rom. viii. 28. Doubt not of thine election, it is an immutable decree; a mark never to be defaced: you have been otherwise, you may and shall be. And for your present affliction, hope the best, it will shortly end. “He is present with his servants in their affliction,” Ps. xci. 15. “Great are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth them out of all,” Ps. xxxiv. 19. “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh in us an eternal weight of glory,” 2. Cor. iv. 18. “Not answerable to that glory which is to come; though now in heaviness,” saith 1 Pet. i. 6, “you shall rejoice.”
Now last of all to those external impediments, terrible objects, which they hear and see many times, devils, bugbears, and mormeluches, noisome smells, &c. These may come, as I have formerly declared in my precedent discourse of the Symptoms of Melancholy, from inward causes; as a concave glass reflects solid bodies, a troubled brain for want of sleep, nutriment, and by reason of that agitation of spirits to which Hercules de Saxonia attributes all symptoms almost, may reflect and show prodigious shapes, as our vain fear and crazed phantasy shall suggest and feign, as many silly weak women and children in the dark, sick folks, and frantic for want of repast and sleep, suppose they see that they see not: many times such terriculaments may proceed from natural causes, and all other senses may be deluded. Besides, as I have said, this humour is balneum diaboli, the devil's bath, by reason of the distemper of humours, and infirm organs in us: he may so possess us inwardly to molest us, as he did Saul and others, by God's permission: he is prince of the air, and can transform himself into several shapes, delude all our senses for a time, but his power is determined, he may terrify us, but not hurt; God hath given “His angels charge over us, He is a wall round about his people,” Psal. xci. 11, 12. There be those that prescribe physic in such cases, 'tis God's instrument and not unfit. The devil works by mediation of humours, and mixed diseases must have mixed remedies. Levinus Lemnius cap. 57 & 58, exhort. ad vit. ep. instit. is very copious on this subject, besides that chief remedy of confidence in God, prayer, hearty repentance, &c., of which for your comfort and instruction, read Lavater de spectris part. 3. cap. 5. and 6. Wierus de praestigiis daemonum lib. 5. to Philip Melancthon, and others, and that Christian armour which Paul prescribes; he sets down certain amulets, herbs, and precious stones, which have marvellous virtues all, profligandis daemonibus, to drive away devils and their illusions. Sapphires, chrysolites, carbuncles, &c. Quae mira virtute pollent ad lemures, stryges, incubos, genios aereos arcendos, si veterum monumentis habenda fides. Of herbs, he reckons us pennyroyal, rue, mint, angelica, peony: Rich. Argentine de praestigiis daemonum, cap. 20, adds, hypericon or St. John's wort, perforata herba, which by a divine virtue drives away devils, and is therefore fuga daemonum: all which rightly used by their suffitus, Daemonum vexationibus obsistunt, afflictas mentes a daemonibus relevant, et venenatis Jiimis, expel devils themselves, and all devilish illusions. Anthony Musa, the Emperor Augustus, his physician, cap. 6, de Betonia, approves of betony to this purpose; [6812]the ancients used therefore to plant it in churchyards, because it was held to be an holy herb and good against fearful visions, did secure such places as it grew in, and sanctified those persons that carried it about them. Idem fere Mathiolus in dioscoridem. Others commend accurate music, so Saul was helped by David's harp. Fires to be made in such rooms where spirits haunt, good store of lights to be set up, odours, perfumes, and suffumigations, as the angel taught Tobias, of brimstone and bitumen, thus, myrrh, briony root, with many such simples which Wecker hath collected, lib. 15, de secretis, cap. 15. ♃ sulphuris drachmam unam, recoquatur in vitis albae, aqua, ut dilutius sit sulphur; detur aegro: nam daemones sunt morbi (saith Rich. Argentine, lib. de praestigiis daemonum, cap. ult.) Vigetus hath a far larger receipt to this purpose, which the said Wecker cites out of Wierus, ♃ sulphuris, vini, bituminis, opoponacis, galbani, castorei, &c. Why sweet perfumes, fires and so many lights should be used in such places, Ernestus Burgravius Lucerna vitae, et mortis, and Fortunius Lycetus assigns this cause, quod his boni genii provocentur, mali arceaniur; “because good spirits are well pleased with, but evil abhor them!” And therefore those old Gentiles, present Mahometans, and Papists have continual lamps burning in their churches all day and all night, lights at funerals and in their graves; lucernae ardentes ex auro liquefacto for many ages to endure (saith Lazius), ne daemones corpus laedant; lights ever burning as those vestal virgins. Pythonissae maintained heretofore, with many such, of which read Tostatus in 2 Reg. cap. 6. quaest. 43, Thyreus, cap. 57, 58, 62, &c. de locis infestis, Pictorius Isagog. de daemonibus, &c., see more in them. Cardan would have the party affected wink altogether in such a case, if he see aught that offends him, or cut the air with a sword in such places they walk and abide; gladiis enim et lanceis terrentur, shoot a pistol at them, for being aerial bodies (as Caelius Rhodiginus, lib. 1. cap. 29. Tertullian, Origen, Psellas, and many hold), if stroken, they feel pain. Papists commonly enjoin and apply crosses, holy water, sanctified beads, amulets, music, ringing of bells, for to that end are they consecrated, and by them baptised, characters, counterfeit relics, so many masses, peregrinations, oblations, adjurations, and what not? Alexander Albertinus a, Rocha, Petrus Thyreus, and Hieronymus Mengus, with many other pontificial writers, prescribe and set down several forms of exorcisms, as well to houses possessed with devils, as to demoniacal persons; but I am of [6813]Lemnius's mind, 'tis but damnosa adjuratio, aut potius ludificatio, a mere mockery, a counterfeit charm, to no purpose, they are fopperies and fictions, as that absurd [6814]story is amongst the rest, of a penitent woman seduced by a magician in France, at St. Bawne, exorcised by Domphius, Michaelis, and a company of circumventing friars. If any man (saith Lemnius) will attempt such a thing, without all those juggling circumstances, astrological elections of time, place, prodigious habits, fustian, big, sesquipedal words, spells, crosses, characters, which exorcists ordinarily use, let him follow the example of Peter and John, that without any ambitious swelling terms, cured a lame man. Acts iii. “In the name of Christ Jesus rise and walk.” His name alone is the best and only charm against all such diabolical illusions, so doth Origen advise: and so Chrysostom, Haec erit tibi baculus, haec turris inexpugnabilis, haec armatura. Nos quid ad haec dicemus, plures fortasse expectabunt, saith St. Austin. Many men will desire my counsel and opinion what is to be done in this behalf; I can say no more, quam ut vera fide, quae per dilectionem operatur, ad Deum unum fugiamus, let them fly to God alone for help. Athanasius in his book, De variis quaest. prescribes as a present charm against devils, the beginning of the lxvii. Psalm. Exurgat Deus, dissipentur inimici, &c. But the best remedy is to fly to God, to call on him, hope, pray, trust, rely on him, to commit ourselves wholly to him. What the practice of the primitive church was in this behalf, Et quis daemonia ejiciendi modus, read Wierus at large, lib. 5. de Cura. Lam. meles. cap. 38. et deinceps.
Last of all: if the party affected shall certainly know this malady to have proceeded from too much fasting, meditation, precise life, contemplation of God's judgments (for the devil deceives many by such means), in that other extreme he circumvents melancholy itself, reading some books, treatises, hearing rigid preachers, &c. If he shall perceive that it hath begun first from some great loss, grievous accident, disaster, seeing others in like case, or any such terrible object, let him speedily remove the cause, which to the cure of this disease Navarras so much commends, [6815]avertat cogitationem a re scrupulosa, by all opposite means, art, and industry, let him laxare animum, by all honest recreations, “refresh and recreate his distressed soul;” let him direct his thoughts, by himself and other of his friends. Let him read no more such tracts or subjects, hear no more such fearful tones, avoid such companies, and by all means open himself, submit himself to the advice of good physicians and divines, which is contraventio scrupulorum, as [6816]he calls it, hear them speak to whom the Lord hath given the tongue of the learned, to be able to minister a word to him that is weary, [6817]whose words are as flagons of wine. Let him not be obstinate, headstrong, peevish, wilful, self-conceited (as in this malady they are), but give ear to good advice, be ruled and persuaded; and no doubt but such good counsel may prove as preposterous to his soul, as the angel was to Peter, that opened the iron gates, loosed his bands, brought him out of prison, and delivered him from bodily thraldom; they may ease his afflicted mind, relieve his wounded soul, and take him out of the jaws of hell itself. I can say no more, or give better advice to such as are any way distressed in this kind, than what I have given and said. Only take this for a corollary and conclusion, as thou tenderest thine own welfare in this, and all other melancholy, thy good health of body and mind, observe this short precept, give not way to solitariness and idleness. “Be not solitary, be not idle.”
SPERATE MISERI—UNHAPPY HOPE.
CAVETE FELICES—HAPPY BE CAUTIOUS.
Vis a dubio liberari? vis quod incertum est evadere? Age poenitentiam dum sanus es; sic agens, dico tibi quod securus es, quod poenitentiam egisti eo tempore quo peccare potuisti. Austin. “Do you wish to be freed from doubts? do you desire to escape uncertainty? Be penitent whilst rational: by so doing I assert that you are safe, because you have devoted that time to penitence in which you might have been guilty of sin.”
Absence a cure of love-melancholy
Absence over long, cause of jealousy
Abstinence commended
Academicorum Errata
Adversity, why better than prosperity
Aerial devils
Affections whence they arise; how they transform us; of sleeping and waking
Affection in melancholy, what
Against abuses, repulse, injuries, contumely, disgraces, scoffs
Against envy, livor, hatred, malice
Against sorrow, vain fears, death of friends
Air, how it causeth melancholy; how rectified it cureth melancholy; air in love
Alkermes good against melancholy
All are melancholy
All beautiful parts attractive in love
Aloes, his virtues
Alteratives in physic, to what use; against melancholy
Ambition defined, described, cause of melancholy; of heresy; hinders and spoils many matches
Amiableness loves object
Amorous objects causes of love-melancholy
Amulets controverted, approved
Amusements
Anger's description, effects, how it causeth melancholy
Antimony a purger of melancholy
Anthony inveigled by Cleopatra
Apology of love-melancholy
Appetite
Apples, good or bad, how
Apparel and clothes, a cause of love-melancholy
Aqueducts of old
Arminian's tenets
Arteries, what
Artificial air against melancholy
Artificial allurements of love
Art of memory
Astrological aphorisms, how available, signs or causes of melancholy
Astrological signs of love
Atheists described
Averters of melancholy
Aurum potabile censured, approved
B.
Baits of lovers
Bald lascivious
Balm good against melancholy
Banishment's effects; its cure and antidote
Barrenness, what grievances it causeth; a cause of jealousy
Barren grounds have best air
Bashfulness a symptom of melancholy; of love-melancholy; cured
Baseness of birth no disparagement
Baths rectified
Bawds a cause of love-melancholy
Beasts and birds in love
Beauty's definition; described; in parts; commendation; attractive power, prerogatives, excellency, how it causeth melancholy; makes grievous wounds, irresistible; more beholding to art than nature; brittle and uncertain; censured; a cause of jealousy; beauty of God
Beef a melancholy meat
Beer censured
Best site of a house
Bezoar's stone good against melancholy
Black eyes best
Black spots in the nails signs of melancholy
Black man a pearl in a woman's eye
Blasphemy, how pardonable
Blindness of lovers
Bloodletting, when and how cure of melancholy; time and quantity
Bloodletting and purging, how causes of melancholy
Blow on the head cause of melancholy
Body, how it works on the mind
Body melancholy, its causes
Bodily symptoms of melancholy; of love-melancholy
Bodily exercises
Books of all sorts
Borage and bugloss, sovereign herbs against melancholy; their wines and juice most excellent
Boring of the head, a cure for melancholy
Brain distempered, how cause of melancholy; his parts anatomised
Bread and beer, how causes of melancholy
Brow and forehead, which are most pleasing
Brute beasts jealous
Business the best cure of love-melancholy
C.
Cardan's father conjured up seven devils at once; had a spirit bound to him
Cards and dice censured, approved
Care's effects
Carp fish's nature
Cataplasms and cerates for melancholy
Cause of diseases
Causes immediate of melancholy symptoms
Causes of honest love; of heroical love; of jealousy
Cautions against jealousy
Centaury good against melancholy
Charles the Great enforced to love basely by a philter
Change of countenance, sign of love-melancholy
Charity described; defects of it
Character of a covetous man
Charles the Sixth, king of France, mad for anger
Chemical physic censured
Chess-play censured
Chiromantical signs of melancholy
Chirurgical remedies of melancholy
Choleric melancholy signs
Chorus sancti Viti, a disease
Circumstances increasing jealousy
Cities' recreations
Civil lawyers' miseries
Climes and particular places, how causes of love-melancholy
Clothes a mere cause of good respect
Clothes causes of love-melancholy
Clysters good for melancholy
Coffee, a Turkey cordial drink
Cold air cause of melancholy
Comets above the moon
Compound alteratives censured, approved; compound purgers of melancholy; compound wines for melancholy
Community of wives a cure of jealousy
Compliment and good carriage causes of love-melancholy
Confections and conserves against melancholy
Confession of his grief to a friend, a principal cure of melancholy
Confidence in his physician half a cure
Conjugal love best
Conscience what it is
Conscience troubled, a cause of despair
Continual cogitation of his mistress a symptom of love-melancholy
Contention, brawling, lawsuits, effects
Continent or inward causes of melancholy
Content above all, whence to be had
Contention's cure
Cookery taxed
Copernicus, his hypothesis of the earth's motion
Correctors of accidents in melancholy
Correctors to expel windiness, and costiveness helped
Cordials against melancholy
Costiveness to some a cause of melancholy
Costiveness helped
Covetousness defined, described, how it causeth melancholy
Counsel against melancholy; cure of jealousy; of despair
Country recreations
Crocodiles jealous
Cuckolds common in all ages
Cupping-glasses, cauteries how and when used to melancholy
Cure of melancholy, unlawful, rejected; from God; of head-melancholy; over all the body; of hypochondriacal melancholy; of love-melancholy; of jealousy; of despair
Cure of melancholy in himself; or friends
Curiosity described, his effects
Custom of diet, delight of appetite, how to be kept and yielded to
D.
Dancing, masking, mumming, censured, approved; their effects, how they cause love-melancholy; how symptoms of lovers
Death foretold by spirits
Death of friends cause of melancholy; other effects; how cured; death advantageous
Deformity of body no misery
Delirium
Despair, equivocations; causes; symptoms; prognostics; cure
Devils, how they cause melancholy; their, beginning, nature, conditions; feel pain, swift in motion, mortal; their orders; power; how they cause religious melancholy; how despair; devils are often in love; shall be saved, as some hold
Diet what, and how causeth melancholy; quantity; diet of divers nations
Diet rectified in substance; in quantity
Diet a cause of love-melancholy; a cure
Diet, inordinate, of parents, a cause of melancholy to their offspring
Digression against all manner of discontents; digression of air; of anatomy of devils and spirits
Discommodities of unequal matches
Disgrace a cause of melancholy; qualified by counsel
Dissimilar parts of the body
Distemper of particular parts, causes of melancholy, and how
Discontents, cares, miseries, causes of melancholy; how repelled and cured by good counsel
Diseases why inflicted upon us; their number, definition, division; diseases of the head; diseases of the mind; more grievous than those of the body
Divers accidents causing melancholy
Divine sentences
Divines' miseries; with the causes of their miseries
Dotage what
Dotage of lovers
Dowry and money main causes of love-melancholy
Dreams and their kinds
Dreams troublesome, how to be amended
Drunkards' children often melancholy
Drunkenness taxed
E.
Earth's motion examined; compass, centre; an sit anamata.
Eccentrics and epicycles exploded
Education a cause of melancholy
Effects of love
Election misconceived, cause of despair
Element of fire exploded
Emulation, hatred, faction, desire of revenge, causes of melancholy; their cure
Envy and malice causes of melancholy; their antidote
Epicurus vindicated
Epicurus's remedy for melancholy
Epicures, atheists, hypocrites how mad, and melancholy Epithalamium Equivocations of melancholy; of jealousy
Eunuchs why kept, and where
Evacuations, how they cause melancholy
Exercise if immoderate, cause of melancholy; before meals wholesome; exercise rectified; several kinds, when fit; exercises of the mind
Exotic and strange simples censured
Extasies
Eyes main instruments of love; love's darts, seats, orators, arrows, torches; how they pierce
F.
Face's prerogative, a most attractive part
Fairies
Fasting cause of melancholy; a cure of love-melancholy; abused, the devil's instrument; effects of it
Fear cause of melancholy, its effects; fear of death, destinies foretold; a symptom of melancholy; sign of love-melancholy; antidote to fear
Fenny fowl, melancholy
Fiery devils
Fire's rage
Fish, what melancholy
Fish good
Fishes in love
Fishing and fowling, how and when good exercise
Flaxen hair a great motive of love
Fools often beget wise men; by love become wise
Force of imagination
Friends a cure of melancholy
Fruits causing melancholy; allowed
Fumitory purgeth melancholy
G.
Gaming a cause of melancholy, his effects
Gardens of simples where, to what end
Gardens for pleasure
General toleration of religion, by whom permitted, and why
Gentry, whence it came first; base without means; vices accompanying it; true gentry, whence; gentry commended
Geography commended
Geometry, arithmetic, algebra, commended
Gesture cause of love-melancholy
Gifts and promises of great force amongst lovers
God's just judgment cause of melancholy; sole cause sometimes
Gold good against melancholy; a most beautiful object
Good counsel a charm to melancholy; good counsel for lovesick persons; against melancholy itself; for such as are jealous
Great men most part dishonest
Gristle what
Guts described
H.
Hand and paps how forcible in love-melancholy
Hard usage a cause of jealousy
Hatred cause of melancholy
Hawking and hunting why good
Head melancholy's causes; symptoms; its cure
Hearing, what
Heat immoderate, cause of melancholy
Health a treasure
Heavens penetrable; infinitely swift
Hell where
Hellebore, white and black, purgers of melancholy; black, its virtues and history
Help from friends against melancholy
Hemorrhage cause of melancholy
Hemorrhoids stopped cause of melancholy
Herbs causing melancholy; curing melancholy
Hereditary diseases
Heretics their conditions; their symptoms
Heroical love's pedigree, power, extent; definition, part affected; tyranny
Hippocrates' jealousy
Honest objects of love
Hope a cure of misery; its benefits
Hope and fear, the Devil's main engines to entrap the world
Hops good against melancholy
Horseleeches how and when used in melancholy
Hot countries apt and prone to jealousy
How oft 'tis fit to eat in a day
How to resist passions
How men fall in love
Humours, what they are
Hydrophobia described
Hypochondriacal melancholy; its causes inward, outward; symptom; cure of it
Hypochondries misaffected, causes
Hypocrites described
I.
Idleness a main cause of melancholy; of love-melancholy; of jealousy
Ignorance the mother of devotion
Ignorance commended
Ignorant persons still circumvented
Imagination what; its force and effects
Imagination of the mother affects her infant
Immaterial melancholy
Immortality of the soul proved; impugned by whom
Impediments of lovers
Importunity and opportunity cause of love-melancholy; of jealousy
Imprisonment cause of melancholy
Impostures of devils; of politicians; of priests
Impotency a cause of jealousy
Impulsive cause of man's misery
Incubi and succubi
Inconstancy of lovers
Inconstancy a sign of melancholy
Infirmities of body and mind, what grievances they cause
Injuries and abuses rectified
Instrumental causes of diseases
Instrumental cause of man's misery
Interpreters of dreams
Inundation's fury
Inventions resulting from love
Inward causes of melancholy
Inward senses described
Issues when used in melancholy
J.
Jealousy a symptom of melancholy; defined, described; of princes; of brute beasts; causes of it; symptoms of it; prognostics; cure of it
Jests how and when to be used
Jews' religious symptoms
Joy in excess cause of melancholy
K.
Kings and princes' discontents
Kissing a main cause of love-melancholy; a symptom of love-melancholy
L.
Labour, business, cure of love-melancholy; Lapis Armenus, its virtues against melancholy
Lascivious meats to be avoided
Laughter, its effects
Laurel a purge for melancholy
Laws against adultery
Leo Decimus the pope's scoffing tricks
Lewellyn prince of Wales, his submission
Leucata petra the cure of lovesick persons
Liberty of princes and great men, how abused
Libraries commended
Liver its site; cause of melancholy distempers, if hot or cold
Loss of liberty, servitude, imprisonment, cause of melancholy
Losses in general how they offend; cause of despair; how eased
Love of gaming and pleasures immoderate, cause of melancholy
Love of learning, overmuch study, cause of melancholy
Love's beginning, object, definition, division; love made the world; love's power; in vegetables; in sensible creatures; love's power in devils and spirits; in men; love a disease; a fire; love's passions; phrases of lovers; their vain wishes and attempts; lovers impudent; courageous; wise, valiant, free; neat in apparel; poets, musicians, dancers; love's effects; love lost revived by sight; love cannot be compelled
Love and hate symptoms of religious melancholy
Lycanthropia described
M.
Madness described; the extent of melancholy; a symptom and effect of love-melancholy
Made dishes cause melancholy
Magicians how they cause melancholy; how they cure it
Mahometans their symptoms
Maids', nuns', and widows' melancholy
Man's excellency, misery
Man the greatest enemy to man
Many means to divert lovers; to cure them
Marriage if unfortunate cause of melancholy; best cure of love-melancholy; marriage helps; miseries; benefits and commendation
Mathematical studies commended
Medicines select for melancholy; against wind and costiveness; for love-melancholy
Melancholy in disposition, melancholy equivocations; definition, name, difference; part and parties affected in melancholy, it's affection; matter; species or kinds of melancholy; melancholy an hereditary disease; meats causing it, &c.; antecedent causes; particular parts; symptoms of it; they are passionate above measure; humorous; melancholy, adust symptoms; mixed symptoms of melancholy with other diseases; melancholy, a cause of jealousy; of despair; melancholy men why witty; why so apt to laugh, weep, sweat, blush; why they see visions, hear strange noises; why they speak untaught languages, prophesy, &c. Memory his seat
Menstruus concubitus causa melanc.
Men seduced by spirits in the night
Metempsychosis
Metals, minerals for melancholy
Meteors strange, how caused
Metoposcopy foreshowing melancholy
Milk a melancholy meat
Mind how it works on the body
Minerals good against melancholy
Ministers how they cause despair
Mirach, mesentery, matrix, mesaraic veins, causes of melancholy
Mirabolanes purgers of melancholy
Mirth and mercy company excellent against melancholy; their abuses
Miseries of man; how they cause melancholy; common miseries; miseries of both sorts; no man free, miseries' effects in us; sent for our good; miseries of students and scholars
Mitigations of melancholy
Money's prerogatives; allurement
Moon inhabited; moon in love
Mother how cause of melancholy
Moving faculty described
Music a present remedy for melancholy; its effects; a symptom of lovers; causes of love-melancholy
N.
Nakedness of parts a cause of love-melancholy; cure of love-melancholy
Narrow streets where in use
Natural melancholy signs
Natural signs of love-melancholy
Necessity to what it enforceth
Neglect and contempt, best cures of jealousy
Nemesis or punishment comes after
Nerves what
News most welcome
Nobility censured
Non-necessary causes of melancholy
Nuns' melancholy
Nurse, how cause of melancholy
O.
Objects causing melancholy to be removed
Obstacles and hindrances of lovers
Occasions to be avoided in love-melancholy
Odoraments to smell to for melancholy
Ointments, for melancholy
Ointments riotously used
Old folks apt to be jealous
Old folks' incontinency taxed
Old age a cause of melancholy; old men's sons often melancholy
One love drives out another
Opinions of or concerning the soul
Oppression's effects
Opportunity and importunity causes of love-melancholy
Organical parts
Overmuch joy, pride, praise, how causes of melancholy
P.
Palaces
Paleness and leanness, symptoms of love-melancholy
Papists' religious symptoms
Paracelsus' defence of minerals
Parents, how they wrong their children; how they cause melancholy by propagation; how by remissness and indulgence
Paraenetical discourse to such as are troubled in mind
Particular parts distempered, how they cause melancholy
Parties affected in religious melancholy
Passions and perturbations causes of melancholy; how they work on the body; their divisions; how rectified and eased
Passions of lovers
Patience a cure of misery
Patient, his conditions that would be cured; patience, confidence, liberality, not to practise on himself; what he must do himself; reveal his grief to a friend
Pennyroyal good against melancholy
Perjury of lovers
Persuasion a means to cure love-melancholy; other melancholy
Phantasy, what
Philippus Bonus, how he used a country fellow
Q.
Quantity of diet cause; cure of melancholy
R.
Rational soul
Reading Scriptures good against melancholy
Recreations good against melancholy
Redness of the face helped
Regions of the belly
Relation or hearing a cause of love-melancholy
Religious melancholy a distinct species its object; causes of it; symptoms; prognostics; cure; religious policy, by whom
Repentance, its effects
Retention and evacuation causes of melancholy; rectified to the cure
Rich men's discontents and miseries; their prerogatives
Riot in apparel, excess of it, a great cause of love-melancholy
Rivers in love
Rivals and co-rivals
Roots censured
Rose cross-men's or Rosicrucian's promises
Philosophers censured; their errors
Philters cause of love-melancholy; how they cure melancholy
Phlebotomy cause of melancholy; how to be used, when, in melancholy; in head melancholy
Phlegmatic melancholy signs
Phrenzy's description
Physician's miseries; his qualities if he be good
Physic censured; commended; when to be used
Physiognomical signs of melancholy
Pictures good against melancholy; cause of love-melancholy
Plague's effects
Planets inhabited
Plays more famous
Pleasant palaces and gardens
Pleasant objects of love
Pleasing tone and voice a cause of love-melancholy
Poetical cures of love-melancholy
Poets why poor
Poetry a symptom of lovers
Politician's pranks
Poor men's miseries; their happiness; they are dear to God
Pope Leo Decimus, his scoffing
Pork a melancholy meat
Possession of devils
Poverty and want causes of melancholy, their effects; no such misery to be poor
Power of spirits
Predestination misconstrued, a cause of despair
Preparatives and purgers for melancholy
Precedency, what stirs it causeth
Precious stones, metals, altering melancholy
Preventions to the cure of jealousy
Pride and praise causes of melancholy
Priests, how they cause religious melancholy
Princes' discontents
Prodigals, their miseries; bankrupts and spendthrifts, how punished
Profitable objects of love
Progress of love-melancholy exemplified
Prognostics or events of love-melancholy; of despair; of jealousy; of melancholy
Prospect good against melancholy
Prosperity a cause of misery
Protestations and deceitful promises of lovers
Pseudoprophets, their pranks; their symptoms
Pulse, peas, beans, cause of melancholy
Pulse of melancholy men, how it is affected
Pulse a sign of love-melancholy
Purgers and preparatives to head melancholy
Purging simples upward; downward
Purging, how cause of melancholy
S.
Saints' aid rejected in melancholy
Salads censured
Sanguine melancholy signs
Scholars' miseries
Scilla or sea-onion, a purger of melancholy
Scipio's continency
Scoffs, calumnies, bitter jests, how they cause melancholy; their antidote
Scorzonera, good against melancholy
Scripture misconstrued, cause of religious melancholy; cure of melancholy
Seasick, good physic for melancholy
Self-love cause of melancholy, his effects
Sensible soul and its parts
Senses, why and how deluded in melancholy
Sentences selected out of humane authors
Servitude cause of melancholy; and imprisonment eased
Several men's delights and recreations
Severe tutors and guardians causes of melancholy
Shame and disgrace how causes of melancholy, their effects
Sickness for our good
Sighs and tears symptoms of love-melancholy
Sight a principal cause of love-melancholy
Signs of honest love
Similar parts of the body
Simples censured proper to melancholy: fit to be known; purging melancholy upward; downward, purging simples
Singing a symptom of lovers; cause of love-melancholy
Sin the impulsive cause of man's misery
Single life and virginity commended; their prerogatives
Slavery of lovers
Sleep and waking causes of melancholy; by what means procured, helped
Small bodies have greatest wits
Smelling what
Smiling a cause of love-melancholy
Sodomy
Soldiers most part lascivious
Solitariness cause of melancholy; coact, voluntary, how good; sign of melancholy
Sorrow its effect; a cause of melancholy; a symptom of melancholy; eased by counsel
Soul defined, its faculties; ex traduceations, as some hold
Spices how causes of melancholy
Spirits and devils, their nature; orders; kinds; power, &c.
Spleen its site; how misaffected cause of melancholy
Sports
Spots in the sun
Spruceness a symptom of lovers
Stars, how causes or signs of melancholy; of love-melancholy; of jealousy
Stepmother, her mischiefs
Stews, why allowed
Stomach distempered a cause of melancholy
Stones like birds, beasts, fishes, &c.
Strange nurses, when best
Streets narrow
Study overmuch cause of melancholy; why and how; study good against melancholy
Subterranean devils
Supernatural causes of melancholy
Superstitious effects, symptoms; how it domineers
Surfeiting and drunkenness taxed
Suspicion and jealousy symptoms of melancholy; how caused
Swallows, cuckoos, &c., where are they in winter
Sweet tunes and singing causes of love-melancholy
Symptoms or signs of melancholy in the body; mind; from stars, members; from education, custom, continuance of time, mixed with other diseases; symptoms of head melancholy; of hypochondriacal melancholy; of the whole body; symptoms of nuns', maids', widows' melancholy; immediate causes of melancholy symptoms; symptoms of love-melancholy; symptoms of a lover pleased; dejected; Symptoms of jealousy; of religious melancholy; of despair
Synteresis
Syrups
T.
Tale of a prebend
Tarantula's stinging effects
Taste what
Temperament a cause of love-melancholy
Tempestuous air, dark and fuliginous, how cause of melancholy
Terrestrial devils
Terrors and affrights cause melancholy
Theologasters censured
The best cure of love-melancholy is to let them, have their desire
Tobacco approved, censured
Toleration, religious
Torments of love
Transmigration of souls
Travelling commended, good against melancholy; for love-melancholy especially
Tutors cause melancholy
U.
Uncharitable men described
Understanding defined, divided
Unfortunate marriages' effects
Unkind friends cause melancholy
Unlawful cures of melancholy rejected
Upstarts censured, their symptoms
Urine of melancholy persons
Uxorii
V.
Vainglory described a cause of melancholy
Valour and courage caused by love
Variation of the compass, where
Variety of meats and dishes cause melancholy
Variety of mistresses and objects a cure of melancholy
Variety of weather, air, manners, countries, whence, &c.
Variety of places, change of air, good against melancholy
Vegetal soul and its faculties
Vegetal creatures in love
Veins described
Venus rectified
Venery a cause of melancholy
Venison a melancholy meat
Vices of women
Violent misery continues not
Violent death, event of love-melancholy; prognostic of despair; by some defended; how to be censured
Virginity, by what signs to be known; commended
Virtue and vice, principal habits of the will
Vitex or agnus castus good against love-melancholy
W.
Waking cause of melancholy; a symptom; cured
Walking, shooting, swimming, &c. good against melancholy