Project Gutenberg's The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Democritus Junior This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Anatomy of Melancholy Author: Democritus Junior Release Date: January 13, 2004 [EBook #10800] [Most recently updated: May 31, 2020] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY *** 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.
pish!and frown, and yet read on:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII, IX.
X.
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.
He must have a barren wit, that in this scribbling age can forge nothing. [92]Princes show their armies, rich men vaunt their buildings, soldiers their manhood, and scholars vent their toys;they must read, they must hear whether they will or no.
What a company of poets hath this year brought out,as Pliny complains to Sossius Sinesius. [94]
This April every day some or other have recited.What a catalogue of new books all this year, all this age (I say), have our Frankfort Marts, our domestic Marts brought out? Twice a year, [95] Proferunt se nova ingenia et ostentant, we stretch our wits out, and set them to sale, magno conatu nihil agimus. So that which [96]Gesner much desires, if a speedy reformation be not had, by some prince's edicts and grave supervisors, to restrain this liberty, it will run on in infinitum. Quis tam avidus librorum helluo, who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books, we are [97]oppressed with them, [98]our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning. For my part I am one of the number, nos numerus sumus, (we are mere ciphers): I do not deny it, I have only this of Macrobius to say for myself, Omne meum, nihil meum, 'tis all mine, and none mine. As a good housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth, a bee gathers wax and honey out of many flowers, and makes a new bundle of all, Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant, I have laboriously [99]collected this cento out of divers writers, and that sine injuria, I have wronged no authors, but given every man his own; which [100]Hierom so much commends in Nepotian; he stole not whole verses, pages, tracts, as some do nowadays, concealing their authors' names, but still said this was Cyprian's, that Lactantius, that Hilarius, so said Minutius Felix, so Victorinus, thus far Arnobius: I cite and quote mine authors (which, howsoever some illiterate scribblers account pedantical, as a cloak of ignorance, and opposite to their affected fine style, I must and will use) sumpsi, non suripui; and what Varro, lib. 6. de re rust. speaks of bees, minime maleficae nullius opus vellicantes faciunt delerius, I can say of myself, Whom have I injured? The matter is theirs most part, and yet mine, apparet unde sumptum sit (which Seneca approves), aliud tamen quam unde sumptum sit apparet, which nature doth with the aliment of our bodies incorporate, digest, assimilate, I do concoquere quod hausi, dispose of what I take. I make them pay tribute, to set out this my Maceronicon, the method only is mine own, I must usurp that of [101]Wecker e Ter. nihil dictum quod non dictum prius, methodus sola artificem ostendit, we can say nothing but what hath been said, the composition and method is ours only, and shows a scholar. Oribasius, Aesius, Avicenna, have all out of Galen, but to their own method, diverso stilo, non diversa fide. Our poets steal from Homer; he spews, saith Aelian, they lick it up. Divines use Austin's words verbatim still, and our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best,
A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself;I may likely add, alter, and see farther than my predecessors; and it is no greater prejudice for me to indite after others, than for Aelianus Montaltus, that famous physician, to write de morbis capitis after Jason Pratensis, Heurnius, Hildesheim, &c., many horses to run in a race, one logician, one rhetorician, after another. Oppose then what thou wilt,
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?
Every man's witty labour takes not, except the matter, subject, occasion, and some commending favourite happen to it.If I be taxed, exploded by thee and some such, I shall haply be approved and commended by others, and so have been (Expertus loquor), and may truly say with [121]Jovius in like case, (absit verbo jactantia) heroum quorundam, pontificum, et virorum nobilium familiaritatem et amicitiam, gratasque gratias, et multorum [122] bene laudatorum laudes sum inde promeritus, as I have been honoured by some worthy men, so have I been vilified by others, and shall be. At the first publishing of this book, (which [123]Probus of Persius satires), editum librum continuo mirari homines, atque avide deripere caeperunt, I may in some sort apply to this my work. The first, second, and third edition were suddenly gone, eagerly read, and, as I have said, not so much approved by some, as scornfully rejected by others. But it was Democritus his fortune, Idem admirationi et [124]irrisioni habitus. 'Twas Seneca's fate, that superintendent of wit, learning, judgment, [125]ad stuporem doctus, the best of Greek and Latin writers, in Plutarch's opinion; that
renowned corrector of vice,as, [126]Fabius terms him,
and painful omniscious philosopher, that writ so excellently and admirably well,could not please all parties, or escape censure. How is he vilified by [127] Caligula, Agellius, Fabius, and Lipsius himself, his chief propugner? In eo pleraque pernitiosa, saith the same Fabius, many childish tracts and sentences he hath, sermo illaboratus, too negligent often and remiss, as Agellius observes, oratio vulgaris et protrita, dicaces et ineptae, sententiae, eruditio plebeia, an homely shallow writer as he is. In partibus spinas et fastidia habet, saith [128]Lipsius; and, as in all his other works, so especially in his epistles, aliae in argutiis et ineptiis occupantur, intricatus alicubi, et parum compositus, sine copia rerum hoc fecit, he jumbles up many things together immethodically, after the Stoics' fashion, parum ordinavit, multa accumulavit, &c. If Seneca be thus lashed, and many famous men that I could name, what shall I expect? How shall I that am vix umbra tanti philosophi hope to please?
No man so absolute([129]Erasmus holds)
to satisfy all, except antiquity, prescription, &c., set a bar.But as I have proved in Seneca, this will not always take place, how shall I evade? 'Tis the common doom of all writers, I must (I say) abide it; I seek not applause; [130]Non ego ventosa venor suffragia plebis; again, non sum adeo informis, I would not be [131]vilified:
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,
when you see a fellow careful about his words, and neat in his speech, know this for a certainty, that man's mind is busied about toys, there's no solidity in him.Non est ornamentum virile concinnitas: as he said of a nightingale, ———vox es, praeterea nihil, &c. I am therefore in this point a professed disciple of [146]Apollonius a scholar of Socrates, I neglect phrases, and labour wholly to inform my reader's understanding, not to please his ear; 'tis not my study or intent to compose neatly, which an orator requires, but to express myself readily and plainly as it happens. So that as a river runs sometimes precipitate and swift, then dull and slow; now direct, then per ambages, now deep, then shallow; now muddy, then clear; now broad, then narrow; doth my style flow: now serious, then light; now comical, then satirical; now more elaborate, then remiss, as the present subject required, or as at that time I was affected. And if thou vouchsafe to read this treatise, it shall seem no otherwise to thee, than the way to an ordinary traveller, sometimes fair, sometimes foul; here champaign, there enclosed; barren, in one place, better soil in another: by woods, groves, hills, dales, plains, &c. I shall lead thee per ardua montium, et lubrica valllum, et roscida cespitum, et [147]glebosa camporum, through variety of objects, that which thou shalt like and surely dislike.
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,
It had been much better for some of them to have been born dumb, and altogether illiterate, than so far to dote to their own destruction.
unhappy men as we are, we spend our days in unprofitable questions and disputations,intricate subtleties, de lana caprina about moonshine in the water,
leaving in the mean time those chiefest treasures of nature untouched, wherein the best medicines for all manner of diseases are to be found, and do not only neglect them ourselves, but hinder, condemn, forbid, and scoff at others, that are willing to inquire after them.These motives at this present have induced me to make choice of this medicinal subject.
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,
the inheritance of his folly to Epicurus,[201]insanienti dum sapientiae, &c. The like he holds of Plato, Aristippus, and the rest, making no difference [202]
betwixt them and beasts, saving that they could speak.[203]Theodoret in his tract, De cur. grec. affect. manifestly evinces as much of Socrates, whom though that Oracle of Apollo confirmed to be the wisest man then living, and saved him from plague, whom 2000 years have admired, of whom some will as soon speak evil as of Christ, yet re vera, he was an illiterate idiot, as [204]Aristophanes calls him, irriscor et ambitiosus, as his master Aristotle terms him, scurra Atticus, as Zeno, an [205]enemy to all arts and sciences, as Athaeneus, to philosophers and travellers, an opiniative ass, a caviller, a kind of pedant; for his manners, as Theod. Cyrensis describes him, a [206] sodomite, an atheist, (so convict by Anytus) iracundus et ebrius, dicax, &c. a pot-companion, by [207]Plato's own confession, a sturdy drinker; and that of all others he was most sottish, a very madman in his actions and opinions. Pythagoras was part philosopher, part magician, or part witch. If you desire to hear more of Apollonius, a great wise man, sometime paralleled by Julian the apostate to Christ, I refer you to that learned tract of Eusebius against Hierocles, and for them all to Lucian's Piscator, Icaromenippus, Necyomantia: their actions, opinions in general were so prodigious, absurd, ridiculous, which they broached and maintained, their books and elaborate treatises were full of dotage, which Tully ad Atticum long since observed, delirant plerumque scriptores in libris suis, their lives being opposite to their words, they commended poverty to others, and were most covetous themselves, extolled love and peace, and yet persecuted one another with virulent hate and malice. They could give precepts for verse and prose, but not a man of them (as [208]Seneca tells them home) could moderate his affections. Their music did show us flebiles modos, &c. how to rise and fall, but they could not so contain themselves as in adversity not to make a lamentable tone. They will measure ground by geometry, set down limits, divide and subdivide, but cannot yet prescribe quantum homini satis, or keep within compass of reason and discretion. They can square circles, but understand not the state of their own souls, describe right lines and crooked, &c. but know not what is right in this life, quid in vita rectum sit, ignorant; so that as he said, Nescio an Anticyram ratio illis destinet omnem. I think all the Anticyrae will not restore them to their wits, [209]if these men now, that held [210] Xenodotus' heart, Crates' liver, Epictetus' lantern, were so sottish, and had no more brains than so many beetles, what shall we think of the commonalty? what of the rest?
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.
One is covetous, a second lascivious, a third ambitious, a fourth envious, &c.as Damasippus the Stoic hath well illustrated in the poet,
which if it be stirred up, or get ahead, will run in infinitum, and infinitely varies, as we ourselves are severally addicted,saith [225]Balthazar Castilio: and cannot so easily be rooted out, it takes such fast hold, as Tully holds, altae radices stultitiae, [226]so we are bred, and so we continue. Some say there be two main defects of wit, error and ignorance, to which all others are reduced; by ignorance we know not things necessary, by error we know them falsely. Ignorance is a privation, error a positive act. From ignorance comes vice, from error heresy, &c. But make how many kinds you will, divide and subdivide, few men are free, or that do not impinge on some one kind or other. [227]Sic plerumque agitat stultos inscitia, as he that examines his own and other men's actions shall find.
[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,
They had more need provide there should be no more thieves and beggars, as they ought with good policy, and take away the occasions, than let them run on, as they do to their own destruction: root out likewise those causes of wrangling, a multitude of lawyers, and compose controversies, lites lustrales et seculares, by some more compendious means.Whereas now for every toy and trifle they go to law, [348]Mugit litibus insanum forum, et saevit invicem discordantium rabies, they are ready to pull out one another's throats; and for commodity [349]
to squeeze blood,saith Hierom,
out of their brother's heart,defame, lie, disgrace, backbite, rail, bear false witness, swear, forswear, fight and wrangle, spend their goods, lives, fortunes, friends, undo one another, to enrich an harpy advocate, that preys upon them both, and cries Eia Socrates, Eia Xantippe; or some corrupt judge, that like the [350]kite in Aesop, while the mouse and frog fought, carried both away. Generally they prey one upon another as so many ravenous birds, brute beasts, devouring fishes, no medium, [351]omnes hic aut captantur aut captant; aut cadavera quae lacerantur, aut corvi qui lacerant, either deceive or be deceived; tear others or be torn in pieces themselves; like so many buckets in a well, as one riseth another falleth, one's empty, another's full; his ruin is a ladder to the third; such are our ordinary proceedings. What's the market? A place, according to [352]Anacharsis, wherein they cozen one another, a trap; nay, what's the world itself? [353]A vast chaos, a confusion of manners, as fickle as the air, domicilium insanorum, a turbulent troop full of impurities, a mart of walking spirits, goblins, the theatre of hypocrisy, a shop of knavery, flattery, a nursery of villainy, the scene of babbling, the school of giddiness, the academy of vice; a warfare, ubi velis nolis pugnandum, aut vincas aut succumbas, in which kill or be killed; wherein every man is for himself, his private ends, and stands upon his own guard. No charity, [354]love, friendship, fear of God, alliance, affinity, consanguinity, Christianity, can contain them, but if they be any ways offended, or that string of commodity be touched, they fall foul. Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offences, and they that erst were willing to do all mutual offices of love and kindness, now revile and persecute one another to death, with more than Vatinian hatred, and will not be reconciled. So long as they are behoveful, they love, or may bestead each other, but when there is no more good to be expected, as they do by an old dog, hang him up or cashier him: which [355] Cato counts a great indecorum, to use men like old shoes or broken glasses, which are flung to the dunghill; he could not find in his heart to sell an old ox, much less to turn away an old servant: but they instead of recompense, revile him, and when they have made him an instrument of their villainy, as [356]Bajazet the second Emperor of the Turks did by Acomethes Bassa, make him away, or instead of [357]reward, hate him to death, as Silius was served by Tiberius. In a word, every man for his own ends. Our summum bonum is commodity, and the goddess we adore Dea moneta, Queen money, to whom we daily offer sacrifice, which steers our hearts, hands, [358]affections, all: that most powerful goddess, by whom we are reared, depressed, elevated, [359]esteemed the sole commandress of our actions, for which we pray, run, ride, go, come, labour, and contend as fishes do for a crumb that falleth into the water. It's not worth, virtue, (that's bonum theatrale,) wisdom, valour, learning, honesty, religion, or any sufficiency for which we are respected, but [360]money, greatness, office, honour, authority; honesty is accounted folly; knavery, policy; [361]men admired out of opinion, not as they are, but as they seem to be: such shifting, lying, cogging, plotting, counterplotting, temporizing, nattering, cozening, dissembling, [362]
that of necessity one must highly offend God if he be conformable to the world, Cretizare cum Crete, or else live in contempt, disgrace and misery.One takes upon him temperance, holiness, another austerity, a third an affected kind of simplicity, when as indeed, he, and he, and he, and the rest are [363]
hypocrites, ambidexters,outsides, so many turning pictures, a lion on the one side, a lamb on the other. [364]How would Democritus have been affected to see these things!
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.
to ask that at God's hand which they are abashed any man should hear:How would he have been confounded? Would he, think you, or any man else, say that these men were well in their wits? Haec sani esse hominis quis sanus juret Orestes? Can all the hellebore in the Anticyrae cure these men? No, sure, [391]
an acre of hellebore will not do it.
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.
an angry man will prefer vengeance, a lascivious his whore, a thief his booty, a glutton his belly, before his welfare.Tell an epicure, a covetous man, an ambitious man of his irregular course, wean him from it a little, pol me occidistis amici, he cries anon, you have undone him, and as [415]a
dog to his vomit,he returns to it again; no persuasion will take place, no counsel, say what thou canst,
those swinish men,he is irrefragable in his humour, he will be a hog still; bray him in a mortar, he will be the same. If he be in an heresy, or some perverse opinion, settled as some of our ignorant Papists are, convince his understanding, show him the several follies and absurd fopperies of that sect, force him to say, veris vincor, make it as clear as the sun, [418]he will err still, peevish and obstinate as he is; and as he said [419]si in hoc erro, libenter erro, nec hunc errorem auferri mihi volo; I will do as I have done, as my predecessors have done, [420]and as my friends now do: I will dote for company. Say now, are these men [421]mad or no, [422]Heus age responde? are they ridiculous? cedo quemvis arbitrum, are they sanae mentis, sober, wise, and discreet? have they common sense? ———[423]uter est insanior horum? I am of Democritus' opinion for my part, I hold them worthy to be laughed at; a company of brain-sick dizzards, as mad as [424]Orestes and Athamas, that they may go
ride the ass,and all sail along to the Anticyrae, in the
ship of foolsfor company together. I need not much labour to prove this which I say otherwise than thus, make any solemn protestation, or swear, I think you will believe me without an oath; say at a word, are they fools? I refer it to you, though you be likewise fools and madmen yourselves, and I as mad to ask the question; for what said our comical Mercury?
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,
What more ridiculous,as [440]Lactantius urges, than to hear how Xerxes whipped the Hellespont, threatened the Mountain Athos, and the like. To speak ad rem, who is free from passion? [441]Mortalis nemo est quem non attingat dolor, morbusve, as [442]Tully determines out of an old poem, no mortal men can avoid sorrow and sickness, and sorrow is an inseparable companion from melancholy. [443]Chrysostom pleads farther yet, that they are more than mad, very beasts, stupefied and void of common sense:
For how(saith he)
shall I know thee to be a man, when thou kickest like an ass, neighest like a horse after women, ravest in lust like a bull, ravenest like a bear, stingest like a scorpion, rakest like a wolf, as subtle as a fox, as impudent as a dog? Shall I say thou art a man, that hast all the symptoms of a beast? How shall I know thee to be a man? by thy shape? That affrights me more, when I see a beast in likeness of a man.
[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.
They that are poor and bad envy rich, hate good men, abhor the present government, wish for a new, and would have all turned topsy-turvy.When Catiline rebelled in Rome, he got a company of such debauched rogues together, they were his familiars and coadjutors, and such have been your rebels most part in all ages, Jack Cade, Tom Straw, Kette, and his companions.
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.
a diapason and sweet harmony of kings, princes, nobles, and plebeians so mutually tied and involved in love, as well as laws and authority, as that they never disagree, insult, or encroach one upon another.If any man deserve well in his office he shall be rewarded.
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?
but let him be angry with himself, that so betrayed and opened his own faults in applying it to himself:[803]
if he be guilty and deserve it, let him amend, whoever he is, and not be angry.
He that hateth correction is a fool,Prov. xii. 1. If he be not guilty, it concerns him not; it is not my freeness of speech, but a guilty conscience, a galled back of his own that makes him wince.
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;
promptness of wit, memory, eloquence, they were God's good gifts, but he did not use them to his glory.If you will particularly know how, and by what means, consult physicians, and they will tell you, that it is in offending in some of those six non-natural things, of which I shall [873]dilate more at large; they are the causes of our infirmities, our surfeiting, and drunkenness, our immoderate insatiable lust, and prodigious riot. Plures crapula, quam gladius, is a true saying, the board consumes more than the sword. Our intemperance it is, that pulls so many several incurable diseases upon our heads, that hastens [874]old age, perverts our temperature, and brings upon us sudden death. And last of all, that which crucifies us most, is our own folly, madness (quos Jupiter perdit, dementat; by subtraction of his assisting grace God permits it) weakness, want of government, our facility and proneness in yielding to several lusts, in giving way to every passion and perturbation of the mind: by which means we metamorphose ourselves and degenerate into beasts. All which that prince of [875]poets observed of Agamemnon, that when he was well pleased, and could moderate his passion, he was—os oculosque Jovi par: like Jupiter in feature, Mars in valour, Pallas in wisdom, another god; but when he became angry, he was a lion, a tiger, a dog, &c., there appeared no sign or likeness of Jupiter in him; so we, as long as we are ruled by reason, correct our inordinate appetite, and conform ourselves to God's word, are as so many saints: but if we give reins to lust, anger, ambition, pride, and follow our own ways, we degenerate into beasts, transform ourselves, overthrow our constitutions, [876]provoke God to anger, and heap upon us this of melancholy, and all kinds of incurable diseases, as a just and deserved punishment of our sins.
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.
Even in the midst of laughing there is sorrow,(as [933]Solomon holds): even in the midst of all our feasting and jollity, as [934]Austin infers in his Com. on the 41st Psalm, there is grief and discontent. Inter delicias semper aliquid saevi nos strangulat, for a pint of honey thou shalt here likely find a gallon of gall, for a dram of pleasure a pound of pain, for an inch of mirth an ell of moan; as ivy doth an oak, these miseries encompass our life. And it is most absurd and ridiculous for any mortal man to look for a perpetual tenure of happiness in his life. Nothing so prosperous and pleasant, but it hath [935]some bitterness in it, some complaining, some grudging; it is all γλυκύπικρον, a mixed passion, and like a chequer table black and white: men, families, cities, have their falls and wanes; now trines, sextiles, then quartiles and oppositions. We are not here as those angels, celestial powers and bodies, sun and moon, to finish our course without all offence, with such constancy, to continue for so many ages: but subject to infirmities, miseries, interrupted, tossed and tumbled up and down, carried about with every small blast, often molested and disquieted upon each slender occasion, [936]uncertain, brittle, and so is all that we trust unto. [937]
And he that knows not this is not armed to endure it, is not fit to live in this world (as one condoles our time), he knows not the condition of it, where with a reciprocalty, pleasure and pain are still united, and succeed one another in a ring.Exi e mundo, get thee gone hence if thou canst not brook it; there is no way to avoid it, but to arm thyself with patience, with magnanimity, to [938]oppose thyself unto it, to suffer affliction as a good soldier of Christ; as [939]Paul adviseth constantly to bear it. But forasmuch as so few can embrace this good council of his, or use it aright, but rather as so many brute beasts give away to their passion, voluntary subject and precipitate themselves into a labyrinth of cares, woes, miseries, and suffer their souls to be overcome by them, cannot arm themselves with that patience as they ought to do, it falleth out oftentimes that these dispositions become habits, and
many affects contemned(as [940]Seneca notes)
make a disease. Even as one distillation, not yet grown to custom, makes a cough; but continual and inveterate causeth a consumption of the lungs;so do these our melancholy provocations: and according as the humour itself is intended, or remitted in men, as their temperature of body, or rational soul is better able to make resistance; so are they more or less affected. For that which is but a flea-biting to one, causeth insufferable torment to another; and which one by his singular moderation, and well-composed carriage can happily overcome, a second is no whit able to sustain, but upon every small occasion of misconceived abuse, injury, grief, disgrace, loss, cross, humour, &c. (if solitary, or idle) yields so far to passion, that his complexion is altered, his digestion hindered, his sleep gone, his spirits obscured, and his heart heavy, his hypochondries misaffected; wind, crudity, on a sudden overtake him, and he himself overcome with melancholy. As it is with a man imprisoned for debt, if once in the gaol, every creditor will bring his action against him, and there likely hold him. If any discontent seize upon a patient, in an instant all other perturbations (for—qua data porta ruunt) will set upon him, and then like a lame dog or broken-winged goose he droops and pines away, and is brought at last to that ill habit or malady of melancholy itself. So that as the philosophers make [941]eight degrees of heat and cold, we may make eighty-eight of melancholy, as the parts affected are diversely seized with it, or have been plunged more or less into this infernal gulf, or waded deeper into it. But all these melancholy fits, howsoever pleasing at first, or displeasing, violent and tyrannizing over those whom they seize on for the time; yet these fits I say, or men affected, are but improperly so called, because they continue not, but come and go, as by some objects they aye moved. This melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, mosbus sonticus, or chronicus, a chronic or continuate disease, a settled humour, as [942] Aurelianus and [943]others call it, not errant, but fixed; and as it was long increasing, so now being (pleasant, or painful) grown to an habit, it will hardly be removed.
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:
This question of the immortality of the soul, is diversely and wonderfully impugned and disputed, especially among the Italians of late,saith Jab. Colerus, lib. de immort. animae, cap. 1. The popes themselves have doubted of it: Leo Decimus, that Epicurean pope, as [1006]some record of him, caused this question to be discussed pro and con before him, and concluded at last, as a profane and atheistical moderator, with that verse of Cornelius Gallus,
the first substantial act of a natural, humane, organical body, by which a man lives, perceives, and understands, freely doing all things, and with election.Out of which definition we may gather, that this rational soul includes the powers, and performs the duties of the two other, which are contained in it, and all three faculties make one soul, which is inorganical of itself, although it be in all parts, and incorporeal, using their organs, and working by them. It is divided into two chief parts, differing in office only, not in essence. The understanding, which is the rational power apprehending; the will, which is the rational power moving: to which two, all the other rational powers are subject and reduced.
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:
which protected particular men as well as princes,Socrates had his Daemonium Saturninum et ignium, which of all spirits is best, ad sublimes cogitationes animum erigentem, as the Platonists supposed; Plotinus his, and we Christians our assisting angel, as Andreas Victorellus, a copious writer of this subject, Lodovicus de La-Cerda, the Jesuit, in his voluminous tract de Angelo Custode, Zanchius, and some divines think. But this absurd tenet of Tyreus, Proclus confutes at large in his book de Anima et daemone.
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,
bring their sweethearts to them by night, upon a goat's back flying in the air.Sigismund Scheretzius, part. 1. cap. 9. de spect. reports confidently, that he conferred with sundry such, that had been so carried many miles, and that he heard witches themselves confess as much; hurt and infect men and beasts, vines, corn, cattle, plants, make women abortive, not to conceive, [1263]barren, men and women unapt and unable, married and unmarried, fifty several ways, saith Bodine, lib. 2. c. 2. fly in the air, meet when and where they will, as Cicogna proves, and Lavat. de spec. part. 2. c. 17.
steal young children out of their cradles, ministerio daemonum, and put deformed in their rooms, which we call changelings,saith [1264]Scheretzius, part. 1. c. 6. make men victorious, fortunate, eloquent; and therefore in those ancient monomachies and combats they were searched of old, [1265]they had no magical charms; they can make [1266]stick frees, such as shall endure a rapier's point, musket shot, and never be wounded: of which read more in Boissardus, cap. 6. de Magia, the manner of the adjuration, and by whom 'tis made, where and how to be used in expeditionibus bellicis, praeliis, duellis, &c., with many peculiar instances and examples; they can walk in fiery furnaces, make men feel no pain on the rack, aut alias torturas sentire; they can stanch blood, [1267]represent dead men's shapes, alter and turn themselves and others into several forms, at their pleasures. [1268]Agaberta, a famous witch in Lapland, would do as much publicly to all spectators, Modo Pusilla, modo anus, modo procera ut quercus, modo vacca, avis, coluber, &c. Now young, now old, high, low, like a cow, like a bird, a snake, and what not? She could represent to others what forms they most desired to see, show them friends absent, reveal secrets, maxima omnium admiratione, &c. And yet for all this subtlety of theirs, as Lipsius well observes, Physiolog. Stoicor. lib. 1. cap. 17. neither these magicians nor devils themselves can take away gold or letters out of mine or Crassus' chest, et Clientelis suis largiri, for they are base, poor, contemptible fellows most part; as [1269]Bodine notes, they can do nothing in Judicum decreta aut poenas, in regum concilia vel arcana, nihil in rem nummariam aut thesauros, they cannot give money to their clients, alter judges' decrees, or councils of kings, these minuti Genii cannot do it, altiores Genii hoc sibi adservarunt, the higher powers reserve these things to themselves. Now and then peradventure there may be some more famous magicians like Simon Magus, [1270]Apollonius Tyaneus, Pasetes, Jamblichus, [1271]Odo de Stellis, that for a time can build castles in the air, represent armies, &c., as they are [1272]said to have done, command wealth and treasure, feed thousands with all variety of meats upon a sudden, protect themselves and their followers from all princes' persecutions, by removing from place to place in an instant, reveal secrets, future events, tell what is done in far countries, make them appear that died long since, and do many such miracles, to the world's terror, admiration and opinion of deity to themselves, yet the devil forsakes them at last, they come to wicked ends, and raro aut nunquam such impostors are to be found. The vulgar sort of them can work no such feats. But to my purpose, they can, last of all, cure and cause most diseases to such as they love or hate, and this of [1273]melancholy amongst the rest. Paracelsus, Tom. 4. de morbis amentium, Tract. 1. in express words affirms; Multi fascinantur in melancholiam, many are bewitched into melancholy, out of his experience. The same saith Danaeus, lib. 3. de sortiariis. Vidi, inquit, qui Melancholicos morbos gravissimos induxerunt: I have seen those that have caused melancholy in the most grievous manner, [1274]dried up women's paps, cured gout, palsy; this and apoplexy, falling sickness, which no physic could help, solu tactu, by touch alone. Ruland in his 3 Cent. Cura 91. gives an instance of one David Helde, a young man, who by eating cakes which a witch gave him, mox delirare coepit, began to dote on a sudden, and was instantly mad: F. H. D. in [1275]Hildesheim, consulted about a melancholy man, thought his disease was partly magical, and partly natural, because he vomited pieces of iron and lead, and spake such languages as he had never been taught; but such examples are common in Scribanius, Hercules de Saxonia, and others. The means by which they work are usually charms, images, as that in Hector Boethius of King Duffe; characters stamped of sundry metals, and at such and such constellations, knots, amulets, words, philters, &c., which generally make the parties affected, melancholy; as [1276]Monavius discourseth at large in an epistle of his to Acolsius, giving instance in a Bohemian baron that was so troubled by a philter taken. Not that there is any power at all in those spells, charms, characters, and barbarous words; but that the devil doth use such means to delude them. Ut fideles inde magos (saith [1277]Libanius) in officio retineat, tum in consortium malefactorum vocet.
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.
'tis a most wholesome(so [1385] Polydore Virgil calleth it)
and a pleasant drink,it is more subtle and better, for the hop that rarefies it, hath an especial virtue against melancholy, as our herbalists confess, Fuchsius approves, Lib. 2. sec. 2. instit. cap. 11, and many others.
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,
to carry their drink the better; [1421]and when nought else serves, they will go forth, or be conveyed out, to empty their gorge, that they may return to drink afresh.They make laws, insanas leges, contra bibendi fallacias, and [1422]brag of it when they have done, crowning that man that is soonest gone, as their drunken predecessors have done, —[1423]quid ego video? Ps. Cum corona Pseudolum ebrium tuum—. And when they are dead, will have a can of wine with [1424]Maron's old woman to be engraven on their tombs. So they triumph in villainy, and justify their wickedness; with Rabelais, that French Lucian, drunkenness is better for the body than physic, because there be more old drunkards than old physicians. Many such frothy arguments they have, [1425]inviting and encouraging others to do as they do, and love them dearly for it (no glue like to that of good fellowship). So did Alcibiades in Greece; Nero, Bonosus, Heliogabalus in Rome, or Alegabalus rather, as he was styled of old (as [1426]Ignatius proves out of some old coins). So do many great men still, as [1427]Heresbachius observes. When a prince drinks till his eyes stare, like Bitias in the Poet,
the [1429]bishop himself (if he belie them not) with his chaplain will stand by and do as much,O dignum principe haustum, 'twas done like a prince.
Our Dutchmen invite all comers with a pail and a dish,Velut infundibula integras obbas exhauriunt, et in monstrosis poculis, ipsi monstrosi monstrosius epotant,
making barrels of their bellies.Incredibile dictu, as [1430]one of their own countrymen complains: [1431]Quantum liquoris immodestissima gens capiat, &c.
How they love a man that will be drunk, crown him and honour him for it,hate him that will not pledge him, stab him, kill him: a most intolerable offence, and not to be forgiven. [1432]
He is a mortal enemy that will not drink with him,as Munster relates of the Saxons. So in Poland, he is the best servitor, and the honestest fellow, saith Alexander Gaguinus, [1433]
that drinketh most healths to the honour of his master, he shall be rewarded as a good servant, and held the bravest fellow that carries his liquor best,when a brewer's horse will bear much more than any sturdy drinker, yet for his noble exploits in this kind, he shall be accounted a most valiant man, for [1434]Tam inter epulas fortis vir esse potest ac in bello, as much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains, and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it. Thus they many times wilfully pervert the good temperature of their bodies, stifle their wits, strangle nature, and degenerate into beasts.
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,
They are most moved with it, and those which are already mad, rave downright, either in, or against a tempest. Besides, the devil many times takes his opportunity of such storms, and when the humours by the air be stirred, he goes in with them, exagitates our spirits, and vexeth our souls; as the sea waves, so are the spirits and humours in our bodies tossed with tempestuous winds and storms.To such as are melancholy therefore, Montanus, consil. 24, will have tempestuous and rough air to be avoided, and consil. 27, all night air, and would not have them to walk abroad, but in a pleasant day. Lemnius, l. 3. c. 3, discommends the south and eastern winds, commends the north. Montanus, consil. 31. [1533]
Will not any windows to be opened in the night.Consil. 229. et consil. 230, he discommends especially the south wind, and nocturnal air: So doth [1534]Plutarch. The night and darkness makes men sad, the like do all subterranean vaults, dark houses in caves and rocks, desert places cause melancholy in an instant, especially such as have not been used to it, or otherwise accustomed. Read more of air in Hippocrates, Aetius, l. 3. a c. 171. ad 175. Oribasius, a c. 1. ad 21. Avicen. l. 1. can. Fen. 2. doc. 2. Fen. 1. c. 123 to the 12, &c.
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.
As in a standing pool, worms and filthy creepers increase, (et vitium capiunt ni moveantur aquae, the water itself putrefies, and air likewise, if it be not continually stirred by the wind) so do evil and corrupt thoughts in an idle person,the soul is contaminated. In a commonwealth, where is no public enemy, there is likely civil wars, and they rage upon themselves: this body of ours, when it is idle, and knows not how to bestow itself, macerates and vexeth itself with cares, griefs, false fears, discontents, and suspicions; it tortures and preys upon his own bowels, and is never at rest. Thus much I dare boldly say; he or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy, let them have all things in abundance and felicity that heart can wish and desire, all contentment, so long as he or she or they are idle, they shall never be pleased, never well in body and mind, but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every object, wishing themselves gone or dead, or else earned away with some foolish phantasy or other. And this is the true cause that so many great men, ladies, and gentlewomen, labour of this disease in country and city; for idleness is an appendix to nobility; they count it a disgrace to work, and spend all their days in sports, recreations, and pastimes, and will therefore take no pains; be of no vocation: they feed liberally, fare well, want exercise, action, employment, (for to work, I say, they may not abide,) and Company to their desires, and thence their bodies become full of gross humours, wind, crudities; their minds disquieted, dull, heavy, &c. care, jealousy, fear of some diseases, sullen fits, weeping fits seize too [1552]familiarly on them. For what will not fear and phantasy work in an idle body? what distempers will they not cause? when the children of [1553] Israel murmured against Pharaoh in Egypt, he commanded his officers to double their task, and let them get straw themselves, and yet make their full number of bricks; for the sole cause why they mutiny, and are evil at ease, is,
they are idle.When you shall hear and see so many discontented persons in all places where you come, so many several grievances, unnecessary complaints, fears, suspicions, [1554]the best means to redress it is to set them awork, so to busy their minds; for the truth is, they are idle. Well they may build castles in the air for a time, and sooth up themselves with fantastical and pleasant humours, but in the end they will prove as bitter as gall, they shall be still I say discontent, suspicious, [1555]fearful, jealous, sad, fretting and vexing of themselves; so long as they be idle, it is impossible to please them, Otio qui nescit uti, plus habet negotii quam qui negotium in negotio, as that [1556]Agellius could observe: He that knows not how to spend his time, hath more business, care, grief, anguish of mind, than he that is most busy in the midst of all his business. Otiosus animus nescit quid volet: An idle person (as he follows it) knows not when he is well, what he would have, or whither he would go, Quum illuc ventum est, illinc lubet, he is tired out with everything, displeased with all, weary of his life: Nec bene domi, nec militiae, neither at home nor abroad, errat, et praeter vitam vivitur, he wanders and lives besides himself. In a word, What the mischievous effects of laziness and idleness are, I do not find any where more accurately expressed, than in these verses of Philolaches in the [1557]Comical Poet, which for their elegancy I will in part insert.
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,
fear from a wise man:others except all, some the greatest passions. But let them dispute how they will, set down in Thesi, give precepts to the contrary; we find that of [1585]Lemnius true by common experience;
No mortal man is free from these perturbations: or if he be so, sure he is either a god, or a block.They are born and bred with us, we have them from our parents by inheritance. A parentibus habemus malum hunc assem, saith [1586]Pelezius, Nascitur una nobiscum, aliturque, 'tis propagated from Adam, Cain was melancholy, [1587]as Austin hath it, and who is not? Good discipline, education, philosophy, divinity (I cannot deny), may mitigate and restrain these passions in some few men at some times, but most part they domineer, and are so violent, [1588]that as a torrent (torrens velut aggere rupto) bears down all before, and overflows his banks, sternit agros, sternit sata, (lays waste the fields, prostrates the crops,) they overwhelm reason, judgment, and pervert the temperature of the body; Fertur [1589] equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas. Now such a man (saith [1590]Austin)
that is so led, in a wise man's eye, is no better than he that stands upon his head.It is doubted by some, Gravioresne morbi a perturbationibus, an ab humoribus, whether humours or perturbations cause the more grievous maladies. But we find that of our Saviour, Mat. xxvi. 41, most true,
The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak,we cannot resist; and this of [1591]Philo Judeus,
Perturbations often offend the body, and are most frequent causes of melancholy, turning it out of the hinges of his health.Vives compares them to [1592]
Winds upon the sea, some only move as those great gales, but others turbulent quite overturn the ship.Those which are light, easy, and more seldom, to our thinking, do us little harm, and are therefore contemned of us: yet if they be reiterated, [1593]
as the rain(saith Austin)
doth a stone, so do these perturbations penetrate the mind:[1594]and (as one observes)
produce a habit of melancholy at the last,which having gotten the mastery in our souls, may well be called diseases.
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,
It hinders concoction, refrigerates the heart, takes away stomach, colour, and sleep, thickens the blood,([1646]Fernelius, l. 1. c. 18. de morb. causis,)
contaminates the spirits.([1647]Piso.) Overthrows the natural heat, perverts the good estate of body and mind, and makes them weary of their lives, cry out, howl and roar for very anguish of their souls. David confessed as much, Psalm xxxviii. 8,
I have roared for the very disquietness of my heart.And Psalm cxix. 4, part 4 v.
My soul melteth away for very heaviness,v. 38.
I am like a bottle in the smoke.Antiochus complained that he could not sleep, and that his heart fainted for grief, [1648]Christ himself, vir dolorum, out of an apprehension of grief, did sweat blood, Mark xiv.
His soul was heavy to the death, and no sorrow was like unto his.Crato, consil. 24. l. 2, gives instance in one that was so melancholy by reason of [1649]grief; and Montanus, consil. 30, in a noble matron, [1650]
that had no other cause of this mischief.I. S. D. in Hildesheim, fully cured a patient of his that was much troubled with melancholy, and for many years, [1651]
but afterwards, by a little occasion of sorrow, he fell into his former fits, and was tormented as before.Examples are common, how it causeth melancholy, [1652]desperation, and sometimes death itself; for (Eccles. xxxviii. 15,)
Of heaviness comes death; worldly sorrow causeth death.2 Cor. vii. 10, Psalm xxxi. 10,
My life is wasted with heaviness, and my years with mourning.Why was Hecuba said to be turned to a dog? Niobe into a stone? but that for grief she was senseless and stupid. Severus the Emperor [1653] died for grief; and how [1654]many myriads besides? Tanta illi est feritas, tanta est insania luctus. [1655]Melancthon gives a reason of it, [1656]
the gathering of much melancholy blood about the heart, which collection extinguisheth the good spirits, or at least dulleth them, sorrow strikes the heart, makes it tremble and pine away, with great pain; and the black blood drawn from the spleen, and diffused under the ribs, on the left side, makes those perilous hypochondriacal convulsions, which happen to them that are troubled with sorrow.
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,
In the calends of January, Angerona had her holy day, to whom in the temple of Volupia, or goddess of pleasure, their augurs and bishops did yearly sacrifice; that, being propitious to them, she might expel all cares, anguish, and vexation of the mind for that year following.Many lamentable effects this fear causeth in men, as to be red, pale, tremble, sweat, [1661]it makes sudden cold and heat to come over all the body, palpitation of the heart, syncope, &c. It amazeth many men that are to speak, or show themselves in public assemblies, or before some great personages, as Tully confessed of himself, that he trembled still at the beginning of his speech; and Demosthenes, that great orator of Greece, before Philippus. It confounds voice and memory, as Lucian wittily brings in Jupiter Tragoedus, so much afraid of his auditory, when he was to make a speech to the rest of the Gods, that he could not utter a ready word, but was compelled to use Mercury's help in prompting. Many men are so amazed and astonished with fear, they know not where they are, what they say, [1662]what they do, and that which is worst, it tortures them many days before with continual affrights and suspicion. It hinders most honourable attempts, and makes their hearts ache, sad and heavy. They that live in fear are never free, [1663]resolute, secure, never merry, but in continual pain: that, as Vives truly said, Nulla est miseria major quam metus, no greater misery, no rack, nor torture like unto it, ever suspicious, anxious, solicitous, they are childishly drooping without reason, without judgment, [1664]
especially if some terrible object be offered,as Plutarch hath it. It causeth oftentimes sudden madness, and almost all manner of diseases, as I have sufficiently illustrated in my [1665] digression of the force of imagination, and shall do more at large in my section of [1666]terrors. Fear makes our imagination conceive what it list, invites the devil to come to us, as [1667]Agrippa and Cardan avouch, and tyranniseth over our phantasy more than all other affections, especially in the dark. We see this verified in most men, as [1668]Lavater saith, Quae metuunt, fingunt; what they fear they conceive, and feign unto themselves; they think they see goblins, hags, devils, and many times become melancholy thereby. Cardan, subtil. lib. 18, hath an example of such an one, so caused to be melancholy (by sight of a bugbear) all his life after. Augustus Caesar durst not sit in the dark, nisi aliquo assidente, saith [1669]Suetonius, Nunquam tenebris exigilavit. And 'tis strange what women and children will conceive unto themselves, if they go over a churchyard in the night, lie, or be alone in a dark room, how they sweat and tremble on a sudden. Many men are troubled with future events, foreknowledge of their fortunes, destinies, as Severus the Emperor, Adrian and Domitian, Quod sciret ultimum vitae diem, saith Suetonius, valde solicitus, much tortured in mind because he foreknew his end; with many such, of which I shall speak more opportunely in another place.[1670] Anxiety, mercy, pity, indignation, &c., and such fearful branches derived from these two stems of fear and sorrow, I voluntarily omit; read more of them in [1671]Carolus Pascalius, [1672]Dandinus, &c.
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;
As a moth gnaws a garment, so,saith Chrysostom,
doth envy consume a man;to be a living anatomy: a
skeleton, to be a lean and [1693]pale carcass, quickened with a [1694]fiend, Hall in Charact. for so often as an envious wretch sees another man prosper, to be enriched, to thrive, and be fortunate in the world, to get honours, offices, or the like, he repines and grieves.
I have read,saith Marcus Aurelius,
Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee authors; I have consulted with many wise men for a remedy for envy, I could find none, but to renounce all happiness, and to be a wretch, and miserable for ever.'Tis the beginning of hell in this life, and a passion not to be excused. [1701]
Every other sin hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of an excuse; envy alone wants both. Other sins last but for awhile; the gut may be satisfied, anger remits, hatred hath an end, envy never ceaseth.Cardan, lib. 2. de sap. Divine and humane examples are very familiar; you may run and read them, as that of Saul and David, Cain and Abel, angebat illum non proprium peccatum, sed fratris prosperitas, saith Theodoret, it was his brother's good fortune galled him. Rachel envied her sister, being barren, Gen. xxx. Joseph's brethren him, Gen. xxxvii. David had a touch of this vice, as he confesseth, [1702]Psal. 37. [1703]Jeremy and [1704]Habakkuk, they repined at others' good, but in the end they corrected themselves, Psal. 75,
fret not thyself,&c. Domitian spited Agricola for his worth, [1705]
that a private man should be so much glorified.[1706]Cecinna was envied of his fellow-citizens, because he was more richly adorned. But of all others, [1707]women are most weak, ob pulchritudinem invidae sunt foeminae (Musaeus) aut amat, aut odit, nihil est tertium (Granatensis.) They love or hate, no medium amongst them. Implacabiles plerumque laesae mulieres, Agrippina like, [1708]
A woman, if she see her neighbour more neat or elegant, richer in tires, jewels, or apparel, is enraged, and like a lioness sets upon her husband, rails at her, scoffs at her, and cannot abide her;so the Roman ladies in Tacitus did at Solonina, Cecinna's wife, [1709]
because she had a better horse, and better furniture, as if she had hurt them with it; they were much offended.In like sort our gentlewomen do at their usual meetings, one repines or scoffs at another's bravery and happiness. Myrsine, an Attic wench, was murdered of her fellows, [1710]
because she did excel the rest in beauty,Constantine, Agricult. l. 11. c. 7. Every village will yield such examples.
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,
Hatred stirs up contention,Prov. x. 12, and they break out at last into immortal enmity, into virulency, and more than Vatinian hate and rage; [1723]they persecute each other, their friends, followers, and all their posterity, with bitter taunts, hostile wars, scurrile invectives, libels, calumnies, fire, sword, and the like, and will not be reconciled. Witness that Guelph and Ghibelline faction in Italy; that of the Adurni and Fregosi in Genoa; that of Cneius Papirius, and Quintus Fabius in Rome; Caesar and Pompey; Orleans and Burgundy in France; York and Lancaster in England: yea, this passion so rageth[1724]many times, that it subverts not men only, and families, but even populous cities. [1725]Carthage and Corinth can witness as much, nay, flourishing kingdoms are brought into a wilderness by it. This hatred, malice, faction, and desire of revenge, invented first all those racks and wheels, strappadoes, brazen bulls, feral engines, prisons, inquisitions, severe laws to macerate and torment one another. How happy might we be, and end our time with blessed days and sweet content, if we could contain ourselves, and, as we ought to do, put up injuries, learn humility, meekness, patience, forget and forgive, as in [1726]God's word we are enjoined, compose such final controversies amongst ourselves, moderate our passions in this kind,
and think better of others,as [1727]Paul would have us,
than of ourselves: be of like affection one towards another, and not avenge ourselves, but have peace with all men.But being that we are so peevish and perverse, insolent and proud, so factious and seditious, so malicious and envious; we do invicem angariare, maul and vex one another, torture, disquiet, and precipitate ourselves into that gulf of woes and cares, aggravate our misery and melancholy, heap upon us hell and eternal damnation.
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?
but it ruins and subverts whole towns, [1739]cities, families, and kingdoms;Nulla pestis humano generi pluris stetit, saith Seneca, de Ira, lib. 1. No plague hath done mankind so much harm. Look into our histories, and you shall almost meet with no other subject, but what a company [1740]of harebrains have done in their rage. We may do well therefore to put this in our procession amongst the rest;
From all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy, from envy, hatred and malice, anger, and all such pestiferous perturbations, good Lord deliver us.
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,
in miseries of body, in miseries of mind, miseries of heart, in miseries asleep, in miseries awake, in miseries wheresoever he turns,as Bernard found, Nunquid tentatio est vita humana super terram? A mere temptation is our life, (Austin, confess. lib. 10. cap. 28,) catena perpetuorum malorum, et quis potest molestias et difficultates pati? Who can endure the miseries of it? [1755]
In prosperity we are insolent and intolerable, dejected in adversity, in all fortunes foolish and miserable.[1756]
In adversity I wish for prosperity, and in prosperity I am afraid of adversity. What mediocrity may be found? Where is no temptation? What condition of life is free?[1757]
Wisdom hath labour annexed to it, glory, envy; riches and cares, children and encumbrances, pleasure and diseases, rest and beggary, go together: as if a man were therefore born(as the Platonists hold)
to be punished in this life for some precedent sins.Or that, as [1758]Pliny complains,
Nature may be rather accounted a stepmother, than a mother unto us, all things considered: no creature's life so brittle, so full of fear, so mad, so furious; only man is plagued with envy, discontent, griefs, covetousness, ambition, superstition.Our whole life is an Irish sea, wherein there is nought to be expected but tempestuous storms and troublesome waves, and those infinite,
there is something in every one of us which before trial we seek, and having tried abhor: [1761] we earnestly wish, and eagerly covet, and are eftsoons weary of it.Thus between hope and fear, suspicions, angers, [1762]Inter spemque metumque, timores inter et iras, betwixt falling in, falling out, &c., we bangle away our best days, befool out our times, we lead a contentious, discontent, tumultuous, melancholy, miserable life; insomuch, that if we could foretell what was to come, and it put to our choice, we should rather refuse than accept of this painful life. In a word, the world itself is a maze, a labyrinth of errors, a desert, a wilderness, a den of thieves, cheaters, &c., full of filthy puddles, horrid rocks, precipitiums, an ocean of adversity, an heavy yoke, wherein infirmities and calamities overtake, and follow one another, as the sea waves; and if we scape Scylla, we fall foul on Charybdis, and so in perpetual fear, labour, anguish, we run from one plague, one mischief, one burden to another, duram servientes servitutem, and you may as soon separate weight from lead, heat from fire, moistness from water, brightness from the sun, as misery, discontent, care, calamity, danger, from a man. Our towns and cities are but so many dwellings of human misery.
In which grief and sorrow([1763]as he right well observes out of Solon)
innumerable troubles, labours of mortal men, and all manner of vices, are included, as in so many pens.Our villages are like molehills, and men as so many emmets, busy, busy still, going to and fro, in and out, and crossing one another's projects, as the lines of several sea-cards cut each other in a globe or map.
Now light and merry,but ([1764]as one follows it)
by-and-by sorrowful and heavy; now hoping, then distrusting; now patient, tomorrow crying out; now pale, then red; running, sitting, sweating, trembling, halting,&c. Some few amongst the rest, or perhaps one of a thousand, may be Pullus Jovis, in the world's esteem, Gallinae filius albae, an happy and fortunate man, ad invidiam felix, because rich, fair, well allied, in honour and office; yet peradventure ask himself, and he will say, that of all others [1765]he is most miserable and unhappy. A fair shoe, Hic soccus novus, elegans, as he [1766]said, sed nescis ubi urat, but thou knowest not where it pincheth. It is not another man's opinion can make me happy: but as [1767]Seneca well hath it,
He is a miserable wretch that doth not account himself happy, though he be sovereign lord of a world: he is not happy, if he think himself not to be so; for what availeth it what thine estate is, or seem to others, if thou thyself dislike it?A common humour it is of all men to think well of other men's fortunes, and dislike their own: [1768]Cui placet alterius, sua nimirum est odio sors; but [1769]qui fit Mecoenas, &c., how comes it to pass, what's the cause of it? Many men are of such a perverse nature, they are well pleased with nothing, (saith [1770] Theodoret,)
neither with riches nor poverty, they complain when they are well and when they are sick, grumble at all fortunes, prosperity and adversity; they are troubled in a cheap year, in a barren, plenty or not plenty, nothing pleaseth them, war nor peace, with children, nor without.This for the most part is the humour of us all, to be discontent, miserable, and most unhappy, as we think at least; and show me him that is not so, or that ever was otherwise. Quintus Metellus his felicity is infinitely admired amongst the Romans, insomuch that as [1771]Paterculus mentioneth of him, you can scarce find of any nation, order, age, sex, one for happiness to be compared unto him: he had, in a word, Bona animi, corporis et fortunae, goods of mind, body, and fortune, so had P. Mutianus, [1772]Crassus. Lampsaca, that Lacedaemonian lady, was such another in [1773]Pliny's conceit, a king's wife, a king's mother, a king's daughter: and all the world esteemed as much of Polycrates of Samos. The Greeks brag of their Socrates, Phocion, Aristides; the Psophidians in particular of their Aglaus, Omni vita felix, ab omni periculo immunis (which by the way Pausanias held impossible;) the Romans of their [1774] Cato, Curius, Fabricius, for their composed fortunes, and retired estates, government of passions, and contempt of the world: yet none of all these were happy, or free from discontent, neither Metellus, Crassus, nor Polycrates, for he died a violent death, and so did Cato; and how much evil doth Lactantius and Theodoret speak of Socrates, a weak man, and so of the rest. There is no content in this life, but as [1775]he said,
All is vanity and vexation of spirit;lame and imperfect. Hadst thou Sampson's hair, Milo's strength, Scanderbeg's arm, Solomon's wisdom, Absalom's beauty, Croesus' wealth, Pasetis obulum, Caesar's valour, Alexander's spirit, Tully's or Demosthenes' eloquence, Gyges' ring, Perseus' Pegasus, and Gorgon's head, Nestor's years to come, all this would not make thee absolute; give thee content, and true happiness in this life, or so continue it. Even in the midst of all our mirth, jollity, and laughter, is sorrow and grief, or if there be true happiness amongst us, 'tis but for a time,
Rabbah put under iron saws, and under iron harrows, and under axes of iron, and cast into the tile kiln,
an hungry fellow ministers to him full, he is athirst that gives him drink(saith [1784]Epictetus)
and is silent whilst he speaks his pleasure: pensive, sad, when he laughs.Pleno se proluit auro: he feasts, revels, and profusely spends, hath variety of robes, sweet music, ease, and all the pleasure the world can afford, whilst many an hunger-starved poor creature pines in the street, wants clothes to cover him, labours hard all day long, runs, rides for a trifle, fights peradventure from sun to sun, sick and ill, weary, full of pain and grief, is in great distress and sorrow of heart. He loathes and scorns his inferior, hates or emulates his equal, envies his superior, insults over all such as are under him, as if he were of another species, a demigod, not subject to any fall, or human infirmities. Generally they love not, are not beloved again: they tire out others' bodies with continual labour, they themselves living at ease, caring for none else, sibi nati; and are so far many times from putting to their helping hand, that they seek all means to depress, even most worthy and well deserving, better than themselves, those whom they are by the laws of nature bound to relieve and help, as much as in them lies, they will let them caterwaul, starve, beg, and hang, before they will any ways (though it be in their power) assist or ease: [1785]so unnatural are they for the most part, so unregardful; so hard-hearted, so churlish, proud, insolent, so dogged, of so bad a disposition. And being so brutish, so devilishly bent one towards another, how is it possible but that we should be discontent of all sides, full of cares, woes, and miseries?
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,
all is sorrow(as David hath it), they do not live but linger. If they be sound, they fear diseases; if sick, weary of their lives: Non est vivere, sed valere vita. One complains of want, a second of servitude, [1795]another of a secret or incurable disease; of some deformity of body, of some loss, danger, death of friends, shipwreck, persecution, imprisonment, disgrace, repulse, [1796] contumely, calumny, abuse, injury, contempt, ingratitude, unkindness, scoffs, flouts, unfortunate marriage, single life, too many children, no children, false servants, unhappy children, barrenness, banishment, oppression, frustrate hopes and ill-success, &c.
for innumerable troubles that compassed him;and we are ready to confess with Hezekiah, Isaiah lviii. 17,
behold, for felicity I had bitter grief;to weep with Heraclitus, to curse the day of our birth with Jeremy, xx. 14, and our stars with Job: to hold that axiom of Silenus, [1801]
better never to have been born, and the best next of all, to die quickly:or if we must live, to abandon the world, as Timon did; creep into caves and holes, as our anchorites; cast all into the sea, as Crates Thebanus; or as Theombrotus Ambrociato's 400 auditors, precipitate ourselves to be rid of these miseries.
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:
he may be freed from his burden, and eased of his pains, will go on still, his wealth increasing, when he hath enough, to get more, to live besides himself,to starve his genius, keep back from his wife [1848]and children, neither letting them nor other friends use or enjoy that which is theirs by right, and which they much need perhaps; like a hog, or dog in the manger, he doth only keep it, because it shall do nobody else good, hurting himself and others: and for a little momentary pelf, damn his own soul? They are commonly sad and tetric by nature, as Achab's spirit was because he could not get Naboth's vineyard, (1. Reg. 22.) and if he lay out his money at any time, though it be to necessary uses, to his own children's good, he brawls and scolds, his heart is heavy, much disquieted he is, and loath to part from it: Miser abstinet et timet uti, Hor. He is of a wearish, dry, pale constitution, and cannot sleep for cares and worldly business; his riches, saith Solomon, will not let him sleep, and unnecessary business which he heapeth on himself; or if he do sleep, 'tis a very unquiet, interrupt, unpleasing sleep: with his bags in his arms,
he sighs for grief of heart(as [1849]Cyprian hath it)
and cannot sleep though it be upon a down bed; his wearish body takes no rest,[1850]
troubled in his abundance, and sorrowful in plenty, unhappy for the present, and more unhappy in the life to come.Basil. He is a perpetual drudge, [1851]restless in his thoughts, and never satisfied, a slave, a wretch, a dust-worm, semper quod idolo suo immolet, sedulus observat Cypr. prolog. ad sermon still seeking what sacrifice he may offer to his golden god, per fas et nefas, he cares not how, his trouble is endless, [1852]crescunt divitiae, tamen curtae nescio quid semper abest rei: his wealth increaseth, and the more he hath, the more [1853]he wants: like Pharaoh's lean kine, which devoured the fat, and were not satisfied. [1854]Austin therefore defines covetousness, quarumlibet rerum inhonestam et insatiabilem cupiditatem a dishonest and insatiable desire of gain; and in one of his epistles compares it to hell; [1855]
which devours all, and yet never hath enough, a bottomless pit,an endless misery; in quem scopulum avaritiae cadaverosi senes utplurimum impingunt, and that which is their greatest corrosive, they are in continual suspicion, fear, and distrust, He thinks his own wife and children are so many thieves, and go about to cozen him, his servants are all false:
They are afraid of tempests for their corn; they are afraid of their friends lest they should ask something of them, beg or borrow; they are afraid of their enemies lest they hurt them, thieves lest they rob them; they are afraid of war and afraid of peace, afraid of rich and afraid of poor; afraid of all.Last of all, they are afraid of want, that they shall die beggars, which makes them lay up still, and dare not use that they have: what if a dear year come, or dearth, or some loss? and were it not that they are both to [1857]lay out money on a rope, they would be hanged forthwith, and sometimes die to save charges, and make away themselves, if their corn and cattle miscarry; though they have abundance left, as [1858]Agellius notes. [1859]Valerius makes mention of one that in a famine sold a mouse for 200 pence, and famished himself: such are their cares, [1860]griefs and perpetual fears. These symptoms are elegantly expressed by Theophrastus in his character of a covetous man; [1861]
lying in bed, he asked his wife whether she shut the trunks and chests fast, the cap-case be sealed, and whether the hall door be bolted; and though she say all is well, he riseth out of his bed in his shirt, barefoot and barelegged, to see whether it be so, with a dark lantern searching every corner, scarce sleeping a wink all night.Lucian in that pleasant and witty dialogue called Gallus, brings in Mycillus the cobbler disputing with his cock, sometimes Pythagoras; where after much speech pro and con, to prove the happiness of a mean estate, and discontents of a rich man, Pythagoras' cock in the end, to illustrate by examples that which he had said, brings him to Gnyphon the usurer's house at midnight, and after that to Encrates; whom, they found both awake, casting up their accounts, and telling of their money, [1862]lean, dry, pale and anxious, still suspecting lest somebody should make a hole through the wall, and so get in; or if a rat or mouse did but stir, starting upon a sudden, and running to the door to see whether all were fast. Plautus, in his Aulularia, makes old Euclio [1863]commanding Staphyla his wife to shut the doors fast, and the fire to be put out, lest anybody should make that an errand to come to his house: when he washed his hands, [1864]he was loath to fling away the foul water, complaining that he was undone, because the smoke got out of his roof. And as he went from home, seeing a crow scratch upon the muck-hill, returned in all haste, taking it for malum omen, an ill sign, his money was digged up; with many such. He that will but observe their actions, shall find these and many such passages not feigned for sport, but really performed, verified indeed by such covetous and miserable wretches, and that it is,
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;
what with a wanton eye, a liquorish tongue, and a gamesome hand,when they have indiscreetly impoverished themselves, mortgaged their wits, together with their lands, and entombed their ancestors' fair possessions in their bowels, they may lead the rest of their days in prison, as many times they do; they repent at leisure; and when all is gone begin to be thrifty: but Sera est in fundo parsimonia, 'tis then too late to look about; their [1891]end is misery, sorrow, shame, and discontent. And well they deserve to be infamous and discontent. [1892]Catamidiari in Amphitheatro, as by Adrian the emperor's edict they were of old, decoctores bonorum suorum, so he calls them, prodigal fools, to be publicly shamed, and hissed out of all societies, rather than to be pitied or relieved. [1893]The Tuscans and Boetians brought their bankrupts into the marketplace in a bier with an empty purse carried before them, all the boys following, where they sat all day circumstante plebe, to be infamous and ridiculous. At [1894]Padua in Italy they have a stone called the stone of turpitude, near the senate-house, where spendthrifts, and such as disclaim non-payment of debts, do sit with their hinder parts bare, that by that note of disgrace others may be terrified from all such vain expense, or borrowing more than they can tell how to pay. The [1895]civilians of old set guardians over such brain-sick prodigals, as they did over madmen, to moderate their expenses, that they should not so loosely consume their fortunes, to the utter undoing of their families.
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.
poverty and want,(Prov. xxi.) shame and disgrace. Multi ignobiles evasere ob vini potum, et (Austin) amissis honoribus profugi aberrarunt: many men have made shipwreck of their fortunes, and go like rogues and beggars, having turned all their substance into aurum potabile, that otherwise might have lived in good worship and happy estate, and for a few hours' pleasure, for their Hilary term's but short, or [1899]free madness, as Seneca calls it, purchase unto themselves eternal tediousness and trouble.
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.)
Let none shed tears over me, or adorn my bier with sorrow—because I am eternally in the mouths of men.With many such proud strains, and foolish flashes too common with writers. Not so much as Democharis on the [1931] Topics, but he will be immortal. Typotius de fama, shall be famous, and well he deserves, because he writ of fame; and every trivial poet must be renowned,—Plausuque petit clarescere vulgi.
He seeks the applause of the public.This puffing humour it is, that hath produced so many great tomes, built such famous monuments, strong castles, and Mausolean tombs, to have their acts eternised,—Digito monstrari, et dicier hic est;
to be pointed at with the finger, and to have it said 'there he goes,'to see their names inscribed, as Phryne on the walls of Thebes, Phryne fecit; this causeth so many bloody battles,—Et noctes cogit vigilare serenas;
and induces us to watch during calm nights.Long journeys, Magnum iter intendo, sed dat mihi gloria vires,
I contemplate a monstrous journey, but the love of glory strengthens me for it,gaining honour, a little applause, pride, self-love, vainglory. This is it which makes them take such pains, and break out into those ridiculous strains, this high conceit of themselves, to [1932]scorn all others; ridiculo fastu et intolerando contemptu; as [1933]Palaemon the grammarian contemned Varro, secum et natas et morituras literas jactans, and brings them to that height of insolency, that they cannot endure to be contradicted, [1934]
or hear of anything but their own commendation,which Hierom notes of such kind of men. And as [1935]Austin well seconds him,
'tis their sole study day and night to be commended and applauded.When as indeed, in all wise men's judgments, quibus cor sapit, they are [1936]mad, empty vessels, funges, beside themselves, derided, et ut Camelus in proverbio quaerens cornua, etiam quas habebat aures amisit, [1937]their works are toys, as an almanac out of date, [1938]authoris pereunt garrulitate sui, they seek fame and immortality, but reap dishonour and infamy, they are a common obloquy, insensati, and come far short of that which they suppose or expect. [1939]O puer ut sis vitalis metuo,
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,
the voice of God and not of man:if he can make a verse, Homer, Virgil, &c., And then my silly weak patient takes all these eulogiums to himself; if he be a scholar so commended for his much reading, excellent style, method, &c., he will eviscerate himself like a spider, study to death, Laudatas ostendit avis Junonia pennas, peacock-like he will display all his feathers. If he be a soldier, and so applauded, his valour extolled, though it be impar congressus, as that of Troilus and Achilles, Infelix puer, he will combat with a giant, run first upon a breach, as another [1951]Philippus, he will ride into the thickest of his enemies. Commend his housekeeping, and he will beggar himself; commend his temperance, he will starve himself.
grew thereupon so [1965]arrogant, that in a short space after he lost his wits.So many men, if any new honour, office, preferment, booty, treasure, possession, or patrimony, ex insperato fall unto them for immoderate joy, and continual meditation of it, cannot sleep [1966]or tell what they say or do, they are so ravished on a sudden; and with vain conceits transported, there is no rule with them. Epaminondas, therefore, the next day after his Leuctrian victory, [1967]
came abroad all squalid and submiss,and gave no other reason to his friends of so doing, than that he perceived himself the day before, by reason of his good fortune, to be too insolent, overmuch joyed. That wise and virtuous lady, [1968]Queen Katherine, Dowager of England, in private talk, upon like occasion, said, that [1969]
she would not willingly endure the extremity of either fortune; but if it were so, that of necessity she must undergo the one, she would be in adversity, because comfort was never wanting in it, but still counsel and government were defective in the other:they could not moderate themselves.
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;
which dries the brain and extinguisheth natural heat; for whilst the spirits are intent to meditation above in the head, the stomach and liver are left destitute, and thence come black blood and crudities by defect of concoction, and for want of exercise the superfluous vapours cannot exhale,&c. The same reasons are repeated by Gomesius, lib. 4, cap. 1, de sale [1985]Nymannus orat. de Imag. Jo. Voschius, lib. 2, cap. 5, de peste: and something more they add, that hard students are commonly troubled with gouts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradiopepsia, bad eyes, stone and colic, [1986]crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by overmuch sitting; they are most part lean, dry, ill-coloured, spend their fortunes, lose their wits, and many times their lives, and all through immoderate pains, and extraordinary studies. If you will not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquinas's works, and tell me whether those men took pains? peruse Austin, Hierom, &c., and many thousands besides.
Not a day that I spend idle, part of the night I keep mine eyes open, tired with waking, and now slumbering to their continual task.Hear Tully pro Archia Poeta:
whilst others loitered, and took their pleasures, he was continually at his book,so they do that will be scholars, and that to the hazard (I say) of their healths, fortunes, wits, and lives. How much did Aristotle and Ptolemy spend? unius regni precium they say, more than a king's ransom; how many crowns per annum, to perfect arts, the one about his History of Creatures, the other on his Almagest? How much time did Thebet Benchorat employ, to find out the motion of the eighth sphere? forty years and more, some write: how many poor scholars have lost their wits, or become dizzards, neglecting all worldly affairs and their own health, wealth, esse and bene esse, to gain knowledge for which, after all their pains, in this world's esteem they are accounted ridiculous and silly fools, idiots, asses, and (as oft they are) rejected, contemned, derided, doting, and mad. Look for examples in Hildesheim spicel. 2, de mania et delirio: read Trincavellius, l. 3. consil. 36, et c. 17. Montanus, consil. 233. [1988]Garceus de Judic. genit. cap. 33. Mercurialis, consil. 86, cap. 25. Prosper [1989]Calenius in his Book de atra bile; Go to Bedlam and ask. Or if they keep their wits, yet they are esteemed scrubs and fools by reason of their carriage:
after seven years' study
He becomes more silent than a statue, and generally excites people's laughter.Because they cannot ride a horse, which every clown can do; salute and court a gentlewoman, carve at table, cringe and make conges, which every common swasher can do, [1990]hos populus ridet, &c., they are laughed to scorn, and accounted silly fools by our gallants. Yea, many times, such is their misery, they deserve it: [1991]a mere scholar, a mere ass.
and was commonly so intent to his studies, that he never perceived what was done about him: when the city was taken, and the soldiers now ready to rifle his house, he took no notice of it.St. Bernard rode all day long by the Lemnian lake, and asked at last where he was, Marullus, lib. 2, cap. 4. It was Democritus's carriage alone that made the Abderites suppose him to have been mad, and send for Hippocrates to cure him: if he had been in any solemn company, he would upon all occasions fall a laughing. Theophrastus saith as much of Heraclitus, for that he continually wept, and Laertius of Menedemus Lampsacus, because he ran like a madman, [1996]saying,
he came from hell as a spy, to tell the devils what mortal men did.Your greatest students are commonly no better, silly, soft fellows in their outward behaviour, absurd, ridiculous to others, and no whit experienced in worldly business; they can measure the heavens, range over the world, teach others wisdom, and yet in bargains and contracts they are circumvented by every base tradesman. Are not these men fools? and how should they be otherwise,
but as so many sots in schools, when(as [1997]he well observed)
they neither hear nor see such things as are commonly practised abroad?how should they get experience, by what means? [1998]
I knew in my time many scholars,saith Aeneas Sylvius (in an epistle of his to Gasper Scitick, chancellor to the emperor),
excellent well learned, but so rude, so silly, that they had no common civility, nor knew how to manage their domestic or public affairs.
Paglarensis was amazed, and said his farmer had surely cozened him, when he heard him tell that his sow had eleven pigs, and his ass had but one foal.To say the best of this profession, I can give no other testimony of them in general, than that of Pliny of Isaeus; [1999]
He is yet a scholar, than which kind of men there is nothing so simple, so sincere, none better, they are most part harmless, honest, upright, innocent, plain-dealing men.
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?
rhetoric only serves them to curse their bad fortunes,and many of them for want of means are driven to hard shifts; from grasshoppers they turn humble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the muses, mules, to satisfy their hunger-starved paunches, and get a meal's meat. To say truth, 'tis the common fortune of most scholars, to be servile and poor, to complain pitifully, and lay open their wants to their respectless patrons, as [2012]Cardan doth, as [2013]Xilander and many others: and which is too common in those dedicatory epistles, for hope of gain, to lie, flatter, and with hyperbolical eulogiums and commendations, to magnify and extol an illiterate unworthy idiot, for his excellent virtues, whom they should rather, as [2014]Machiavel observes, vilify, and rail at downright for his most notorious villainies and vices. So they prostitute themselves as fiddlers, or mercenary tradesmen, to serve great men's turns for a small reward. They are like [2015]Indians, they have store of gold, but know not the worth of it: for I am of Synesius's opinion, [2016]
King Hieron got more by Simonides' acquaintance, than Simonides did by his;they have their best education, good institution, sole qualification from us, and when they have done well, their honour and immortality from us: we are the living tombs, registers, and as so many trumpeters of their fames: what was Achilles without Homer? Alexander without Arian and Curtius? who had known the Caesars, but for Suetonius and Dion?
live in base esteem, and starve, except they will submit,as Budaeus well hath it,
so many good parts, so many ensigns of arts, virtues, be slavishly obnoxious to some illiterate potentate, and live under his insolent worship, or honour, like parasites,Qui tanquam mures alienum panem comedunt. For to say truth, artes hae, non sunt Lucrativae, as Guido Bonat that great astrologer could foresee, they be not gainful arts these, sed esurientes et famelicae, but poor and hungry.
There came,saith he,
by chance into my company, a fellow not very spruce to look on, that I could perceive by that note alone he was a scholar, whom commonly rich men hate: I asked him what he was, he answered, a poet: I demanded again why he was so ragged, he told me this kind of learning never made any man rich.
they thrust their children to the study of law and divinity, before they be informed aright, or capable of such studies.Scilicet omnibus artibus antistat spes lucri, et formosior est cumulus auri, quam quicquid Graeci Latinique delirantes scripserunt. Ex hoc numero deinde veniunt ad gubernacula reipub. intersunt et praesunt consiliis regum, o pater, o patria? so he complained, and so may others. For even so we find, to serve a great man, to get an office in some bishop's court (to practise in some good town) or compass a benefice, is the mark we shoot at, as being so advantageous, the highway to preferment.
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?
With what face(as [2042]he quotes out of Aust.)
can they expect a blessing or inheritance from Christ in heaven, that defraud Christ of his inheritance here on earth?I would all our simoniacal patrons, and such as detain tithes, would read those judicious tracts of Sir Henry Spelman, and Sir James Sempill, knights; those late elaborate and learned treatises of Dr. Tilslye, and Mr. Montague, which they have written of that subject. But though they should read, it would be to small purpose, clames licet et mare coelo Confundas; thunder, lighten, preach hell and damnation, tell them 'tis a sin, they will not believe it; denounce and terrify, they have [2043]cauterised consciences, they do not attend, as the enchanted adder, they stop their ears. Call them base, irreligious, profane, barbarous, pagans, atheists, epicures, (as some of them surely are) with the bawd in Plautus, Euge, optime, they cry and applaud themselves with that miser, [2044]simul ac nummos contemplor in arca: say what you will, quocunque modo rem: as a dog barks at the moon, to no purpose are your sayings: Take your heaven, let them have money. A base, profane, epicurean, hypocritical rout: for my part, let them pretend what zeal they will, counterfeit religion, blear the world's eyes, bombast themselves, and stuff out their greatness with church spoils, shine like so many peacocks; so cold is my charity, so defective in this behalf, that I shall never think better of them, than that they are rotten at core, their bones are full of epicurean hypocrisy, and atheistical marrow, they are worse than heathens. For as Dionysius Halicarnassaeus observes, Antiq. Rom. lib. 7. [2045]Primum locum, &c.
Greeks and Barbarians observe all religious rites, and dare not break them for fear of offending their gods;but our simoniacal contractors, our senseless Achans, our stupefied patrons, fear neither God nor devil, they have evasions for it, it is no sin, or not due jure divino, or if a sin, no great sin, &c. And though they be daily punished for it, and they do manifestly perceive, that as he said, frost and fraud come to foul ends; yet as [2046]Chrysostom follows it Nulla ex poena sit correctio, et quasi adversis malitia hominum provocetur, crescit quotidie quod puniatur: they are rather worse than better,—iram atque animos a crimine sumunt, and the more they are corrected, the more they offend: but let them take their course, [2047]Rode caper vites, go on still as they begin, 'tis no sin, let them rejoice secure, God's vengeance will overtake them in the end, and these ill-gotten goods, as an eagle's feathers, [2048] will consume the rest of their substance; it is [2049]aurum Tholosanum, and will produce no better effects. [2050]
Let them lay it up safe, and make their conveyances never so close, lock and shut door,saith Chrysostom,
yet fraud and covetousness, two most violent thieves are still included, and a little gain evil gotten will subvert the rest of their goods.The eagle in Aesop, seeing a piece of flesh now ready to be sacrificed, swept it away with her claws, and carried it to her nest; but there was a burning coal stuck to it by chance, which unawares consumed her young ones, nest, and all together. Let our simoniacal church-chopping patrons, and sacrilegious harpies, look for no better success.
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;
As children do by a bird or a butterfly in a string, pull in and let him out as they list, do they by their trencher chaplains, prescribe, command their wits, let in and out as to them it seems best.If the patron be precise, so must his chaplain be; if he be papistical, his clerk must be so too, or else be turned out. These are those clerks which serve the turn, whom they commonly entertain, and present to church livings, whilst in the meantime we that are University men, like so many hidebound calves in a pasture, tarry out our time, wither away as a flower ungathered in a garden, and are never used; or as so many candles, illuminate ourselves alone, obscuring one another's light, and are not discerned here at all, the least of which, translated to a dark room, or to some country benefice, where it might shine apart, would give a fair light, and be seen over all. Whilst we lie waiting here as those sick men did at the Pool of [2086] Bethesda, till the Angel stirred the water, expecting a good hour, they step between, and beguile us of our preferment. I have not yet said, if after long expectation, much expense, travel, earnest suit of ourselves and friends, we obtain a small benefice at last; our misery begins afresh, we are suddenly encountered with the flesh, world, and devil, with a new onset; we change a quiet life for an ocean of troubles, we come to a ruinous house, which before it be habitable, must be necessarily to our great damage repaired; we are compelled to sue for dilapidations, or else sued ourselves, and scarce yet settled, we are called upon for our predecessor's arrearages; first-fruits, tenths, subsidies, are instantly to be paid, benevolence, procurations, &c., and which is most to be feared, we light upon a cracked title, as it befell Clenard of Brabant, for his rectory, and charge of his Beginae; he was no sooner inducted, but instantly sued, cepimusque [2087](saith he) strenue litigare, et implacabili bello confligere: at length after ten years' suit, as long as Troy's siege, when he had tired himself, and spent his money, he was fain to leave all for quietness' sake, and give it up to his adversary. Or else we are insulted over, and trampled on by domineering officers, fleeced by those greedy harpies to get more fees; we stand in fear of some precedent lapse; we fall amongst refractory, seditious sectaries, peevish puritans, perverse papists, a lascivious rout of atheistical Epicures, that will not be reformed, or some litigious people (those wild beasts of Ephesus must be fought with) that will not pay their dues without much repining, or compelled by long suit; Laici clericis oppido infesti, an old axiom, all they think well gotten that is had from the church, and by such uncivil, harsh dealings, they make their poor minister weary of his place, if not his life; and put case they be quiet honest men, make the best of it, as often it falls out, from a polite and terse academic, he must turn rustic, rude, melancholise alone, learn to forget, or else, as many do, become maltsters, graziers, chapmen, &c. (now banished from the academy, all commerce of the muses, and confined to a country village, as Ovid was from Rome to Pontus), and daily converse with a company of idiots and clowns.
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;
they bring sorrow, shame, heaviness to their parents(Ecclus. cap. xxx. 8, 9),
become wanton, stubborn, wilful, and disobedient;rude, untaught, headstrong, incorrigible, and graceless;
they love them so foolishly,saith [2132]Cardan,
that they rather seem to hate them, bringing them not up to virtue but injury, not to learning but to riot, not to sober life and conversation, but to all pleasure and licentious behaviour.Who is he of so little experience that knows not this of Fabius to be true? [2133]
Education is another nature, altering the mind and will, and I would to God(saith he)
we ourselves did not spoil our children's manners, by our overmuch cockering and nice education, and weaken the strength of their bodies and minds, that causeth custom, custom nature,&c. For these causes Plutarch in his book de lib. educ. and Hierom. epist. lib. 1. epist. 17. to Laeta de institut. filiae, gives a most especial charge to all parents, and many good cautions about bringing up of children, that they be not committed to indiscreet, passionate, bedlam tutors, light, giddy-headed, or covetous persons, and spare for no cost, that they may be well nurtured and taught, it being a matter of so great consequence. For such parents as do otherwise, Plutarch esteems of them [2134]
that are more careful of their shoes than of their feet,that rate their wealth above their children. And he, saith [2135]Cardan,
that leaves his son to a covetous schoolmaster to be informed, or to a close Abbey to fast and learn wisdom together, doth no other, than that he be a learned fool, or a sickly wise man.
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.
by the sudden sight of some spectrum or devil, a thing very common in all ages,saith Lavater part 1. cap. 9. as Orestes did at the sight of the Furies, which appeared to him in black (as [2144]Pausanias records). The Greeks call them μορμολύχεια, which so terrify their souls, or if they be but affrighted by some counterfeit devils in jest,
was turned into fury with all his men,Cranzius, l. 5, Dan. hist. and Alexander ab Alexandro l. 3. c. 5. Amatus Lusitanus had a patient, that by reason of bad tidings became epilepticus, cen. 2. cura 90, Cardan subtil. l. 18, saw one that lost his wits by mistaking of an echo. If one sense alone can cause such violent commotions of the mind, what may we think when hearing, sight, and those other senses are all troubled at once? as by some earthquakes, thunder, lightning, tempests, &c. At Bologna in Italy, anno 1504, there was such a fearful earthquake about eleven o'clock in the night (as [2155]Beroaldus in his book de terrae motu, hath commended to posterity) that all the city trembled, the people thought the world was at an end, actum de mortalibus, such a fearful noise, it made such a detestable smell, the inhabitants were infinitely affrighted, and some ran mad. Audi rem atrocem, et annalibus memorandam (mine author adds), hear a strange story, and worthy to be chronicled: I had a servant at the same time called Fulco Argelanus, a bold and proper man, so grievously terrified with it, that he [2156]was first melancholy, after doted, at last mad, and made away himself. At [2157]Fuscinum in Japona
there was such an earthquake, and darkness on a sudden, that many men were offended with headache, many overwhelmed with sorrow and melancholy. At Meacum whole streets and goodly palaces were overturned at the same time, and there was such a hideous noise withal, like thunder, and filthy smell, that their hair stared for fear, and their hearts quaked, men and beasts were incredibly terrified. In Sacai, another city, the same earthquake was so terrible unto them, that many were bereft of their senses; and others by that horrible spectacle so much amazed, that they knew not what they did.Blasius a Christian, the reporter of the news, was so affrighted for his part, that though it were two months after, he was scarce his own man, neither could he drive the remembrance of it out of his mind. Many times, some years following, they will tremble afresh at the [2158]remembrance or conceit of such a terrible object, even all their lives long, if mention be made of it. Cornelius Agrippa relates out of Gulielmus Parisiensis, a story of one, that after a distasteful purge which a physician had prescribed unto him, was so much moved, [2159]
that at the very sight of physic he would be distempered,though he never so much as smelled to it, the box of physic long after would give him a purge; nay, the very remembrance of it did effect it; [2160]
like travellers and seamen,saith Plutarch,
that when they have been sanded, or dashed on a rock, for ever after fear not that mischance only, but all such dangers whatsoever.
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:
made him set foolish songs, and invent new ridiculous precepts, which they did highly commend,as to tie his arm that played on the lute, to make him strike a sweeter stroke, [2174]
and to pull down the arras hangings, because the voice would be clearer, by reason of the reverberation of the wall.In the like manner they persuaded one Baraballius of Caieta, that he was as good a poet as Petrarch; would have him to be made a laureate poet, and invite all his friends to his instalment; and had so possessed the poor man with a conceit of his excellent poetry, that when some of his more discreet friends told him of his folly, he was very angry with them, and said [2175]
they envied his honour, and prosperity:it was strange (saith Jovius) to see an old man of 60 years, a venerable and grave old man, so gulled. But what cannot such scoffers do, especially if they find a soft creature, on whom they may work? nay, to say truth, who is so wise, or so discreet, that may not be humoured in this kind, especially if some excellent wits shall set upon him; he that mads others, if he were so humoured, would be as mad himself, as much grieved and tormented; he might cry with him in the comedy, Proh Jupiter tu homo me, adigas ad insaniam. For all is in these things as they are taken; if he be a silly soul, and do not perceive it, 'tis well, he may haply make others sport, and be no whit troubled himself; but if he be apprehensive of his folly, and take it to heart, then it torments him worse than any lash: a bitter jest, a slander, a calumny, pierceth deeper than any loss, danger, bodily pain, or injury whatsoever; leviter enim volat, (it flies swiftly) as Bernard of an arrow, sed graviter vulnerat, (but wounds deeply), especially if it shall proceed from a virulent tongue,
it cuts(saith David)
like a two-edged sword. They shoot bitter words as arrows,Psal. lxiv. 5.
And they smote with their tongues,Jer. xviii. 18, and that so hard, that they leave an incurable wound behind them. Many men are undone by this means, moped, and so dejected, that they are never to be recovered; and of all other men living, those which are actually melancholy, or inclined to it, are most sensible, (as being suspicious, choleric, apt to mistake) and impatient of an injury in that kind: they aggravate, and so meditate continually of it, that it is a perpetual corrosive, not to be removed, till time wear it out. Although they peradventure that so scoff, do it alone in mirth and merriment, and hold it optimum aliena frui insania, an excellent thing to enjoy another man's madness; yet they must know, that it is a mortal sin (as [2176]Thomas holds) and as the prophet [2177]David denounceth,
they that use it, shall never dwell in God's tabernacle.
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.
are no better than injuries,biting jests, mordentes et aculeati, they are poisoned jests, leave a sting behind them, and ought not to be used.
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.
It doth me good to think yet, though I be dying, that I shall leave you, my children, sound and rich:for wealth sways all. It is not with us, as amongst those Lacedaemonian senators of Lycurgus in Plutarch,
He preferred that deserved best, was most virtuous and worthy of the place, [2231]not swiftness, or strength, or wealth, or friends carried it in those days:but inter optimos optimus, inter temperantes temperantissimus, the most temperate and best. We have no aristocracies but in contemplation, all oligarchies, wherein a few rich men domineer, do what they list, and are privileged by their greatness. [2232]They may freely trespass, and do as they please, no man dare accuse them, no not so much as mutter against them, there is no notice taken of it, they may securely do it, live after their own laws, and for their money get pardons, indulgences, redeem their souls from purgatory and hell itself,—clausum possidet arca Jovem. Let them be epicures, or atheists, libertines, Machiavellians, (as they often are) [2233]Et quamvis perjuris erit, sine gente, cruentus, they may go to heaven through the eye of a needle, if they will themselves, they may be canonised for saints, they shall be [2234]honourably interred in Mausolean tombs, commended by poets, registered in histories, have temples and statues erected to their names,—e manibus illis—nascentur violae.—If he be bountiful in his life, and liberal at his death, he shall have one to swear, as he did by Claudius the Emperor in Tacitus, he saw his soul go to heaven, and be miserably lamented at his funeral. Ambubalarum collegia, &c. Trimalcionis topanta in Petronius recta in caelum abiit, went right to heaven: a, base quean, [2235]
thou wouldst have scorned once in thy misery to have a penny from her;and why? modio nummos metiit, she measured her money by the bushel. These prerogatives do not usually belong to rich men, but to such as are most part seeming rich, let him have but a good [2236]outside, he carries it, and shall be adored for a god, as [2237]Cyrus was amongst the Persians, ob splendidum apparatum, for his gay attires; now most men are esteemed according to their clothes. In our gullish times, whom you peradventure in modesty would give place to, as being deceived by his habit, and presuming him some great worshipful man, believe it, if you shall examine his estate, he will likely be proved a serving man of no great note, my lady's tailor, his lordship's barber, or some such gull, a Fastidius Brisk, Sir Petronel Flash, a mere outside. Only this respect is given him, that wheresoever he comes, he may call for what he will, and take place by reason of his outward habit.
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.
Poverty separates them from their [2270]neighbours.
His brethren hate him if he be poor,[2274]omnes vicini oderunt,
his neighbours hate him,Pro. xiv. 20, [2275]omnes me noti ac ignoti deserunt, as he complained in the comedy, friends and strangers, all forsake me. Which is most grievous, poverty makes men ridiculous, Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, quam quod ridiculos homines facit, they must endure [2276]jests, taunts, flouts, blows of their betters, and take all in good part to get a meal's meat: [2277]magnum pauperies opprobrium, jubet quidvis et facere et pati. He must turn parasite, jester, fool, cum desipientibus desipere; saith [2278]Euripides, slave, villain, drudge to get a poor living, apply himself to each man's humours, to win and please, &c., and be buffeted when he hath all done, as Ulysses was by Melanthius [2279]in Homer, be reviled, baffled, insulted over, for [2280]potentiorum stultitia perferenda est, and may not so much as mutter against it. He must turn rogue and villain; for as the saying is, Necessitas cogit ad turpia, poverty alone makes men thieves, rebels, murderers, traitors, assassins,
because of poverty we have sinned,Ecclus. xxvii. 1, swear and forswear, bear false witness, lie, dissemble, anything, as I say, to advantage themselves, and to relieve their necessities: [2281] Culpae scelerisque magistra est, when a man is driven to his shifts, what will he not do?
thievish, sacrilegious, filthy, wicked, and mischievous:and well he might. For it makes many an upright man otherwise, had he not been in want, to take bribes, to be corrupt, to do against his conscience, to sell his tongue, heart, hand, &c., to be churlish, hard, unmerciful, uncivil, to use indirect means to help his present estate. It makes princes to exact upon their subjects, great men tyrannise, landlords oppress, justice mercenary, lawyers vultures, physicians harpies, friends importunate, tradesmen liars, honest men thieves, devout assassins, great men to prostitute their wives, daughters, and themselves, middle sort to repine, commons to mutiny, all to grudge, murmur, and complain. A great temptation to all mischief, it compels some miserable wretches to counterfeit several diseases, to dismember, make themselves blind, lame, to have a more plausible cause to beg, and lose their limbs to recover their present wants. Jodocus Damhoderius, a lawyer of Bruges, praxi rerum criminal. c. 112. hath some notable examples of such counterfeit cranks, and every village almost will yield abundant testimonies amongst us; we have dummerers, Abraham men, &c. And that which is the extent of misery, it enforceth them through anguish and wearisomeness of their lives, to make away themselves; they had rather be hanged, drowned, &c., than to live without means.
for his part, he would rather run upon a sword point (and so would any man in his wits,) than live with such base diet, or lead so wretched a life.[2287]In Japonia, 'tis a common thing to stifle their children if they be poor, or to make an abortion, which Aristotle commends. In that civil commonwealth of China, [2288]the mother strangles her child, if she be not able to bring it up, and had rather lose, than sell it, or have it endure such misery as poor men do. Arnobius, lib. 7, adversus gentes, [2289]Lactantius, lib. 5. cap. 9. objects as much to those ancient Greeks and Romans,
they did expose their children to wild beasts, strangle, or knock out their brains against a stone, in such cases.If we may give credit to [2290]Munster, amongst us Christians in Lithuania, they voluntarily mancipate and sell themselves, their wives and children to rich men, to avoid hunger and beggary; [2291] many make away themselves in this extremity. Apicius the Roman, when he cast up his accounts, and found but 100,000 crowns left, murdered himself for fear he should be famished to death. P. Forestus, in his medicinal observations, hath a memorable example of two brothers of Louvain that, being destitute of means, became both melancholy, and in a discontented humour massacred themselves. Another of a merchant, learned, wise otherwise and discreet, but out of a deep apprehension he had of a loss at seas, would not be persuaded but as [2292]Ventidius in the poet, he should die a beggar. In a word, thus much I may conclude of poor men, that though they have good [2293]parts they cannot show or make use of them: [2294]ab inopia ad virtutem obsepta est via, 'tis hard for a poor man to [2295] rise, haud facile emergunt, quorum virtutibus obstat res angusta domi. [2296]
The wisdom of the poor is despised, and his words are not heard.Eccles. vi. 19. His works are rejected, contemned, for the baseness and obscurity of the author, though laudable and good in themselves, they will not likely take.
No verses can please men or live long that are written by water-drinkers.Poor men cannot please, their actions, counsels, consultations, projects, are vilified in the world's esteem, amittunt consilium in re, which Gnatho long since observed. [2297]Sapiens crepidas sibi nunquam nec soleas fecit, a wise man never cobbled shoes; as he said of old, but how doth he prove it? I am sure we find it otherwise in our days, [2298] pruinosis horret facundia pannis. Homer himself must beg if he want means, and as by report sometimes he did [2299]
go from door to door, and sing ballads, with a company of boys about him.This common misery of theirs must needs distract, make them discontent and melancholy, as ordinarily they are, wayward, peevish, like a weary traveller, for [2300] Fames et mora bilem in nares conciunt, still murmuring and repining: Ob inopiam morosi sunt, quibus est male, as Plutarch quotes out of Euripides, and that comical poet well seconds,
If they be in adversity, they are more suspicious and apt to mistake: they think themselves scorned by reason of their misery:and therefore many generous spirits in such cases withdraw themselves from all company, as that comedian [2302]Terence is said to have done; when he perceived himself to be forsaken and poor, he voluntarily banished himself to Stymphalus, a base town in Arcadia, and there miserably died.
Give me, O Lord, neither riches nor poverty; feed me with food convenient for me.
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,
they think they see their dead friends continually in their eyes,observantes imagines, as Conciliator confesseth he saw his mother's ghost presenting herself still before him. Quod nimis miseri volunt, hoc facile credunt, still, still, still, that good father, that good son, that good wife, that dear friend runs in their minds: Totus animus hac una cogitatione defixus est, all the year long, as [2318]Pliny complains to Romanus,
methinks I see Virginius, I hear Virginius, I talk with Virginius,&c.
Can I ever cease to think of thee, and to think with sorrow? O bitter days, O nights of sorrow,&c. Gregory Nazianzen, that noble Pulcheria! O decorem, &c. flos recens, pullulans, &c. Alexander, a man of most invincible courage, after Hephestion's death, as Curtius relates, triduum jacuit ad moriendum obstinatus, lay three days together upon the ground, obstinate, to die with him, and would neither eat, drink, nor sleep. The woman that communed with Esdras (lib. 2. cap. 10.) when her son fell down dead.
fled into the field, and would not return into the city, but there resolved to remain, neither to eat nor drink, but mourn and fast until she died.
Rachel wept for her children, and would not be comforted because they were not.Matt. ii. 18. So did Adrian the emperor bewail his Antinous; Hercules, Hylas; Orpheus, Eurydice; David, Absalom; (O my dear son Absalom) Austin his mother Monica, Niobe her children, insomuch that the [2323]poets feigned her to be turned into a stone, as being stupefied through the extremity of grief. [2324]Aegeas, signo lugubri filii consternatus, in mare se proecipitatem dedit, impatient of sorrow for his son's death, drowned, himself. Our late physicians are full of such examples. Montanus consil. 242. [2325]had a patient troubled with this infirmity, by reason of her husband's death, many years together. Trincavellius, l. 1. c. 14. hath such another, almost in despair, after his [2326]mother's departure, ut se ferme proecipitatem daret; and ready through distraction to make away himself: and in his Fifteenth counsel, tells a story of one fifty years of age,
that grew desperate upon his mother's death;and cured by Fallopius, fell many years after into a relapse, by the sudden death of a daughter which he had, and could never after be recovered. The fury of this passion is so violent sometimes, that it daunts whole kingdoms and cities. Vespasian's death was pitifully lamented all over the Roman empire, totus orbis lugebat, saith Aurelius Victor. Alexander commanded the battlements of houses to be pulled down, mules and horses to have their manes shorn off, and many common soldiers to be slain, to accompany his dear Hephestion's death; which is now practised amongst the Tartars, when [2327]a great Cham dieth, ten or twelve thousand must be slain, men and horses, all they meet; and among those the [2328]Pagan Indians, their wives and servants voluntarily die with them. Leo Decimus was so much bewailed in Rome after his departure, that as Jovius gives out, [2329]communis salus, publica hilaritas, the common safety of all good fellowship, peace, mirth, and plenty died with him, tanquam eodem sepulchro cum Leone condita lugebantur: for it was a golden age whilst he lived, [2330]but after his decease an iron season succeeded, barbara vis et foeda vastitas, et dira malorum omnium incommoda, wars, plagues, vastity, discontent. When Augustus Caesar died, saith Paterculus, orbis ruinam timueramus, we were all afraid, as if heaven had fallen upon our heads. [2331]Budaeus records, how that, at Lewis the Twelfth his death, tam subita mutatio, ut qui prius digito coelum attingere videbantur, nunc humi derepente serpere, sideratos esse diceres, they that were erst in heaven, upon a sudden, as if they had been planet-strucken, lay grovelling on the ground;
and for a twelvemonth's space throughout the city, they were forbid to sing or dance.
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:
Loss of friends, and loss of goods, make many men melancholy, as I have often seen by continual meditation of such things.The same causes Arnoldus Villanovanus inculcates, Breviar. l. 1. c. 18. ex rerum amissione, damno, amicorum morte, &c. Want alone will make a man mad, to be Sans argent will cause a deep and grievous melancholy. Many persons are affected like [2339] Irishmen in this behalf, who if they have a good scimitar, had rather have a blow on their arm, than their weapon hurt: they will sooner lose their life, than their goods: and the grief that cometh hence, continueth long (saith [2340]Plater)
and out of many dispositions, procureth an habit.[2341]Montanus and Frisemelica cured a young man of 22 years of age, that so became melancholy, ab amissam pecuniam, for a sum of money which he had unhappily lost. Sckenkius hath such another story of one melancholy, because he overshot himself, and spent his stock in unnecessary building. [2342]Roger that rich bishop of Salisbury, exutus opibus et castris a Rege Stephano, spoiled of his goods by king Stephen, vi doloris absorptus, atque in amentiam versus, indecentia fecit, through grief ran mad, spoke and did he knew not what. Nothing so familiar, as for men in such cases, through anguish of mind to make away themselves. A poor fellow went to hang himself, (which Ausonius hath elegantly expressed in a neat [2343]Epigram) but finding by chance a pot of money, flung away the rope, and went merrily home, but he that hid the gold, when he missed it, hanged himself with that rope which the other man had left, in a discontented humour.
Those proud palaces that even now vaunted their tops up to heaven, were dejected as low as hell in an instant.Whom will not such misery make discontent? Terence the poet drowned himself (some say) for the loss of his comedies, which suffered shipwreck. When a poor man hath made many hungry meals, got together a small sum, which he loseth in an instant; a scholar spent many an hour's study to no purpose, his labours lost, &c., how should it otherwise be? I may conclude with Gregory, temporalium amor, quantum afficit, cum haeret possessio, tantum quum subtrahitur, urit dolor; riches do not so much exhilarate us with their possession, as they torment us with their loss.
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,
A foolish son is an heaviness to his mother.Injusta noverca: a stepmother often vexeth a whole family, is matter of repentance, exercise of patience, fuel of dissension, which made Cato's son expostulate with his father, why he should offer to marry his client Solinius' daughter, a young wench, Cujus causa novercam induceret; what offence had he done, that he should marry again?
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,
thou art above all gold and treasure,Ecclus. xxx. 15, the poor man's riches, the rich man's bliss, without thee there can be no happiness: or visited with some loathsome disease, offensive to others, or troublesome to ourselves; as a stinking breath, deformity of our limbs, crookedness, loss of an eye, leg, hand, paleness, leanness, redness, baldness, loss or want of hair, &c., hic ubi fluere caepit, diros ictus cordi infert, saith [2386]Synesius, he himself troubled not a little ob comae defectum, the loss of hair alone, strikes a cruel stroke to the heart. Acco, an old woman, seeing by chance her face in a true glass (for she used false flattering glasses belike at other times, as most gentlewomen do,) animi dolore in insaniam delapsa est, (Caelius Rhodiginus l. 17, c. 2,) ran mad. [2387]Brotheus, the son of Vulcan, because he was ridiculous for his imperfections, flung himself into the fire. Lais of Corinth, now grown old, gave up her glass to Venus, for she could hot abide to look upon it. [2388]Qualis sum nolo, qualis eram nequeo. Generally to fair nice pieces, old age and foul linen are two most odious things, a torment of torments, they may not abide the thought of it,
Hannah wept sore, did not eat, and was troubled in spirit, and all for her barrenness,1 Sam. 1. and Gen. 30. Rachel said
in the anguish of her soul, give me a child, or I shall die:another hath too many: one was never married, and that's his hell, another is, and that's his plague. Some are troubled in that they are obscure; others by being traduced, slandered, abused, disgraced, vilified, or any way injured: minime miror eos (as he said) qui insanire occipiunt ex injuria, I marvel not at all if offences make men mad. Seventeen particular causes of anger and offence Aristotle reckons them up, which for brevity's sake I must omit. No tidings troubles one; ill reports, rumours, bad tidings or news, hard hap, ill success, cast in a suit, vain hopes, or hope deferred, another: expectation, adeo omnibus in rebus molesta semper est expectatio, as [2390]Polybius observes; one is too eminent, another too base born, and that alone tortures him as much as the rest: one is out of action, company, employment; another overcome and tormented with worldly cares, and onerous business. But what [2391]tongue can suffice to speak of all?
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.
many grains and small sands sink a ship, many small drops make a flood,&c., often reiterated; many dispositions produce an habit.
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,
He came home sorrowful, and troubled in his mind, his servants did all they possibly could to please him; one pulled off his socks, another made ready his bed, a third his supper, all did their utmost endeavours to ease his grief, and exhilarate his person, he was profoundly melancholy, he had lost his son, illud angebat, that was his Cordolium, his pain, his agony which could not be removed.
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.
he forsook the city, lived in groves and hollow trees, upon a green bank by a brook side, or confluence of waters all day long, and all night.Quae quidem (saith he) plurimum atra bile vexatis et melancholicis eveniunt, deserta frequentant, hominumque congressum aversantur; [2535]which is an ordinary thing with melancholy men. The Egyptians therefore in their hieroglyphics expressed a melancholy man by a hare sitting in her form, as being a most timorous and solitary creature, Pierius Hieroglyph. l. 12. But this, and all precedent symptoms, are more or less apparent, as the humour is intended or remitted, hardly perceived in some, or not all, most manifest in others. Childish in some, terrible in others; to be derided in one, pitied or admired in another; to him by fits, to a second continuate: and howsoever these symptoms be common and incident to all persons, yet they are the more remarkable, frequent, furious and violent in melancholy men. To speak in a word, there is nothing so vain, absurd, ridiculous, extravagant, impossible, incredible, so monstrous a chimera, so prodigious and strange, [2536]such as painters and poets durst not attempt, which they will not really fear, feign, suspect and imagine unto themselves: and that which [2537]Lod. Vives said in a jest of a silly country fellow, that killed his ass for drinking up the moon, ut lunam mundo redderet, you may truly say of them in earnest; they will act, conceive all extremes, contrarieties, and contradictions, and that in infinite varieties. Melancholici plane incredibilia sibi persuadent, ut vix omnibus saeculis duo reperti sint, qui idem imaginati sint (Erastus de Lamiis), scarce two of two thousand that concur in the same symptoms. The tower of Babel never yielded such confusion of tongues, as the chaos of melancholy doth variety of symptoms. There is in all melancholy similitudo dissimilis, like men's faces, a disagreeing likeness still; and as in a river we swim in the same place, though not in the same numerical water; as the same instrument affords several lessons, so the same disease yields diversity of symptoms. Which howsoever they be diverse, intricate, and hard to be confined, I will adventure yet in such a vast confusion and generality to bring them into some order; and so descend to particulars.
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,
No evil is to be done that good may come of it;reclamat Christus, reclamat Scriptura, God, and all good men are [2781]against it: He that stabs another, can kill his body; but he that stabs himself, kills his own soul. [2782]Male meretur, qui dat mendico, quod edat; nam et illud quod dat, perit; et illi producit vitam ad miseriam: he that gives a beggar an alms (as that comical poet said) doth ill, because he doth but prolong his miseries. But Lactantius l. 6. c. 7. de vero cultu, calls it a detestable opinion, and fully confutes it, lib. 3. de sap. cap. 18. and S. Austin, epist. 52. ad Macedonium, cap. 61. ad Dulcitium Tribunum: so doth Hierom to Marcella of Blesilla's death, Non recipio tales animas, &c., he calls such men martyres stultae Philosophiae: so doth Cyprian de duplici martyrio; Si qui sic moriantur, aut infirmitas, aut ambitio, aut dementia cogit eos; 'tis mere madness so to do, [2783]furore est ne moriare mori. To this effect writes Arist. 3. Ethic. Lipsius Manuduc. ad Stoicam Philosophiaem lib. 3. dissertat. 23. but it needs no confutation. This only let me add, that in some cases, those [2784]hard censures of such as offer violence to their own persons, or in some desperate fit to others, which sometimes they do, by stabbing, slashing, &c. are to be mitigated, as in such as are mad, beside themselves for the time, or found to have been long melancholy, and that in extremity, they know not what they do, deprived of reason, judgment, all, [2785]as a ship that is void of a pilot, must needs impinge upon the next rock or sands, and suffer shipwreck. [2786]P. Forestus hath a story of two melancholy brethren, that made away themselves, and for so foul a fact, were accordingly censured to be infamously buried, as in such cases they use: to terrify others, as it did the Milesian virgins of old; but upon farther examination of their misery and madness, the censure was [2787]revoked, and they were solemnly interred, as Saul was by David, 2 Sam. ii. 4. and Seneca well adviseth, Irascere interfectori, sed miserere interfecti; be justly offended with him as he was a murderer, but pity him now as a dead man. Thus of their goods and bodies we can dispose; but what shall become of their souls, God alone can tell; his mercy may come inter pontem et fontem, inter gladium et jugulum, betwixt the bridge and the brook, the knife and the throat. Quod cuiquam contigit, quivis potest: Who knows how he may be tempted? It is his case, it may be thine: [2788]Quae sua sors hodie est, eras fore vestra potest. We ought not to be so rash and rigorous in our censures, as some are; charity will judge and hope the best: God be merciful unto us all.
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.
tells them that it is not to be expected, except with a true faith they call upon God, and teach their patients to do the like.The council of Lateran, Canon 22. decreed they should do so: the fathers of the church have still advised as much: whatsoever thou takest in hand (saith [2816]Gregory)
let God be of thy counsel, consult with him; that healeth those that are broken in heart, (Psal. cxlvii. 3.) and bindeth up their sores.Otherwise as the prophet Jeremiah, cap. xlvi. 11. denounced to Egypt, In vain shalt thou use many medicines, for thou shalt have no health. It is the same counsel which [2817]Comineus that politic historiographer gives to all Christian princes, upon occasion of that unhappy overthrow of Charles Duke of Burgundy, by means of which he was extremely melancholy, and sick to death: insomuch that neither physic nor persuasion could do him any good, perceiving his preposterous error belike, adviseth all great men in such cases, [2818]
to pray first to God with all submission and penitency, to confess their sins, and then to use physic.The very same fault it was, which the prophet reprehends in Asa king of Judah, that he relied more on physic than on God, and by all means would have him to amend it. And 'tis a fit caution to be observed of all other sorts of men. The prophet David was so observant of this precept, that in his greatest misery and vexation of mind, he put this rule first in practice. Psal. lxxvii. 3.
When I am in heaviness, I will think on God.Psal. lxxxvi. 4.
Comfort the soul of thy servant, for unto thee I lift up my soul:and verse 7.
In the day of trouble will I call upon thee, for thou hearest me.Psal. liv. 1.
Save me, O God, by thy name,&c. Psal. lxxxii. Psal. xx. And 'tis the common practice of all good men, Psal. cvii. 13.
when their heart was humbled with heaviness, they cried to the Lord in their troubles, and he delivered them from their distress.And they have found good success in so doing, as David confesseth, Psal. xxx. 12.
Thou hast turned my mourning into joy, thou hast loosed my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness.Therefore he adviseth all others to do the like, Psal. xxxi. 24.
All ye that trust in the Lord, be strong, and he shall establish your heart.It is reported by [2819]Suidas, speaking of Hezekiah, that there was a great book of old, of King Solomon's writing, which contained medicines for all manner of diseases, and lay open still as they came into the temple: but Hezekiah king of Jerusalem, caused it to be taken away, because it made the people secure, to neglect their duty in calling and relying upon God, out of a confidence on those remedies. [2820]Minutius that worthy consul of Rome in an oration he made to his soldiers, was much offended with them, and taxed their ignorance, that in their misery called more on him than upon God. A general fault it is all over the world, and Minutius's speech concerns us all, we rely more on physic, and seek oftener to physicians, than to God himself. As much faulty are they that prescribe, as they that ask, respecting wholly their gain, and trusting more to their ordinary receipts and medicines many times, than to him that made them. I would wish all patients in this behalf, in the midst of their melancholy, to remember that of Siracides, Ecc. i. 11. and 12.
The fear of the Lord is glory and gladness, and rejoicing. The fear of the Lord maketh a merry heart, and giveth gladness, and joy, and long life:and all such as prescribe physic, to begin in nomine Dei, as [2821]Mesue did, to imitate Laelius a Fonte Eugubinus, that in all his consultations, still concludes with a prayer for the good success of his business; and to remember that of Creto one of their predecessors, fuge avaritiam, et sine oratione et invocations Dei nihil facias avoid covetousness, and do nothing without invocation upon God.
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,
And God often winks at these impostures, because they forsake his word, and betake themselves to the devil, as they do that seek after holy water, crosses,&c. Wierus, lib. 4. cap. 3. What can these men plead for themselves more than those heathen gods, the same cures done by both, the same spirit that seduceth; but read more of the Pagan god's effects in Austin de Civitate Dei, l. 10. cap. 6. and of Aesculapius especially in Cicogna l. 3. cap. 8. or put case they could help, why should we rather seek to them, than to Christ himself, since that he so kindly invites us unto him,
Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will ease you,Mat. xi. and we know that there is one God,
one Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ,(1 Tim. ii. 5)
who gave himself a ransom for all men.We know that
we have an [2840] advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ(1 Joh. ii. 1.) that there is no
other name under heaven, by which we can be saved, but by his,who is always ready to hear us, and sits at the right hand of God, and from [2841] whom we can have no repulse, solus vult, solus potest, curat universos tanquam singulos, et [2842]unumquemque nostrum et solum, we are all as one to him, he cares for us all as one, and why should we then seek to any other but to him.
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.
Barbarous immanity([2863]Melancthon terms it)
and folly to be deplored, so to contemn the precepts of health, good remedies, and voluntarily to pull death, and many maladies upon their own heads.Though many again are in that other extreme too profuse, suspicious, and jealous of their health, too apt to take physic on every small occasion, to aggravate every slender passion, imperfection, impediment: if their finger do but ache, run, ride, send for a physician, as many gentlewomen do, that are sick, without a cause, even when they will themselves, upon every toy or small discontent, and when he comes, they make it worse than it is, by amplifying that which is not. [2864]Hier. Capivaccius sets it down as a common fault of all
melancholy persons to say their symptoms are greater than they are, to help themselves.And which [2865]Mercurialis notes, consil. 53.
to be more troublesome to their physicians, than other ordinary patients, that they may have change of physic.
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.
very commodious to a city(according to [2908]Vegetius)
when fresh springs are included within the walls,as at Corinth, in the midst of the town almost, there was arx altissima scatens fontibus, a goodly mount full of fresh water springs:
if nature afford them not they must be had by art.It is a wonder to read of those [2909]stupend aqueducts, and infinite cost hath been bestowed in Rome of old, Constantinople, Carthage, Alexandria, and such populous cities, to convey good and wholesome waters: read [2910]Frontinus, Lipsius de admir. [2911]Plinius, lib. 3. cap. 11, Strabo in his Geogr. That aqueduct of Claudius was most eminent, fetched upon arches fifteen miles, every arch 109 feet high: they had fourteen such other aqueducts, besides lakes and cisterns, 700 as I take it; [2912]every house had private pipes and channels to serve them for their use. Peter Gillius, in his accurate description of Constantinople, speaks of an old cistern which he went down to see, 336 feet long, 180 feet broad, built of marble, covered over with arch-work, and sustained by 336 pillars, 12 feet asunder, and in eleven rows, to contain sweet water. Infinite cost in channels and cisterns, from Nilus to Alexandria, hath been formerly bestowed, to the admiration of these times; [2913]their cisterns so curiously cemented and composed, that a beholder would take them to be all of one stone: when the foundation is laid, and cistern made, their house is half built. That Segovian aqueduct in Spain, is much wondered at in these days, [2914]upon three rows of pillars, one above another, conveying sweet water to every house: but each city almost is full of such aqueducts. Amongst the rest [2915]he is eternally to be commended, that brought that new stream to the north side of London at his own charge: and Mr. Otho Nicholson, founder of our waterworks and elegant conduit in Oxford. So much have all times attributed to this element, to be conveniently provided of it: although Galen hath taken exceptions at such waters, which run through leaden pipes, ob cerussam quae in iis generatur, for that unctuous ceruse, which causeth dysenteries and fluxes; [2916]yet as Alsarius Crucius of Genna well answers, it is opposite to common experience. If that were true, most of our Italian cities, Montpelier in France, with infinite others, would find this inconvenience, but there is no such matter. For private families, in what sort they should furnish themselves, let them consult with P. Crescentius, de Agric. l. 1. c. 4, Pamphilius Hirelacus, and the rest.
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,
A sick [3248]man(saith he)
sits upon a green bank, and when the dog-star parcheth the plains, and dries up rivers, he lies in a shady bower, Fronde sub arborea ferventia temperat astra, and feeds his eyes with variety of objects, herbs, trees, to comfort his misery, he receives many delightsome smells, and fills his ears with that sweet and various harmony of birds: good God(saith he),
what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!He that should be admitted on a sudden to the sight of such a palace as that of Escurial in Spain, or to that which the Moors built at Granada, Fontainebleau in France, the Turk's gardens in his seraglio, wherein all manner of birds and beasts are kept for pleasure; wolves, bears, lynxes, tigers, lions, elephants, &c., or upon the banks of that Thracian Bosphorus: the pope's Belvedere in Rome, [3249]as pleasing as those horti pensiles in Babylon, or that Indian king's delightsome garden in [3250]Aelian; or [3251]those famous gardens of the Lord Cantelow in France, could, not choose, though he were never so ill paid, but be much recreated for the time; or many of our noblemen's gardens at home. To take a boat in a pleasant evening, and with music [3252]to row upon the waters, which Plutarch so much applauds, Elian admires, upon the river Pineus: in those Thessalian fields, beset with green bays, where birds so sweetly sing that passengers, enchanted as it were with their heavenly music, omnium laborum et curarum obliviscantur, forget forthwith all labours, care, and grief: or in a gondola through the Grand Canal in Venice, to see those goodly palaces, must needs refresh and give content to a melancholy dull spirit. Or to see the inner rooms of a fair-built and sumptuous edifice, as that of the Persian kings, so much renowned by Diodorus and Curtius, in which all was almost beaten gold, [3253]chairs, stools, thrones, tabernacles, and pillars of gold, plane trees, and vines of gold, grapes of precious stones, all the other ornaments of pure gold,
I see the gods now(saith he)
which before I heard of,nec feliciorem ullam vitae meae aut optavi, aut sensi diem: it was the happiest day that ever he had in his life. Such a sight alone were able of itself to drive away melancholy; if not for ever, yet it must needs expel it for a time. Radzivilus was much taken with the pasha's palace in Cairo, and amongst many other objects which that place afforded, with that solemnity of cutting the banks of the Nile by Imbram Pasha, when it overflowed, besides two or three hundred gilded galleys on the water, he saw two millions of men gathered together on the land, with turbans as white as snow; and 'twas a goodly sight. The very reading of feasts, triumphs, interviews, nuptials, tilts, tournaments, combats, and monomachies, is most acceptable and pleasant. [3264] Franciscus Modius hath made a large collection of such solemnities in two great tomes, which whoso will may peruse. The inspection alone of those curious iconographies of temples and palaces, as that of the Lateran church in Albertus Durer, that of the temple of Jerusalem in [3265]Josephus, Adricomius, and Villalpandus: that of the Escurial in Guadas, of Diana at Ephesus in Pliny, Nero's golden palace in Rome, [3266]Justinian's in Constantinople, that Peruvian Jugo's in [3267]Cusco, ut non ab hominibus, sed a daemoniis constructum videatur; St. Mark's in Venice, by Ignatius, with many such; priscorum artificum opera (saith that [3268]interpreter of Pausanias), the rare workmanship of those ancient Greeks, in theatres, obelisks, temples, statues, gold, silver, ivory, marble images, non minore ferme quum leguntur, quam quum cernuntur, animum delectatione complent, affect one as much by reading almost as by sight.
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:
to please himself with the sight, and others with the narration of it.News are generally welcome to all our ears, avide audimus, aures enim hominum novitate laetantur ([3286]as Pliny observes), we long after rumour to hear and listen to it, [3287]densum humeris bibit aure vulgus. We are most part too inquisitive and apt to hearken after news, which Caesar, in his [3288]Commentaries, observes of the old Gauls, they would be inquiring of every carrier and passenger what they had heard or seen, what news abroad?
For most part in these kind of disports 'tis not art or skill, but subtlety, cony-catching, knavery, chance and fortune carries all away:'tis ambulatoria pecunia,
A thing so common all over Europe at this day, and so generally abused, that many men are utterly undone by it,their means spent, patrimonies consumed, they and their posterity beggared; besides swearing, wrangling, drinking, loss of time, and such inconveniences, which are ordinary concomitants: [3295]
for when once they have got a haunt of such companies, and habit of gaming, they can hardly be drawn from it, but as an itch it will tickle them, and as it is with whoremasters, once entered, they cannot easily leave it off:Vexat mentes insania cupido, they are mad upon their sport. And in conclusion (which Charles the Seventh, that good French king, published in an edict against gamesters) unde piae et hilaris vitae, suffugium sibi suisque liberis, totique familiae, &c.
That which was once their livelihood, should have maintained wife, children, family, is now spent and gone;maeror et egestas, &c., sorrow and beggary succeeds. So good things may be abused, and that which was first invented to [3296] refresh men's weary spirits, when they come from other labours and studies to exhilarate the mind, to entertain time and company, tedious otherwise in those long solitary winter nights, and keep them from worse matters, an honest exercise is contrarily perverted.
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.
and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other prison than that library, and to be chained together with so many good authors et mortuis magistris.So sweet is the delight of study, the more learning they have (as he that hath a dropsy, the more he drinks the thirstier he is) the more they covet to learn, and the last day is prioris discipulus; harsh at first learning is, radices amarcae, but fractus dulces, according to that of Isocrates, pleasant at last; the longer they live, the more they are enamoured with the Muses. Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Leyden in Holland, was mewed up in it all the year long: and that which to thy thinking should have bred a loathing, caused in him a greater liking. [3339]
I no sooner(saith he)
come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones, and rich men that know not this happiness.I am not ignorant in the meantime (notwithstanding this which I have said) how barbarously and basely, for the most part, our ruder gentry esteem of libraries and books, how they neglect and contemn so great a treasure, so inestimable a benefit, as Aesop's cock did the jewel he found in the dunghill; and all through error, ignorance, and want of education. And 'tis a wonder, withal, to observe how much they will vainly cast away in unnecessary expenses, quot modis pereant (saith [3340]Erasmus) magnatibus pecuniae, quantum absumant alea, scorta, compotationes, profectiones non necessariae, pompae, bella quaesita, ambitio, colax, morio, ludio, &c., what in hawks, hounds, lawsuits, vain building, gormandising, drinking, sports, plays, pastimes, &c. If a well-minded man to the Muses, would sue to some of them for an exhibition, to the farther maintenance or enlargement of such a work, be it college, lecture, library, or whatsoever else may tend to the advancement of learning, they are so unwilling, so averse, that they had rather see these which are already, with such cost and care erected, utterly ruined, demolished or otherwise employed; for they repine many and grudge at such gifts and revenues so bestowed: and therefore it were in vain, as Erasmus well notes, vel ab his, vel a negotiatoribus qui se Mammonae dediderunt, improbum fortasse tale officium exigere, to solicit or ask anything of such men that are likely damned to riches; to this purpose. For my part I pity these men, stultos jubeo esse libenter, let them go as they are, in the catalogue of Ignoramus. How much, on the other side, are all we bound that are scholars, to those munificent Ptolemies, bountiful Maecenases, heroical patrons, divine spirits,
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?
Every disease of the soul,saith [3356]Austin,
hath a peculiar medicine in the Scripture; this only is required, that the sick man take the potion which God hath already tempered.[3357]Gregory calls it
a glass wherein we may see all our infirmities,ignitum colloquium, Psalm cxix. 140. [3358]Origen a charm. And therefore Hierom prescribes Rusticus the monk, [3359]
continually to read the Scripture, and to meditate on that which he hath read; for as mastication is to meat, so is meditation on that which we read.I would for these causes wish him that, is melancholy to use both human and divine authors, voluntarily to impose some task upon himself, to divert his melancholy thoughts: to study the art of memory, Cosmus Rosselius, Pet. Ravennas, Scenkelius' Detectus, or practise brachygraphy, &c., that will ask a great deal of attention: or let him demonstrate a proposition in Euclid, in his five last books, extract a square root, or study Algebra: than which, as [3360]Clavius holds,
in all human disciplines nothing can be more excellent and pleasant, so abstruse and recondite, so bewitching, so miraculous, so ravishing, so easy withal and full of delight,omnem humanum captum superare videtur. By this means you may define ex ungue leonem, as the diverb is, by his thumb alone the bigness of Hercules, or the true dimensions of the great [3361]Colossus, Solomon's temple, and Domitian's amphitheatre out of a little part. By this art you may contemplate the variation of the twenty-three letters, which may be so infinitely varied, that the words complicated and deduced thence will not be contained within the compass of the firmament; ten words may be varied 40,320 several ways: by this art you may examine how many men may stand one by another in the whole superficies of the earth, some say 148,456,800,000,000, assignando singulis passum quadratum (assigning a square foot to each), how many men, supposing all the world as habitable as France, as fruitful and so long-lived, may be born in 60,000 years, and so may you demonstrate with [3362]Archimedes how many sands the mass of the whole world might contain if all sandy, if you did but first know how much a small cube as big as a mustard-seed might hold, with infinite such. But in all nature what is there so stupendous as to examine and calculate the motion of the planets, their magnitudes, apogees, perigees, eccentricities, how far distant from the earth, the bigness, thickness, compass of the firmament, each star, with their diameters and circumference, apparent area, superficies, by those curious helps of glasses, astrolabes, sextants, quadrants, of which Tycho Brahe in his mechanics, optics ([3363]divine optics) arithmetic, geometry, and such like arts and instruments? What so intricate and pleasing withal, as to peruse and practise Heron Alexandrinus's works, de spiritalibus, de machinis bellicis, de machina se movente, Jordani Nemorarii de ponderibus proposit. 13, that pleasant tract of Machometes Bragdedinus de superficierum divisionibus, Apollonius's Conics, or Commandinus's labours in that kind, de centro gravitatis, with many such geometrical theorems and problems? Those rare instruments and mechanical inventions of Jac. Bessonus, and Cardan to this purpose, with many such experiments intimated long since by Roger Bacon, in his tract de [3364]Secretis artis et naturae, as to make a chariot to move sine animali, diving boats, to walk on the water by art, and to fly in the air, to make several cranes and pulleys, quibus homo trahat ad se mille homines, lift up and remove great weights, mills to move themselves, Archita's dove, Albertus's brazen head, and such thaumaturgical works. But especially to do strange miracles by glasses, of which Proclus and Bacon writ of old, burning glasses, multiplying glasses, perspectives, ut unus homo appareat exercitus, to see afar off, to represent solid bodies by cylinders and concaves, to walk in the air, ut veraciter videant, (saith Bacon) aurum et argentum et quicquid aliud volunt, et quum veniant ad locum visionis, nihil inveniant, which glasses are much perfected of late by Baptista Porta and Galileo, and much more is promised by Maginus and Midorgius, to be performed in this kind. Otocousticons some speak of, to intend hearing, as the other do sight; Marcellus Vrencken, a Hollander, in his epistle to Burgravius, makes mention of a friend of his that is about an instrument, quo videbit quae in altero horizonte sint. But our alchemists, methinks, and Rosicrucians afford most rarities, and are fuller of experiments: they can make gold, separate and alter metals, extract oils, salts, lees, and do more strange works than Geber, Lullius, Bacon, or any of those ancients. Crollius hath made after his master Paracelsus, aurum fulminans, or aurum volatile, which shall imitate thunder and lightning, and crack louder than any gunpowder; Cornelius Drible a perpetual motion, inextinguishable lights, linum non ardens, with many such feats; see his book de natura elementorum, besides hail, wind, snow, thunder, lightning, &c., those strange fireworks, devilish petards, and such like warlike machinations derived hence, of which read Tartalea and others. Ernestus Burgravius, a disciple of Paracelsus, hath published a discourse, in which he specifies a lamp to be made of man's blood, Lucerna vitae et mortis index, so he terms it, which chemically prepared forty days, and afterwards kept in a glass, shall show all the accidents of this life; si lampus hic clarus, tunc homo hilaris et sanus corpore et animo; si nebulosus et depressus, male afficitur, et sic pro statu hominis variatur, unde sumptus sanguis; [3365]and which is most wonderful, it dies with the party, cum homine perit, et evanescit, the lamp and the man whence the blood was taken, are extinguished together. The same author hath another tract of Mumia (all out as vain and prodigious as the first) by which he will cure most diseases, and transfer them from a man to a beast, by drawing blood from one, and applying it to the other, vel in plantam derivare, and an Alexi-pharmacum, of which Roger Bacon of old in his Tract. de retardanda senectute, to make a man young again, live three or four hundred years. Besides panaceas, martial amulets, unguentum armarium, balsams, strange extracts, elixirs, and such like magico-magnetical cures. Now what so pleasing can there be as the speculation of these things, to read and examine such experiments, or if a man be more mathematically given, to calculate, or peruse Napier's Logarithms, or those tables of artificial [3366]sines and tangents, not long since set out by mine old collegiate, good friend, and late fellow-student of Christ Church in Oxford, [3367]Mr. Edmund Gunter, which will perform that by addition and subtraction only, which heretofore Regiomontanus's tables did by multiplication and division, or those elaborate conclusions of his [3368]sector, quadrant, and cross-staff. Or let him that is melancholy calculate spherical triangles, square a circle, cast a nativity, which howsoever some tax, I say with [3369]Garcaeus, dabimus hoc petulantibus ingeniis, we will in some cases allow: or let him make an ephemerides, read Suisset the calculator's works, Scaliger de emendatione temporum, and Petavius his adversary, till he understand them, peruse subtle Scotus and Suarez's metaphysics, or school divinity, Occam, Thomas, Entisberus, Durand, &c. If those other do not affect him, and his means be great, to employ his purse and fill his head, he may go find the philosopher's stone; he may apply his mind, I say, to heraldry, antiquity, invent impresses, emblems; make epithalamiums, epitaphs, elegies, epigrams, palindroma epigrammata, anagrams, chronograms, acrostics, upon his friends' names; or write a comment on Martianus Capella, Tertullian de pallio, the Nubian geography, or upon Aelia Laelia Crispis, as many idle fellows have essayed; and rather than do nothing, vary a [3370]verse a thousand ways with Putean, so torturing his wits, or as Rainnerus of Luneburg, [3371]2150 times in his Proteus Poeticus, or Scaliger, Chrysolithus, Cleppissius, and others, have in like sort done. If such voluntary tasks, pleasure and delight, or crabbedness of these studies, will not yet divert their idle thoughts, and alienate their imaginations, they must be compelled, saith Christophorus a Vega, cogi debent, l. 5. c. 14, upon some mulct, if they perform it not, quod ex officio incumbat, loss of credit or disgrace, such as our public University exercises. For, as he that plays for nothing will not heed his game; no more will voluntary employment so thoroughly affect a student, except he be very intent of himself, and take an extraordinary delight in the study, about which he is conversant. It should be of that nature his business, which volens nolens he must necessarily undergo, and without great loss, mulct, shame, or hindrance, he may not omit.
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.
but compel that which is mortal to do as much as that which is immortal: that which is earthly, as that which is ethereal. But as the ox tired, told the camel, (both serving one master) that refused to carry some part of his burden, before it were long he should be compelled to carry all his pack, and skin to boot (which by and by, the ox being dead, fell out), the body may say to the soul, that will give him no respite or remission: a little after, an ague, vertigo, consumption, seizeth on them both, all his study is omitted, and they must be compelled to be sick together:he that tenders his own good estate, and health, must let them draw with equal yoke, both alike, [3375]
that so they may happily enjoy their wished health.
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:
two or three hours after supper, when as the meat is now settled at the bottom of the stomach, and 'tis good to lie on the right side first, because at that site the liver doth rest under the stomach, not molesting any way, but heating him as a fire doth a kettle, that is put to it. After the first sleep 'tis not amiss to lie on the left side, that the meat may the better descend;and sometimes again on the belly, but never on the back. Seven or eight hours is a competent time for a melancholy man to rest, as Crato thinks; but as some do, to lie in bed and not sleep, a day, or half a day together, to give assent to pleasing conceits and vain imaginations, is many ways pernicious. To procure this sweet moistening sleep, it's best to take away the occasions (if it be possible) that hinder it, and then to use such inward or outward remedies, which may cause it. Constat hodie (saith Boissardus in his tract de magia, cap. 4.) multos ita fascinari ut noctes integras exigant insomnes, summa, inquietudine animorum et corporum; many cannot sleep for witches and fascinations, which are too familiar in some places; they call it, dare alicui malam noctem. But the ordinary causes are heat and dryness, which must first be removed: [3380]a hot and dry brain never sleeps well: grief, fears, cares, expectations, anxieties, great businesses, [3381]In aurum utramque otiose ut dormias, and all violent perturbations of the mind, must in some sort be qualified, before we can hope for any good repose. He that sleeps in the daytime, or is in suspense, fear, any way troubled in mind, or goes to bed upon a full [3382]stomach, may never hope for quiet rest in the night; nec enim meritoria somnos admittunt, as the [3383]poet saith; inns and such like troublesome places are not for sleep; one calls ostler, another tapster, one cries and shouts, another sings, whoops, halloos,
sweet music,which Ficinus commends, lib. 1. cap. 24, or as Jobertus, med. pract. lib. 3. cap. 10. [3387]
to read some pleasant author till he be asleep, to have a basin of water still dropping by his bedside,or to lie near that pleasant murmur, lene sonantis aquae. Some floodgates, arches, falls of water, like London Bridge, or some continuate noise which may benumb the senses, lenis motus, silentium et tenebra, tum et ipsa voluntas somnos faciunt; as a gentle noise to some procures sleep, so, which Bernardinus Tilesius, lib. de somno, well observes, silence, in a dark room, and the will itself, is most available to others. Piso commends frications, Andrew Borde a good draught of strong drink before one goes to bed; I say, a nutmeg and ale, or a good draught of Muscadine, with a toast and nutmeg, or a posset of the same, which many use in a morning, but methinks, for such as have dry brains, are much more proper at night; some prescribe a [3388] sup of vinegar as they go to bed, a spoonful, saith Aetius Tetrabib. lib. 2. ser. 2. cap. 10. lib. 6. cap. 10. Aegineta, lib. 3. cap. 14. Piso,
a little after meat,[3389]
because it rarefies melancholy, and procures an appetite to sleep.Donat. ab Altomar. cap. 7. and Mercurialis approve of it, if the malady proceed from the [3390]spleen. Salust. Salvian. lib. 2. cap. 1. de remed. Hercules de Saxonia in Pan. Aelinus, Montaltus de morb. capitis, cap. 28. de Melan. are altogether against it. Lod. Mercatus, de inter. Morb. cau. lib. 1. cap. 17. in some cases doth allow it. [3391]Rhasis seems to deliberate of it, though Simeon commend it (in sauce peradventure) he makes a question of it: as for baths, fomentations, oils, potions, simples or compounds, inwardly taken to this purpose, [3392] I shall speak of them elsewhere. If, in the midst of the night, when they lie awake, which is usual to toss and tumble, and not sleep, [3393] Ranzovius would have them, if it be in warm weather, to rise and walk three or four turns (till they be cold) about the chamber, and then go to bed again.
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.
the best way was to have divine and celestial meditations, and to use honest actions in the daytime. [3397]Lod. Vives wonders how schoolmen could sleep quietly, and were not terrified in the night, or walk in the dark, they had such monstrous questions, and thought of such terrible matters all day long.They had need, amongst the rest, to sacrifice to god Morpheus, whom [3398] Philostratus paints in a white and black coat, with a horn and ivory box full of dreams, of the same colours, to signify good and bad. If you will know how to interpret them, read Artemidorus, Sambucus and Cardan; but how to help them, [3399]I must refer you to a more convenient place.
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.
It would be a perfect remedy against all corruption, if,as [3411]Roger Bacon hath it,
we could but moderate ourselves in those six non-natural things.[3412]
If it be any disgrace, abuse, temporal loss, calumny, death of friends, imprisonment, banishment, be not troubled with it, do not fear, be not angry, grieve not at it, but with all courage sustain it.(Gordonius, lib. 1. c. 15. de conser. vit.) Tu contra audentior ito. [3413]If it be sickness, ill success, or any adversity that hath caused it, oppose an invincible courage,
fortify thyself by God's word, or otherwise,mala bonis persuadenda, set prosperity against adversity, as we refresh our eyes by seeing some pleasant meadow, fountain, picture, or the like: recreate thy mind by some contrary object, with some more pleasing meditation divert thy thoughts.
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,
seen the beauty of the skies,stars errant, fixed, &c., insuavis erit admiratio, it will do him no pleasure, except he have somebody to impart what he hath seen. It is the best thing in the world, as [3429]Seneca therefore adviseth in such a case,
to get a trusty friend, to whom we may freely and sincerely pour out our secrets; nothing so delighteth and easeth the mind, as when we have a prepared bosom, to which our secrets may descend, of whose conscience we are assured as our own, whose speech may ease our succourless estate, counsel relieve, mirth expel our mourning, and whose very sight may be acceptable unto us.It was the counsel which that politic [3430]Comineus gave to all princes, and others distressed in mind, by occasion of Charles Duke of Burgundy, that was much perplexed,
first to pray to God, and lay himself open to him, and then to some special friend, whom we hold most dear, to tell all our grievances to him; nothing so forcible to strengthen, recreate, and heal the wounded soul of a miserable man.
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.
Many,saith [3447]Galen,
have been cured by good counsel and persuasion alone.
Heaviness of the heart of man doth bring it down, but a good word rejoiceth it,Prov. xii. 25.
And there is he that speaketh words like the pricking of a sword, but the tongue of a wise man is health,ver. 18. Oratio, namque saucii animi est remedium, a gentle speech is the true cure of a wounded soul, as [3448]Plutarch contends out of Aeschylus and Euripides:
if it be wisely administered it easeth grief and pain, as diverse remedies do many other diseases.'Tis incantationis instar, a charm, aestuantis animi refrigerium, that true Nepenthe of Homer, which was no Indian plant, or feigned medicine, which Epidamna, Thonis' wife, sent Helena for a token, as Macrobius, 7. Saturnal. Goropius Hermat. lib. 9. Greg. Nazianzen, and others suppose, but opportunity of speech: for Helena's bowl, Medea's unction, Venus's girdle, Circe's cup, cannot so enchant, so forcibly move or alter as it doth. A letter sent or read will do as much; multum allevor quum tuas literas lego, I am much eased, as [3449]Tully wrote to Pomponius Atticus, when I read thy letters, and as Julianus the Apostate once signified to Maximus the philosopher; as Alexander slept with Homer's works, so do I with thine epistles, tanquam Paeoniis medicamentis, easque assidue tanquam, recentes et novas iteramus; scribe ergo, et assidue scribe, or else come thyself; amicus ad amicum venies. Assuredly a wise and well-spoken man may do what he will in such a case; a good orator alone, as [3450]Tully holds, can alter affections by power of his eloquence,
comfort such as are afflicted, erect such as are depressed, expel and mitigate fear, lust, anger,&c. And how powerful is the charm of a discreet and dear friend? Ille regit dictis animos et temperat iras. What may not he effect? As [3451]Chremes told Menedemus,
Fear not, conceal it not, O friend! but tell me what it is that troubles thee, and I shall surely help thee by comfort, counsel, or in the matter itself.[3452] Arnoldus, lib. 1. breviar. cap. 18. speaks of a usurer in his time, that upon a loss, much melancholy and discontent, was so cured. As imagination, fear, grief, cause such passions, so conceits alone, rectified by good hope, counsel, &c., are able again to help: and 'tis incredible how much they can do in such a case, as [3453]Trincavellius illustrates by an example of a patient of his; Porphyrius, the philosopher, in Plotinus's life (written by him), relates, that being in a discontented humour through insufferable anguish of mind, he was going to make away himself: but meeting by chance his master Plotinus, who perceiving by his distracted looks all was not well, urged him to confess his grief: which when he had heard, he used such comfortable speeches, that he redeemed him e faucibus Erebi, pacified his unquiet mind, insomuch that he was easily reconciled to himself, and much abashed to think afterwards that he should ever entertain so vile a motion. By all means, therefore, fair promises, good words, gentle persuasions, are to be used, not to be too rigorous at first, [3454]
or to insult over them, not to deride, neglect, or contemn,but rather, as Lemnius exhorteth,
to pity, and by all plausible means to seek to redress them:but if satisfaction may not be had, mild courses, promises, comfortable speeches, and good counsel will not take place; then as Christophorus a Vega determines, lib. 3. cap. 14. de Mel. to handle them more roughly, to threaten and chide, saith [3455]Altomarus, terrify sometimes, or as Salvianus will have them, to be lashed and whipped, as we do by a starting horse, [3456]that is affrighted without a cause, or as [3457]Rhasis adviseth,
one while to speak fair and flatter, another while to terrify and chide, as they shall see cause.
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,
By all means(saith [3505] Mesue)
procure mirth to these men in such things as are heard, seen, tasted, or smelled, or any way perceived, and let them have all enticements and fair promises, the sight of excellent beauties, attires, ornaments, delightsome passages to distract their minds from fear and sorrow, and such things on which they are so fixed and intent.[3506]
Let them use hunting, sports, plays, jests, merry company,as Rhasis prescribes,
which will not let the mind be molested, a cup of good drink now and then, hear music, and have such companions with whom they are especially delighted;[3507]
merry tales or toys, drinking, singing, dancing, and whatsoever else may procure mirth:and by no means, saith Guianerius, suffer them to be alone. Benedictus Victorius Faventinus, in his empirics, accounts it an especial remedy against melancholy, [3508]
to hear and see singing, dancing, maskers, mummers, to converse with such merry fellows and fair maids.
For the beauty of a woman cheereth the countenance,Ecclus. xxxvi. 22. [3509] Beauty alone is a sovereign remedy against fear, grief, and all melancholy fits; a charm, as Peter de la Seine and many other writers affirm, a banquet itself; he gives instance in discontented Menelaus, that was so often freed by Helena's fair face: and [3510]Tully, 3 Tusc. cites Epicurus as a chief patron of this tenet. To expel grief, and procure pleasure, sweet smells, good diet, touch, taste, embracing, singing, dancing, sports, plays, and above the rest, exquisite beauties, quibus oculi jucunde moventur et animi, are most powerful means, obvia forma, to meet or see a fair maid pass by, or to be in company with her. He found it by experience, and made good use of it in his own person, if Plutarch belie him not; for he reckons up the names of some more elegant pieces; [3511]Leontia, Boedina, Hedieia, Nicedia, that were frequently seen in Epicurus' garden, and very familiar in his house. Neither did he try it himself alone, but if we may give credit to [3512]Atheneus, he practised it upon others. For when a sad and sick patient was brought unto him to be cured,
he laid him on a down bed, crowned him with a garland of sweet-smelling flowers, in a fair perfumed closet delicately set out, and after a portion or two of good drink, which he administered, he brought in a beautiful young [3513]wench that could play upon a lute, sing, and dance,&c. Tully, 3. Tusc. scoffs at Epicurus, for this his profane physic (as well he deserved), and yet Phavorinus and Stobeus highly approve of it; most of our looser physicians in some cases, to such parties especially, allow of this; and all of them will have a melancholy, sad, and discontented person, make frequent use of honest sports, companies, and recreations, et incitandos ad Venerem, as [3514]Rodericus a Fonseca will, aspectu et contactu pulcherrimarum foeminarum, to be drawn to such consorts, whether they will or no. Not to be an auditor only, or a spectator, but sometimes an actor himself. Dulce est desipere in loco, to play the fool now and then is not amiss, there is a time for all things. Grave Socrates would be merry by fits, sing, dance, and take his liquor too, or else Theodoret belies him; so would old Cato, [3515]Tully by his own confession, and the rest. Xenophon, in his Sympos. brings in Socrates as a principal actor, no man merrier than himself, and sometimes he would [3516]
ride a cockhorse with his children.—equitare in arundine longa. (Though Alcibiades scoffed at him for it) and well he might; for now and then (saith Plutarch) the most virtuous, honest, and gravest men will use feasts, jests, and toys, as we do sauce to our meats. So did Scipio and Laelius,
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,
Because laughter and merriment was to season their labours and modester life.[3528]Risus enim divum atque; hominum est aeterna voluptas. Princes use jesters, players, and have those masters of revels in their courts. The Romans at every supper (for they had no solemn dinner) used music, gladiators, jesters, &c. as [3529]Suetonius relates of Tiberius, Dion of Commodus, and so did the Greeks. Besides music, in Xenophon's Sympos. Philippus ridendi artifex, Philip, a jester, was brought to make sport. Paulus Jovius, in the eleventh book of his history, hath a pretty digression of our English customs, which howsoever some may misconstrue, I, for my part, will interpret to the best. [3530]
The whole nation beyond all other mortal men, is most given to banqueting and feasts; for they prolong them many hours together, with dainty cheer, exquisite music, and facete jesters, and afterwards they fall a dancing and courting their mistresses, till it be late in the night.Volateran gives the same testimony of this island, commending our jovial manner of entertainment and good mirth, and methinks he saith well, there is no harm in it; long may they use it, and all such modest sports. Ctesias reports of a Persian king, that had 150 maids attending at his table, to play, sing, and dance by turns; and [3531]Lil. Geraldus of an Egyptian prince, that kept nine virgins still to wait upon him, and those of most excellent feature, and sweet voices, which afterwards gave occasion to the Greeks of that fiction of the nine Muses. The king of Ethiopia in Africa, most of our Asiatic princes have done so and do; those Sophies, Mogors, Turks, &c. solace themselves after supper amongst their queens and concubines, quae jucundioris oblectamenti causa ([3532]saith mine author) coram rege psallere et saltare consueverant, taking great pleasure to see and hear them sing and dance. This and many such means to exhilarate the heart of men, have been still practised in all ages, as knowing there is no better thing to the preservation of man's life. What shall I say, then, but to every melancholy man,
Live merrily, O my friends, free from cares, perplexity, anguish, grief of mind, live merrily,laetitia caelum vos creavit: [3536]
Again and again I request you to be merry, if anything trouble your hearts, or vex your souls, neglect and contemn it,[3537]
let it pass.[3538]
And this I enjoin you, not as a divine alone, but as a physician; for without this mirth, which is the life and quintessence of physic, medicines, and whatsoever is used and applied to prolong the life of man, is dull, dead, and of no force.Dum fata sinunt, vivite laeti (Seneca), I say be merry.
Contemn the world(saith he)
and count that is in it vanity and toys; this only covet all thy life long; be not curious, or over solicitous in anything, but with a well composed and contented estate to enjoy thyself, and above all things to be merry.
than that a man should rejoice in his affairs.'Tis the same advice which every physician in this case rings to his patient, as Capivaccius to his, [3543]
avoid overmuch study and perturbations of the mind, and as much as in thee lies live at heart's-ease:Prosper Calenus to that melancholy Cardinal Caesius, [3544]
amidst thy serious studies and business, use jests and conceits, plays and toys, and whatsoever else may recreate thy mind.Nothing better than mirth and merry company in this malady. [3545]
It begins with sorrow(saith Montanus),
it must be expelled with hilarity.
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,
Those heavenly bodies indeed are freely carried in their orbs without any impediment or interruption, to continue their course for innumerable ages, and make their conversions: but men are urged with many difficulties, and have diverse hindrances, oppositions still crossing, interrupting their endeavours and desires, and no mortal man is free from this law of nature.We must not therefore hope to have all things answer our own expectation, to have a continuance of good success and fortunes, Fortuna nunquam perpetuo est bona. And as Minutius Felix, the Roman consul, told that insulting Coriolanus, drunk with his good fortunes, look not for that success thou hast hitherto had; [3576]
It never yet happened to any man since the beginning of the world, nor ever will, to have all things according to his desire, or to whom fortune was never opposite and adverse.Even so it fell out to him as he foretold. And so to others, even to that happiness of Augustus; though he were Jupiter's almoner, Pluto's treasurer, Neptune's admiral, it could not secure him. Such was Alcibiades's fortune, Narsetes, that great Gonsalvus, and most famous men's, that as [3577]Jovius concludes,
it is almost fatal to great princes, through their own default or otherwise circumvented with envy and malice, to lose their honours, and die contumeliously.'Tis so, still hath been, and ever will be, Nihil est ab omni parte beatum,
Thou shalt not here find peaceable and cheerful days, quiet times, but rather clouds, storms, calumnies, such is our fate.And as those errant planets in their distinct orbs have their several motions, sometimes direct, stationary, retrograde, in apogee, perigee, oriental, occidental, combust, feral, free, and as our astrologers will, have their fortitudes and debilities, by reason of those good and bad irradiations, conferred to each other's site in the heavens, in their terms, houses, case, detriments, &c. So we rise and fall in this world, ebb and flow, in and out, reared and dejected, lead a troublesome life, subject to many accidents and casualties of fortunes, variety of passions, infirmities as well from ourselves as others.
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,
Every man knows his own, but not others' defects and miseries; and 'tis the nature of all men still to reflect upon themselves, their own misfortunes,not to examine or consider other men's, not to compare themselves with others: To recount their miseries, but not their good gifts, fortunes, benefits, which they have, or ruminate on their adversity, but not once to think on their prosperity, not what they have, but what they want: to look still on them that go before, but not on those infinite numbers that come after. [3582]
Whereas many a man would think himself in heaven, a pretty prince, if he had but the least part of that fortune which thou so much repinest at, abhorrest and accountest a most vile and wretched estate.How many thousands want that which thou hast? how many myriads of poor slaves, captives, of such as work day and night in coal-pits, tin-mines, with sore toil to maintain a poor living, of such as labour in body and mind, live in extreme anguish, and pain, all which thou art free from? O fortunatos nimium bona si sua norint: Thou art most happy if thou couldst be content, and acknowledge thy happiness; [3583]Rem carendo, non fruendo cognoscimus, when thou shalt hereafter come to want that which thou now loathest, abhorrest, and art weary of, and tired with, when 'tis past thou wilt say thou wert most happy: and after a little miss, wish with all thine heart thou hadst the same content again, mightst lead but such a life, a world for such a life: the remembrance of it is pleasant. Be silent then, [3584]rest satisfied, desine, intuensque in aliorum infortunia solare mentem, comfort thyself with other men's misfortunes, and as the mouldwarp in Aesop told the fox, complaining for want of a tail, and the rest of his companions, tacete, quando me occulis captum videtis, you complain of toys, but I am blind, be quiet. I say to thee be thou satisfied. It is [3585]recorded of the hares, that with a general consent they went to drown themselves, out of a feeling of their misery; but when they saw a company of frogs more fearful than they were, they began to take courage, and comfort again. Compare thine estate with others. Similes aliorum respice casus, mitius ista feres. Be content and rest satisfied, for thou art well in respect to others: be thankful for that thou hast, that God hath done for thee, he hath not made thee a monster, a beast, a base creature, as he might, but a man, a Christian, such a man; consider aright of it, thou art full well as thou art. [3586]Quicquid vult habere nemo potest, no man can have what he will, Illud potest nolle quod non habet, he may choose whether he will desire that which he hath not. Thy lot is fallen, make the best of it. [3587]
If we should all sleep at all times,(as Endymion is said to have done)
who then were happier than his fellow?Our life is but short, a very dream, and while we look about [3588]immortalitas adest, eternity is at hand: [3589]
Our life is a pilgrimage on earth, which wise men pass with great alacrity.If thou be in woe, sorrow, want, distress, in pain, or sickness, think of that of our apostle,
God chastiseth them whom he loveth: they that sow in tears, shall reap in joy,Psal. cxxvi. 6.
As the furnace proveth the potter's vessel, so doth temptation try men's thoughts,Eccl. xxv. 5, 'tis for [3590]thy good, Periisses nisi periisses: hadst thou not been so visited, thou hadst been utterly undone:
as gold in the fire,so men are tried in adversity. Tribulatio ditut: and which Camerarius hath well shadowed in an emblem of a thresher and corn,
Corn is not separated but by threshing, nor men from worldly impediments but by tribulation.'Tis that which [3592]Cyprian ingeminates, Ser. 4. de immort. 'Tis that which [3593]Hierom, which all the fathers inculcate,
so we are catechised for eternity.'Tis that which the proverb insinuates. Nocumentum documentum; 'tis that which all the world rings in our ears. Deus unicum habet filium sine peccato, nullum sine flagello: God, saith [3594]Austin, hath one son without sin, none without correction. [3595]
An expert seaman is tried in a tempest, a runner in a race, a captain in a battle, a valiant man in adversity, a Christian in tentation and misery.Basil, hom. 8. We are sent as so many soldiers into this world, to strive with it, the flesh, the devil; our life is a warfare, and who knows it not? [3596]Non est ad astra mollis e terris via: [3597]
and therefore peradventure this world here is made troublesome unto us,that, as Gregory notes,
we should not be delighted by the way, and forget whither we are going.
God sees thee, he takes notice of thee:there is a God above that can vindicate thy cause, that can relieve thee. And surely [3600]Seneca thinks he takes delight in seeing thee.
The gods are well pleased when they see great men contending with adversity,as we are to see men fight, or a man with a beast. But these are toys in respect, [3601]
Behold,saith he,
a spectacle worthy of God; a good man contented with his estate.A tyrant is the best sacrifice to Jupiter, as the ancients held, and his best object
a contented mind.For thy part then rest satisfied,
cast all thy care on him, thy burthen on him,[3602]
rely on him, trust on him, and he shall nourish thee, care for thee, give thee thine heart's desire;say with David,
God is our hope and strength, in troubles ready to be found,Psal. xlvi. 1.
for they that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed,Psal. cxxiv. 1. 2.
as the mountains are about Jerusalem, so is the Lord about his people, from henceforth and for ever.
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?
is a burden to them, and their spirits not so lively, nor they so erect and merry:Non est in magno corpore mica salis: a little diamond is more worth than a rocky mountain: which made Alexander Aphrodiseus positively conclude,
The lesser, the [3619]wiser, because the soul was more contracted in such a body.Let Bodine in his 5. c. method, hist. plead the rest; the lesser they are, as in Asia, Greece, they have generally the finest wits. And for bodily stature which some so much admire, and goodly presence, 'tis true, to say the best of them, great men are proper, and tall, I grant,—caput inter nubila condunt, (hide their heads in the clouds); but belli pusilli little men are pretty: Sed si bellus homo est Cotta, pusillus homo est. Sickness, diseases, trouble many, but without a cause; [3620]
It may be 'tis for the good of their souls:Pars fati fuit, the flesh rebels against the spirit; that which hurts the one, must needs help the other. Sickness is the mother of modesty, putteth us in mind of our mortality; and when we are in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, she pulleth us by the ear, and maketh us know ourselves. [3621]Pliny calls it, the sum of philosophy,
If we could but perform that in our health, which we promise in our sickness.Quum infirmi sumus, optimi sumus; [3622]for what sick man (as [3623] Secundus expostulates with Rufus) was ever
lascivious, covetous, or ambitious? he envies no man, admires no man, flatters no man, despiseth no man, listens not after lies and tales, &c.And were it not for such gentle remembrances, men would have no moderation of themselves, they would be worse than tigers, wolves, and lions: who should keep them in awe?
princes, masters, parents, magistrates, judges, friends, enemies, fair or foul means cannot contain us, but a little sickness,(as [3624]Chrysostom observes)
will correct and amend us.And therefore with good discretion, [3625]Jovianus Pontanus caused this short sentence to be engraven on his tomb in Naples:
Labour, sorrow, grief, sickness, want and woe, to serve proud masters, bear that superstitious yoke, and bury your clearest friends, &c., are the sauces of our life.If thy disease be continuate and painful to thee, it will not surely last:
and a light affliction, which is but for a moment, causeth unto us a far more excellent and eternal weight of glory,2 Cor. iv. 17. bear it with patience; women endure much sorrow in childbed, and yet they will not contain; and those that are barren, wish for this pain;
be courageous, [3626]there is as much valour to be shown in thy bed, as in an army, or at a sea fight:aut vincetur, aut vincet, thou shalt be rid at last. In the mean time, let it take its course, thy mind is not any way disabled. Bilibaldus Pirkimerus, senator to Charles the Fifth, ruled all Germany, lying most part of his days sick of the gout upon his bed. The more violent thy torture is, the less it will continue: and though it be severe and hideous for the time, comfort thyself as martyrs do, with honour and immortality. [3627]That famous philosopher Epicurus, being in as miserable pain of stone and colic, as a man might endure, solaced himself with a conceit of immortality;
the joy of his soul for his rare inventions, repelled the pain of his bodily torments.
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,
An upstart born in a base cottage, that scarce at first had coarse bread to fill his hungry guts, must now feed on kickshaws and made dishes, will have all variety of flesh and fish, the best oysters,&c. A beggar's brat will be commonly more scornful, imperious, insulting, insolent, than another man of his rank:
Nothing so intolerable as a fortunate fool,as [3674]Tully found out long since out of his experience; Asperius nihil est humili cum surgit in altum, set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride a gallop, a gallop, &c.
as being nobly born, ingenuously brought up, and from their infancy trained to all manner of civility.For learning and virtue in a nobleman is more eminent, and, as a jewel set in gold is more precious, and much to be respected, such a man deserves better than others, and is as great an honour to his family as his noble family to him. In a word, many noblemen are an ornament to their order: many poor men's sons are singularly well endowed, most eminent, and well deserving for their worth, wisdom, learning, virtue, valour, integrity; excellent members and pillars of a commonwealth. And therefore to conclude that which I first intended, to be base by birth, meanly born is no such disparagement. Et sic demonstratur, quod erat demonstrandum.
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.
you see the best(said he)
but you know not their several gripings and discontents:they are like painted walls, fair without, rotten within: diseased, filthy, crazy, full of intemperance's effects; [3689]
and who can reckon half? if you but knew their fears, cares, anguish of mind and vexation, to which they are subject, you would hereafter renounce all riches.
pride, lust, anger, faction, emulation, fears, cares, suspicion enter with his wealth;for his intemperance he hath aches, crudities, gouts, and as fruits of his idleness, and fullness, lust, surfeiting and drunkenness, all manner of diseases: pecuniis augetur improbitas, the wealthier, the more dishonest. [3693]
He is exposed to hatred, envy, peril and treason, fear of death, degradation,&c. 'tis lubrica statio et proxima praecipitio, and the higher he climbs, the greater is his fall.
When goods increase, they are increased that eat them; and what good cometh to the owners, but the beholding thereof with the eyes?Eccles. iv. 10.
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?
His worship,as Apuleius describes him,
in all his plenty and great provision, is forbidden to eat, or else hath no appetite,(sick in bed, can take no rest, sore grieved with some chronic disease, contracted with full diet and ease, or troubled in mind)
when as, in the meantime, all his household are merry, and the poorest servant that he keeps doth continually feast.'Tis Bracteata felicitas, as [3702] Seneca terms it, tinfoiled happiness, infelix felicitas, an unhappy kind of happiness, if it be happiness at all. His gold, guard, clattering of harness, and fortifications against outward enemies, cannot free him from inward fears and cares.
boasts himself in the multitude of his riches,Psalm xlix. 6. 11. he thinks his house
called after his own name,shall continue for ever;
but he perisheth like a beast,verse 20.
his way utters his folly,verse 13. male parta, male dilabuntur;
like sheep they lie in the grave,verse 14. Puncto descendunt ad infernum,
they spend their days in wealth, and go suddenly down to hell,Job xxi. 13. For all physicians and medicines enforcing nature, a swooning wife, families' complaints, friends' tears, dirges, masses, naenias, funerals, for all orations, counterfeit hired acclamations, eulogiums, epitaphs, hearses, heralds, black mourners, solemnities, obelisks, and Mausolean tombs, if he have them, at least,[3713]he, like a hog, goes to hell with a guilty conscience (propter hos dilatavit infernos os suum), and a poor man's curse; his memory stinks like the snuff of a candle when it is put out; scurrilous libels, and infamous obloquies accompany him. When as poor Lazarus is Dei sacrarium, the temple of God, lives and dies in true devotion, hath no more attendants, but his own innocency, the heaven a tomb, desires to be dissolved, buried in his mother's lap, and hath a company of[3714]Angels ready to convey his soul into Abraham's bosom, he leaves an everlasting and a sweet memory behind him. Crassus and Sylla are indeed still recorded, but not so much for their wealth as for their victories: Croesus for his end, Solomon for his wisdom. In a word,[3715]
to get wealth is a great trouble, anxiety to keep, grief to lose it.
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.
he knows not the affliction of Joseph, stretching himself on ivory beds, and singing to the sound of the viol.And it troubles him that he hath not the like: there is a difference (he grumbles) between Laplolly and Pheasants, to tumble i' th' straw and lie in a down bed, betwixt wine and water, a cottage and a palace.
He hates nature(as [3732]Pliny characterised him)
that she hath made him lower than a god, and is angry with the gods that any man goes before him;and although he hath received much, yet (as [3733]Seneca follows it)
he thinks it an injury that he hath no more, and is so far from giving thanks for his tribuneship, that he complains he is not praetor, neither doth that please him, except he may be consul.Why is he not a prince, why not a monarch, why not an emperor? Why should one man have so much more than his fellows, one have all, another nothing? Why should one man be a slave or drudge to another? One surfeit, another starve, one live at ease, another labour, without any hope of better fortune? Thus they grumble, mutter, and repine: not considering that inconstancy of human affairs, judicially conferring one condition with another, or well weighing their own present estate. What they are now, thou mayst shortly be; and what thou art they shall likely be. Expect a little, compare future and times past with the present, see the event, and comfort thyself with it. It is as well to be discerned in commonwealths, cities, families, as in private men's estates. Italy was once lord of the world, Rome the queen of cities, vaunted herself of two [3734]myriads of inhabitants; now that all-commanding country is possessed by petty princes, [3735]Rome a small village in respect. Greece of old the seat of civility, mother of sciences and humanity; now forlorn, the nurse of barbarism, a den of thieves. Germany then, saith Tacitus, was incult and horrid, now full of magnificent cities: Athens, Corinth, Carthage, how flourishing cities, now buried in their own ruins! Corvorum, ferarum, aprorum et bestiarum lustra, like so many wildernesses, a receptacle of wild beasts. Venice a poor fisher-town; Paris, London, small cottages in Caesar's time, now most noble emporiums. Valois, Plantagenet, and Scaliger how fortunate families, how likely to continue! now quite extinguished and rooted out. He stands aloft today, full of favour, wealth, honour, and prosperity, in the top of fortune's wheel: tomorrow in prison, worse than nothing, his son's a beggar. Thou art a poor servile drudge, Foex populi, a very slave, thy son may come to be a prince, with Maximinus, Agathocles, &c. a senator, a general of an army; thou standest bare to him now, workest for him, drudgest for him and his, takest an alms of him: stay but a little, and his next heir peradventure shall consume all with riot, be degraded, thou exalted, and he shall beg of thee. Thou shalt be his most honourable patron, he thy devout servant, his posterity shall run, ride, and do as much for thine, as it was with [3736]Frisgobald and Cromwell, it may be for thee. Citizens devour country gentlemen, and settle in their seats; after two or three descents, they consume all in riot, it returns to the city again.
virtue and prosperity beget rest; rest idleness; idleness riot; riot destruction from which we come again to good laws; good laws engender virtuous actions; virtue, glory, and prosperity;
and 'tis no dishonour then(as Guicciardine adds)
for a flourishing man, city, or state to come to ruin,[3739]
nor infelicity to be subject to the law of nature.Ergo terrena calcanda, sitienda coelestia, (therefore I say) scorn this transitory state, look up to heaven, think not what others are, but what thou art: [3740]Qua parte locatus es in re: and what thou shalt be, what thou mayst be. Do (I say) as Christ himself did, when he lived here on earth, imitate him as much as in thee lies. How many great Caesars, mighty monarchs, tetrarchs, dynasties, princes lived in his days, in what plenty, what delicacy, how bravely attended, what a deal of gold and silver, what treasure, how many sumptuous palaces had they, what provinces and cities, ample territories, fields, rivers, fountains, parks, forests, lawns, woods, cells, &c.? Yet Christ had none of all this, he would have none of this, he voluntarily rejected all this, he could not be ignorant, he could not err in his choice, he contemned all this, he chose that which was safer, better, and more certain, and less to be repented, a mean estate, even poverty itself; and why dost thou then doubt to follow him, to imitate him, and his apostles, to imitate all good men: so do thou tread in his divine steps, and thou shalt not err eternally, as too many worldlings do, that run on in their own dissolute courses, to their confusion and ruin, thou shalt not do amiss. Whatsoever thy fortune is, be contented with it, trust in him, rely on him, refer thyself wholly to him. For know this, in conclusion, Non est volentis nec currentis, sed miserentis Dei, 'tis not as men, but as God will.
The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, bringeth low, and exalteth(1 Sam. ii. ver. 7. 8),
he lifteth the poor from the dust, and raiseth the beggar from the dunghill, to set them amongst princes, and make them inherit the seat of glory;'tis all as he pleaseth, how, and when, and whom; he that appoints the end (though to us unknown) appoints the means likewise subordinate to the end.
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.
Nature is content with bread and water; and he that can rest satisfied with that, may contend with Jupiter himself for happiness.In that golden age, [3744]somnos dedit umbra salubres, potum quoque lubricus amnis, the tree gave wholesome shade to sleep under, and the clear rivers drink. The Israelites drank water in the wilderness; Samson, David, Saul, Abraham's servant when he went for Isaac's wife, the Samaritan woman, and how many besides might I reckon up, Egypt, Palestine, whole countries in the [3745]Indies, that drank pure water all their lives. [3746]The Persian kings themselves drank no other drink than the water of Chaospis, that runs by Susa, which was carried in bottles after them, whithersoever they went. Jacob desired no more of God, but bread to eat, and clothes to put on in his journey, Gen. xxviii. 20. Bene est cui deus obtulit Parca quod satis est manu; bread is enough [3747]
to strengthen the heart.And if you study philosophy aright, saith [3748] Maudarensis,
whatsoever is beyond this moderation, is not useful, but troublesome.[3749]Agellius, out of Euripides, accounts bread and water enough to satisfy nature,
of which there is no surfeit, the rest is not a feast, but a riot.[3750]S. Hierome esteems him rich
that hath bread to eat, and a potent man that is not compelled to be a slave; hunger is not ambitious, so that it have to eat, and thirst doth not prefer a cup of gold.It was no epicurean speech of an epicure, he that is not satisfied with a little will never have enough: and very good counsel of him in the [3751]poet,
O my son, mediocrity of means agrees best with men; too much is pernicious.
O ye gods what a sight of things do not I want?'Tis thy want alone that keeps thee in health of body and mind, and that which thou persecutest and abhorrest as a feral plague is thy physician and [3753]chiefest friend, which makes thee a good man, a healthful, a sound, a virtuous, an honest and happy man. For when virtue came from heaven (as the poet feigns) rich men kicked her up, wicked men abhorred her, courtiers scoffed at her, citizens hated her, [3754]and that she was thrust out of doors in every place, she came at last to her sister Poverty, where she had found good entertainment. Poverty and Virtue dwell together. How happy art thou if thou couldst be content.
Godliness is a great gain, if a man can be content with that which he hath,1 Tim. vi. 6. And all true happiness is in a mean estate. I have a little wealth, as he said, [3756]sed quas animus magnas facit, a kingdom in conceit;
Hear, O ye Venetians, and I will tell you which is the best thing in the world: to contemn it.I will engrave it in my heart, it shall be my whole study to contemn it. Let them take wealth, Stercora stercus amet so that I may have security: bene qui latuit, bene vixit; though I live obscure, [3761] yet I live clean and honest; and when as the lofty oak is blown down, the silky reed may stand. Let them take glory, for that's their misery; let them take honour, so that I may have heart's ease. Duc me O Jupiter et tu fatum, [3762]&c. Lead me, O God, whither thou wilt, I am ready to follow; command, I will obey. I do not envy at their wealth, titles, offices; let me live quiet and at ease. [3764]Erimus fortasse (as he comforted himself) quando illi non erunt, when they are dead and gone, and all their pomp vanished, our memory may flourish:
He that lives according to nature cannot be poor, and he that exceeds can never have enough,totus non sufficit orbis, the whole world cannot give him content.
A small thing that the righteous hath, is better than the riches of the ungodly,Psal. xxxvii. 19;
and better is a poor morsel with quietness, than abundance with strife,Prov. xvii. 7. Be content then, enjoy thyself, and as [3769] Chrysostom adviseth,
be not angry for what thou hast not, but give God hearty thanks for what thou hast received.But what wantest thou, to expostulate the matter? or what hast thou not better than a rich man? [3771]
health, competent wealth, children, security, sleep, friends, liberty, diet, apparel, and what not,or at least mayst have (the means being so obvious, easy, and well known) for as he inculcated to himself,
Passing by a village in the territory of Milan,saith [3773]St. Austin,
I saw a poor beggar that had got belike his bellyful of meat, jesting and merry; I sighed, and said to some of my friends that were then with me, what a deal of trouble, madness, pain and grief do we sustain and exaggerate unto ourselves, to get that secure happiness which this poor beggar hath prevented us of, and which we peradventure shall never have? For that which he hath now attained with the begging of some small pieces of silver, a temporal happiness, and present heart's ease, I cannot compass with all my careful windings, and running in and out,[3774]
And surely the beggar was very merry, but I was heavy; he was secure, but I timorous. And if any man should ask me now, whether I had rather be merry, or still so solicitous and sad, I should say, merry. If he should ask me again, whether I had rather be as I am, or as this beggar was, I should sure choose to be as I am, tortured still with cares and fears; but out of peevishness, and not out of truth.That which St. Austin said of himself here in this place, I may truly say to thee, thou discontented wretch, thou covetous niggard, thou churl, thou ambitious and swelling toad, 'tis not want but peevishness which is the cause of thy woes; settle thine affection, thou hast enough.
O if I might but live a while longer to see all things settled, some two or three years, I would pay my debts,make all my reckonings even: but they are come and past, and thou hast more business than before.
O madness, to think to settle that in thine old age when thou hast more, which in thy youth thou canst not now compose having but a little.[3778]Pyrrhus would first conquer Africa, and then Asia, et tum suaviter agere, and then live merrily and take his ease: but when Cyneas the orator told him he might do that already, id jam posse fieri, rested satisfied, condemning his own folly. Si parva licet componere magnis, thou mayst do the like, and therefore be composed in thy fortune. Thou hast enough: he that is wet in a bath, can be no more wet if he be flung into Tiber, or into the ocean itself: and if thou hadst all the world, or a solid mass of gold as big as the world, thou canst not have more than enough; enjoy thyself at length, and that which thou hast; the mind is all; be content, thou art not poor, but rich, and so much the richer as [3779]Censorinus well writ to Cerellius, quanto pauciora optas, non quo plura possides, in wishing less, not having more. I say then, Non adjice opes, sed minue cupiditates ('tis [3780]Epicurus' advice), add no more wealth, but diminish thy desires; and as [3781]Chrysostom well seconds him, Si vis ditari, contemne divitias; that's true plenty, not to have, but not to want riches, non habere, sed non indigere, vera abundantia: 'tis more glory to contemn, than to possess; et nihil agere, est deorum,
and to want nothing is divine.How many deaf, dumb, halt, lame, blind, miserable persons could I reckon up that are poor, and withal distressed, in imprisonment, banishment, galley slaves, condemned to the mines, quarries, to gyves, in dungeons, perpetual thraldom, than all which thou art richer, thou art more happy, to whom thou art able to give an alms, a lord, in respect, a petty prince: [3782]be contented then I say, repine and mutter no more,
for thou art not poor indeed but in opinion.
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.
Thirst, heat, sands, serpents, were pleasant to a valiant man;honourable enterprises are accompanied with dangers and damages, as experience evinceth: they will make the rest of thy life relish the better. But put case they continue; thou art not so poor as thou wast born, and as some hold, much better to be pitied than envied. But be it so thou hast lost all, poor thou art, dejected, in pain of body, grief of mind, thine enemies insult over thee, thou art as bad as Job; yet tell me (saith Chrysostom)
was Job or the devil the greater conqueror? surely Job; the [3792]devil had his goods, he sat on the muck-hill and kept his good name; he lost his children, health, friends, but he kept his innocency; he lost his money, but he kept his confidence in God, which was better than any treasure.Do thou then as Job did, triumph as Job did, [3793]and be not molested as every fool is. Sed qua ratione potero? How shall this be done? Chrysostom answers, facile si coelum cogitaveris, with great facility, if thou shalt but meditate on heaven. [3794]Hannah wept sore, and troubled in mind, could not eat;
but why weepest thou,said Elkanah her husband,
and why eatest thou not? why is thine heart troubled? am not I better to thee than ten sons?and she was quiet. Thou art here [3795]vexed in this world; but say to thyself,
Why art thou troubled, O my soul?Is not God better to thee than all temporalities, and momentary pleasures of the world? be then pacified. And though thou beest now peradventure in extreme want, [3796]it may be 'tis for thy further good, to try thy patience, as it did Job's, and exercise thee in this life: trust in God, and rely upon him, and thou shalt be [3797]crowned in the end. What's this life to eternity? The world hath forsaken thee, thy friends and fortunes all are gone: yet know this, that the very hairs of thine head are numbered, that God is a spectator of all thy miseries, he sees thy wrongs, woes, and wants. [3798]
'Tis his goodwill and pleasure it should be so, and he knows better what is for thy good than thou thyself. His providence is over all, at all times; he hath set a guard of angels over us, and keeps us as the apple of his eye,Ps. xvii. 8. Some he doth exalt, prefer, bless with worldly riches, honours, offices, and preferments, as so many glistering stars he makes to shine above the rest: some he doth miraculously protect from thieves, incursions, sword, fire, and all violent mischances, and as the [3799]poet feigns of that Lycian Pandarus, Lycaon's son, when he shot at Menelaus the Grecian with a strong arm, and deadly arrow, Pallas, as a good mother keeps flies from her child's face asleep, turned by the shaft, and made it hit on the buckle of his girdle; so some he solicitously defends, others he exposeth to danger, poverty, sickness, want, misery, he chastiseth and corrects, as to him seems best, in his deep, unsearchable and secret judgment, and all for our good.
The tyrant took the city(saith [3800]Chrysostom),
God did not hinder it; led them away captives, so God would have it; he bound them, God yielded to it: flung them into the furnace, God permitted it: heat the oven hotter, it was granted: and when the tyrant had done his worst, God showed his power, and the children's patience; he freed them:so can he thee, and can [3801]help in an instant, when it seems to him good. [3802]
Rejoice not against me, O my enemy; for though I fall, I shall rise: when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall lighten me.Remember all those martyrs what they have endured, the utmost that human rage and fury could invent, with what [3803]patience they have borne, with what willingness embraced it.
Though he kill me,saith Job,
I will trust in him.Justus [3804]inexpugnabilis, as Chrysostom holds, a just man is impregnable, and not to be overcome. The gout may hurt his hands, lameness his feet, convulsions may torture his joints, but not rectam mentem his soul is free.
Take away his money, his treasure is in heaven: banish him his country, he is an inhabitant of that heavenly Jerusalem: cast him into bands, his conscience is free; kill his body, it shall rise again; he fights with a shadow that contends with an upright man:he will not be moved.
The poor shall not always be forgotten, the patient abiding of the meek shall not perish for ever,Psal. x. 18. ver. 9.
The Lord will be a refuge of the oppressed, and a defence in the time of trouble.
God especially protected him, he was dear unto him:Modo in egestate, tribulatione, convalle deplorationis, &c.
Thou art now in the vale of misery, in poverty, in agony,[3808]
in temptation; rest, eternity, happiness, immortality, shall be thy reward,as Chrysostom pleads,
if thou trust in God, and keep thine innocency.Non si male nunc, et olim sic erit semper; a good hour may come upon a sudden; [3809] expect a little.
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,
he that sows in tears, shall reap in joy,Psal. cxxvi. 7.
A desire accomplished delights the soul,Prov. xiii. 19.
The hope that is deferred, is the fainting of the heart, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life,Prov. xiii. 12, [3815]suavissimum est voti compos fieri. Many men are both wretched and miserable at first, but afterwards most happy: and oftentimes it so falls out, as [3816]Machiavel relates of Cosmo de Medici, that fortunate and renowned citizen of Europe,
that all his youth was full of perplexity, danger, and misery, till forty years were past, and then upon a sudden the sun of his honour broke out as through a cloud.Huniades was fetched out of prison, and Henry the Third of Portugal out of a poor monastery, to be crowned kings.
Though my father and mother forsake me, yet the Lord will gather me up,Psal. xxvii. 10.
Wait patiently on the Lord, and hope in him,Psal. xxxvii. 7.
Be strong, hope and trust in the Lord, and he will comfort thee, and give thee thine heart's desire,Psal. xxvii. 14.
thou hast lost them, they would otherwise have lost thee.If thy money be gone, [3819]
thou art so much the lighter,and as Saint Hierome persuades Rusticus the monk, to forsake all and follow Christ:
Gold and silver are too heavy metals for him to carry that seeks heaven.
Many miseries have happened unto me at home, and in the wars abroad, of which by the help of God some I have endured, some I have repelled, and by mine own valour overcome: courage was never wanting to my designs, nor industry to my intents: prosperity or adversity could never alter my disposition.A wise man's mind, as Seneca holds, [3824]
is like the state of the world above the moon, ever serene.Come then what can come, befall what may befall, infractum invictumque [3825] animum opponas: Rebus angustis animosus atque fortis appare. (Hor. Od. 11. lib. 2.) Hope and patience are two sovereign remedies for all, the surest reposals, the softest cushions to lean on in adversity:
Be contented with thy loss, state, and calling, whatsoever it is, and rest as well satisfied with thy present condition in this life:
therefore,saith Theodoret,
hath God diversely distributed his gifts, wealth to one, skill to another, that rich men might encourage and set poor men at work, poor men might learn several trades to the common good.As a piece of arras is composed of several parcels, some wrought of silk, some of gold, silver, crewel of diverse colours, all to serve for the exornation of the whole: music is made of diverse discords and keys, a total sum of many small numbers, so is a commonwealth of several unequal trades and callings. [3834]If all should be Croesi and Darii, all idle, all in fortunes equal, who should till the land? As [3835]Menenius Agrippa well satisfied the tumultuous rout of Rome, in his elegant apologue of the belly and the rest of the members. Who should build houses, make our several stuffs for raiments? We should all be starved for company, as Poverty declared at large in Aristophanes' Plutus, and sue at last to be as we were at first. And therefore God hath appointed this inequality of states, orders, and degrees, a subordination, as in all other things. The earth yields nourishment to vegetables, sensible creatures feed on vegetables, both are substitutes to reasonable souls, and men are subject amongst themselves, and all to higher powers, so God would have it. All things then being rightly examined and duly considered as they ought, there is no such cause of so general discontent, 'tis not in the matter itself, but in our mind, as we moderate our passions and esteem of things. Nihil aliud necessarium ut sis miser (saith [3836]Cardan) quam ut te miserum credas, let thy fortune be what it will, 'tis thy mind alone that makes thee poor or rich, miserable or happy. Vidi ego (saith divine Seneca) in villa hilari et amaena maestos, et media solitudine occupatos; non locus, sed animus facit ad tranquillitatem. I have seen men miserably dejected in a pleasant village, and some again well occupied and at good ease in a solitary desert. 'Tis the mind not the place causeth tranquillity, and that gives true content. I will yet add a word or two for a corollary. Many rich men, I dare boldly say it, that lie on down beds, with delicacies pampered every day, in their well-furnished houses, live at less heart's ease, with more anguish, more bodily pain, and through their intemperance, more bitter hours, than many a prisoner or galley-slave; [3837]Maecenas in pluma aeque vigilat ac Regulus in dolio: those poor starved Hollanders, whom [3838]Bartison their captain left in Nova Zembla, anno 1596, or those [3839]eight miserable Englishmen that were lately left behind, to winter in a stove in Greenland, in 77 deg. of lat., 1630, so pitifully forsaken, and forced to shift for themselves in a vast, dark, and desert place, to strive and struggle with hunger, cold, desperation, and death itself. 'Tis a patient and quiet mind (I say it again and again) gives true peace and content. So for all other things, they are, as old [3840]Chremes told us, as we use them.
Parents, friends, fortunes, country, birth, alliance, &c., ebb and flow with our conceit; please or displease, as we accept and construe them, or apply them to ourselves.Faber quisque fortunae suae, and in some sort I may truly say, prosperity and adversity are in our own hands. Nemo laeditur nisi a seipso, and which Seneca confirms out of his judgment and experience. [3841]
Every man's mind is stronger than fortune, and leads him to what side he will; a cause to himself each one is of his good or bad life.But will we, or nill we, make the worst of it, and suppose a man in the greatest extremity, 'tis a fortune which some indefinitely prefer before prosperity; of two extremes it is the best. Luxuriant animi rebus plerumque secundis, men in [3842]prosperity forget God and themselves, they are besotted with their wealth, as birds with henbane: [3843] miserable if fortune forsake them, but more miserable if she tarry and overwhelm them: for when they come to be in great place, rich, they that were most temperate, sober, and discreet in their private fortunes, as Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Heliogabalus (optimi imperatores nisi imperassent) degenerate on a sudden into brute beasts, so prodigious in lust, such tyrannical oppressors, &c., they cannot moderate themselves, they become monsters, odious, harpies, what not? Cum triumphos, opes, honores adepti sunt, ad voluptatem et otium deinceps se convertunt: 'twas [3844]Cato's note,
they cannot contain.For that cause belike
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?
The lascivious prefers his whore before his life, or good estate; an angry man his revenge: a parasite his gut; ambitious, honours; covetous, wealth; a thief his booty; a soldier his spoil; we abhor diseases, and yet we pull them upon us.We are never better or freer from cares than when we sleep, and yet, which we so much avoid and lament, death is but a perpetual sleep; and why should it, as [3876]Epicurus argues, so much affright us?
When we are, death is not: but when death is, then we are not:our life is tedious and troublesome unto him that lives best; [3877]
'tis a misery to be born, a pain to live, a trouble to die:death makes an end of our miseries, and yet we cannot consider of it; a little before [3878]Socrates drank his portion of cicuta, he bid the citizens of Athens cheerfully farewell, and concluded his speech with this short sentence;
My time is now come to be gone, I to my death, you to live on; but which of these is best, God alone knows.For there is no pleasure here but sorrow is annexed to it, repentance follows it. [3879]
If I feed liberally, I am likely sick or surfeit: if I live sparingly my hunger and thirst is not allayed; I am well neither full nor fasting; if I live honest, I burn in lust;if I take my pleasure, I tire and starve myself, and do injury to my body and soul. [3880]
Of so small a quantity of mirth, how much sorrow? after so little pleasure, how great misery?'Tis both ways troublesome to me, to rise and go to bed, to eat and provide my meat; cares and contentions attend me all day long, fears and suspicions all my life. I am discontented, and why should I desire so much to live? But a happy death will make an end of all our woes and miseries; omnibus una meis certa medela malis; why shouldst not thou then say with old Simeon since thou art so well affected,
Lord now let thy servant depart in peace:or with Paul,
I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ? Beata mors quae ad beatam vitam aditum aperit, 'tis a blessed hour that leads us to a [3881]blessed life, and blessed are they that die in the Lord. But life is sweet, and death is not so terrible in itself as the concomitants of it, a loathsome disease, pain, horror, &c. and many times the manner of it, to be hanged, to be broken on the wheel, to be burned alive. [3882]Servetus the heretic, that suffered in Geneva, when he was brought to the stake, and saw the executioner come with fire in his hand, homo viso igne tam horrendum exclamavit, ut universum populum perterrefecerit, roared so loud, that he terrified the people. An old stoic would have scorned this. It troubles some to be unburied, or so:
that have no hope? 'Tis fit there should be some solemnity.
I know not how(saith Seneca)
but sometimes 'tis good to be miserable in misery: and for the most part all grief evacuates itself by tears,
yet after a day's mourning or two, comfort thyself for thy heaviness,Eccles. xxxviii. 17. [3888]Non decet defunctum ignavo quaestu prosequi; 'twas Germanicus' advice of old, that we should not dwell too long upon our passions, to be desperately sad, immoderate grievers, to let them tyrannise, there's indolentiae, ars, a medium to be kept: we do not (saith [3889]Austin) forbid men to grieve, but to grieve overmuch.
I forbid not a man to be angry, but I ask for what cause he is so? Not to be sad, but why is he sad? Not to fear, but wherefore is he afraid?I require a moderation as well as a just reason. [3890]The Romans and most civil commonwealths have set a time to such solemnities, they must not mourn after a set day,
or if in a family a child be born, a daughter or son married, some state or honour be conferred, a brother be redeemed from his bands, a friend from his enemies,or the like, they must lament no more. And 'tis fit it should be so; to what end is all their funeral pomp, complaints, and tears? When Socrates was dying, his friends Apollodorus and Crito, with some others, were weeping by him, which he perceiving, asked them what they meant: [3891]
for that very cause he put all the women out of the room, upon which words of his they were abashed, and ceased from their tears.Lodovicus Cortesius, a rich lawyer of Padua (as [3892] Bernardinus Scardeonius relates) commanded by his last will, and a great mulct if otherwise to his heir, that no funeral should be kept for him, no man should lament: but as at a wedding, music and minstrels to be provided; and instead of black mourners, he took order, [3893]
that twelve virgins clad in green should carry him to the church.His will and testament was accordingly performed, and he buried in St. Sophia's church. [3894]Tully was much grieved for his daughter Tulliola's death at first, until such time that he had confirmed his mind with some philosophical precepts, [3895]
then he began to triumph over fortune and grief, and for her reception into heaven to be much more joyed than before he was troubled for her loss.If a heathen man could so fortify himself from philosophy, what shall a Christian from divinity? Why dost thou so macerate thyself? 'Tis an inevitable chance, the first statute in Magna Charta, an everlasting Act of Parliament, all must [3896]die.
die like men:[3898]—involvit humile pariter et celsum caput, aquatque summis infima.
O weak condition of human estate,Sylvius exclaims: [3899]Ladislaus, king of Bohemia, eighteen years of age, in the flower of his youth, so potent, rich, fortunate and happy, in the midst of all his friends, amongst so many [3900]physicians, now ready to be [3901] married, in thirty-six hours sickened and died. We must so be gone sooner or later all, and as Calliopeius in the comedy took his leave of his spectators and auditors, Vos valete et plaudite, Calliopeius recensui, must we bid the world farewell (Exit Calliopeius), and having now played our parts, for ever be gone. Tombs and monuments have the like fate, data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris, kingdoms, provinces, towns, and cities have their periods, and are consumed. In those flourishing times of Troy, Mycenae was the fairest city in Greece, Graeciae cunctae imperitabat, but it, alas, and that [3902]
Assyrian Nineveh are quite overthrown:the like fate hath that Egyptian and Boeotian Thebes, Delos, commune Graeciae, conciliabulum, the common council-house of Greece, [3903]and Babylon, the greatest city that ever the sun shone on, hath now nothing but walls and rubbish left. [3904]Quid Pandioniae restat nisi nomen Athenae? Thus [3905]Pausanias complained in his times. And where is Troy itself now, Persepolis, Carthage, Cizicum, Sparta, Argos, and all those Grecian cities? Syracuse and Agrigentum, the fairest towns in Sicily, which had sometimes 700,000 inhabitants, are now decayed: the names of Hieron, Empedocles, &c., of those mighty numbers of people, only left. One Anacharsis is remembered amongst the Scythians; the world itself must have an end; and every part of it. Caeterae igitur urbes sunt mortales, as Peter [3906]Gillius concludes of Constantinople, haec sane quamdiu erunt homines, futura mihi videtur immortalis; but 'tis not so: nor site, nor strength, nor sea nor land, can vindicate a city, but it and all must vanish at last. And as to a traveller great mountains seem plains afar off, at last are not discerned at all; cities, men, monuments decay,—nec solidis prodest sua machina terris,[3907]the names are only left, those at length forgotten, and are involved in perpetual night.
[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,
in such a [3912]tempest as this to have but one anchor,go seek another: and for his part thou dost him great injury to desire his longer life. [3913]
Wilt thou have him crazed and sickly still,like a tired traveller that comes weary to his inn, begin his journey afresh,
or to be freed from his miseries; thou hast more need rejoice that he is gone.Another complains of a most sweet wife, a young wife, Nondum sustulerat flavum Proserpina crinem, such a wife as no mortal man ever had, so good a wife, but she is now dead and gone, laethaeoque jacet condita sarcophago. I reply to him in Seneca's words, if such a woman at least ever was to be had, [3914]
He did either so find or make her; if he found her, he may as happily find another;if he made her, as Critobulus in Xenophon did by his, he may as good cheap inform another, et bona tam sequitur, quam bona prima fuit; he need not despair, so long as the same master is to be had. But was she good? Had she been so tired peradventure as that Ephesian widow in Petronius, by some swaggering soldier, she might not have held out. Many a man would have been willingly rid of his: before thou wast bound, now thou art free; [3915]
and 'tis but a folly to love thy fetters though they be of gold.Come into a third place, you shall have an aged father sighing for a son, a pretty child;
If thou covet thy wife, friends, children should live always, thou art a fool.He was a fine child indeed, dignus Apollineis lachrymis, a sweet, a loving, a fair, a witty child, of great hope, another Eteoneus, whom Pindarus the poet and Aristides the rhetorician so much lament; but who can tell whether he would have been an honest man? He might have proved a thief, a rogue, a spendthrift, a disobedient son, vexed and galled thee more than all the world beside, he might have wrangled with thee and disagreed, or with his brothers, as Eteocles and Polynices, and broke thy heart; he is now gone to eternity, as another Ganymede, in the [3920]flower of his youth,
as if he had risen,saith [3921]Plutarch,
from the midst of a feastbefore he was drunk,
the longer he had lived, the worse he would have been,et quo vita longior, (Ambrose thinks) culpa numerosior, more sinful, more to answer he would have had. If he was naught, thou mayst be glad he is gone; if good, be glad thou hadst such a son. Or art thou sure he was good? It may be he was an hypocrite, as many are, and howsoever he spake thee fair, peradventure he prayed, amongst the rest that Icaro Menippus heard at Jupiter's whispering place in Lucian, for his father's death, because he now kept him short, he was to inherit much goods, and many fair manors after his decease. Or put case he was very good, suppose the best, may not thy dead son expostulate with thee, as he did in the same [3922]Lucian,
why dost thou lament my death, or call me miserable that am much more happy than thyself? what misfortune is befallen me? Is it because I am not so bald, crooked, old, rotten, as thou art? What have I lost, some of your good cheer, gay clothes, music, singing, dancing, kissing, merry-meetings, thalami lubentias, &c., is that it? Is it not much better not to hunger at all than to eat: not to thirst than to drink to satisfy thirst: not to be cold than to put on clothes to drive away cold? You had more need rejoice that I am freed from diseases, agues, cares, anxieties, livor, love, covetousness, hatred, envy, malice, that I fear no more thieves, tyrants, enemies, as you do.[3923]Ad cinerem et manes credis curare sepultos?
Do they concern us at all, think you, when we are once dead?Condole not others then overmuch,
wish not or fear thy death.[3924] Summum nec optes diem nec metuas; 'tis to no purpose.
While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; but being now dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him again? I shall go to him, but he cannot return to me.He that doth otherwise is an intemperate, a weak, a silly, and indiscreet man. Though Aristotle deny any part of intemperance to be conversant about sorrow, I am of [3926]Seneca's mind,
he that is wise is temperate, and he that is temperate is constant, free from passion, and he that is such a one, is without sorrow,as all wise men should be. The [3927]Thracians wept still when a child was born, feasted and made mirth when any man was buried: and so should we rather be glad for such as die well, that they are so happily freed from the miseries of this life. When Eteoneus, that noble young Greek, was so generally lamented by his friends, Pindarus the poet feigns some god saying, Silete homines, non enim miser est, &c. be quiet good folks, this young man is not so miserable as you think; he is neither gone to Styx nor Acheron, sed gloriosus et senii expers heros, he lives for ever in the Elysian fields. He now enjoys that happiness which your great kings so earnestly seek, and wears that garland for which ye contend. If our present weakness is such, we cannot moderate our passions in this behalf, we must divert them by all means, by doing something else, thinking of another subject. The Italians most part sleep away care and grief, if it unseasonably seize upon them, Danes, Dutchmen, Polanders and Bohemians drink it down, our countrymen go to plays: do something or other, let it not transpose thee, or by [3928]
premeditation make such accidents familiar,as Ulysses that wept for his dog, but not for his wife, quod paratus esset animo obfirmato, (Plut. de anim. tranq.)
accustom thyself, and harden beforehand by seeing other men's calamities, and applying them to thy present estate;Praevisum est levius quod fuit ante malum. I will conclude with [3929]Epictetus,
If thou lovest a pot, remember 'tis but a, pot thou lovest, and thou wilt not be troubled when 'tis broken: if thou lovest a son or wife, remember they were mortal, and thou wilt not be so impatient.And for false fears and all other fortuitous inconveniences, mischances, calamities, to resist and prepare ourselves, not to faint is best: [3930]Stultum est timere quod vitari non potest, 'tis a folly to fear that which cannot be avoided, or to be discouraged at all.
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.
Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war,a fit motto for every man's private house; happy is the man that provides for a future assault. But many times we complain, repine and mutter without a cause, we give way to passions we may resist, and will not. Socrates was bad by nature, envious, as he confessed to Zophius the physiognomer, accusing him of it, froward and lascivious: but as he was Socrates, he did correct and amend himself. Thou art malicious, envious, covetous, impatient, no doubt, and lascivious, yet as thou art a Christian, correct and moderate thyself. 'Tis something, I confess, and able to move any man, to see himself contemned, obscure, neglected, disgraced, undervalued, [3940]
left behind;some cannot endure it, no not constant Lipsius, a man discreet otherwise, yet too weak and passionate in this, as his words express, [3941]collegas olim, quos ego sine fremitu non intueor, nuper terrae filios, nunc Maecenates et Agrippas habeo,—summo jam monte potitos. But he was much to blame for it: to a wise staid man this is nothing, we cannot all be honoured and rich, all Caesars; if we will be content, our present state is good, and in some men's opinion to be preferred. Let them go on, get wealth, offices, titles, honours, preferments, and what they will themselves, by chance, fraud, imposture, simony, and indirect means, as too many do, by bribery, flattery, and parasitical insinuation, by impudence and time-serving, let them climb up to advancement in despite of virtue, let them
go before, cross me on every side,me non offendunt modo non in, oculos incurrant, [3942]as he said, correcting his former error, they do not offend me, so long as they run not into mine eyes. I am inglorious and poor, composita paupertate, but I live secure and quiet: they are dignified, have great means, pomp, and state, they are glorious; but what have they with it? [3943]
Envy, trouble, anxiety, as much labour to maintain their place with credit, as to get it at first.I am contented with my fortunes, spectator e longinquo, and love Neptunum procul a terra spectare furentem: he is ambitious, and not satisfied with his:
but what [3944]gets he by it? to have all his life laid open, his reproaches seen: not one of a thousand but he hath done more worthy of dispraise and animadversion than commendation; no better means to help this than to be private.Let them run, ride, strive as so many fishes for a crumb, scrape, climb, catch, snatch, cozen, collogue, temporise and fleer, take all amongst them, wealth, honour, [3945]and get what they can, it offends me not:
I am well pleased with my fortunes,[3947]Vivo et regno simul ista relinquens.
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;
One professeth([3956]Cardan well notes)
for a thousand crowns, but he deserves not ten, when as he that deserves a thousand cannot get ten.Solarium non dat multis salem. As good horses draw in carts, as coaches. And oftentimes, which Machiavel seconds, [3957] Principes non sunt qui ob insignem virtutem principatu digni sunt, he that is most worthy wants employment; he that hath skill to be a pilot wants a ship, and he that could govern a commonwealth, a world itself, a king in conceit, wants means to exercise his worth, hath not a poor office to manage, and yet all this while he is a better man that is fit to reign, etsi careat regno, though he want a kingdom, [3958]
than he that hath one, and knows not how to rule it:a lion serves not always his keeper, but oftentimes the keeper the lion, and as [3959]Polydore Virgil hath it, multi reges ut pupilli ob inscitiam non regunt sed reguntur. Hieron of Syracuse was a brave king, but wanted a kingdom; Perseus of Macedon had nothing of a king, but the bare name and title, for he could not govern it: so great places are often ill bestowed, worthy persons unrespected. Many times, too, the servants have more means than the masters whom they serve, which [3960]Epictetus counts an eyesore and inconvenient. But who can help it? It is an ordinary thing in these days to see a base impudent ass, illiterate, unworthy, insufficient, to be preferred before his betters, because he can put himself forward, because he looks big, can bustle in the world, hath a fair outside, can temporise, collogue, insinuate, or hath good store of friends and money, whereas a more discreet, modest, and better-deserving man shall lie hid or have a repulse. 'Twas so of old, and ever will be, and which Tiresias advised Ulysses in the [3961] poet,—Accipe qua ratione queas ditescere, &c., is still in use; lie, flatter, and dissemble: if not, as he concludes,—Ergo pauper eris, then go like a beggar as thou art. Erasmus, Melancthon, Lipsius, Budaeus, Cardan, lived and died poor. Gesner was a silly old man, baculo innixus, amongst all those huffing cardinals, swelling bishops that flourished in his time, and rode on foot-clothes. It is not honesty, learning, worth, wisdom, that prefers men,
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,but as the wise man said, [3962]Chance, and sometimes a ridiculous chance. [3963]Casus plerumque ridiculus multos elevavit. 'Tis fortune's doings, as they say, which made Brutus now dying exclaim, O misera virtus, ergo nihil quam verba eras, atqui ego te tanquam rem exercebam, sed tu serviebas fortunae. [3964]Believe it hereafter, O my friends! virtue serves fortune. Yet be not discouraged (O my well deserving spirits) with this which I have said, it may be otherwise, though seldom I confess, yet sometimes it is. But to your farther content, I'll tell you a [3965]tale. In Maronia pia, or Maronia felix, I know not whether, nor how long since, nor in what cathedral church, a fat prebend fell void. The carcass scarce cold, many suitors were up in an instant. The first had rich friends, a good purse, and he was resolved to outbid any man before he would lose it, every man supposed he should carry it. The second was my lord Bishop's chaplain (in whose gift it was), and he thought it his due to have it. The third was nobly born, and he meant to get it by his great parents, patrons, and allies. The fourth stood upon his worth, he had newly found out strange mysteries in chemistry, and other rare inventions, which he would detect to the public good. The fifth was a painful preacher, and he was commended by the whole parish where he dwelt, he had all their hands to his certificate. The sixth was the prebendary's son lately deceased, his father died in debt (for it, as they say), left a wife and many poor children. The seventh stood upon fair promises, which to him and his noble friends had been formerly made for the next place in his lordship's gift. The eighth pretended great losses, and what he had suffered for the church, what pains he had taken at home and abroad, and besides he brought noblemen's letters. The ninth had married a kinswoman, and he sent his wife to sue for him. The tenth was a foreign doctor, a late convert, and wanted means. The eleventh would exchange for another, he did not like the former's site, could not agree with his neighbours and fellows upon any terms, he would be gone. The twelfth and last was (a suitor in conceit) a right honest, civil, sober man, an excellent scholar, and such a one as lived private in the university, but he had neither means nor money to compass it; besides he hated all such courses, he could not speak for himself, neither had he any friends to solicit his cause, and therefore made no suit, could not expect, neither did he hope for, or look after it. The good bishop amongst a jury of competitors thus perplexed, and not yet resolved what to do, or on whom to bestow it, at the last, of his own accord, mere motion, and bountiful nature, gave it freely to the university student, altogether unknown to him but by fame; and to be brief, the academical scholar had the prebend sent him for a present. The news was no sooner published abroad, but all good students rejoiced, and were much cheered up with it, though some would not believe it; others, as men amazed, said it was a miracle; but one amongst the rest thanked God for it, and said, Nunc juvat tandem studiosum esse, et Deo integro corde servire. You have heard my tale: but alas it is but a tale, a mere fiction, 'twas never so, never like to be, and so let it rest. Well, be it so then, they have wealth and honour, fortune and preferment, every man (there's no remedy) must scramble as he may, and shift as he can; yet Cardan comforted himself with this, [3966]
the star Fomahant would make him immortal,and that [3967]after his decease his books should be found in ladies' studies: [3968]Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori. But why shouldst thou take thy neglect, thy canvas so to heart? It may be thou art not fit; but a [3969]child that puts on his father's shoes, hat, headpiece, breastplate, breeches, or holds his spear, but is neither able to wield the one, or wear the other; so wouldst thou do by such an office, place, or magistracy: thou art unfit:
And what is dignity to an unworthy man, but (as [3970] Salvianus holds) a gold ring in a swine's snout?Thou art a brute. Like a bad actor (so [3971]Plutarch compares such men in a tragedy, diadema fert, at vox non auditur: Thou wouldst play a king's part, but actest a clown, speakest like an ass. [3972]Magna petis Phaeton et quae non viribus istis, &c., as James and John, the sons of Zebedee, did ask they knew not what: nescis temerarie nescis; thou dost, as another Suffenus, overween thyself; thou art wise in thine own conceit, but in other more mature judgment altogether unfit to manage such a business. Or be it thou art more deserving than any of thy rank, God in his providence hath reserved thee for some other fortunes, sic superis visum. Thou art humble as thou art, it may be; hadst thou been preferred, thou wouldst have forgotten God and thyself, insulted over others, contemned thy friends, [3973]been a block, a tyrant, or a demigod, sequiturque superbia formam: [3974]
Therefore,saith Chrysostom,
good men do not always find grace and favour, lest they should be puffed up with turgent titles, grow insolent and proud.
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.
went up to the arms in water, and embracing his boat, would have carried him out upon his shoulders, adding that his humility and wisdom had triumphed over his pride and folly,and thereupon he was reconciled unto him and did his homage. If thou canst not so win him, put it up, if thou beest a true Christian, a good divine, an imitator of Christ, [3987](
for he was reviled and put it up, whipped and sought no revenge,) thou wilt pray for thine enemies, [3988]
and bless them that persecute thee;be patient, meek, humble, &c. An honest man will not offer thee injury, probus non vult; if he were a brangling knave, 'tis his fashion so to do; where is least heart is most tongue; quo quisque stultior, eo magis insolescit, the more sottish he is, still the more insolent: [3989]
Do not answer a fool according to his folly.If he be thy superior, [3990]bear it by all means, grieve not at it, let him take his course; Anitus and Melitus [3991]
may kill me, they cannot hurt me;as that generous Socrates made answer in like case. Mens immota manet, though the body be torn in pieces with wild horses, broken on the wheel, pinched with fiery tongs, the soul cannot be distracted. 'Tis an ordinary thing for great men to vilify and insult, oppress, injure, tyrannise, to take what liberty they list, and who dare speak against? Miserum est ab eo laedi, a quo non possis queri, a miserable thing 'tis to be injured of him, from whom is no appeal: [3992]and not safe to write against him that can proscribe and punish a man at his pleasure, which Asinius Pollio was aware of, when Octavianus provoked him. 'Tis hard I confess to be so injured: one of Chilo's three difficult things: [3993]
To keep counsel; spend his time well; put up injuries:but be thou patient, and [3994]leave revenge unto the Lord. [3995]
Vengeance is mine and I will repay, saith the Lord—
I know the Lord,saith [3996]David,
will avenge the afflicted and judge the poor.—
No man(as [3997]Plato farther adds)
can so severely punish his adversary, as God will such as oppress miserable men.
Thy sword hath made many women childless, so shall thy mother be childless amongst other women.It shall be done to them as they have done to others. Conradinus, that brave Suevian prince, came with a well-prepared army into the kingdom of Naples, was taken prisoner by king Charles, and put to death in the flower of his youth; a little after (ultionem Conradini mortis, Pandulphus Collinutius Hist. Neap. lib. 5. calls it), King Charles's own son, with two hundred nobles, was so taken prisoner, and beheaded in like sort. Not in this only, but in all other offences, quo quisque peccat in eo punietur, [4000]they shall be punished in the same kind, in the same part, like nature, eye with or in the eye, head with or in the head, persecution with persecution, lust with effects of lust; let them march on with ensigns displayed, let drums beat on, trumpets sound taratantarra, let them sack cities, take the spoil of countries, murder infants, deflower virgins, destroy, burn, persecute, and tyrannise, they shall be fully rewarded at last in the same measure, they and theirs, and that to their desert.
They shall have sorrow of heart, and be destroyed from under the heaven,Thre. iii. 64, 65, 66. Only be thou patient: [4002]vincit qui patitur: and in the end thou shalt be crowned. Yea, but 'tis a hard matter to do this, flesh and blood may not abide it; 'tis grave, grave! no (Chrysostom replies) non est grave, o homo! 'tis not so grievous, [4003]
neither had God commanded it, if it had been so difficult.But how shall it be done?
Easily,as he follows it,
if thou shalt look to heaven, behold the beauty of it, and what God hath promised to such as put up injuries.But if thou resist and go about vim vi repellere, as the custom of the world is, to right thyself, or hast given just cause of offence, 'tis no injury then but a condign punishment; thou hast deserved as much: A te principium, in te recredit crimen quod a te fuit; peccasti, quiesce, as Ambrose expostulates with Cain, lib. 3. de Abel et Cain. [4004]Dionysius of Syracuse, in his exile, was made to stand without door, patienter ferendum, fortasse nos tale quid fecimus, quum in honore essemus, he wisely put it up, and laid the fault where it was, on his own pride and scorn, which in his prosperity he had formerly showed others. 'Tis [4005] Tully's axiom, ferre ea molestissime homines non debent, quae ipsorum culpa contracta sunt, self do, self have, as the saying is, they may thank themselves. For he that doth wrong must look to be wronged again; habet et musca splenem, et formicae sua bills inest. The least fly hath a spleen, and a little bee a sting. [4006]An ass overwhelmed a thistlewarp's nest, the little bird pecked his galled back in revenge; and the humble-bee in the fable flung down the eagle's eggs out of Jupiter's lap. Bracides, in Plutarch, put his hand into a mouse's nest and hurt her young ones, she bit him by the finger: [4007]I see now (saith he) there is no creature so contemptible, that will not be revenged. 'Tis lex talionis, and the nature of all things so to do: if thou wilt live quietly thyself, [4008]do no wrong to others; if any be done thee, put it up, with patience endure it, for [4009]
this is thankworthy,saith our apostle,
if any man for conscience towards God endure grief, and suffer wrong undeserved; for what praise is it, if when ye be buffeted for you faults, ye take it patiently? But if when you do well, ye suffer wrong, and take it patiently, there is thanks with God; for hereunto verily we are called.Qui mala non fert, ipse sibi testis est per impatientiam quod bonus non est,
he that cannot bear injuries, witnesseth against himself that he is no good man,as Gregory holds. [4010]
'Tis the nature of wicked men to do injuries, as it is the property of all honest men patiently to bear them.Improbitas nullo flectitur obsequio. The wolf in the [4011]emblem sucked the goat (so the shepherd would have it), but he kept nevertheless a wolf's nature; [4012]a knave will be a knave. Injury is on the other side a good man's footboy, his fidus Acliates, and as a lackey follows him wheresoever he goes. Besides, misera est fortuna quae caret inimico, he is in a miserable estate that wants enemies: [4013]it is a thing not to be avoided, and therefore with more patience to be endured. Cato Censorius, that upright Cato of whom Paterculus gives that honourable eulogium, bene fecit quod aliter facere non potuit, was [4014]fifty times indicted and accused by his fellow citizens, and as [4015]Ammianus well hath it, Quis erit innocens si clam vel palam accusasse sufficiat? if it be sufficient to accuse a man openly or in private, who shall be free? If there were no other respect than that of Christianity, religion and the like, to induce men to be long-suffering and patient, yet methinks the nature of injury itself is sufficient to keep them quiet, the tumults, uproars, miseries, discontents, anguish, loss, dangers that attend upon it might restrain the calamities of contention: for as it is with ordinary gamesters, the gains go to the box, so falls it out to such as contend; the lawyers get all; and therefore if they would consider of it, aliena pericula cantos, other men's misfortunes in this kind, and common experience might detain them. [4016]The more they contend, the more they are involved in a labyrinth of woes, and the catastrophe is to consume one another, like the elephant and dragon's conflict in Pliny; [4017]the dragon got under the elephant's belly, and sucked his blood so long, till he fell down dead upon the dragon, and killed him with the fall, so both were ruined. 'Tis a hydra's head, contention; the more they strive, the more they may: and as Praxiteles did by his glass, when he saw a scurvy face in it, brake it in pieces: but for that one he saw many more as bad in a moment: for one injury done they provoke another cum foenore, and twenty enemies for one. Noli irritare crabrones, oppose not thyself to a multitude: but if thou hast received a wrong, wisely consider of it, and if thou canst possibly, compose thyself with patience to bear it. This is the safest course, and thou shalt find greatest ease to be quiet.
[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.
a good conscience is a continual feast,innocency will vindicate itself: and which the poet gave out of Hercules, diis fruitur iratis, enjoy thyself, though all the world be set against thee, contemn and say with him, Elogium mihi prae, foribus, my posy is,
not to be moved, that [4032]my palladium, my breastplate, my buckler, with which I ward all injuries, offences, lies, slanders; I lean upon that stake of modesty, so receive and break asunder all that foolish force of liver and spleen.And whosoever he is that shall observe these short instructions, without all question he shall much ease and benefit himself.
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,
If we be honest 'twas poverty made us so:if we melancholy men be not as bad as he that is worst, 'tis our dame melancholy kept us so: Non deerat voluntas sed facultas. [4073]
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?
that variety of pulses described by Galen, is neither observed nor understood of any.And for urine, that is meretrix medicorum, the most deceitful thing of all, as Forestus and some other physicians have proved at large: I say nothing of critic days, errors in indications, &c. The most rational of them, and skilful, are so often deceived, that as [4097]Tholosanus infers,
I had rather believe and commit myself to a mere empiric, than to a mere doctor, and I cannot sufficiently commend that custom of the Babylonians, that have no professed physicians, but bring all their patients to the market to be cured:which Herodotus relates of the Egyptians: Strabo, Sardus, and Aubanus Bohemus of many other nations. And those that prescribed physic, amongst them, did not so arrogantly take upon them to cure all diseases, as our professors do, but some one, some another, as their skill and experience did serve; [4098]
One cured the eyes, a second the teeth, a third the head, another the lower parts,&c., not for gain, but in charity, to do good, they made neither art, profession, nor trade of it, which in other places was accustomed: and therefore Cambyses in [4099]Xenophon told Cyrus, that to his thinking, physicians
were like tailors and cobblers, the one mended our sick bodies, as the other did our clothes.But I will urge these cavilling and contumelious arguments no farther, lest some physician should mistake me, and deny me physic when I am sick: for my part, I am well persuaded of physic: I can distinguish the abuse from the use, in this and many other arts and sciences: [4100]Alliud vinum, aliud ebrietas, wine and drunkenness are two distinct things. I acknowledge it a most noble and divine science, in so much that Apollo, Aesculapius, and the first founders of it, merito pro diis habiti, were worthily counted gods by succeeding ages, for the excellency of their invention. And whereas Apollo at Delos, Venus at Cyprus, Diana at Ephesus, and those other gods were confined and adored alone in some peculiar places: Aesculapius and his temple and altars everywhere, in Corinth, Lacedaemon, Athens, Thebes, Epidaurus, &c. Pausanius records, for the latitude of his art, deity, worth, and necessity. With all virtuous and wise men therefore I honour the name and calling, as I am enjoined
to honour the physician for necessity's sake. The knowledge of the physician lifteth up his head, and in the sight of great men he shall be admired. The Lord hath created medicines of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them,Eccles. lviii 1. But of this noble subject, how many panegyrics are worthily written? For my part, as Sallust said of Carthage, praestat silere, quam pauca dicere; I have said, yet one thing I will add, that this kind of physic is very moderately and advisedly to be used, upon good occasion, when the former of diet will not take place. And 'tis no other which I say, than that which Arnoldus prescribes in his 8. Aphoris. [4101]
A discreet and goodly physician doth first endeavour to expel a disease by medicinal diet, than by pure medicine:and in his ninth, [4102]
he that may be cured by diet, must not meddle with physic.So in 11. Aphoris. [4103]
A modest and wise physician will never hasten to use medicines, but upon urgent necessity, and that sparingly too:because (as he adds in his 13. Aphoris.) [4104]
Whosoever takes much physic in his youth, shall soon bewail it in his old age:purgative physic especially, which doth much debilitate nature. For which causes some physicians refrain from the use of purgatives, or else sparingly use them. [4105]Henricus Ayrerus in a consultation for a melancholy person, would have him take as few purges as he could,
because there be no such medicines, which do not steal away some of our strength, and rob the parts of our body, weaken nature, and cause that cacochymia,which [4106]Celsus and others observe, or ill digestion, and bad juice through all the parts of it. Galen himself confesseth, [4107]
that purgative physic is contrary to nature, takes away some of our best spirits, and consumes the very substance of our bodies:But this, without question, is to be understood of such purges as are unseasonably or immoderately taken: they have their excellent use in this, as well as most other infirmities. Of alteratives and cordials no man doubts, be they simples or compounds. I will amongst that infinite variety of medicines, which I find in every pharmacopoeia, every physician, herbalist, &c., single out some of the chiefest.
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,
each disease a medicine, for every humour;and as some hold, every clime, every country, and more than that, every private place hath his proper remedies growing in it, peculiar almost to the domineering and most frequent maladies of it, As [4110]one discourseth,
wormwood grows sparingly in Italy, because most part there they be misaffected with hot diseases: but henbane, poppy, and such cold herbs: with us in Germany and Poland, great store of it in every waste.Baracellus Horto geniali, and Baptista Porta Physiognomicae, lib. 6. cap. 23, give many instances and examples of it, and bring many other proofs. For that cause belike that learned Fuchsius of Nuremberg, [4111]
when he came into a village, considered always what herbs did grow most frequently about it, and those he distilled in a silver alembic, making use of others amongst them as occasion served.I know that many are of opinion, our northern simples are weak, imperfect, not so well concocted, of such force, as those in the southern parts, not so fit to be used in physic, and will therefore fetch their drugs afar off: senna, cassia out of Egypt, rhubarb from Barbary, aloes from Socotra; turbith, agaric, mirabolanes, hermodactils, from the East Indies, tobacco from the west, and some as far as China, hellebore from the Anticyrae, or that of Austria which bears the purple flower, which Mathiolus so much approves, and so of the rest. In the kingdom of Valencia, in Spain, [4112]Maginus commends two mountains, Mariola and Renagolosa, famous for simples; [4113] Leander Albertus, [4114]Baldus a mountain near the Lake Benacus in the territory of Verona, to which all the herbalists in the country continually flock; Ortelius one in Apulia, Munster Mons major in Istria; others Montpelier in France; Prosper Altinus prefers Egyptian simples, Garcias ab Horto Indian before the rest, another those of Italy, Crete, &c. Many times they are over-curious in this kind, whom Fuchsius taxeth, Instit. l. 1. sec. 1. cap. 1. [4115]
that think they do nothing, except they rake all over India, Arabia, Ethiopia for remedies, and fetch their physic from the three quarters of the world, and from beyond the Garamantes. Many an old wife or country woman doth often more good with a few known and common garden herbs, than our bombast physicians, with all their prodigious, sumptuous, far-fetched, rare, conjectural medicines:without all question if we have not these rare exotic simples, we hold that at home, which is in virtue equivalent unto them, ours will serve as well as theirs, if they be taken in proportionable quantity, fitted and qualified aright, if not much better, and more proper to our constitutions. But so 'tis for the most part, as Pliny writes to Gallus, [4116]
We are careless of that which is near us, and follow that which is afar off, to know which we will travel and sail beyond the seas, wholly neglecting that which is under our eyes.Opium in Turkey doth scarce offend, with us in a small quantity it stupefies; cicuta or hemlock is a strong poison in Greece, but with us it hath no such violent effects: I conclude with I. Voschius, who as he much inveighs against those exotic medicines, so he promiseth by our European, a full cure and absolute of all diseases; a capite ad calcem, nostrae regionis herbae nostris corporibus magis conducunt, our own simples agree best with us. It was a thing that Fernelius much laboured in his French practice, to reduce all his cure to our proper and domestic physic; so did [4117]Janus Cornarius, and Martin Rulandus in Germany. T. B. with us, as appeareth by a treatise of his divulged in our tongue 1615, to prove the sufficiency of English medicines, to the cure of all manner of diseases. If our simples be not altogether of such force, or so apposite, it may be, if like industry were used, those far fetched drugs would prosper as well with us, as in those countries whence now we have them, as well as cherries, artichokes, tobacco, and many such. There have been diverse worthy physicians, which have tried excellent conclusions in this kind, and many diligent, painful apothecaries, as Gesner, Besler, Gerard, &c., but amongst the rest those famous public gardens of Padua in Italy, Nuremberg in Germany, Leyden in Holland, Montpelier in France, (and ours in Oxford now in fieri, at the cost and charges for the Right Honourable the Lord Danvers Earl of Danby) are much to be commended, wherein all exotic plants almost are to be seen, and liberal allowance yearly made for their better maintenance, that young students may be the sooner informed in the knowledge of them: which as [4118]Fuchsius holds,
is most necessary for that exquisite manner of curing,and as great a shame for a physician not to observe them, as for a workman not to know his axe, saw, square, or any other tool which he must of necessity use.
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,
to be no better than poison,a mere imposture, a non ens; dug out of that broody hill belike this golden stone is, ubi nascetur ridiculus mus. Paracelsus and his chemistical followers, as so many Promethei, will fetch fire from heaven, will cure all manner of diseases with minerals, accounting them the only physic on the other side. [4164]Paracelsus calls Galen, Hippocrates, and all their adherents, infants, idiots, sophisters, &c. Apagesis istos qui Vulcanias istas metamorphoses sugillant, inscitiae soboles, supinae pertinaciae alumnos, &c., not worthy the name of physicians, for want of these remedies: and brags that by them he can make a man live 160 years, or to the world's end, with their [4165]Alexipharmacums, Panaceas, Mummias, unguentum Armarium, and such magnetical cures, Lampas vitae et mortis, Balneum Dianae, Balsamum, Electrum Magico-physicum, Amuleta Martialia, &c. What will not he and his followers effect? He brags, moreover, that he was primus medicorum, and did more famous cures than all the physicians in Europe besides, [4166]
a drop of his preparations should go farther than a dram, or ounce of theirs,those loathsome and fulsome filthy potions, heteroclitical pills (so he calls them), horse medicines, ad quoram aspectum Cyclops Polyphemus exhorresceret. And though some condemn their skill and magnetical cures as tending to magical superstition, witchery, charms, &c., yet they admire, stiffly vindicate nevertheless, and infinitely prefer them. But these are both in extremes, the middle sort approve of minerals, though not in so high a degree. Lemnius lib. 3. cap. 6. de occult. nat. mir. commends gold inwardly and outwardly used, as in rings, excellent good in medicines; and such mixtures as are made for melancholy men, saith Wecker, antid. spec. lib. 1. to whom Renodeus subscribes, lib. 2. cap. 2. Ficinus, lib. 2. cap. 19. Fernel. meth. med. lib. 5. cap. 21. de Cardiacis. Daniel Sennertus, lib. 1. part. 2. cap. 9. Audernacus, Libavius, Quercetanus, Oswaldus Crollius, Euvonymus, Rubeus, and Matthiolus in the fourth book of his Epistles, Andreas a Blawen epist. ad Matthiolum, as commended and formerly used by Avicenna, Arnoldus, and many others: [4167]Matthiolus in the same place approves of potable gold, mercury, with many such chemical confections, and goes so far in approbation of them, that he holds [4168]
no man can be an excellent physician that hath not some skill in chemistical distillations, and that chronic diseases can hardly be cured without mineral medicines:look for antimony among purgers.
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.
Put case(saith he)
all other medicines fail, by the help of God this alone shall do it, and 'tis a crowned medicine which must be kept in secret.
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.
And though all the schools of Galenists, with a wicked and unthankful pride and scorn, detest it in their practice, yet in more grievous diseases, when their vegetals will do no good,they are compelled to seek the help of minerals, though they
use them rashly, unprofitably, slackly, and to no purpose.Rhenanus, a Dutch chemist, in his book de Sale e puteo emergente, takes upon him to apologise for Anthony, and sets light by all that speak against him. But what do I meddle with this great controversy, which is the subject of many volumes? Let Paracelsus, Quercetan, Crollius, and the brethren of the rosy cross, defend themselves as they may. Crato, Erastus, and the Galenists oppugn Paracelsus, he brags on the other side, he did more famous cures by this means, than all the Galenists in Europe, and calls himself a monarch; Galen, Hippocrates, infants, illiterate, &c. As Thessalus of old railed against those ancient Asclepiadean writers, [4274]
he condemns others, insults, triumphs, overcomes all antiquity(saith Galen as if he spake to him)
declares himself a conqueror, and crowns his own doings. [4275]One drop of their chemical preparatives shall do more good than all their fulsome potions.Erastus, and the rest of the Galenists vilify them on the other side, as heretics in physic; [4276]
Paracelsus did that in physic, which Luther in Divinity. [4277]A drunken rogue he was, a base fellow, a magician, he had the devil for his master, devils his familiar companions, and what he did, was done by the help of the devil.Thus they contend and rail, and every mart write books pro and con, et adhuc sub judice lis est: let them agree as they will, I proceed.
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.
spent his time with dice and drink that he might so ease his discontented mind, and avoid those continual cogitations of his present condition wherewith he was tormented.Therefore Solomon, Prov. xxxi. 6, bids
wine be given to him that is ready to [4307]perish, and to him that hath grief of heart, let him drink that he forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.Sollicitis animis onus eximit, it easeth a burdened soul, nothing speedier, nothing better; which the prophet Zachariah perceived, when he said,
that in the time of Messias, they of Ephraim should be glad, and their heart should rejoice as through wine.All which makes me very well approve of that pretty description of a feast in [4308] Bartholomeus Anglicus, when grace was said, their hands washed, and the guests sufficiently exhilarated, with good discourse, sweet music, dainty fare, exhilarationis gratia, pocula iterum atque iterum offeruntur, as a corollary to conclude the feast, and continue their mirth, a grace cup came in to cheer their hearts, and they drank healths to one another again and again. Which as I. Fredericus Matenesius, Crit. Christ. lib. 2. cap. 5, 6, & 7, was an old custom in all ages in every commonwealth, so as they be not enforced, bibere per violentiam, but as in that royal feast of [4309] Ahasuerus, which lasted 180 days,
without compulsion they drank by order in golden vessels,when and what they would themselves. This of drink is a most easy and parable remedy, a common, a cheap, still ready against fear, sorrow, and such troublesome thoughts, that molest the mind; as brimstone with fire, the spirits on a sudden are enlightened by it.
No better physic(saith [4310]Rhasis)
for a melancholy man: and he that can keep company, and carouse, needs no other medicines,'tis enough. His countryman Avicenna, 31. doc. 2. cap. 8. proceeds farther yet, and will have him that is troubled in mind, or melancholy, not to drink only, but now and then to be drunk: excellent good physic it is for this and many other diseases. Magninus Reg. san. part. 3. c. 31. will have them to be so once a month at least, and gives his reasons for it, [4311]
because it scours the body by vomit, urine, sweat, of all manner of superfluities, and keeps it clean.Of the same mind is Seneca the philosopher, in his book de tranquil. lib. 1. c. 15. nonnunquam ut in aliis morbis ad ebrietatem usque veniendum; Curas deprimit, tristitiae medetur, it is good sometimes to be drunk, it helps sorrow, depresseth cares, and so concludes this tract with a cup of wine: Habes, Serene charissime, quae ad, tranquillitatem animae, pertinent. But these are epicureal tenets, tending to looseness of life, luxury and atheism, maintained alone by some heathens, dissolute Arabians, profane Christians, and are exploded by Rabbi Moses, tract. 4. Guliel, Placentius, lib. 1. cap. 8. Valescus de Taranta, and most accurately ventilated by Jo. Sylvaticus, a late writer and physician of Milan, med. cont. cap. 14. where you shall find this tenet copiously confuted.
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.
let us maintain the vigour of our souls with a moderate cup of wine,[4314]Natis in usum laetitiae scyphis,
and drink to refresh our mind; if there be any cold sorrow in it, or torpid bashfulness, let's wash it all away.—Nunc vino pellite curas; so saith [4315]Horace, so saith Anacreon,
they be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess,which our [4316]Apostle forewarns; for as Chrysostom well comments on that place, ad laetitiam datum est vinum, non ad ebrietatem, 'tis for mirth wine, but not for madness: and will you know where, when, and how that is to be understood? Vis discere ubi bonum sit vinum? Audi quid dicat Scriptura, hear the Scriptures,
Give wine to them that are in sorrow,or as Paul bid Timothy drink wine for his stomach's sake, for concoction, health, or some such honest occasion. Otherwise, as [4317] Pliny telleth us; if singular moderation be not had, [4318]
nothing so pernicious, 'tis mere vinegar, blandus daemon, poison itself.But hear a more fearful doom, Habac. ii. 15. and 16.
Woe be to him that makes his neighbour drunk, shameful spewing shall be upon his glory.Let not good fellows triumph therefore (saith Matthiolus) that I have so much commended wine, if it be immoderately taken,
instead of making glad, it confounds both body and soul, it makes a giddy head, a sorrowful heart.And 'twas well said of the poet of old,
Vine causeth mirth and grief,[4319]nothing so good for some, so bad for others, especially as [4320]one observes, qui a causa calida male habent, that are hot or inflamed. And so of spices, they alone, as I have showed, cause head-melancholy themselves, they must not use wine as an [4321]ordinary drink, or in their diet. But to determine with Laurentius, c. 8. de melan. wine is bad for madmen, and such as are troubled with heat in their inner parts or brains; but to melancholy, which is cold (as most is), wine, soberly used, may be very good.
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.
it takes away sadness, and makes him merry that useth it; I have seen some that have been much diseased with faintness, swooning, and melancholy, that taking the weight of three grains of this stone, in the water of oxtongue, have been cured.Garcias ab Horto brags how many desperate cures he hath done upon melancholy men by this alone, when all physicians had forsaken them. But alkermes many except against; in some cases it may help, if it be good and of the best, such as that of Montpelier in France, which [4329]Iodocus Sincerus, Itinerario Galliae, so much magnifies, and would have no traveller omit to see it made. But it is not so general a medicine as the other. Fernelius, consil. 49, suspects alkermes, by reason of its heat, [4330]
nothing(saith he)
sooner exasperates this disease, than the use of hot working meats and medicines, and would have them for that cause warily taken.I conclude, therefore, of this and all other medicines, as Thucydides of the plague at Athens, no remedy could be prescribed for it, Nam quod uni profuit, hoc aliis erat exitio: there is no Catholic medicine to be had: that which helps one, is pernicious to another.
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.
If I have spent my time ill to write, let not them be so idle as to read.But I am persuaded it is not so ill spent, I ought not to excuse or repent myself of this subject; on which many grave and worthy men have written whole volumes, Plato, Plutarch, Plotinus, Maximus, Tyrius, Alcinous, Avicenna, Leon Hebreus in three large dialogues, Xenophon sympos. Theophrastus, if we may believe Athenaeus, lib. 13. cap. 9. Picus Mirandula, Marius, Aequicola, both in Italian, Kornmannus de linea Amoris, lib. 3. Petrus Godefridus hath handled in three books, P. Haedus, and which almost every physician, as Arnoldus, Villanovanus, Valleriola observat. med. lib. 2. observ. 7. Aelian Montaltus and Laurentius in their treatises of melancholy, Jason Pratensis de morb. cap. Valescus de Taranta, Gordonius, Hercules de Saxonia, Savanarola, Langius, &c., have treated of apart, and in their works. I excuse myself, therefore, with Peter Godefridus, Valleriola, Ficinus, and in [4420]Langius' words. Cadmus Milesius writ fourteen books of love,
and why should I be ashamed to write an epistle in favour of young men, of this subject?A company of stern readers dislike the second of the Aeneids, and Virgil's gravity, for inserting such amorous passions in an heroical subject; but [4421]Servius, his commentator, justly vindicates the poet's worth, wisdom, and discretion in doing as he did. Castalio would not have young men read the [4422] Canticles, because to his thinking it was too light and amorous a tract, a ballad of ballads, as our old English translation hath it. He might as well forbid the reading of Genesis, because of the loves of Jacob and Rachael, the stories of Sichem and Dinah, Judah and Thamar; reject the Book of Numbers, for the fornications of the people of Israel with the Moabites; that of Judges for Samson and Dalilah's embracings; that of the Kings, for David and Bersheba's adulteries, the incest of Ammon and Thamar, Solomon's concubines, &c. The stories of Esther, Judith, Susanna, and many such. Dicearchus, and some other, carp at Plato's majesty, that he would vouchsafe to indite such love toys: amongst the rest, for that dalliance with Agatho,
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,
he was in his life a philosopher(as Ausonius apologiseth for him),
in his epigrams a lover, in his precepts most severe; in his epistle to Caerellia, a wanton.Annianus, Sulpicius, Evemus, Menander, and many old poets besides, did in scriptis prurire, write Fescennines, Atellans, and lascivious songs; laetam materiam; yet they had in moribus censuram, et severitatem, they were chaste, severe, and upright livers.
Incensed(as he said)
with the love of finding love, we have sought it, and found it.More yet, I have augmented and added something to this light treatise (if light) which was not in the former editions, I am not ashamed to confess it, with a good [4450]author, quod extendi et locupletari hoc subjectum plerique postulabant, et eorum importunitate victus, animum utcunque renitentem eo adegi, ut jam sexta vice calamum in manum sumerem, scriptionique longe et a studiis et professione mea alienae, me accingerem, horas aliquas a seriis meis occupationibus interim suffuratus, easque veluti ludo cuidam ac recreationi destinans; etsi non ignorarem novos fortasse detractores novis hisce interpolationibus meis minime defuturos. [4452]
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.
By this love(saith Gerson)
we purchase heaven,and buy the kingdom of God. This [4496]love is either in the Trinity itself (for the Holy Ghost is the love of the Father and the Son, &c. John iii. 35, and v. 20, and xiv. 31), or towards us his creatures, as in making the world. Amor mundum fecit, love built cities, mundi anima, invented arts, sciences, and all [4497]good things, incites us to virtue and humanity, combines and quickens; keeps peace on earth, quietness by sea, mirth in the winds and elements, expels all fear, anger, and rusticity; Circulus a bono in bonum, a round circle still from good to good; for love is the beginner and end of all our actions, the efficient and instrumental cause, as our poets in their symbols, impresses, [4498]emblems of rings, squares, &c., shadow unto us,
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son for it,John iii. 16.
Behold what love the Father hath showed on us, that we should be called the sons of God,1 John iii. 1. Or by His sweet Providence, in protecting of it; either all in general, or His saints elect and church in particular, whom He keeps as the apple of His eye, whom He loves freely, as Hosea xiv. 5. speaks, and dearly respects, [4500]Charior est ipsis homo quam sibi. Not that we are fair, nor for any merit or grace of ours, for we are most vile and base; but out of His incomparable love and goodness, out of His Divine Nature. And this is that Homer's golden chain, which reacheth down from heaven to earth, by which every creature is annexed, and depends on his Creator. He made all, saith [4501]Moses,
and it was good;He loves it as good.
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,
This is the great goddess we adore and worship; this is the sole object of our desire.If we have it, as we think, we are made for ever, thrice happy, princes, lords, &c. If we lose it, we are dull, heavy, dejected, discontent, miserable, desperate, and mad. Our estate and bene esse ebbs and flows with our commodity; and as we are endowed or enriched, so are we beloved and esteemed: it lasts no longer than our wealth; when that is gone, and the object removed, farewell friendship: as long as bounty, good cheer, and rewards were to be hoped, friends enough; they were tied to thee by the teeth, and would follow thee as crows do a carcass: but when thy goods are gone and spent, the lamp of their love is out, and thou shalt be contemned, scorned, hated, injured. [4516]Lucian's Timon, when he lived in prosperity, was the sole spectacle of Greece, only admired; who but Timon? Everybody loved, honoured, applauded him, each man offered him his service, and sought to be kin to him; but when his gold was spent, his fair possessions gone, farewell Timon: none so ugly, none so deformed, so odious an object as Timon, no man so ridiculous on a sudden, they gave him a penny to buy a rope, no man would know him.
'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:
a mother cannot forget her child:Solomon so found out the true owner; love of parents may not be concealed, 'tis natural, descends, and they that are inhuman in this kind, are unworthy of that air they breathe, and of the four elements; yet many unnatural examples we have in this rank, of hard-hearted parents, disobedient children, of [4540]disagreeing brothers, nothing so common. The love of kinsmen is grown cold, [4541]
many kinsmen(as the saying is)
few friends;if thine estate be good, and thou able, par pari referre, to requite their kindness, there will be mutual correspondence, otherwise thou art a burden, most odious to them above all others. The last object that ties man and man, is comeliness of person, and beauty alone, as men love women with a wanton eye: which κατ' ἐξοχὴν is termed heroical, or love-melancholy. Other loves (saith Picolomineus) are so called with some contraction, as the love of wine, gold, &c., but this of women is predominant in a higher strain, whose part affected is the liver, and this love deserves a longer explication, and shall be dilated apart in the next section.
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.
no painter, no graver, no carver can express virtue's lustre, or those admirable rays that come from it, those enchanting rays that enamour posterity, those everlasting rays that continue to the world's end.Many, saith Phavorinus, that loved and admired Alcibiades in his youth, knew not, cared not for Alcibiades a man, nunc intuentes quaerebant Alcibiadem; but the beauty of Socrates is still the same; [4571]virtue's lustre never fades, is ever fresh and green, semper viva to all succeeding ages, and a most attractive loadstone, to draw and combine such as are present. For that reason belike, Homer feigns the three Graces to be linked and tied hand in hand, because the hearts of men are so firmly united with such graces. [4572]
O sweet bands (Seneca exclaims), which so happily combine, that those which are bound by them love their binders, desiring withal much more harder to be bound,and as so many Geryons to be united into one. For the nature of true friendship is to combine, to be like affected, of one mind,
He did express his friends in colours, in wax, in brass, in ivory, marble, gold, and silver(as Pliny reports of a citizen in Rome),
and in a great auditory not long since recited a just volume of his life.In another place, [4579]speaking of an epigram which Martial had composed in praise of him, [4580]
He gave me as much as he might, and would have done more if he could: though what can a man give more than honour, glory, and eternity?But that which he wrote peradventure will not continue, yet he wrote it to continue. 'Tis all the recompense a poor scholar can make his well-deserving patron, Mecaenas, friend, to mention him in his works, to dedicate a book to his name, to write his life, &c., as all our poets, orators, historiographers have ever done, and the greatest revenge such men take of their adversaries, to persecute them with satires, invectives, &c., and 'tis both ways of great moment, as [4581] Plato gives us to understand. Paulus Jovius, in the fourth book of the life and deeds of Pope Leo Decimus, his noble patron, concludes in these words, [4582]
Because I cannot honour him as other rich men do, with like endeavour, affection, and piety, I have undertaken to write his life; since my fortunes will not give me leave to make a more sumptuous monument, I will perform those rites to his sacred ashes, which a small, perhaps, but a liberal wit can afford.But I rove. Where this true love is wanting, there can be no firm peace, friendship from teeth outward, counterfeit, or for some by-respects, so long dissembled, till they have satisfied their own ends, which, upon every small occasion, breaks out into enmity, open war, defiance, heart-burnings, whispering, calumnies, contentions, and all manner of bitter melancholy discontents. And those men which have no other object of their love, than greatness, wealth, authority, &c., are rather feared than beloved; nec amant quemquam, nec amantur ab ullo: and howsoever borne with for a time, yet for their tyranny and oppression, griping, covetousness, currish hardness, folly, intemperance, imprudence, and such like vices, they are generally odious, abhorred of all, both God and men.
wife and children, friends, neighbours, all the world forsakes them, would feign be rid of them,and are compelled many times to lay violent hands on them, or else God's judgments overtake them: instead of graces, come furies. So when fair [4583]Abigail, a woman of singular wisdom, was acceptable to David, Nabal was churlish and evil-conditioned; and therefore [4584]Mordecai was received, when Haman was executed, Haman the favourite,
that had his seat above the other princes, to whom all the king's servants that stood in the gates, bowed their knees and reverenced.Though they flourished many times, such hypocrites, such temporising foxes, and blear the world's eyes by flattery, bribery, dissembling their natures, or other men's weakness, that cannot so apprehend their tricks, yet in the end they will be discerned, and precipitated in a moment:
surely,saith David,
thou hast set them in slippery places,Psal. xxxvii. 5. as so many Sejani, they will come down to the Gemonian scales; and as Eusebius in [4585] Ammianus, that was in such authority, ad jubendum Imperatorem, be cast down headlong on a sudden. Or put case they escape, and rest unmasked to their lives' end, yet after their death their memory stinks as a snuff of a candle put out, and those that durst not so much as mutter against them in their lives, will prosecute their name with satires, libels, and bitter imprecations, they shall male audire in all succeeding ages, and be odious to the world's end.
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.
As the sun is in the firmament, so is friendship in the world,a most divine and heavenly band. As nuptial love makes, this perfects mankind, and is to be preferred (if you will stand to the judgment of [4597]Cornelius Nepos) before affinity or consanguinity; plus in amiciticia valet similitudo morum, quam affinitas, &c., the cords of love bind faster than any other wreath whatsoever. Take this away, and take all pleasure, joy, comfort, happiness, and true content out of the world; 'tis the greatest tie, the surest indenture, strongest band, and, as our modern Maro decides it, is much to be preferred before the rest.
[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,
Show some pity for Christ's sake, pity a sick man, an old man,&c., he cares not, ride on: pretend sickness, inevitable loss of limbs, goods, plead suretyship, or shipwreck, fires, common calamities, show thy wants and imperfections,
but to [4615]eternise his own name, to be immortal by the benefit of scholars; for when his friends were dead, walls decayed, and all inscriptions gone, books would remain to the world's end.The lantern in [4616]Athens was built by Zenocles, the theatre by Pericles, the famous port Pyraeum by Musicles, Pallas Palladium by Phidias, the Pantheon by Callicratidas; but these brave monuments are decayed all, and ruined long since, their builders' names alone flourish by meditation of writers. And as [4617]he said of that Marian oak, now cut down and dead, nullius Agricolae manu vulta stirps tam diuturna, quam quae poetae, versu seminari potest, no plant can grow so long as that which is ingenio sata, set and manured by those ever-living wits. [4618]Allon Backuth, that weeping oak, under which Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died, and was buried, may not survive the memory of such everlasting monuments. Vainglory and emulation (as to most men) was the cause efficient, and to be a trumpeter of his own fame, Cosmo's sole intent so to do good, that all the world might take notice of it. Such for the most part is the charity of our times, such our benefactors, Mecaenates and patrons. Show me amongst so many myriads, a truly devout, a right, honest, upright, meek, humble, a patient, innocuous, innocent, a merciful, a loving, a charitable man! [4619]Probus quis nobiscum vivit? Show me a Caleb or a Joshua! Dic mihi Musa virum—show a virtuous woman, a constant wife, a good neighbour, a trusty servant, an obedient child, a true friend, &c. Crows in Africa are not so scant. He that shall examine this [4620]iron age wherein we live, where love is cold, et jam terras Astrea reliquit, justice fled with her assistants, virtue expelled,
to make the trumpet of the gospel the trumpet of war,a company of hell-born Jesuits, and fiery-spirited friars, facem praeferre to all seditions: as so many firebrands set all the world by the ears (I say nothing of their contentious and railing books, whole ages spent in writing one against another, and that with such virulency and bitterness, Bionaeis sermonibus et sale nigro), and by their bloody inquisitions, that in thirty years, Bale saith, consumed 39 princes, 148 earls, 235 barons, 14,755 commons; worse than those ten persecutions, may justly doubt where is charity? Obsecro vos quales hi demum Christiani! Are these Christians? I beseech you tell me: he that shall observe and see these things, may say to them as Cato to Caesar, credo quae de inferis dicuntur falsa existimas,
sure I think thou art of opinion there is neither heaven nor hell.Let them pretend religion, zeal, make what shows they will, give alms, peace-makers, frequent sermons, if we may guess at the tree by the fruit, they are no better than hypocrites, epicures, atheists, with the [4625]
fool in their hearts they say there is no God.'Tis no marvel then if being so uncharitable, hard-hearted as we are, we have so frequent and so many discontents, such melancholy fits, so many bitter pangs, mutual discords, all in a combustion, often complaints, so common grievances, general mischiefs, si tantae in terris tragoediae, quibus labefactatur et misere laceratur humanum genus, so many pestilences, wars, uproars, losses, deluges, fires, inundations, God's vengeance and all the plagues of Egypt, come upon us, since we are so currish one towards another, so respectless of God, and our neighbours, and by our crying sins pull these miseries upon our own heads. Nay more, 'tis justly to be feared, which [4626]Josephus once said of his countrymen Jews,
if the Romans had not come when they did to sack their city, surely it had been swallowed up with some earthquake, deluge, or fired from heaven as Sodom and Gomorrah: their desperate malice, wickedness and peevishness was such.'Tis to be suspected, if we continue these wretched ways, we may look for the like heavy visitations to come upon us. If we had any sense or feeling of these things, surely we should not go on as we do, in such irregular courses, practise all manner of impieties; our whole carriage would not be so averse from God. If a man would but consider, when he is in the midst and full career of such prodigious and uncharitable actions, how displeasing they are in God's sight, how noxious to himself, as Solomon told Joab, 1 Kings, ii.
The Lord shall bring this blood upon their heads.Prov. i. 27,
sudden desolation and destruction shall come like a whirlwind upon them: affliction, anguish, the reward of his hand shall be given him,Isa. iii. 11, &c.,
they shall fall into the pit they have digged for others,and when they are scraping, tyrannising, getting, wallowing in their wealth,
this night, O fool, I will take away thy soul,what a severe account they must make; and how [4627]gracious on the other side a charitable man is in God's eyes, haurit sibi gratiam. Matt. v. 7,
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy: he that lendeth to the poor, gives to God,and how it shall be restored to them again;
how by their patience and long-suffering they shall heap coals on their enemies' heads,Rom. xii.
and he that followeth after righteousness and mercy, shall find righteousness and glory;surely they would check their desires, curb in their unnatural, inordinate affections, agree amongst themselves, abstain from doing evil, amend their lives, and learn to do well.
Behold how comely and good a thing it is for brethren to live together in [4628]union: it is like the precious ointment, &c. How odious to contend one with the other![4629] Miseriquid luctatiunculis hisce volumus? ecce mors supra caput est, et supremum illud tribunal, ubi et dicta et facta nostra examinanda sunt: Sapiamus!
Why do we contend and vex one another? behold death is over our heads, and we must shortly give an account of all our uncharitable words and actions: think upon it: and be wise.
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:
I had rather contend with bulls, lions, bears, and giants, than with Love;he is so powerful, enforceth [4644]all to pay tribute to him, domineers over all, and can make mad and sober whom he list; insomuch that Caecilius in Tully's Tusculans, holds him to be no better than a fool or an idiot, that doth not acknowledge Love to be a great god.
now drawing her to Mount Ida, for the love of that Trojan Anchises, now to Libanus for that Assyrian youth's sake. And although she threatened to break his bow and arrows, to clip his wings, [4654]and whipped him besides on the bare buttocks with her pantofle, yet all would not serve, he was too headstrong and unruly.That monster-conquering Hercules was tamed by him:
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.
and would not be comforted until such time her love applied herself unto her; you might see the two trees bend, and of their own accords stretch out their boughs to embrace and kiss each other: they will give manifest signs of mutual love.Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. 24, reports that they marry one another, and fall in love if they grow in sight; and when the wind brings the smell to them, they are marvellously affected. Philostratus in Imaginibus, observes as much, and Galen lib. 6. de locis affectis, cap. 5. they will be sick for love; ready to die and pine away, which the husbandmen perceiving, saith [4660]Constantine,
stroke many palms that grow together, and so stroking again the palm that is enamoured, they carry kisses from the one to the other:or tying the leaves and branches of the one to the stem of the other, will make them both flourish and prosper a great deal better: [4661]
which are enamoured, they can perceive by the bending of boughs, and inclination of their bodies.If any man think this which I say to be a tale, let him read that story of two palm-trees in Italy, the male growing at Brundusium, the female at Otranto (related by Jovianus Pontanus in an excellent poem, sometimes tutor to Alphonsus junior, King of Naples, his secretary of state, and a great philosopher)
which were barren, and so continued a long time,till they came to see one another growing up higher, though many stadiums asunder. Pierius in his Hieroglyphics, and Melchior Guilandinus, Mem. 3. tract. de papyro, cites this story of Pontanus for a truth. See more in Salmuth Comment. in Pancirol. de Nova repert. Tit. 1. de novo orbe Mizaldus Arcanorum lib. 2. Sand's Voyages, lib. 2. fol. 103. &c.
If such fury be in vegetals, what shall we think of sensible creatures, how much more violent and apparent shall it be in them!
Cupid in Lucian bids Venus his mother be of good cheer, for he was now familiar with lions, and oftentimes did get on their backs, hold them by the mane, and ride them about like horses, and they would fawn upon him with their tails.Bulls, bears, and boars are so furious in this kind they kill one another: but especially cocks, [4665] lions, and harts, which are so fierce that you may hear them fight half a mile off, saith [4666]Turberville, and many times kill each other, or compel them to abandon the rut, that they may remain masters in their places;
and when one hath driven his co-rival away, he raiseth his nose up into the air, and looks aloft, as though he gave thanks to nature,which affords him such great delight. How birds are affected in this kind, appears out of Aristotle, he will have them to sing ob futuram venerem for joy or in hope of their venery which is to come.
Fishes pine away for love and wax lean,if [4668]Gomesius's authority may be taken, and are rampant too, some of them: Peter Gellius, lib. 10. de hist, animal. tells wonders of a triton in Epirus: there was a well not far from the shore, where the country wenches fetched water, they, [4669]tritons, stupri causa would set upon them and carry them to the sea, and there drown them, if they would not yield; so love tyranniseth in dumb creatures. Yet this is natural for one beast to dote upon another of the same kind; but what strange fury is that, when a beast shall dote upon a man? Saxo Grammaticus, lib. 10. Dan. hist. hath a story of a bear that loved a woman, kept her in his den a long time and begot a son of her, out of whose loins proceeded many northern kings: this is the original belike of that common tale of Valentine and Orson: Aelian, Pliny, Peter Gillius, are full of such relations. A peacock in Lucadia loved a maid, and when she died, the peacock pined. [4670]
A dolphin loved a boy called Hernias, and when he died, the fish came on land, and so perished.The like adds Gellius, lib. 10. cap. 22. out of Appion, Aegypt. lib. 15. a dolphin at Puteoli loved a child, would come often to him, let him get on his back, and carry him about, [4671]
and when by sickness the child was taken away, the dolphin died.[4672]
Every book is full(saith Busbequius, the emperor's orator with the Grand Signior, not long since, ep. 3. legat. Turc.),
and yields such instances, to believe which I was always afraid lest I should be thought to give credit to fables, until I saw a lynx which I had from Assyria, so affected towards one of my men, that it cannot be denied but that he was in love with him. When my man was present, the beast would use many notable enticements and pleasant motions, and when he was going, hold him back, and look after him when he was gone, very sad in his absence, but most jocund when he returned: and when my man went from me, the beast expressed his love with continual sickness, and after he had pined away some few days, died.Such another story he hath of a crane of Majorca, that loved a Spaniard, that would walk any way with him, and in his absence seek about for him, make a noise that he might hear her, and knock at his door, [4673]
and when he took his last farewell, famished herself.Such pretty pranks can love play with birds, fishes, beasts:
he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; but she being fair and lovely would live and die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold.The young man a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love, tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius, who, by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia, and that all her furniture was like Tantalus's gold described by Homer, no substance, but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant: [4677]
many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the midst of Greece.Sabine in his Comment on the tenth of Ovid's Metamorphoses, at the tale of Orpheus, telleth us of a gentleman of Bavaria, that for many months together bewailed the loss of his dear wife; at length the devil in her habit came and comforted him, and told him, because he was so importunate for her, that she would come and live with him again, on that condition he would be new married, never swear and blaspheme as he used formerly to do; for if he did, she should be gone: [4678]
he vowed it, married, and lived with her, she brought him children, and governed his house, but was still pale and sad, and so continued, till one day falling out with him, he fell a swearing; she vanished thereupon, and was never after seen.[4679]
This I have heard,saith Sabine,
from persons of good credit, which told me that the Duke of Bavaria did tell it for a certainty to the Duke of Saxony.One more I will relate out of Florilegus, ad annum 1058, an honest historian of our nation, because he telleth it so confidently, as a thing in those days talked of all over Europe: a young gentleman of Rome, the same day that he was married, after dinner with the bride and his friends went a walking into the fields, and towards evening to the tennis-court to recreate himself; whilst he played, he put his ring upon the finger of Venus statua, which was thereby made in brass; after he had sufficiently played, and now made an end of his sport, he came to fetch his ring, but Venus had bowed her finger in, and he could not get it off. Whereupon loath to make his company tarry at present, there left it, intending to fetch it the next day, or at some more convenient time, went thence to supper, and so to bed. In the night, when he should come to perform those nuptial rites, Venus steps between him and his wife (unseen or felt of her), and told her that she was his wife, that he had betrothed himself unto her by that ring, which he put upon her finger: she troubled him for some following nights. He not knowing how to help himself, made his moan to one Palumbus, a learned magician in those days, who gave him a letter, and bid him at such a time of the night, in such a cross-way, at the town's end, where old Saturn would pass by with his associates in procession, as commonly he did, deliver that script with his own hands to Saturn himself; the young man of a bold spirit, accordingly did it; and when the old fiend had read it, he called Venus to him, who rode before him, and commanded her to deliver his ring, which forthwith she did, and so the gentleman was freed. Many such stories I find in several [4680]authors to confirm this which I have said; as that more notable amongst the rest, of Philinium and Machates in [4681]Phlegon's Tract, de rebus mirabilibus, and though many be against it, yet I, for my part, will subscribe to Lactantius, lib. 14. cap. 15. [4682]
God sent angels to the tuition of men; but whilst they lived amongst us, that mischievous all-commander of the earth, and hot in lust, enticed them by little and little to this vice, and defiled them with the company of women:and to Anaxagoras, de resurrect. [4683]
Many of those spiritual bodies, overcome by the love of maids, and lust, failed, of whom those were born we call giants.Justin Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus, Sulpicius Severus, Eusebius, etc., to this sense make a twofold fall of angels, one from the beginning of the world, another a little before the deluge, as Moses teacheth us, [4684]openly professing that these genii can beget, and have carnal copulation with women. At Japan in the East Indies, at this present (if we may believe the relation of [4685]travellers), there is an idol called Teuchedy, to whom one of the fairest virgins in the country is monthly brought, and left in a private room, in the fotoqui, or church, where she sits alone to be deflowered. At certain times [4686]the Teuchedy (which is thought to be the devil) appears to her, and knoweth her carnally. Every month a fair virgin is taken in; but what becomes of the old, no man can tell. In that goodly temple of Jupiter Belus in Babylon, there was a fair chapel, [4687]saith Herodotus, an eyewitness of it, in which was splendide stratus lectus et apposita mensa aurea, a brave bed, a table of gold, &c., into which no creature came but one only woman, which their god made choice of, as the Chaldean priests told him, and that their god lay with her himself, as at Thebes in Egypt was the like done of old. So that you see this is no news, the devils themselves, or their juggling priests, have played such pranks in all ages. Many divines stiffly contradict this; but I will conclude with [4688]Lipsius, that since
examples, testimonies, and confessions, of those unhappy women are so manifest on the other side, and many even in this our town of Louvain, that it is likely to be so. [4689]One thing I will add, that I suppose that in no age past, I know not by what destiny of this unhappy time, have there ever appeared or showed themselves so many lecherous devils, satyrs, and genii, as in this of ours, as appears by the daily narrations, and judicial sentences upon record.Read more of this question in Plutarch, vit. Numae, Austin de civ. Dei. lib. 15. Wierus, lib. 3. de praestig. Daem. Giraldus Cambrensis, itinerar. Camb. lib. 1. Malleus malefic. quaest. 5. part. 1. Jacobus Reussus, lib. 5. cap. 6. fol. 54. Godelman, lib. 2. cap. 4. Erastus, Valesius de sacra philo. cap. 40. John Nider, Fornicar. lib. 5. cap. 9. Stroz. Cicogna. lib. 3. cap. 3. Delrio, Lipsius Bodine, daemonol. lib. 2. cap. 7. Pererius in Gen. lib. 8. in 6. cap. ver. 2. King James, &c.
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.
a continuate cough,[4740]his sight fails him, thick of hearing, his breath stinks, all his moisture is dried up and gone, may not spit from him, a very child again, that cannot dress himself, or cut his own meat, yet he will be dreaming of, and honing after wenches, what can be more unseemly? Worse it is in women than in men, when she is aetate declivis, diu vidua, mater olim, parum decore matrimonium sequi videtur, an old widow, a mother so long since ([4741]in Pliny's opinion), she doth very unseemly seek to marry, yet whilst she is [4742]so old a crone, a beldam, she can neither see, nor hear, go nor stand, a mere [4743]carcass, a witch, and scarce feel; she caterwauls, and must have a stallion, a champion, she must and will marry again, and betroth herself to some young man, [4744]that hates to look on, but for her goods; abhors the sight of her, to the prejudice of her good name, her own undoing, grief of friends, and ruin of her children.
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;
would have a bout with every one they see:the colt's evil is common to all complexions. Theomestus a young and lusty gallant acknowledgeth (in the said author) all this to be verified in him,
I am so amorously given, [4768]you may sooner number the sea-sands, and snow falling from the skies, than my several loves. Cupid had shot all his arrows at me, I am deluded with various desires, one love succeeds another, and that so soon, that before one is ended, I begin with a second; she that is last is still fairest, and she that is present pleaseth me most: as an hydra's head my loves increase, no Iolaus can help me. Mine eyes are so moist a refuge and sanctuary of love, that they draw all beauties to them, and are never satisfied. I am in a doubt what fury of Venus this should be: alas, how have I offended her so to vex me, what Hippolitus am I!What Telchine is my genius? or is it a natural imperfection, an hereditary passion? Another in [4769]Anacreon confesseth that he had twenty sweethearts in Athens at once, fifteen at Corinth, as many at Thebes, at Lesbos, and at Rhodes, twice as many in Ionia, thrice in Caria, twenty thousand in all: or in a word, ἐί φύλλα, πάντα, &c.
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.
He saw very few maids that he did not desire, and desired fewer whom he did not enjoy:nothing so familiar amongst them, 'tis most of their business: Sardanapalus, Messalina, and Joan of Naples, are not comparable to [4779]meaner men and women; Solomon of old had a thousand concubines; Ahasuerus his eunuchs and keepers; Nero his Tigillinus panders, and bawds; the Turks, [4780] Muscovites, Mogors, Xeriffs of Barbary, and Persian Sophies, are no whit inferior to them in our times. Delectus fit omnium puellarum toto regno forma praestantiorum (saith Jovius) pro imperatore; et quas ille linquit, nobiles habent; they press and muster up wenches as we do soldiers, and have their choice of the rarest beauties their countries can afford, and yet all this cannot keep them from adultery, incest, sodomy, buggery, and such prodigious lusts. We may conclude, that if they be young, fortunate, rich, high-fed, and idle withal, it is almost impossible that they should live honest, not rage, and precipitate themselves into these inconveniences of burning lust.
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.
the wild beasts stood in admiration of her person,(Saxo Grammaticus lib. 8. Dan. hist.)
and would not hurt her.Wherefore did that royal virgin in [4844]Apuleius, when she fled from the thieves' den, in a desert, make such an apostrophe to her ass on whom she rode; (for what knew she to the contrary, but that he was an ass?) Si me parentibus et proco formoso reddideris, quas, tibi gratias, quos honores habebo, quos cibos exhibebo? [4845]She would comb him, dress him, feed him, and trick him every day herself, and he should work no more, toil no more, but rest and play, &c. And besides she would have a dainty picture drawn, in perpetual remembrance, a virgin riding upon an ass's back with this motto, Asino vectore regia virgo fugiens captivitatem; why said she all this? why did she make such promises to a dumb beast? but that she perceived the poor ass to be taken with her beauty, for he did often obliquo collo pedes puellae decoros basiare, kiss her feet as she rode, et ad delicatulas voculas tentabat adhinnire, offer to give consent as much as in him was to her delicate speeches, and besides he had some feeling, as she conceived of her misery. And why did Theogine's horse in Heliodorus [4846]curvet, prance, and go so proudly, exultans alacriter et superbiens, &c., but that such as mine author supposeth, he was in love with his master? dixisses ipsum equum pulchrum intelligere pulchram domini fomam? A fly lighted on [4847] Malthius' cheek as he lay asleep; but why? Not to hurt him, as a parasite of his, standing by, well perceived, non ut pungeret, sed ut oscularetur, but certainly to kiss him, as ravished with his divine looks. Inanimate creatures, I suppose, have a touch of this. When a drop of [4848]Psyche's candle fell on Cupid's shoulder, I think sure it was to kiss it. When Venus ran to meet her rose-cheeked Adonis, as an elegant [4849]poet of our's sets her out,
but the very quintessence of beauty,some fair creature, as without doubt the poet understood in the first fiction of it, at which the spectators were amazed. [4863]Miseri quibus intentata nites, poor wretches are compelled at the very sight of her ravishing looks to run mad, or make away with themselves.
for he thought it impossible for any man living to see her and contain himself.The very fame of beauty will fetch them to it many miles off (such an attractive power this loadstone hath), and they will seem but short, they will undertake any toil or trouble, [4866]long journeys. Penia or Atalanta shall not overgo them, through seas, deserts, mountains, and dangerous places, as they did to gaze on Psyche:
many mortal men came far and near to see that glorious object of her age,Paris for Helena, Corebus to Troja.
who inflamed with a violent passion for Cassandra, happened then to be in Troy.King John of France, once prisoner in England, came to visit his old friends again, crossing the seas; but the truth is, his coming was to see the Countess of Salisbury, the nonpareil of those times, and his dear mistress. That infernal God Pluto came from hell itself, to steal Proserpine; Achilles left all his friends for Polixena's sake, his enemy's daughter; and all the [4867]Graecian gods forsook their heavenly mansions for that fair lady, Philo Dioneus daughter's sake, the paragon of Greece in those days; ea enim venustate fuit, ut eam certatim omnes dii conjugem expeterent:
for she was of such surpassing beauty, that all the gods contended for her love.[4868]Formosa divis imperat puella.
The beautiful maid commands the gods.They will not only come to see, but as a falcon makes a hungry hawk hover about, follow, give attendance and service, spend goods, lives, and all their fortunes to attain;
at whose gates lay all Greece.[4874]
Every man sought to get her love, some with gallant and costly apparel, some with an affected pace, some with music, others with rich gifts, pleasant discourse, multitude of followers; others with letters, vows, and promises, to commend themselves, and to be gracious in her eyes.Happy was he that could see her, thrice happy that enjoyed her company. Charmides [4875]in Plato was a proper young man in comeliness of person,
and all good qualities, far exceeding others; whensoever fair Charmides came abroad, they seemed all to be in love with him(as Critias describes their carriage),
and were troubled at the very sight of him; many came near him, many followed him wheresoever he went,as those [4876]formarum spectatores did Acontius, if at any time he walked abroad: the Athenian lasses stared on Alcibiades; Sappho and the Mitilenean women on Phaon the fair. Such lovely sights do not only please, entice, but ravish and amaze. Cleonimus, a delicate and tender youth, present at a feast which Androcles his uncle made in Piraeo at Athens, when he sacrificed to Mercury, so stupefied the guests, Dineas, Aristippus, Agasthenes, and the rest (as Charidemus in [4877]Lucian relates it), that they could not eat their meat, they sat all supper time gazing, glancing at him, stealing looks, and admiring of his beauty. Many will condemn these men that are so enamoured, for fools; but some again commend them for it; many reject Paris's judgment, and yet Lucian approves of it, admiring Paris for his choice; he would have done as much himself, and by good desert in his mind: beauty is to be preferred [4878]
before wealth or wisdom.[4879]Athenaeus Deipnosophist, lib. 13. cap. 7, holds it not such indignity for the Trojans and Greeks to contend ten years, to spend so much labour, lose so many men's lives for Helen's sake, [4880]for so fair a lady's sake,
methinks(as he said)
I could die for her.
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?
all the gods came flocking about, and saluted her, each of them went to Jupiter, and desired he might have her to be his wife.When fair [4896]Antilochus came in presence, as a candle in the dark his beauty shined, all men's eyes (as Xenophon describes the manner of it)
were instantly fixed on him, and moved at the sight, insomuch that they could not conceal themselves, but in gesture or looks it was discerned and expressed.Those other senses, hearing, touching, may much penetrate and affect, but none so much, none so forcible as sight. Forma Briseis mediis in armis movit Achillem, Achilles was moved in the midst of a battle by fair Briseis, Ajax by Tecmessa; Judith captivated that great Captain Holofernes: Dalilah, Samson; Rosamund, [4897]Henry the Second; Roxolana, Suleiman the Magnificent, &c.
A fair woman overcomes fire and sword.
I will not conceal it, she overcame me with her presence, and quite assaulted my continency which I had kept unto mine old age; I resisted a long time my bodily eyes with the eyes of my understanding; at last I was conquered, and as in a tempest carried headlong.[4903] Xenophiles, a philosopher, railed at women downright for many years together, scorned, hated, scoffed at them; coming at last into Daphnis a fair maid's company (as he condoles his mishap to his friend Demaritis), though free before, Intactus nullis ante cupidinibus, was far in love, and quite overcome upon a sudden. Victus sum fateor a Daphnide, &c. I confess I am taken,
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 thousand appear, as many are concealed;gratiarum sedes gratissima; a sweet-smelling flower, from which bees may gather honey, [4915]Mellilegae volucres quid adhuc cava thyma rosasque, &c.
though she come accompanied with the graces, and all Cupid's train to attend upon her, girt with her own girdle, and smell of cinnamon and balm, yet if she be bald or badhaired, she cannot please her Vulcan.Which belike makes our Venetian ladies at this day to counterfeit yellow hair so much, great women to calamistrate and curl it up, vibrantes ad gratiam crines, et tot orbibus in captivitatem flexos, to adorn their heads with spangles, pearls, and made-flowers; and all courtiers to effect a pleasing grace in this kind. In a word, [4923]
the hairs are Cupid's nets, to catch all comers, a brushy wood, in which Cupid builds his nest, and under whose shadow all loves a thousand several ways sport themselves.
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]
the hooks of love(as Arandus will)
the guides, touchstone, judges, that in a moment cure mad men, and make sound folks mad, the watchmen of the body; what do they not?How vex they not? All this is true, and (which Athaeneus lib. 13. dip. cap. 5. and Tatius hold) they are the chief seats of love, and James Lernutius [4936]hath facetely expressed in an elegant ode of his,
Cupid's arrows; the tongue, the lightning of love; the paps, the tents:[4938]Balthazar Castilio, the causes, the chariots, the lamps of love,
What a tyranny(saith he),
what a penetration of bodies is this! thou drawest with violence, and swallowest me up, as Charybdis doth sailors with thy rocky eyes: he that falls into this gulf of love, can never get out.Let this be the corollary then, the strongest beams of beauty are still darted from the eyes.
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.
it gets in at our eyes, pores, nostrils, engenders the same qualities and affections in us, as were in the party whence it came.The manner of the fascination, as Ficinus 10. cap. com. in Plat. declares it, is thus:
Mortal men are then especially bewitched, when as by often gazing one on the other, they direct sight to sight, join eye to eye, and so drink and suck in love between them; for the beginning of this disease is the eye. And therefore he that hath a clear eye, though he be otherwise deformed, by often looking upon him, will make one mad, and tie him fast to him by the eye.Leonard. Varius, lib. 1. cap. 2. de fascinat. telleth us, that by this interview, [4954]
the purer spirits are infected,the one eye pierceth through the other with his rays, which he sends forth, and many men have those excellent piercing eyes, that, which Suetonius relates of Augustus, their brightness is such, they compel their spectators to look off, and can no more endure them than the sunbeams. [4955]Barradius, lib. 6. cap. 10. de Harmonia Evangel. reports as much of our Saviour Christ, and [4956]Peter Morales of the Virgin Mary, whom Nicephorus describes likewise to have been yellow-haired, of a wheat colour, but of a most amiable and piercing eye. The rays, as some think, sent from the eyes, carry certain spiritual vapours with them, and so infect the other party, and that in a moment. I know, they that hold visio fit intra mittendo, will make a doubt of this; but Ficinus proves it from blear-eyes, [4957]
That by sight alone, make others blear-eyed; and it is more than manifest, that the vapour of the corrupt blood doth get in together with the rays, and so by the contagion the spectators' eyes are infected.Other arguments there are of a basilisk, that kills afar off by sight, as that Ephesian did of whom [4958]Philostratus speaks, of so pernicious an eye, he poisoned all he looked steadily on: and that other argument, menstruae faminae, out of Aristotle's Problems, morbosae Capivaccius adds, and [4959]Septalius the commentator, that contaminate a looking-glass with beholding it. [4960]
So the beams that come from the agent's heart, by the eyes, infect the spirits about the patients, inwardly wound, and thence the spirits infect the blood.To this effect she complained in [4961]Apuleius,
Thou art the cause of my grief, thy eyes piercing through mine eyes to mine inner parts, have set my bowels on fire, and therefore pity me that am now ready to die for thy sake.Ficinus illustrates this with a familiar example of that Marrhusian Phaedrus and Theban Lycias, [4962]
Lycias he stares on Phaedrus' face, and Phaedrus fastens the balls of his eyes upon Lycias, and with those sparkling rays sends out his spirits. The beams of Phaedrus' eyes are easily mingled with the beams of Lycias, and spirits are joined to spirits. This vapour begot in Phaedrus' heart, enters into Lycias' bowels; and that which is a greater wonder, Phaedrus' blood is in Lycias' heart, and thence come those ordinary love-speeches, my sweetheart Phaedrus, and mine own self, my dear bowels. And Phaedrus again to Lycias, O my light, my joy, my soul, my life. Phaedrus follows Lycias, because his heart would have his spirits, and Lycias follows Phaedrus, because he loves the seat of his spirits; both follow; but Lycias the earnester of the two: the river hath more need of the fountain, than the fountain of the river; as iron is drawn to that which is touched with a loadstone, but draws not it again; so Lycias draws Phaedrus.But how comes it to pass then, that the blind man loves, that never saw? We read in the Lives of the Fathers, a story of a child that was brought up in the wilderness, from his infancy, by an old hermit: now come to man's estate, he saw by chance two comely women wandering in the woods: he asked the old man what creatures they were, he told him fairies; after a while talking obiter, the hermit demanded of him, which was the pleasantest sight that ever he saw in his life? He readily replied, the two [4963]fairies he spied in the wilderness. So that, without doubt, there is some secret loadstone in a beautiful woman, a magnetic power, a natural inbred affection, which moves our concupiscence, and as he sings,
lie still in wait as so many soldiers, and when they spy an innocent spectator fixed on them, shoot him through, and presently bewitch him: especially when they shall gaze and gloat, as wanton lovers do one upon another, and with a pleasant eye-conflict participate each other's souls.Hence you may perceive how easily and how quickly we may be taken in love; since at the twinkling of an eye, Phaedrus' spirits may so perniciously infect Lycias' blood. [4965]
Neither is it any wonder, if we but consider how many other diseases closely, and as suddenly are caught by infection, plague, itch, scabs, flux,&c. The spirits taken in, will not let him rest that hath received them, but egg him on. [4966]Idque petit corpus mens unde est saucia amore; and we may manifestly perceive a strange eduction of spirits, by such as bleed at nose after they be dead, at the presence of the murderer; but read more of this in Lemnius, lib. 2. de occult. nat. mir. cap. 7. Valleriola lib. 2. observ. cap. 7. Valesius controv. Ficinus, Cardan, Libavius de cruentis cadaveribus, &c.
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.
Many will think that our so long commerce with naked women, must needs be a great provocation to lust;but he concludes otherwise, that their nakedness did much less entice them to lasciviousness, than our women's clothes.
And I dare boldly affirm(saith he)
that those glittering attires, counterfeit colours, headgears, curled hairs, plaited coats, cloaks, gowns, costly stomachers, guarded and loose garments, and all those other accoutrements, wherewith our countrywomen counterfeit a beauty, and so curiously set out themselves, cause more inconvenience in this kind, than that barbarian homeliness, although they be no whit inferior unto them in beauty. I could evince the truth of this by many other arguments, but I appeal(saith he)
to my companions at that present, which were all of the same mind.His countryman, Montague, in his essays, is of the same opinion, and so are many others; out of whose assertions thus much in brief we may conclude, that beauty is more beholden to art than nature, and stronger provocations proceed from outward ornaments, than such as nature hath provided. It is true that those fair sparkling eyes, white neck, coral lips, turgent paps, rose-coloured cheeks, &c., of themselves are potent enticers; but when a comely, artificial, well-composed look, pleasing gesture, an affected carriage shall be added, it must needs be far more forcible than it was, when those curious needleworks, variety of colours, purest dyes, jewels, spangles, pendants, lawn, lace, tiffanies, fair and fine linen, embroideries, calamistrations, ointments, etc. shall be added, they will make the veriest dowdy otherwise, a goddess, when nature shall be furthered by art. For it is not the eye of itself that enticeth to lust, but an
adulterous eye,as Peter terms it, 2. ii. 14. a wanton, a rolling, lascivious eye: a wandering eye, which Isaiah taxeth, iii. 16. Christ himself, and the Virgin Mary, had most beautiful eyes, as amiable eyes as any persons, saith [4970]Baradius, that ever lived, but withal so modest, so chaste, that whosoever looked on them was freed from that passion of burning lust, if we may believe [4971]Gerson and [4972]Bonaventure: there was no such antidote against it, as the Virgin Mary's face; 'tis not the eye, but carriage of it, as they use it, that causeth such effects. When Pallas, Juno, Venus, were to win Paris' favour for the golden apple, as it is elegantly described in that pleasant interlude of [4973]Apuleius, Juno came with majesty upon the stage, Minerva gravity, but Venus dulce subridens, constitit amaene; et gratissimae, Graticae deam propitiantes, &c. came in smiling with her gracious graces and exquisite music, as if she had danced, et nonnunquam saltare solis oculis, and which was the main matter of all, she danced with her rolling eyes: they were the brokers and harbingers of her suite. So she makes her brags in a modern poet,
that if she had but looked upon any one almost(saith Calisiris)
she would have bewitched him, and he could not possibly escape it.For as [4977]Salvianus observes,
the eyes are the windows of our souls, by which as so many channels, all dishonest concupiscence gets into our hearts.They reveal our thoughts, and as they say, frons animi index, but the eye of the countenance, [4978]Quid procacibus intuere ocellis? &c. I may say the same of smiling, gait, nakedness of parts, plausible gestures, &c. To laugh is the proper passion of a man, an ordinary thing to smile; but those counterfeit, composed, affected, artificial and reciprocal, those counter-smiles are the dumb shows and prognostics of greater matters, which they most part use, to inveigle and deceive; though many fond lovers again are so frequently mistaken, and led into a fool's paradise. For if they see but a fair maid laugh, or show a pleasant countenance, use some gracious words or gestures, they apply it all to themselves, as done in their favour; sure she loves them, she is willing, coming, &c.
She makes thine heart leap with [4981]a pleasing gentle smile of hers.
I love Lalage as much for smiling, as for discoursing,delectata illa risit tam blandum, as he said in Petronius of his mistress, being well pleased, she gave so sweet a smile. It won Ismenias, as he [4983] confesseth, Ismene subrisit amatorium, Ismene smiled so lovingly the second time I saw her, that I could not choose but admire her: and Galla's sweet smile quite overcame [4984]Faustus the shepherd, Me aspiciens moils blande subrisit ocellis. All other gestures of the body will enforce as much. Daphnis in [4985]Lucian was a poor tattered wench when I knew her first, said Corbile, pannosa et Zacera, but now she is a stately piece indeed, hath her maids to attend her, brave attires, money in her purse, &c., and will you know how this came to pass?
by setting out herself after the best fashion, by her pleasant carriage, affability, sweet smiling upon all,&c. Many women dote upon a man for his compliment only, and good behaviour, they are won in an instant; too credulous to believe that every light wanton suitor, who sees or makes love to them, is instantly enamoured, he certainly dotes on, admires them, will surely marry, when as he means nothing less, 'tis his ordinary carriage in all such companies. So both delude each other by such outward shows; and amongst the rest, an upright, a comely grace, courtesies, gentle salutations, cringes, a mincing gait, a decent and an affected pace, are most powerful enticers, and which the prophet Isaiah, a courtier himself, and a great observer, objected to the daughters of Zion, iii. 16.
they minced as they went, and made a tinkling with their feet.To say the truth, what can they not effect by such means?
and so when they pull up their petticoats, and outward garments,as usually they do to show their fine stockings, and those of purest silken dye, gold fringes, laces, embroiderings, (it shall go hard but when they go to church, or to any other place, all shall be seen) 'tis but a springe to catch woodcocks; and as [4988]Chrysostom telleth them downright,
though they say nothing with their mouths, they speak in their gait, they speak with their eyes, they speak in the carriage of their bodies.And what shall we say otherwise of that baring of their necks, shoulders, naked breasts, arms and wrists, to what end are they but only to tempt men to lust!
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;
To what end are those crisped, false hairs, painted faces,as [5001]the satirist observes,
such a composed gait, not a step awry?Why are they like so many Sybarites, or Nero's Poppaea, Ahasuerus' concubines, so costly, so long a dressing, as Caesar was marshalling his army, or a hawk in pruning? [5002]Dum moliuntur, dum comuntur annus est: a [5003]gardener takes not so much delight and pains in his garden, a horseman to dress his horse, scour his armour, a mariner about his ship, a merchant his shop and shop-book, as they do about their faces, and all those other parts: such setting up with corks, straightening with whalebones; why is it, but as a day-net catcheth larks, to make young men stoop unto them? Philocharus, a gallant in Aristenaetus, advised his friend Poliaenus to take heed of such enticements, [5004]
for it was the sweet sound and motion of his mistress's spangles and bracelets, the smell of her ointments, that captivated him first,Illa fuit mentis prima ruina meae. Quid sibi vult pixidum turba, saith [5005]Lucian,
to what use are pins, pots, glasses, ointments, irons, combs, bodkins, setting-sticks? why bestow they all their patrimonies and husbands' yearly revenues on such fooleries?[5006]bina patrimonia singulis auribus;
why use they dragons, wasps, snakes, for chains, enamelled jewels on their necks, ears?dignum potius foret ferro manus istas religari, atque utinam monilia vere dracones essent; they had more need some of them be tied in bedlam with iron chains, have a whip for a fan, and hair-cloths next to their skins, and instead of wrought smocks, have their cheeks stigmatised with a hot iron: I say, some of our Jezebels, instead of painting, if they were well served. But why is all this labour, all this cost, preparation, riding, running, far-fetched, and dear bought stuff? [5007]
Because forsooth they would be fair and fine, and where nature, is defective, supply it by art.[5008]Sanguine quae vero non rubet, arte rubet, (Ovid); and to that purpose they anoint and paint their faces, to make Helen of Hecuba—parvamque exortamque puellam—Europen.[5009]To this intent they crush in their feet and bodies, hurt and crucify themselves, sometimes in lax-clothes, a hundred yards I think in a gown, a sleeve; and sometimes again so close, ut nudos exprimant artus. [5010]Now long tails and trains, and then short, up, down, high, low, thick, thin, &c.; now little or no bands, then as big as cart wheels; now loose bodies, then great farthingales and close girt, &c. Why is all this, but with the whore in the Proverbs, to intoxicate some or other? oculorum decipulam,[5011]one therefore calls it, et indicem libidinis, the trap of lust, and sure token, as an ivy-bush is to a tavern.
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.
They make those holy temples, consecrated to godly martyrs and religious uses, the shops of impudence, dens of whores and thieves, and little better than brothel houses.When we shall see these things daily done, their husbands bankrupts, if not cornutos, their wives light housewives, daughters dishonest; and hear of such dissolute acts, as daily we do, how should we think otherwise? what is their end, but to deceive and inveigle young men? As tow takes fire, such enticing objects produce their effect, how can it be altered? When Venus stood before Anchises (as [5018]Homer feigns in one of his hymns) in her costly robes, he was instantly taken,
with diverse presents, and enticing ornaments, Asiatic allurements, with such wonderful joy and festivity, they did so inveigle the Romans, that no man could contain himself, all was turned to delight and pleasure. The women transformed themselves to Bacchus shapes, the men-children to Satyrs and Pans; but Antony himself was quite besotted with Cleopatra's sweet speeches, philters, beauty, pleasing tires: for when she sailed along the river Cydnus, with such incredible pomp in a gilded ship, herself dressed like Venus, her maids like the Graces, her pages like so many Cupids, Antony was amazed, and rapt beyond himself.Heliodorus, lib. 1. brings in Dameneta, stepmother to Cnemon,
whom she [5022]saw in his scarves, rings, robes, and coronet, quite mad for the love of him.It was Judith's pantofles that ravished the eyes of Holofernes. And [5023]Cardan is not ashamed to confess, that seeing his wife the first time all in white, he did admire and instantly love her. If these outward ornaments were not of such force, why doth [5024]Naomi give Ruth counsel how to please Boaz? and [5025]Judith, seeking to captivate Holofernes, washed and anointed herself with sweet ointments, dressed her hair, and put on costly attires. The riot in this kind hath been excessive in times past; no man almost came abroad, but curled and anointed,
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.
If he be rich, he is the man,a fine man, and a proper man, she will go to Jacaktres or Tidore with him; Galesimus de monte aureo. Sir Giles Goosecap, Sir Amorous La-Fool, shall have her. And as Philemasium in [5046] Aristaenetus told Emmusus, absque argento omnia vana, hang him that hath no money,
'tis to no purpose to talk of marriage without means,[5047] trouble me not with such motions; let others do as they will,
I'll be sure to have one shall maintain me fine and brave.Most are of her mind, [5048] De moribus ultima fiet questio, for his conditions, she shall inquire after them another time, or when all is done, the match made, and everybody gone home. [5049]Lucian's Lycia was a proper young maid, and had many fine gentlemen to her suitors; Ethecles, a senator's son, Melissus, a merchant, &c.; but she forsook them all for one Passius, a base, hirsute, bald-pated knave; but why was it?
His father lately died and left him sole heir of his goods and lands.This is not amongst your dust-worms alone, poor snakes that will prostitute their souls for money, but with this bait you may catch our most potent, puissant, and illustrious princes. That proud upstart domineering Bishop of Ely, in the time of Richard the First, viceroy in his absence, as [5050]Nubergensis relates it, to fortify himself, and maintain his greatness, propinquarum suarum connubiis, plurimos sibi potentes et nobiles devincire curavit, married his poor kinswomen (which came forth of Normandy by droves) to the chiefest nobles of the land, and they were glad to accept of such matches, fair or foul, for themselves, their sons, nephews, &c. Et quis tam praeclaram aflinitatem sub spe magnae promotionis non optaret? Who would not have done as much for money and preferment? as mine author [5051]adds. Vortiger, King of Britain, married Rowena the daughter of Hengist the Saxon prince, his mortal enemy; but wherefore? she had Kent for her dowry. Iagello the great Duke of Lithuania, 1386, was mightily enamoured on Hedenga, insomuch that he turned Christian from a Pagan, and was baptised himself by the name of Uladislaus, and all his subjects for her sake: but why was it? she was daughter and heir of Poland, and his desire was to have both kingdoms incorporated into one. Charles the Great was an earnest suitor to Irene the Empress, but, saith [5052]Zonarus, ob regnum, to annex the empire of the East to that of the West. Yet what is the event of all such matches, that are so made for money, goods, by deceit, or for burning lust, quos foeda libido conjunxit, what follows? they are almost mad at first, but 'tis a mere flash; as chaff and straw soon fired, burn vehemently for a while, yet out in a moment; so are all such matches made by those allurements of burning lust; where there is no respect of honesty, parentage, virtue, religion, education, and the like, they are extinguished in an instant, and instead of love comes hate; for joy, repentance and desperation itself. Franciscus Barbarus in his first book de re uxoria, c. 5, hath a story of one Philip of Padua that fell in love with a common whore, and was now ready to run mad for her; his father having no more sons let him enjoy her; [5053]
but after a few days, the young man began to loath, could not so much as endure the sight of her, and from one madness fell into another.Such event commonly have all these lovers; and he that so marries, or for such respects, let them look for no better success than Menelaus had with Helen, Vulcan with Venus, Theseus with Phaedra, Minos with Pasiphae, and Claudius with Messalina; shame, sorrow, misery, melancholy, discontent.
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?
O good God, when Lais speaks, how sweet it is!Philocolus exclaims in Aristenaetus, to hear a fair young gentlewoman play upon the virginals, lute, viol, and sing to it, which as Gellius observes, lib. 1. cap. 11. are lascivientium delicicae, the chief delight of lovers, must needs be a great enticement. Parthenis was so taken. [5080]Mi vox ista avida haurit ab aure animam: O sister Harpedona (she laments) I am undone, [5081]
how sweetly he sings, I'll speak a bold word, he is the properest man that ever I saw in my life: O how sweetly he sings, I die for his sake, O that he would love me again!If thou didst but hear her sing, saith [5082]Lucian,
thou wouldst forget father and mother, forsake all thy friends, and follow her.Helena is highly commended by [5083]Theocritus the poet for her sweet voice and music; none could play so well as she, and Daphnis in the same Edyllion,
he heard her play by chance upon the lute, and sing a pretty song to it in commendations of a rose,out of old Anacreon belike;
and that ravished his heart.It was Jason's discourse as much as his beauty, or any other of his good parts, which delighted Medea so much.
as bulls' horns are bound with ropes, so are men's hearts with pleasant words.
Her words burn as fire,Eccles. ix. 10. Roxalana bewitched Suleiman the Magnificent, and Shore's wife by this engine overcame Edward the Fourth, [5087]Omnibus una omnes surripuit Veneres. The wife of Bath in Chaucer confesseth all this out of her experience.
[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.
let not young folks meddle at all with such matters.And this made the Romans, as [5094]Vitruvius relates, put Venus' temple in the suburbs, extra murum, ne adolescentes venereis insuescant, to avoid all occasions and objects. For what will not such an object do? Ismenias, as he walked in Sosthene's garden, being now in love, when he saw so many [5095]lascivious pictures, Thetis' marriage, and I know not what, was almost beside himself. And to say truth, with a lascivious object who is not moved, to see others dally, kiss, dance? And much more when he shall come to be an actor himself.
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.
They breathe out their souls and spirits together with their kisses,saith [5108]Balthazar Castilio,
change hearts and spirits, and mingle affections as they do kisses, and it is rather a connection of the mind than of the body.And although these kisses be delightsome and pleasant, Ambrosial kisses, [5109]Suaviolum dulci dulcius Ambrosia, such as [5110] Ganymede gave Jupiter, Nectare suavius, sweeter than [5111]nectar, balsam, honey, [5112]Oscula merum amorem stillantia, love-dropping kisses; for
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,
Though I was by nature and art most beautiful and fair, yet by these tricks I seemed to be far more amiable than I was, for that which men earnestly seek and cannot attain, draws on their affection with a most furious desire. I had a suitor loved me dearly(said she),
and the [5126]more he gave me, the more eagerly he wooed me, the more I seemed to neglect, to scorn him, and which I commonly gave others, I would not let him see me, converse with me, no, not have a kiss.To gull him the more, and fetch him over (for him only I aimed at) I personated mine own servant to bring in a present from a Spanish count, whilst he was in my company, as if he had been the count's servant, which he did excellently well perform: [5127]Comes de monte Turco,
my lord and master hath sent your ladyship a small present, and part of his hunting, a piece of venison, a pheasant, a few partridges, &c. (all which she bought with her own money), commends his love and service to you, desiring you to accept of it in good part, and he means very shortly to come and see you.Withal she showed him rings, gloves, scarves, coronets which others had sent her, when there was no such matter, but only to circumvent him. [5128]By these means (as she concludes)
I made the poor gentleman so mad, that he was ready to spend himself, and venture his dearest blood for my sake.Philinna, in [5129]Lucian, practised all this long before, as it shall appear unto you by her discourse; for when Diphilus her sweetheart came to see her (as his daily custom was) she frowned upon him, would not vouchsafe him her company, but kissed Lamprius his co-rival, at the same time [5130]before his face: but why was it? To make him (as she telleth her mother that chid her for it) more jealous; to whet his love, to come with a greater appetite, and to know that her favour was not so easy to be had. Many other tricks she used besides this (as she there confesseth), for she would fall out with, and anger him of set purpose, pick quarrels upon no occasion, because she would be reconciled to him again. Amantium irae amoris redintegratio, as the old saying is, the falling out of lovers is the renewing of love; and according to that of Aristenaetis, jucundiores amorum post injurias deliciae, love is increased by injuries, as the sunbeams are more gracious after a cloud. And surely this aphorism is most true; for as Ampelis informs Crisis in the said Lucian, [5131]
If a lover be not jealous, angry, waspish, apt to fall out, sigh and swear, he is no true lover.To kiss and coll, hang about her neck, protest, swear and wish, are but ordinary symptoms, incipientis adhuc et crescentis amoris signa; but if he be jealous, angry, apt to mistake, &c., bene speres licet, sweet sister he is thine own; yet if you let him alone, humour him, please him, &c., and that he perceive once he hath you sure, without any co-rival, his love will languish, and he will not care so much for you. Hitherto (saith she) can I speak out of experience; Demophantus a rich fellow was a suitor of mine, I seemed to neglect him, and gave better entertainment to Calliades the painter before his face, principio abiit, verbis me insectatus, at first he went away all in a chafe, cursing and swearing, but at last he came submitting himself, vowing and protesting he loved me most dearly, I should have all he had, and that he would kill himself for my sake. Therefore I advise thee (dear sister Crisis) and all maids, not to use your suitors over kindly; insolentes enim sunt hoc cum sentiunt, 'twill make them proud and insolent; but now and then reject them, estrange thyself, et si me audies semel atque iterum exclude, shut him out of doors once or twice, let him dance attendance; follow my counsel, and by this means [5132]you shall make him mad, come off roundly, stand to any conditions, and do whatsoever you will have him. These are the ordinary practices; yet in the said Lucian, Melissa methinks had a trick beyond all this; for when her suitor came coldly on, to stir him up, she writ one of his co-rival's names and her own in a paper, Melissa amat Hermotimum, Hermotimus Mellissam, causing it to be stuck upon a post, for all gazers to behold, and lost it in the way where he used to walk; which when the silly novice perceived, statim ut legit credidit, instantly apprehended it was so, came raving to me, &c. [5133]
and so when I was in despair of his love, four months after I recovered him again.Eugenia drew Timocles for her valentine, and wore his name a long time after in her bosom: Camaena singled out Pamphilus to dance, at Myson's wedding (some say), for there she saw him first; Felicianus overtook Caelia by the highway side, offered his service, thence came further acquaintance, and thence came love. But who can repeat half their devices? What Aretine experienced, what conceited Lucian, or wanton Aristenaetus? They will deny and take, stiffly refuse, and yet earnestly seek the same, repel to make them come with more eagerness, fly from if you follow, but if averse, as a shadow they will follow you again, fugientem sequitur, sequentem fugit; with a regaining retreat, a gentle reluctancy, a smiling threat, a pretty pleasant peevishness they will put you off, and have a thousand such several enticements. For as he saith,
some young, some of one age, some of another, some winged, some of one sex, some of another, some with torches, some with golden apples, some with darts, gins, snares, and other engines in their hands,as Propertius hath prettily painted them out, lib. 2. et 29. and which some interpret, diverse enticements, or diverse affections of lovers, which if not alone, yet jointly may batter and overcome the strongest constitutions.
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.
the king was not a spectator only, but a principal actor himself.A thing nevertheless frequently used, and part of a gentlewoman's bringing up, to sing, dance, and play on the lute, or some such instrument, before she can say her paternoster, or ten commandments. 'Tis the next way their parents think to get them husbands, they are compelled to learn, and by that means, [5146]Incoestos amores de tenero meditantur ungue; 'tis a great allurement as it is often used, and many are undone by it. Thais, in Lucian, inveigled Lamprias in a dance, Herodias so far pleased Herod, that she made him swear to give her what she would ask, John Baptist's head in a platter. [5147]Robert, Duke of Normandy, riding by Falais, spied Arlette, a fair maid, as she danced on a green, and was so much enamoured with the object, that [5148]she must needs lie with her that night. Owen Tudor won Queen Catherine's affection in. a dance, falling by chance with his head in her lap. Who cannot parallel these stories out of his experience? Speusippas a noble gallant in [5149]that Greek Aristenaetus, seeing Panareta a fair young gentlewoman dancing by accident, was so far in love with her, that for a long time after he could think of nothing but Panareta: he came raving home full of Panareta:
Who would not admire her, who would not love her, that should but see her dance as I did? O admirable, O divine Panareta! I have seen old and new Rome, many fair cities, many proper women, but never any like to Panareta, they are dross, dowdies all to Panareta! O how she danced, how she tripped, how she turned, with what a grace! happy is that man that shall enjoy her. O most incomparable, only, Panareta!When Xenophon, in Symposio, or Banquet, had discoursed of love, and used all the engines that might be devised, to move Socrates, amongst the rest, to stir him the more, he shuts up all with a pleasant interlude or dance of Dionysius and Ariadne. [5150]
First Ariadne dressed like a bride came in and took her place; by and by Dionysius entered, dancing to the music. The spectators did all admire the young man's carriage; and Ariadne herself was so much affected with the sight, that she could scarce sit. After a while Dionysius beholding Ariadne, and incensed with love, bowing to her knees, embraced her first, and kissed her with a grace; she embraced him again, and kissed him with like affection, &c., as the dance required; but they that stood by, and saw this, did much applaud and commend them both for it. And when Dionysius rose up, he raised her up with him, and many pretty gestures, embraces, kisses, and love compliments passed between them: which when they saw fair Bacchus and beautiful Ariadne so sweetly and so unfeignedly kissing each other, so really embracing, they swore they loved indeed, and were so inflamed with the object, that they began to rouse up themselves, as if they would have flown. At the last when they saw them still, so willingly embracing, and now ready to go to the bride-chamber, they were so ravished, with it, that they that were unmarried, swore they would forthwith marry, and those that were married called instantly for their horses, and galloped home to their wives.What greater motive can there be than this burning lust? what so violent an oppugner? Not without good cause therefore so many general councils condemn it, so many fathers abhor it, so many grave men speak against it;
Use not the company of a woman,saith Siracides, 8. 4.
that is a singer, or a dancer; neither hear, lest thou be taken in her craftiness.In circo non tam cernitur quam discitur libido. [5151]Haedus holds, lust in theatres is not seen, but learned. Gregory Nazianzen that eloquent divine, ([5152]as he relates the story himself,) when a noble friend of his solemnly invited him with other bishops, to his daughter Olympia's wedding, refused to come: [5153]
For it is absurd to see an old gouty bishop sit amongst dancers;he held it unfit to be a spectator, much less an actor. Nemo saltat sobrius, Tully writes, he is not a sober man that danceth; for some such reason (belike) Domitian forbade the Roman senators to dance, and for that fact removed many of them from the senate. But these, you will say, are lascivious and Pagan dances, 'tis the abuse that causeth such inconvenience, and I do not well therefore to condemn, speak against, or
innocently to accuse the best and pleasantest thing (so [5154]Lucian calls it) that belongs to mortal men.You misinterpret, I condemn it not; I hold it notwithstanding an honest disport, a lawful recreation, if it be opportune, moderately and soberly used: I am of Plutarch's mind, [5155]
that which respects pleasure alone, honest recreation, or bodily exercise, ought not to be rejected and contemned:I subscribe to [5156]Lucian,
'tis an elegant thing, which cheereth up the mind, exerciseth the body, delights the spectators, which teacheth many comely gestures, equally affecting the ears, eyes, and soul itself.Sallust discommends singing and dancing in Sempronia, not that she did sing or dance, but that she did it in excess, 'tis the abuse of it; and Gregory's refusal doth not simply condemn it, but in some folks. Many will not allow men and women to dance together, because it is a provocation to lust: they may as well, with Lycurgus and Mahomet, cut down all vines, forbid the drinking of wine, for that it makes some men drunk.
There is a time to mourn, a time to dance,Eccles. iii. 4. Let them take their pleasures then, and as [5159] he said of old,
young men and maids flourishing in their age, fair and lovely to behold, well attired, and of comely carriage, dancing a Greek galliard, and as their dance required, kept their time, now turning, now tracing, now apart now altogether, now a courtesy then a caper,&c., and it was a pleasant sight to see those pretty knots, and swimming figures. The sun and moon (some say) dance about the earth, the three upper planets about the sun as their centre, now stationary, now direct, now retrograde, now in apogee, then in perigee, now swift then slow, occidental, oriental, they turn round, jump and trace, ♂ and ☿ about the sun with those thirty-three Maculae or Bourbonian planet, circa Solem saltantes Cytharedum, saith Fromundus. Four Medicean stars dance about Jupiter, two Austrian about Saturn, &c., and all (belike) to the music of the spheres. Our greatest counsellors, and staid senators, at some times dance, as David before the ark, 2 Sam. vi. 14. Miriam, Exod. xv. 20. Judith, xv. 13. (though the devil hence perhaps hath brought in those bawdy bacchanals), and well may they do it. The greatest soldiers, as [5160] Quintilianus, [5161]Aemilius Probus, [5162]Coelius Rhodiginus, have proved at large, still use it in Greece, Rome, and the most worthy senators, cantare, saltare. Lucian, Macrobius, Libanus, Plutarch, Julius, Pollux, Athenaeus, have written just tracts in commendation of it. In this our age it is in much request in those countries, as in all civil commonwealths, as Alexander ab Alexandro, lib. 4. cap. 10. et lib. 2. cap. 25. hath proved at large, [5163]amongst the barbarians themselves none so precious; all the world allows it.
that young folks might meet, be acquainted, see one another, and be seen;nay more, he would have them dance naked; and scoffs at them that laugh at it. But Eusebius praepar. Evangel. lib. 1. cap. 11. and Theodoret lib. 9. curat. graec. affect. worthily lash him for it; and well they might: for as one saith, [5166]
the very sight of naked parts causeth enormous, exceeding concupiscences, and stirs up both men and women to burning lust.There is a mean in all things: this is my censure in brief; dancing is a pleasant recreation of body and mind, if sober and modest (such as our Christian dances are); if tempestively used, a furious motive to burning lust; if as by Pagans heretofore, unchastely abused. But I proceed.
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,
I have a thousand sheep, good store of cattle, and they are all at her command,
house, land, goods, are at her service,as he is himself. Dinomachus, a senator's son in [5172]Lucian, in love with a wench inferior to him in birth and fortunes, the sooner to accomplish his desire, wept unto her, and swore he loved her with all his heart, and her alone, and that as soon as ever his father died (a very rich man and almost decrepit) he would make her his wife. The maid by chance made her mother acquainted with the business, who being an old fox, well experienced in such matters, told her daughter, now ready to yield to his desire, that he meant nothing less, for dost thou think he will ever care for thee, being a poor wench, [5173]that may have his choice of all the beauties in the city, one noble by birth, with so many talents, as young, better qualified, and fairer than thyself? daughter believe him not: the maid was abashed, and so the matter broke off. When Jupiter wooed Juno first (Lilius Giraldus relates it out of an old comment on Theocritus) the better to effect his suit, he turned himself into a cuckoo, and spying her one day walking alone, separated from the other goddesses, caused a tempest suddenly to arise, for fear of which she fled to shelter; Jupiter to avoid the storm likewise flew into her lap, in virginis Junonis gremium devolavit, whom Juno for pity covered in her [5174]apron. But he turned himself forthwith into his own shape, began to embrace and offer violence unto her, sed illa matris metu abnuebat, but she by no means would yield, donec pollicitus connubium obtinuit, till he vowed and swore to marry her, and then she gave consent. This fact was done at Thornax hill, which ever after was called Cuckoo hill, and in perpetual remembrance there was a temple erected to Telia Juno in the same place. So powerful are fair promises, vows, oaths and protestations. It is an ordinary thing too in this case to belie their age, which widows usually do, that mean to marry again, and bachelors too sometimes,
that he might be persuaded those tears were shed for joy of his return.Quartilla in Petronius, when nought would move, fell a weeping, and as Balthazar Castilio paints them out, [5193]
To these crocodile's tears they will add sobs, fiery sighs, and sorrowful countenance, pale colour, leanness, and if you do but stir abroad, these fiends are ready to meet you at every turn, with such a sluttish neglected habit, dejected look, as if they were now ready to die for your sake; and how, saith he, shall a young novice thus beset, escape?But believe them not.
There is a Nemesis, and it cannot choose but grieve and trouble thee, to hear that I have either strangled or drowned myself for thy sake.Nothing so common to this sex as oaths, vows, and protestations, and as I have already said, tears, which they have at command; for they can so weep, that one would think their very hearts were dissolved within them, and would come out in tears; their eyes are like rocks, which still drop water, diariae lachrymae et sudoris in modum lurgeri promptae, saith [5199] Aristaenetus, they wipe away their tears like sweat, weep with one eye, laugh with the other; or as children [5200]weep and cry, they can both together.
will scarce serve to reckon up those allurements and guiles, that men and women use to deceive one another with.
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,
if she cannot have egress, before her window you shall have an old woman, or some prating gossip, tell her some tales of this clerk, and that monk, describing or commending some young gentleman or other unto her.
As I was walking in the street(saith a good fellow in Petronius)
to see the town served one evening, [5211]I spied an old woman in a corner selling of cabbages and roots(as our hucksters do plums, apples, and such like fruits);
mother(quoth he)
can you tell where I can dwell? she, being well pleased with my foolish urbanity, replied, and why, sir, should I not tell? With that she rose up and went before me. I took her for a wise woman, and by-and-by she led me into a by-lane, and told me there I should dwell. I replied again, I knew not the house; but I perceived, on a sudden, by the naked queans, that I was now come into a bawdy-house, and then too late I began to curse the treachery of this old jade.Such tricks you shall have in many places, and amongst the rest it is ordinary in Venice, and in the island of Zante, for a man to be bawd to his own wife. No sooner shall you land or come on shore, but, as the Comical Poet hath it,
with promises and pleasant discourse, with gifts, tokens, and taking their opportunities, they lay nets which Lucretia cannot avoid, and baits that Hippolitus himself would swallow; they make such strong assaults and batteries, that the goddess of virginity cannot withstand them: give gifts and bribes to move Penelope, and with threats able to terrify Susanna. How many Proserpinas, with those catchpoles, doth Pluto take? These are the sleepy rods with which their souls touched descend to hell; this the glue or lime with which the wings of the mind once taken cannot fly away; the devil's ministers to allure, entice,&c. Many young men and maids, without all question, are inveigled by these Eumenides and their associates. But these are trivial and well known. The most sly, dangerous, and cunning bawds, are your knavish physicians, empirics, mass-priests, monks, [5214] Jesuits, and friars. Though it be against Hippocrates' oath, some of them will give a dram, promise to restore maidenheads, and do it without danger, make an abortion if need be, keep down their paps, hinder conception, procure lust, make them able with Satyrions, and now and then step in themselves. No monastery so close, house so private, or prison so well kept, but these honest men are admitted to censure and ask questions, to feel their pulse beat at their bedside, and all under pretence of giving physic. Now as for monks, confessors, and friars, as he said,
wenches could not sleep in their beds for necromantic friars:and the good abbess in Boccaccio may in some sort witness, that rising betimes, mistook and put on the friar's breeches instead of her veil or hat. You have heard the story, I presume, of [5219] Paulina, a chaste matron in Aegesippus, whom one of Isis's priests did prostitute to Mundus, a young knight, and made her believe it was their god Anubis. Many such pranks are played by our Jesuits, sometimes in their own habits, sometimes in others, like soldiers, courtiers, citizens, scholars, gallants, and women themselves. Proteus-like, in all forms and disguises, that go abroad in the night, to inescate and beguile young women, or to have their pleasure of other men's wives; and, if we may believe [5220] some relations, they have wardrobes of several suits in the colleges for that purpose. Howsoever in public they pretend much zeal, seem to be very holy men, and bitterly preach against adultery, fornication, there are no verier bawds or whoremasters in a country; [5221]
whose soul they should gain to God, they sacrifice to the devil.But I spare these men for the present.
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,
The sole philter that ever I used was kissing and embracing, by which alone I made men rave like beasts stupefied, and compelled them to worship me like an idol.In our times it is a common thing, saith Erastus, in his book de Lamiis, for witches to take upon them the making of these philters, [5224]
to force men and women to love and hate whom they will, to cause tempests, diseases,&c., by charms, spells, characters, knots.—[5225]hic Thessala vendit Philtra. St. Hierome proves that they can do it (as in Hilarius' life, epist. lib. 3); he hath a story of a young man, that with a philter made a maid mad for the love of him, which maid was after cured by Hilarion. Such instances I find in John Nider, Formicar. lib. 5. cap. 5. Plutarch records of Lucullus that he died of a philter; and that Cleopatra used philters to inveigle Antony, amongst other allurements. Eusebius reports as much of Lucretia the poet. Panormitan, lib. 4. de gest. Aphonsi, hath a story of one Stephan, a Neapolitan knight, that by a philter was forced to run mad for love. But of all others, that which [5226]Petrarch, epist. famil. lib. 1. ep. 5, relates of Charles the Great (Charlemagne) is most memorable. He foolishly doted upon a woman of mean favour and condition, many years together, wholly delighting in her company, to the great grief and indignation of his friends and followers. When she was dead, he did embrace her corpse, as Apollo did the bay-tree for his Daphne, and caused her coffin (richly embalmed and decked with jewels) to be carried about with him, over which he still lamented. At last a venerable bishop, that followed his court, prayed earnestly to God (commiserating his lord and master's case) to know the true cause of this mad passion, and whence it proceeded; it was revealed to him, in fine,
that the cause of the emperor's mad love lay under the dead woman's tongue.The bishop went hastily to the carcass, and took a small ring thence; upon the removal the emperor abhorred the corpse, and, instead [5227]of it, fell as furiously in love with the bishop, he would not suffer him to be out of his presence; which when the bishop perceived, he flung the ring into the midst of a great lake, where the king then was. From that hour the emperor neglected all his other houses, dwelt at [5228]Ache, built a fair house in the midst of the marsh, to his infinite expense, and a [5229]temple by it, where after he was buried, and in which city all his posterity ever since use to be crowned. Marcus the heretic is accused by Irenaeus, to have inveigled a young maid by this means; and some writers speak hardly of the Lady Katharine Cobham, that by the same art she circumvented Humphrey Duke of Gloucester to be her husband. Sycinius Aemilianus summoned [5230]Apuleius to come before Cneius Maximus, proconsul of Africa, that he being a poor fellow,
had bewitched by philters Pudentilla, an ancient rich matron, to love him,and, being worth so many thousand sesterces, to be his wife. Agrippa, lib. 1. cap. 48. occult. philos. attributes much in this kind to philters, amulets, images: and Salmutz com. in Pancirol. Tit. 10. de Horol. Leo Afer, lib. 3, saith, 'tis an ordinary practice at Fez in Africa, Praestigiatores ibi plures, qui cogunt amores et concubitus: as skilful all out as that hyperborean magician, of whom Cleodemus, in [5231] Lucian, tells so many fine feats performed in this kind. But Erastus, Wierus, and others are against it; they grant indeed such things may be done, but (as Wierus discourseth, lib. 3. de Lamiis. cap. 37.) not by charms, incantations, philters, but the devil himself; lib. 5. cap. 2. he contends as much; so doth Freitagius, noc. med. cap. 74. Andreas Cisalpinus, cap. 5; and so much Sigismundus Scheretzius, cap. 9. de hirco nocturno, proves at large. [5232]
Unchaste women by the help of these witches, the devil's kitchen maids, have their loves brought to them in the night, and carried back again by a phantasm flying in the air in the likeness of a goat. I have heard(saith he)
divers confess, that they have been so carried on a goat's back to their sweethearts, many miles in a night.Others are of opinion that these feats, which most suppose to be done by charms and philters, are merely effected by natural causes, as by man's blood chemically prepared, which much avails, saith Ernestus Burgravius, in Lucerna vitae et mortis Indice, ad amorem conciliandum et odium, (so huntsmen make their dogs love them, and farmers their pullen,) 'tis an excellent philter, as he holds, sed vulgo prodere grande nefas, but not fit to be made common: and so be Mala insana, mandrake roots, mandrake [5233]apples, precious stones, dead men's clothes, candles, mala Bacchica, panis porcinus, Hyppomanes, a certain hair in a [5234]wolf's tail, &c., of which Rhasis, Dioscorides, Porta, Wecker, Rubeus, Mizaldus, Albertus, treat: a swallow's heart, dust of a dove's heart, multum valent linguae viperarum, cerebella asinorum, tela equina, palliola quibus infantes obvoluti nascuntur, funis strangulati hominis, lapis de nido Aquilae, &c. See more in Sckenkius observat. medicinal, lib. 4. &c., which are as forcible and of as much virtue as that fountain Salmacis in [5235] Vitruvius, Ovid, Strabo, that made all such mad for love that drank of it, or that hot bath at [5236]Aix in Germany, wherein Cupid once dipped his arrows, which ever since hath a peculiar virtue to make them lovers all that wash in it. But hear the poet's own description of it,
Love toys and dalliance, pleasantness, sweetness, persuasions, subtleties, gentle speeches, and all witchcraft to enforce love, was contained.Read more of these in Agrippa de occult. Philos. lib. 1. cap. 50. et 45. Malleus malefic. part. 1. quaest. 7. Delrio tom. 2. quest. 3. lib. 3. Wierus, Pomponatis, cap. 8. de incantat. Ficinus, lib. 13. Theol. Plat. Calcagninus, &c.
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.
And eyes that once rivalled the locks of Phoebus, lose the patrial and paternal lustre.With groans, griefs, sadness, dullness,
because of the distraction of the spirits the liver doth not perform his part, nor turns the aliment into blood as it ought, and for that cause the members are weak for want of sustenance, they are lean and pine, as the herbs of my garden do this month of May, for want of rain.The green sickness therefore often happeneth to young women, a cachexia or an evil habit to men, besides their ordinary sighs, complaints, and lamentations, which are too frequent. As drops from a still,—ut occluso stillat ab igne liquor, doth Cupid's fire provoke tears from a true lover's eyes,
she was half distracted, and spake she knew not what, sighed to herself, lay much awake, and was lean upon a sudden:and when she was besotted on her son-in-law, [5246]pallor deformis, marcentes oculi, &c., she had ugly paleness, hollow eyes, restless thoughts, short wind, &c. Euryalus, in an epistle sent to Lucretia, his mistress, complains amongst other grievances, tu mihi et somni et cibi usum abstulisti, thou hast taken my stomach and my sleep from me. So he describes it aright:
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.
because that when she came in presence, or was named, his pulse varied, and he blushed besides.In this very sort was the love of Callices, the son of Polycles, discovered by Panacaeas the physician, as you may read the story at large in [5255]Aristenaetus. By the same signs Galen brags that he found out Justa, Boethius the consul's wife, to dote on Pylades the player, because at his name still she both altered pulse and countenance, as [5256] Polyarchus did at the name of Argenis. Franciscus Valesius, l. 3. controv. 13. med. contr. denies there is any such pulsus amatorius, or that love may be so discerned; but Avicenna confirms this of Galen out of his experience, lib. 3. Fen. 1. and Gordonius, cap. 20. [5257]
Their pulse, he saith, is ordinate and swift, if she go by whom he loves,Langius, epist. 24. lib. 1. med. epist. Neviscanus, lib. 4. numer. 66. syl. nuptialis, Valescus de Taranta, Guianerius, Tract. 15. Valleriola sets down this for a symptom, [5258]
Difference of pulse, neglect of business, want of sleep, often sighs, blushings, when there is any speech of their mistress, are manifest signs.But amongst the rest, Josephus Struthis, that Polonian, in the fifth book, cap. 17. of his Doctrine of Pulses, holds that this and all other passions of the mind may be discovered by the pulse. [5259]
And if you will know, saith he, whether the men suspected be such or such, touch their arteries,&c. And in his fourth book, fourteenth chapter, he speaks of this particular pulse, [5260]
Love makes an unequal pulse,&c., he gives instance of a gentlewoman, [5261]a patient of his, whom by this means he found to be much enamoured, and with whom: he named many persons, but at the last when his name came whom he suspected, [5262]
her pulse began to vary and to beat swifter, and so by often feeling her pulse, he perceived what the matter was.Apollonius Argonaut. lib. 4. poetically setting down the meeting of Jason and Medea, makes them both to blush at one another's sight, and at the first they were not able to speak.
as Lamprias in Lucian kissed Thais, Philippus her [5274]Aristaenetus,amore lymphato tam uriose adhaesit, ut vix labra solvere esset, totumque os mihi contrivit; [5275]Aretine's Lucretia, by a suitor of hers was so saluted, and 'tis their ordinary fashion.
he looked so attentively on her, and sometimes would sigh and weep in her company, and when I drank by chance, and gave Ganymede the cup, he would desire to drink still in the very cup that I drank of, and in the same place where I drank, and would kiss the cup, and then look steadily on me, and sometimes sigh, and then again smile.If it be so they cannot come near to dally, have not that opportunity, familiarity, or acquaintance to confer and talk together; yet if they be in presence, their eye will betray them: Ubi amor ibi oculus, as the common saying is,
where I look I like, and where I like I love;but they will lose themselves in her looks.
They cannot look off whom they love,they will impregnare eam, ipsis oculis, deflower her with their eyes, be still gazing, staring, stealing faces, smiling, glancing at her, as [5280]Apollo on Leucothoe, the moon on her [5281]Endymion, when she stood still in Caria, and at Latmos caused her chariot to be stayed. They must all stand and admire, or if she go by, look after her as long as they can see her, she is animae auriga, as Anacreon calls her, they cannot go by her door or window, but, as an adamant, she draws their eyes to it; though she be not there present, they must needs glance that way, and look back to it. Aristenaetus of [5282] Exithemus, Lucian, in his Imagim. of himself, and Tatius of Clitophon, say as much, Ille oculos de Leucippe [5283]nunquam dejiciebat, and many lovers confess when they came in their mistress' presence, they could not hold off their eyes, but looked wistfully and steadily on her, inconnivo aspectu, with much eagerness and greediness, as if they would look through, or should never have enough sight of her. Fixis ardens obtutibus haeret; so she will do by him, drink to him with her eyes, nay, drink him up, devour him, swallow him, as Martial's Mamurra is remembered to have done: Inspexit molles pueros, oculisque comedit, &c. There is a pleasant story to this purpose in Navigat. Vertom. lib. 3. cap. 5. The sultan of Sana's wife in Arabia, because Vertomannus was fair and white, could not look off him, from sunrising to sunsetting; she could not desist; she made him one day come into her chamber, et geminae, horae spatio intuebatur, non a me anquam aciem oculorum avertebat, me observans veluti Cupidinem quendam, for two hours' space she still gazed on him. A young man in [5284]Lucian fell in love with Venus' picture; he came every morning to her temple, and there continued all day long [5285]from sunrising to sunset, unwilling to go home at night, sitting over against the goddess's picture, he did continually look upon her, and mutter to himself I know not what. If so be they cannot see them whom they love, they will still be walking and waiting about their mistress's doors, taking all opportunity to see them, as in [5286]Longus Sophista, Daphnis and Chloe, two lovers, were still hovering at one another's gates, he sought all occasions to be in her company, to hunt in summer, and catch birds in the frost about her father's house in the winter, that she might see him, and he her. [5287]
A king's palace was not so diligently attended,saith Aretine's Lucretia,
as my house was when I lay in Rome; the porch and street was ever full of some, walking or riding, on set purpose to see me; their eye was still upon my window; as they passed by, they could not choose but look back to my house when they were past, and sometimes hem or cough, or take some impertinent occasion to speak aloud, that I might look out and observe them.'Tis so in other places, 'tis common to every lover, 'tis all his felicity to be with her, to talk with her; he is never well but in her company, and will walk [5288]
seven or eight times a day through the street where she dwells, and make sleeveless errands to see her;plotting still where, when, and how to visit her,
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;
a tormentand [5297]
executionas it is, as he calls it in the poet, an unquenchable fire, and what not? [5298]From it, saith Austin, arise
biting cares, perturbations, passions, sorrows, fears, suspicions, discontents, contentions, discords, wars, treacheries, enmities, flattery, cozening, riot, impudence, cruelty, knavery,&c.
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,
Be of good cheer, my son, thou shalt have her to wife. Ae. Ah father, do you mock me now? M. I mock thee, why? Ae. That which I so earnestly desire, I more suspect and fear. M. Get you home, and send for her to be your wife. Ae. What now a wife, now father,&c. These doubts, anxieties, suspicions, are the least part of their torments; they break many times from passions to actions, speak fair, and flatter, now most obsequious and willing, by and by they are averse, wrangle, fight, swear, quarrel, laugh, weep: and he that doth not so by fits, [5304]Lucian holds, is not thoroughly touched with this loadstone of love. So their actions and passions are intermixed, but of all other passions, sorrow hath the greatest share; [5305]love to many is bitterness itself; rem amaram Plato calls it, a bitter potion, an agony, a plague.
O Venus, thou knowest my poor heart.Charmides, in [5310]Lucian, was so impatient, that he sobbed and sighed, and tore his hair, and said he would hang himself.
I am undone, O sister Tryphena, I cannot endure these love pangs; what shall I do?Vos O dii Averrunci solvite me his curis, O ye gods, free me from these cares and miseries, out of the anguish of his soul, [5311]Theocles prays. Shall I say, most part of a lover's life is full of agony, anxiety, fear, and grief, complaints, sighs, suspicions, and cares, (heigh-ho, my heart is woe) full of silence and irksome solitariness?
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.
He could find in his heart to be killed instantly, lest if he live longer, some sorrow or sickness should contaminate his joys.A little after, he was so merrily set upon the same occasion, that he could not contain himself.
Is't possible (O my countrymen) for any living to be so happy as myself? No sure it cannot be, for the gods have shown all their power, all their goodness in me.Yet by and by when this young gallant was crossed in his wench, he laments, and cries, and roars downright: Occidi—I am undone,
prefer another suitor, speak more familiarly to him, or use more kindly than himself, if by nod, smile, message, she discloseth herself to another, he is instantly tormented, none so dejected as he is,utterly undone, a castaway, [5320]In quem fortuna omnia odiorum suorum crudelissima tela exonerat, a dead man, the scorn of fortune, a monster of fortune, worse than nought, the loss of a kingdom had been less. [5321]Aretine's Lucretia made very good proof of this, as she relates it herself.
For when I made some of my suitors believe I would betake myself to a nunnery, they took on, as if they had lost father and mother, because they were for ever after to want my company.Omnes labores leves fuere, all other labour was light: [5322]but this might not be endured. Tui carendum quod erat—
for I cannot be without thy company,mournful Amyntas, painful Amyntas, careful Amyntas; better a metropolitan city were sacked, a royal army overcome, an invincible armada sunk, and twenty thousand kings should perish, than her little finger ache, so zealous are they, and so tender of her good. They would all turn friars for my sake, as she follows it, in hope by that means to meet, or see me again, as my confessors, at stool-ball, or at barley-break: And so afterwards when an importunate suitor came, [5323]
If I had bid my maid say that I was not at leisure, not within, busy, could not speak with him, he was instantly astonished, and stood like a pillar of marble; another went swearing, chafing, cursing, foaming.[5324]Illa sibi vox ipsa Jovis violentior ira, cum tonat, &c. the voice of a mandrake had been sweeter music:
but he to whom I gave entertainment, was in the Elysian fields, ravished for joy, quite beyond himself.'Tis the general humour of all lovers, she is their stern, pole-star, and guide. [5325]Deliciumque animi, deliquiumque sui. As a tulipant to the sun (which our herbalists calls Narcissus) when it shines, is Admirandus flos ad radios solis se pandens, a glorious flower exposing itself; [5326]but when the sun sets, or a tempest comes, it hides itself, pines away, and hath no pleasure left, (which Carolus Gonzaga, duke of Mantua, in a cause not unlike, sometimes used for an impress) do all inamorates to their mistress; she is their sun, their Primum mobile, or anima informans; this [5327]one hath elegantly expressed by a windmill, still moved by the wind, which otherwise hath no motion of itself. Sic tua ni spiret gratia, truncus ero.
He is wholly animated from her breath,his soul lives in her body, [5328]sola claves habet interitus et salutis, she keeps the keys of his life: his fortune ebbs and flows with her favour, a gracious or bad aspect turns him up or down, Mens mea lucescit Lucia luce tua. Howsoever his present state be pleasing or displeasing, 'tis continuate so long as he [5329]loves, he can do nothing, think of nothing but her; desire hath no rest, she is his cynosure, Hesperus and vesper, his morning and evening star, his goddess, his mistress, his life, his soul, his everything; dreaming, waking, she is always in his mouth; his heart, his eyes, ears, and all his thoughts are full of her. His Laura, his Victorina, his Columbina, Flavia, Flaminia, Caelia, Delia, or Isabella, (call her how you will) she is the sole object of his senses, the substance of his soul, nidulus animae suae, he magnifies her above measure, totus in illa, full of her, can breathe nothing but her.
I adore Melebaea,saith lovesick [5330]Calisto,
I believe in Melebaea, I honour, admire and love my Melebaea;His soul was soused, imparadised, imprisoned in his lady. When [5331]Thais took her leave of Phaedria,—mi Phaedria, et nunquid aliud vis? Sweet heart (she said) will you command me any further service? he readily replied, and gave in this charge,
For all day long he had some object or other to distract his senses, but in the night all ran upon her. All night long he lay [5334] awake, and could think of nothing else but her, he could not get her out of his mind; towards morning, sleep took a little pity on him, he slumbered awhile, but all his dreams were of her.
day and night I think of thee, I wish for thee, I talk of thee, call on thee, look for thee, hope for thee, delight myself in thee, day and night I love thee.
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.
O happy day that shall restore thee to my sight.In the meantime he raves on her; her sweet face, eyes, actions, gestures, hands, feet, speech, length, breadth, height, depth, and the rest of her dimensions, are so surveyed, measured, and taken, by that Astrolabe of phantasy, and that so violently sometimes, with such earnestness and eagerness, such continuance, so strong an imagination, that at length he thinks he sees her indeed; he talks with her, he embraceth her, Ixion-like, pro Junone nubem, a cloud for Juno, as he said. Nihil praeter Leucippen cerno, Leucippe mihi perpetuo in oculis, et animo versatur, I see and meditate of nought but Leucippe. Be she present or absent, all is one;
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?
For to love and not enjoy was a most unspeakable torment,no tyrant could invent the like punishment; as a gnat at a candle, in a short space he would consume himself. For love is a perpetual [5345]flux, angor animi, a warfare, militat omni amans, a grievous wound is love still, and a lover's heart is Cupid's quiver, a consuming [5346]fire, [5347]accede ad hunc ignem, &c. an inextinguishable fire. As Aetna rageth, so doth love, and more than Aetna or any material fire.
and [5352]one soul is worth a hundred thousand bodies.No water can quench this wild fire.
his heart was combust, his liver smoky, his lungs dried up, insomuch that he verily believed his soul was either sodden or roasted through the vehemency of love's fire.Which belike made a modern writer of amorous emblems express love's fury by a pot hanging over the fire, and Cupid blowing the coals. As the heat consumes the water, [5360]Sic sua consumit viscera coecus amor, so doth love dry up his radical moisture. Another compares love to a melting torch, which stood too near the fire.
The beginning, middle, end of love is nought else but sorrow, vexation, agony, torment, irksomeness, wearisomeness; so that to be squalid, ugly, miserable, solitary, discontent, dejected, to wish for death, to complain, rave, and to be peevish, are the certain signs and ordinary actions of a lovesick person.This continual pain and torture makes them forget themselves, if they be far gone with it, in doubt, despair of obtaining, or eagerly bent, to neglect all ordinary business.
How so?Ch.
I am in love.Prudens sciens. [5371]—vivus vidensque pereo, nec quid agam scio. [5372]
He that erst had his thoughts free(as Philostratus Lemnius, in an epistle of his, describes this fiery passion),
and spent his time like a hard student, in those delightsome philosophical precepts; he that with the sun and moon wandered all over the world, with stars themselves ranged about, and left no secret or small mystery in nature unsearched, since he was enamoured can do nothing now but think and meditate of love matters, day and night composeth himself how to please his mistress; all his study, endeavour, is to approve himself to his mistress, to win his mistress' favour, to compass his desire, to be counted her servant.When Peter Abelard, that great scholar of his age, Cui soli patuit scibile quicquid erat,[5373](
whose faculties were equal to any difficulty in learning,) was now in love with Heloise, he had no mind to visit or frequent schools and scholars any more, Taediosum mihi valde fuit (as he [5374]confesseth) ad scholas procedere, vel in iis morari, all his mind was on his new mistress.
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.
I may have better matches, I confess, but farewell shame, farewell honour, farewell honesty, farewell friends and fortunes, &c. O, Harpedona, keep my counsel, I will leave all for his sweet sake, I will have him, say no more, contra gentes, I am resolved, I will have him.Gobrias[5377], the captain, when, he had espied Rhodanthe, the fair captive maid, fell upon his knees before Mystilus, the general, with tears, vows, and all the rhetoric he could, by the scars he had formerly received, the good service he had done, or whatsoever else was dear unto him, besought his governor he might have the captive virgin to be his wife, virtutis suae spolium, as a reward of his worth and service; and, moreover, he would forgive him the money which was owing, and all reckonings besides due unto him,
I ask no more, no part of booty, no portion, but Rhodanthe to be my wife.And when as he could not compass her by fair means, he fell to treachery, force and villainy, and set his life at stake at last to accomplish his desire. 'Tis a common humour this, a general passion of all lovers to be so affected, and which Aemilia told Aratine, a courtier in Castilio's discourse,
surely Aratine, if thou werst not so indeed, thou didst not love; ingenuously confess, for if thou hadst been thoroughly enamoured, thou wouldst have desired nothing more than to please thy mistress. For that is the law of love, to will and nill the same.[5378]Tantum velle et nolle, velit nolit quod amica?[5379]
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.
her dugs like two double jugs,or else no dugs, in that other extreme, bloody fallen fingers, she have filthy, long unpared nails, scabbed hands or wrists, a tanned skin, a rotten carcass, crooked back, she stoops, is lame, splay-footed,
as slender in the middle as a cow in the waist,gouty legs, her ankles hang over her shoes, her feet stink, she breed lice, a mere changeling, a very monster, an oaf imperfect, her whole complexion savours, a harsh voice, incondite gesture, vile gait, a vast virago, or an ugly tit, a slug, a fat fustilugs, a truss, a long lean rawbone, a skeleton, a sneaker (si qua latent meliora puta), and to thy judgment looks like a merd in a lantern, whom thou couldst not fancy for a world, but hatest, loathest, and wouldst have spit in her face, or blow thy nose in her bosom, remedium amoris to another man, a dowdy, a slut, a scold, a nasty, rank, rammy, filthy, beastly quean, dishonest peradventure, obscene, base, beggarly, rude, foolish, untaught, peevish, Irus' daughter, Thersites' sister, Grobians' scholar, if he love her once, he admires her for all this, he takes no notice of any such errors, or imperfections of body or mind, [5391]Ipsa haec—delectant, veluti Balbinum Polypus Agnae,; he had rather have her than any woman in the world. If he were a king, she alone should be his queen, his empress. O that he had but the wealth and treasure of both the Indies to endow her with, a carrack of diamonds, a chain of pearl, a cascanet of jewels, (a pair of calfskin gloves of four-pence a pair were fitter), or some such toy, to send her for a token, she should have it with all his heart; he would spend myriads of crowns for her sake. Venus herself, Panthea, Cleopatra, Tarquin's Tanaquil, Herod's Mariamne, or [5392]Mary of Burgundy, if she were alive, would not match her.
Whoever saw the beauties of the east, or of the west, let them come from all quarters, all, and tell truth, if ever they saw such an excellent feature as this is.A good fellow in Petronius cries out, no tongue can [5399]tell his lady's fine feature, or express it, quicquid dixeris minus erit, &c.
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.
my life, my light, my jewel, my glory,[5413]Margareta speciosa, cujus respectu omnia mundi pretiosa sordent, my sweet Margaret, my sole delight and darling. And as [5414]Rhodomant courted Isabella:
Come to me my dear Lycias,(saith Musaeus in [5419]Aristaenetus)
come quickly sweetheart, all other men are satyrs, mere clowns, blockheads to thee, nobody to thee.Thy looks, words, gestures, actions, &c.,
are incomparably beyond all others.Venus was never so much besotted on her Adonis, Phaedra so delighted in Hippolitus, Ariadne in Theseus, Thisbe in her Pyramus, as she is enamoured on her Mopsus.
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.
love will find out a way,through thick and thin he will to her, Expeditissimi montes videntur omnes tranabiles, he will swim through an ocean, ride post over the Alps, Apennines, or Pyrenean hills,
What shall I say,saith Haedus,
of their great dangers they undergo, single combats they undertake, how they will venture their lives, creep in at windows, gutters, climb over walls to come to their sweethearts,(anointing the doors and hinges with oil, because they should not creak, tread soft, swim, wade, watch, &c.),
and if they be surprised, leap out at windows, cast themselves headlong down, bruising or breaking their legs or arms, and sometimes loosing life itself,as Calisto did for his lovely Melibaea. Hear some of their own confessions, protestations, complaints, proffers, expostulations, wishes, brutish attempts, labours in this kind. Hercules served Omphale, put on an apron, took a distaff and spun; Thraso the soldier was so submissive to Thais, that he was resolved to do whatever she enjoined. [5428]Ego me Thaidi dedam; et faciam quod jubet, I am at her service. Philostratus in an epistle to his mistress, [5429]
I am ready to die sweetheart if it be thy will; allay his thirst whom thy star hath scorched and undone, the fountains and rivers deny no man drink that comes; the fountain doth not say thou shalt not drink, nor the apple thou shalt not eat, nor the fair meadow walk not in me, but thou alone wilt not let me come near thee, or see thee, contemned and despised I die for grief.Polienus, when his mistress Circe did but frown upon him in Petronius, drew his sword, and bade her [5430]kill, stab, or whip him to death, he would strip himself naked, and not resist. Another will take a journey to Japan, Longae navigationis molestis non curans: a third (if she say it) will not speak a word for a twelvemonth's space, her command shall be most inviolably kept: a fourth will take Hercules's club from him, and with that centurion in the Spanish [5431]Caelestina, will kill ten men for his mistress Areusa, for a word of her mouth he will cut bucklers in two like pippins, and flap down men like flies, Elige quo mortis genere illum occidi cupis? [5432]Galeatus of Mantua did a little more: for when he was almost mad for love of a fair maid in the city, she, to try him belike what he would do for her sake, bade him in jest leap into the river Po if he loved her; he forthwith did leap headlong off the bridge and was drowned. Another at Ficinum in like passion, when his mistress by chance (thinking no harm I dare swear) bade him go hang, the next night at her doors hanged himself. [5433]
Money(saith Xenophon)
is a very acceptable and welcome guest, yet I had rather give it my dear Clinia than take it of others, I had rather serve him than command others, I had rather be his drudge than take my ease, undergo any danger for his sake than live in security. For I had rather see Clinia than all the world besides, and had rather want the sight of all other things than him alone; I am angry with the night and sleep that I may not see him, and thank the light and sun because they show me my Clinia; I will run into the fire for his sake, and if you did but see him, I know that you likewise would run with me.So Philostratus to his mistress, [5434]
Command me what you will, I will do it; bid me go to sea, I am gone in an instant, take so many stripes, I am ready, run through the fire, and lay down my life and soul at thy feet, 'tis done.So did. Aeolus to Juno.
O God of Heaven, grant me this life for ever to sit over against my mistress, and to hear her sweet voice, to go in and out with her, to have every other business common with her; I would labour when she labours; sail when she sails; he that hates her should hate me; and if a tyrant kill her, he should kill me; if she should die, I would not live, and one grave should hold us both.[5438]Finiet illa meos moriens morientis amores. Abrocomus in [5439]Aristaenetus makes the like petition for his Delphia, —[5440]Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam lubens.
I desire to live with thee, and I am ready to die with thee.'Tis the same strain which Theagines used to his Chariclea,
so that I may but enjoy thy love, let me die presently:Leander to his Hero, when he besought the sea waves to let him go quietly to his love, and kill him coming back. [5441]Parcite dum propero, mergite dum redeo.
Spare me whilst I go, drown me as I return.'Tis the common humour of them all, to contemn death, to wish for death, to confront death in this case, Quippe queis nec fera, nec ignis, neque praecipitium, nec fretum, nec ensis, neque laqueus gravia videntur;
'Tis their desire(saith Tyrius)
to die.
He does not fear death, he desireth such upon the very swords.Though a thousand dragons or devils keep the gates, Cerberus himself, Scyron and Procrastes lay in wait, and the way as dangerous, as inaccessible as hell, through fiery flames and over burning coulters, he will adventure for all this. And as [5442]Peter Abelard lost his testicles for his Heloise, he will I say not venture an incision, but life itself. For how many gallants offered to lose their lives for a night's lodging with Cleopatra in those days! and in the hour or moment of death, 'tis their sole comfort to remember their dear mistress, as [5443]Zerbino slain in France, and Brandimart in Barbary; as Arcite did his Emily.
till their headpiece, bucklers be all broken, and swords hacked like so many saws,for they must not see her abused in any sort, 'tis blasphemy to speak against her, a dishonour without all good respect to name her. 'Tis common with these creatures, to drink [5451]healths upon their bare knees, though it were a mile to the bottom, no matter of what mixture, off it comes. If she bid them they will go barefoot to Jerusalem, to the great Cham's court, [5452] to the East Indies, to fetch her a bird to wear in her hat: and with Drake and Candish sail round about the world for her sweet sake, adversis ventis, serve twice seven years, as Jacob did for Rachel; do as much as [5453]Gesmunda, the daughter of Tancredus, prince of Salerna, did for Guisardus, her true love, eat his heart when he died; or as Artemisia drank her husband's bones beaten to powder, and so bury him in herself, and endure more torments than Theseus or Paris. Et his colitur Venus magis quam thure, et victimis, with such sacrifices as these (as [5454] Aristaenetus holds) Venus is well pleased. Generally they undertake any pain, any labour, any toil, for their mistress' sake, love and admire a servant, not to her alone, but to all her friends and followers, they hug and embrace them for her sake; her dog, picture, and everything she wears, they adore it as a relic. If any man come from her, they feast him, reward him, will not be out of his company, do him all offices, still remembering, still talking of her:
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,
'sit at home with his picture before her;' a garter or a bracelet of hers is more precious than any saint's relic,he lays it up in his casket, (O blessed relic) and every day will kiss it: if in her presence, his eye is never off her, and drink he will where she drank, if it be possible, in that very place, &c. If absent, he will walk in the walk, sit under that tree where she did use to sit, in that bower, in that very seat,—et foribus miser oscula figit, [5461]many years after sometimes, though she be far distant and dwell many miles off, he loves yet to walk that way still, to have his chamber-window look that way: to walk by that river's side, which (though far away) runs by the house where she dwells, he loves the wind blows to that coast.
O happy ground on which she treads, and happy were I if she would tread upon me. I think her countenance would make the rivers stand, and when she comes abroad, birds will sing and come about her.
When she is in the meadow, she is fairer than any flower, for that lasts but for a day, the river is pleasing, but it vanisheth on a sudden, but thy flower doth not fade, thy stream is greater than the sea. If I look upon the heaven, methinks I see the sun fallen down to shine below, and thee to shine in his place, whom I desire. If I look upon the night, methinks I see two more glorious stars, Hesperus and thyself.A little after he thus courts his mistress, [5468]
If thou goest forth of the city, the protecting gods that keep the town will run after to gaze upon thee: if thou sail upon the seas, as so many small boats, they will follow thee: what river would not run into the sea?Another, he sighs and sobs, swears he hath Cor scissum, a heart bruised to powder, dissolved and melted within him, or quite gone from him, to his mistress' bosom belike, he is in an oven, a salamander in the fire, so scorched with love's heat; he wisheth himself a saddle for her to sit on, a posy for her to smell to, and it would not grieve him to be hanged, if he might be strangled in her garters: he would willingly die tomorrow, so that she might kill him with her own hands. [5469]Ovid would be a flea, a gnat, a ring, Catullus a sparrow,
happy are his bedfellows;and as she said of Cyprus, [5476]Beata quae illi uxor futura esset, blessed is that woman that shall be his wife, nay, thrice happy she that shall enjoy him but a night. [5477]Una nox Jovis sceptro aequiparanda, such a night's lodging is worth Jupiter's sceptre.
O what a blissful night would it be, how soft, how sweet a bed!She will adventure all her estate for such a night, for a nectarean, a balsam kiss alone. The sultan of Sana's wife in Arabia, when she had seen Vertomannus, that comely traveller, lamented to herself in this manner, [5480]
O God, thou hast made this man whiter than the sun, but me, mine husband, and all my children black; I would to God he were my husband, or that I had such a son;she fell a weeping, and so impatient for love at last, that (as Potiphar's wife did by Joseph) she would have had him gone in with her, she sent away Gazella, Tegeia, Galzerana, her waiting-maids, loaded him with fair promises and gifts, and wooed him with all the rhetoric she could,— extremum hoc miserae da munus amanti,
grant this last request to a wretched lover.But when he gave not consent, she would have gone with him, and left all, to be his page, his servant, or his lackey, Certa sequi charum corpus ut umbra solet, so that she might enjoy him, threatening moreover to kill herself, &c. Men will do as much and more for women, spend goods, lands, lives, fortunes; kings will leave their crowns, as King John for Matilda the nun at Dunmow.
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—
I doubt not, therefore, but if a man had such an army of lovers(as Castilio supposeth)
he might soon conquer all the world, except by chance he met with such another army of inamoratos to oppose it.[5497]For so perhaps they might fight as that fatal dog and fatal hare in the heavens, course one another round, and never make an end. Castilio thinks Ferdinand King of Spain would never have conquered Granada, had not Queen Isabel and her ladies been present at the siege: [5498]
It cannot be expressed what courage the Spanish knights took, when the ladies were present, a few Spaniards overcame a multitude of Moors.They will undergo any danger whatsoever, as Sir Walter Manny in Edward the Third's time, stuck full of ladies' favours, fought like a dragon. For soli amantes, as [5499]Plato holds, pro amicis mori appetunt, only lovers will die for their friends, and in their mistress' quarrel. And for that cause he would have women follow the camp, to be spectators and encouragers of noble actions: upon such an occasion, the [5500]Squire of Dames himself, Sir Lancelot or Sir Tristram, Caesar, or Alexander, shall not be more resolute or go beyond them.
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,
have neat shoe-ties, points, garters, speak in print, walk in print, eat and drink in print, and that which is all in all, he must be mad in print.
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.
Love(as he holds)
will make a silent man speak, a modest man most officious; dull, quick; slow, nimble; and that which is most to be admired, a hard, base, untractable churl, as fire doth iron in a smith's forge, free, facile, gentle, and easy to be entreated.Nay, 'twill make him prodigal in the other extreme, and give a [5527]hundred sesterces for a night's lodging, as they did of old to Lais of Corinth, or [5528] ducenta drachmarum millia pro unica nocte, as Mundus to Paulina, spend all his fortunes (as too many do in like case) to obtain his suit. For which cause many compare love to wine, which makes men jovial and merry, frolic and sad, whine, sing, dance, and what not.
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.
there never was any excellent poet that invented good fables, or made laudable verses, which was not in love himself;had he not taken a quill from Cupid's wings, he could never have written so amorously as he did.
O the broom, the bonny, bonny broom,ditties and songs,
Bess a belle, she doth excel,—they must write likewise and indite all in rhyme.
ask what she would, she should have it.Caligula gave 100,000 sesterces to his courtesan at first word, to buy her pins, and yet when he was solicited by the senate to bestow something to repair the decayed walls of Rome for the commonwealth's good, he would give but 6000 sesterces at most. [5553]Dionysius, that Sicilian tyrant, rejected all his privy councillors, and was so besotted on Mirrha his favourite and mistress, that he would bestow no office, or in the most weightiest business of the kingdom do aught without her especial advice, prefer, depose, send, entertain no man, though worthy and well deserving, but by her consent; and he again whom she commended, howsoever unfit, unworthy, was as highly approved. Kings and emperors, instead of poems, build cities; Adrian built Antinoa in Egypt, besides constellations, temples, altars, statues, images, &c., in the honour of his Antinous. Alexander bestowed infinite sums to set out his Hephestion to all eternity. [5554]Socrates professeth himself love's servant, ignorant in all arts and sciences, a doctor alone in love matters, et quum alienarum rerum omnium scientiam diffiteretur, saith [5555]Maximus Tyrius, his sectator, hujus negotii professor, &c., and this he spake openly, at home and abroad, at public feasts, in the academy, in Pyraeo, Lycaeo, sub Platano, &c., the very bloodhound of beauty, as he is styled by others. But I conclude there is no end of love's symptoms, 'tis a bottomless pit. Love is subject to no dimensions; not to be surveyed by any art or engine: and besides, I am of [5556]Haedus' mind,
no man can discourse of love matters, or judge of them aright, that hath not made trial in his own person,or as Aeneas Sylvius [5557]adds,
hath not a little doted, been mad or lovesick himself.I confess I am but a novice, a contemplator only, Nescio quid sit amor nec amo[5558]—I have a tincture; for why should I lie, dissemble or excuse it, yet homo sum, &c., not altogether inexpert in this subject, non sum praeceptor amandi, and what I say, is merely reading, ex altorum forsan ineptiis, by mine own observation, and others' relation.
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;
Their love brought themselves and all Egypt into extreme and miserable calamities,
the end of her is as bitter as wormwood, and as sharp as a two-edged sword,Prov. v. 4, 5.
Her feet go down to death, her steps lead on to hell. She is more bitter than death,(Eccles. vii. 28.)
and the sinner shall be taken by her.[5568]Qui in amore praecipitavit, pejus perit, quam qui saxo salit. [5569]
He that runs headlong from the top of a rock is not in so bad a case as he that falls into this gulf of love.
For hence,saith [5570] Platina,
comes repentance, dotage, they lose themselves, their wits, and make shipwreck of their fortunes altogether:madness, to make away themselves and others, violent death. Prognosticatio est talis, saith Gordonius, [5571]si non succurratur iis, aut in maniam cadunt, aut moriuntur; the prognostication is, they will either run mad, or die.
For if this passion continue,saith [5572]Aelian Montaltus,
it makes the blood hot, thick, and black; and if the inflammation get into the brain, with continual meditation and waking, it so dries it up, that madness follows, or else they make away themselves,[5573]O Corydon, Corydon, quae te dementia cepit? Now, as Arnoldus adds, it will speedily work these effects, if it be not presently helped; [5574]
They will pine away, run mad, and die upon a sudden;Facile incidunt in maniam, saith Valescus, quickly mad, nisi succurratur, if good order be not taken,
never looked up, no jests could exhilarate her sad mind, no joys comfort her wounded and distressed soul, but a little after she fell sick and died.But this is a gentle end, a natural death, such persons commonly make away themselves.
that raving through impatience of love, had he not been watched, would every while have offered violence to himself.Amatus Lusitanus, cent. 3. car. 56, hath such [5585]another story, and Felix Plater, med. observ. lib. 1. a third of a young [5586]gentleman that studied physic, and for the love of a doctor's daughter, having no hope to compass his desire, poisoned himself, [5587]anno 1615. A barber in Frankfort, because his wench was betrothed to another, cut his own throat. [5588]At Neoburg, the same year, a young man, because he could not get her parents' consent, killed his sweetheart, and afterward himself, desiring this of the magistrate, as he gave up the ghost, that they might be buried in one grave, Quodque rogis superest una requiescat in urna, which [5589] Gismunda besought of Tancredus, her father, that she might be in like sort buried with Guiscardus, her lover, that so their bodies might lie together in the grave, as their souls wander about [5590]Campos lugentes in the Elysian fields,—quos durus amor crudeli tabe peredit, [5591]in a myrtle grove
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,
Never to be idle but at the hours of sleep.
to go with hair-cloth next his skin, to go barefooted, and barelegged in cold weather, to whip himself now and then, as monks do, but above all to fast.Not with sweet wine, mutton and pottage, as many of those tender-bellies do, howsoever they put on Lenten faces, and whatsoever they pretend, but from all manner of meat. Fasting is an all-sufficient remedy of itself; for, as Jason Pratensis holds, the bodies of such persons that feed liberally, and live at ease, [5611]
are full of bad spirits and devils, devilish thoughts; no better physic for such parties, than to fast.Hildesheim, spicel. 2. to this of hunger, adds, [5612]
often baths, much exercise and sweat,but hunger and fasting he prescribes before the rest. And 'tis indeed our Saviour's oracle,
This kind of devil is not cast out but by fasting and prayer,which makes the fathers so immoderate in commendation of fasting. As
hunger,saith [5613] Ambrose,
is a friend of virginity, so is it an enemy to lasciviousness, but fullness overthrows chastity, and fostereth all manner of provocations.If thine horse be too lusty, Hierome adviseth thee to take away some of his provender; by this means those Pauls, Hilaries, Anthonies, and famous anchorites, subdued the lusts of the flesh; by this means Hilarion
made his ass, as he called his own body, leave kicking,(so [5614]Hierome relates of him in his life)
when the devil tempted him to any such foul offence.By this means those [5615]Indian Brahmins kept themselves continent: they lay upon the ground covered with skins, as the red-shanks do on heather, and dieted themselves sparingly on one dish, which Guianerius would have all young men put in practice, and if that will not serve, [5616]Gordonius
would have them soundly whipped, or, to cool their courage, kept in prison,and there fed with bread and water till they acknowledge their error, and become of another mind. If imprisonment and hunger will not take them down, according to the directions of that [5617] Theban Crates,
time must wear it out; if time will not, the last refuge is a halter.But this, you will say, is comically spoken. Howsoever, fasting, by all means, must be still used; and as they must refrain from such meats formerly mentioned, which cause venery, or provoke lust, so they must use an opposite diet. [5618]Wine must be altogether avoided of the younger sort. So [5619]Plato prescribes, and would have the magistrates themselves abstain from it, for example's sake, highly commending the Carthaginians for their temperance in this kind. And 'twas a good edict, a commendable thing, so that it were not done for some sinister respect, as those old Egyptians abstained from wine, because some fabulous poets had given out, wine sprang first from the blood of the giants, or out of superstition, as our modern Turks, but for temperance, it being animae virus et vitiorum fomes, a plague itself, if immoderately taken. Women of old for that cause, [5620]in hot countries, were forbid the use of it; as severely punished for drinking of wine as for adultery; and young folks, as Leonicus hath recorded, Var. hist. l. 3. cap. 87, 88. out of Athenaeus and others, and is still practised in Italy, and some other countries of Europe and Asia, as Claudius Minoes hath well illustrated in his Comment on the 23. Emblem of Alciat. So choice is to be made of other diet.
A lover that hath as it were lost himself through impotency, impatience, must be called home as a traveller, by music, feasting, good wine, if need be to drunkenness itself, which many so much commend for the easing of the mind, all kinds of sports and merriments, to see fair pictures, hangings, buildings, pleasant fields, orchards, gardens, groves, ponds, pools, rivers, fishing, fowling, hawking, hunting, to hear merry tales, and pleasant discourse, reading, to use exercise till he sweat, that new spirits may succeed, or by some vehement affection or contrary passion to be diverted till he be fully weaned from anger, suspicion, cares, fears, &c., and habituated into another course.Semper tecum sit, (as [5627]Sempronius adviseth Calisto his lovesick master) qui sermones joculares moveat, conciones ridiculas, dicteria falsa, suaves historias, fabulas venustas recenseat, coram ludat, &c., still have a pleasant companion to sing and tell merry tales, songs and facete histories, sweet discourse, &c. And as the melody of music, merriment, singing, dancing, doth augment the passion of some lovers, as [5628] Avicenna notes, so it expelleth it in others, and doth very much good. These things must be warily applied, as the parties' symptoms vary, and as they shall stand variously affected.
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,
kissing, dalliance, all speeches, tokens, love-letters, and the like,or as Castilio, lib. 4. to converse with them, hear them speak, or sing, (tolerabilius est audire basiliscum sibilantem, thou hadst better hear, saith [5640]Cyprian, a serpent hiss) [5641]
those amiable smiles, admirable graces, and sweet gestures,which their presence affords. but all talk, name, mention, or cogitation of them, and of any other women, persons, circumstance, amorous book or tale that may administer any occasion of remembrance. [5643]Prosper adviseth young men not to read the Canticles, and some parts of Genesis at other times; but for such as are enamoured they forbid, as before, the name mentioned, &c., especially all sight, they must not so much as come near, or look upon them.
Gaze not on a maid,saith Siracides,
turn away thine eyes from a beautiful woman,c. 9. v. 5. 7, 8. averte oculos, saith David, or if thou dost see them, as Ficinus adviseth, let not thine eye be intentus ad libidinem, do not intend her more than the rest: for as [5645]Propertius holds, Ipse alimenta sibi maxima praebet amor, love as a snow ball enlargeth itself by sight: but as Hierome to Nepotian, aut aequaliter ama, aut aequaliter ignora, either see all alike, or let all alone; make a league with thine eyes, as [5646]Job did, and that is the safest course, let all alone, see none of them. Nothing sooner revives, [5647]
or waxeth sore again,as Petrarch holds,
than love doth by sight.
As pomp renews ambition; the sight of gold, covetousness; a beauteous object sets on fire this burning lust.Et multum saliens incitat unda sitim. The sight of drink makes one dry, and the sight of meat increaseth appetite. 'Tis dangerous therefore to see. A [5648]young gentleman in merriment would needs put on his mistress's clothes, and walk abroad alone, which some of her suitors espying, stole him away for her that he represented. So much can sight enforce. Especially if he have been formerly enamoured, the sight of his mistress strikes him into a new fit, and makes him rave many days after.
at the first sight of her, as straw in a fire, I burned afresh, and more than ever I did before.[5652]
Chariclia was as much moved at the sight of her dear Theagines, after he had been a great stranger.[5653]Mertila, in Aristaenetus, swore she would never love Pamphilus again, and did moderate her passion, so long as he was absent; but the next time he came in presence, she could not contain, effuse amplexa attrectari se sinit, &c., she broke her vow, and did profusely embrace him. Hermotinus, a young man (in the said [5654]author) is all out as unstaid, he had forgot his mistress quite, and by his friends was well weaned from her love; but seeing her by chance, agnovit veteris vestigia flammae, he raved amain, Illa tamen emergens veluti lucida stella cepit elucere, &c., she did appear as a blazing star, or an angel to his sight. And it is the common passion of all lovers to be overcome in this sort. For that cause belike Alexander discerning this inconvenience and danger that comes by seeing, [5655]
when he heard Darius's wife so much commended for her beauty, would scarce admit her to come in his sight,foreknowing belike that of Plutarch, formosam videre periculosissimum, how full of danger it is to see a proper woman, and though he was intemperate in other things, yet in this superbe se gessit, he carried himself bravely. And so when as Araspus, in Xenophon, had so much magnified that divine face of Panthea to Cyrus, [5656]
by how much she was fairer than ordinary, by so much he was the more unwilling to see her.Scipio, a young man of twenty-three years of age, and the most beautiful of the Romans, equal in person to that Grecian Charinus, or Homer's Nireus, at the siege of a city in Spain, when as a noble and most fair young gentlewoman was brought unto him, [5657]
and he had heard she was betrothed to a lord, rewarded her, and sent her back to her sweetheart.St. Austin, as [5658]Gregory reports of him, ne cum sorore quidem sua putavit habitandum, would not live in the house with his own sister. Xenocrates lay with Lais of Corinth all night, and would not touch her. Socrates, though all the city of Athens supposed him to dote upon fair Alcibiades, yet when he had an opportunity, [5659]solus cum solo to lie in the chamber with, and was wooed by him besides, as the said Alcibiades publicly [5660]confessed, formam sprevit et superbe contempsit, he scornfully rejected him. Petrarch, that had so magnified his Laura in several poems, when by the pope's means she was offered unto him, would not accept of her. [5661]
It is a good happiness to be free from this passion of love, and great discretion it argues in such a man that he can so contain himself; but when thou art once in love, to moderate thyself (as he saith) is a singular point of wisdom.
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.
he was not the same man:proripuit sese tandem, as [5672]Aeneas fled from Dido, not vouchsafing her any farther parley, loathing his folly, and ashamed of that which formerly he had done. [5673]Non sum stultus ut ante jam Neaera.
O Neaera, put your tricks, and practise hereafter upon somebody else, you shall befool me no longer.Petrarch hath such another tale of a young gallant, that loved a wench with one eye, and for that cause by his parents was sent to travel into far countries,
after some years he returned, and meeting the maid for whose sake he was sent abroad, asked her how, and by what chance she lost her eye? no, said she, I have lost none, but you have found yours:signifying thereby, that all lovers were blind, as Fabius saith, Amantes de forma judicare non possunt, lovers cannot judge of beauty, nor scarce of anything else, as they will easily confess after they return unto themselves, by some discontinuance or better advice, wonder at their own folly, madness, stupidity, blindness, be much abashed,
and laugh at love, and call it an idle thing, condemn themselves that ever they should be so besotted or misled: and be heartily glad they have so happily escaped.
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.
Tell me, sweetheart (saith Tryphena to a lovesick Charmides in [5701]Lucian), what is it that troubles thee? peradventure I can ease thy mind, and further thee in thy suit;and so, without question, she might, and so mayst thou, if the patient be capable of good counsel, and will hear at least what may be said.
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,
our eyes and other senses will commonly deceive us;it may be, to thee thyself upon a more serious examination, or after a little absence, she is not so fair as she seems. Quaedam videntur et non sunt; compare her to another standing by, 'tis a touchstone to try, confer hand to hand, body to body, face to face, eye to eye, nose to nose, neck to neck, &c., examine every part by itself, then altogether, in all postures, several sites, and tell me how thou likest her. It may be not she, that is so fair, but her coats, or put another in her clothes, and she will seem all out as fair; as the [5711]poet then prescribes, separate her from her clothes: suppose thou saw her in a base beggar's weed, or else dressed in some old hirsute attires out of fashion, foul linen, coarse raiment, besmeared with soot, colly, perfumed with opoponax, sagapenum, asafoetida, or some such filthy gums, dirty, about some indecent action or other; or in such a case as [5712]Brassivola, the physician, found Malatasta, his patient, after a potion of hellebore, which he had prescribed: Manibus in terram depositis, et ano versus caelum elevato (ac si videretur Socraticus ille Aristophanes, qui Geometricas figuras in terram scribens, tubera colligere videbatur) atram bilem in album parietem injiciebat, adeoque totam cameram, et se deturpabat, ut, &c., all to bewrayed, or worse; if thou saw'st her (I say) would thou affect her as thou dost? Suppose thou beheldest her in a [5713] frosty morning, in cold weather, in some passion or perturbation of mind, weeping, chafing, &c., rivelled and ill-favoured to behold. She many times that in a composed look seems so amiable and delicious, tam scitula, forma, if she do but laugh or smile, makes an ugly sparrow-mouthed face, and shows a pair of uneven, loathsome, rotten, foul teeth: she hath a black skin, gouty legs, a deformed crooked carcass under a fine coat. It may be for all her costly tires she is bald, and though she seem so fair by dark, by candlelight, or afar off at such a distance, as Callicratides observed in [5714]Lucian,
If thou should see her near, or in a morning, she would appear more ugly than a beast;[5715]si diligenter consideres, quid per os et nares et caeteros corporis meatus egreditur, vilius sterquilinium nunquam vidisti. Follow my counsel, see her undressed, see her, if it be possible, out of her attires, furtivis nudatam coloribus, it may be she is like Aesop's jay, or [5716]Pliny's cantharides, she will be loathsome, ridiculous, thou wilt not endure her sight: or suppose thou saw'st her, pale, in a consumption, on her death-bed, skin and bones, or now dead, Cujus erat gratissimus amplexus (whose embrace was so agreeable) as Barnard saith, erit horribilis aspectus; Non redolet, sed olet, quae, redolere solet,
As a posy she smells sweet, is most fresh and fair one day, but dried up, withered, and stinks another.Beautiful Nireus, by that Homer so much admired, once dead, is more deformed than Thersites, and Solomon deceased as ugly as Marcolphus: thy lovely mistress that was erst [5717]Charis charior ocellis,
dearer to thee than thine eyes,once sick or departed, is Vili vilior aestimata coeno,
worse than any dirt or dunghill.Her embraces were not so acceptable, as now her looks be terrible: thou hadst better behold a Gorgon's head, than Helen's carcass.
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,
and after he had used her as a wife one night, because her breath stunk, they say, or for some other secret fault, sent her back again to her father.Peter Mattheus, in the life of Lewis the Eleventh, finds fault with our English [5721]chronicles, for writing how Margaret the king of Scots' daughter, and wife to Louis the Eleventh, French king, was ob graveolentiam oris, rejected by her husband. Many such matches are made for by-respects, or some seemly comeliness, which after honeymoon's past, turn to bitterness: for burning lust is but a flash, a gunpowder passion; and hatred oft follows in the highest degree, dislike and contempt.
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,
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vanity,Prov. xxxi. 30.
can she be fair and honest too?[5732] Aristo, the son of Agasicles, married a Spartan lass, the fairest lady in all Greece next to Helen, but for her conditions the most abominable and beastly creature of the world. So that I would wish thee to respect, with [5733]Seneca, not her person but qualities.
Will you say that's a good blade which hath a gilded scabbard, embroidered with gold and jewels? No, but that which hath a good edge and point, well tempered metal, able to resist.This beauty is of the body alone, and what is that, but as [5734] Gregory Nazianzen telleth us,
a mock of time and sickness?or as Boethius, [5735]
as mutable as a flower, and 'tis not nature so makes us, but most part the infirmity of the beholder.For ask another, he sees no such matter: Dic mihi per gratias quails tibi videtur,
I pray thee tell me how thou likest my sweetheart,as she asked her sister in Aristenaetus, [5736]
whom I so much admire, methinks he is the sweetest gentleman, the properest man that ever I saw: but I am in love, I confess (nec pudet fateri) and cannot therefore well judge.But be she fair indeed, golden-haired, as Anacreon his Bathillus, (to examine particulars) she have [5737]Flammeolos oculos, collaque lacteola, a pure sanguine complexion, little mouth, coral lips, white teeth, soft and plump neck, body, hands, feet, all fair and lovely to behold, composed of all graces, elegances, an absolute piece,
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?
but if she be not so to me, what care I how kind she be?I say with [5749]Philostratus, formosa aliis, mihi superba, she is a tyrant to me, and so let her go. Besides these outward neves or open faults, errors, there be many inward infirmities, secret, some private (which I will omit), and some more common to the sex, sullen fits, evil qualities, filthy diseases, in this case fit to be considered; consideratio foeditatis mulierum, menstruae imprimis, quam immundae sunt, quam Savanarola proponit regula septima penitus observandam; et Platina dial. amoris fuse perstringit. Lodovicus Bonacsialus, mulieb. lib. 2. cap. 2. Pet. Haedus, Albertus, et infiniti fere medici. [5750]A lover, in Calcagninus's Apologies, wished with all his heart he were his mistress's ring, to hear, embrace, see, and do I know not what: O thou fool, quoth the ring, if thou wer'st in my room, thou shouldst hear, observe, and see pudenda et poenitenda, that which would make thee loathe and hate her, yea, peradventure, all women for her sake.
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,
better dwell with a dragon or a lion, than keep house with a wicked wife,Ecclus. xxv. 18.
better dwell in a wilderness,Prov. xxi. 19.
no wickedness like to her,Ecclus. xxv. 22.
She makes a sorry heart, an heavy countenance, a wounded mind, weak hands, and feeble knees,vers. 25.
A woman and death are two the bitterest things in the world:uxor mihi ducenda est hodie, id mihi visus est dicere, abi domum et suspende te. Ter. And. 1. 5. And yet for all this we bachelors desire to be married; with that vestal virgin, we long for it, [5764]Felices nuptae! moriar, nisi nubere dulce est. 'Tis the sweetest thing in the world, I would I had a wife saith he,
So long as we are wooers, may kiss and coll at our pleasure, nothing is so sweet, we are in heaven as we think; but when we are once tied, and have lost our liberty, marriage is an hell,
give me my yellow hose again:a mouse in a trap lives as merrily, we are in a purgatory some of us, if not hell itself. Dulce bellum inexpertis, as the proverb is, 'tis fine talking of war, and marriage sweet in contemplation, till it be tried: and then as wars are most dangerous, irksome, every minute at death's door, so is, &c. When those wild Irish peers, saith [5766]Stanihurst, were feasted by king Henry the Second, (at what time he kept his Christmas at Dublin) and had tasted of his prince-like cheer, generous wines, dainty fare, had seen his [5767]massy plate of silver, gold, enamelled, beset with jewels, golden candlesticks, goodly rich hangings, brave furniture, heard his trumpets sound, fifes, drums, and his exquisite music in all kinds: when they had observed his majestical presence as he sat in purple robes, crowned, with his sceptre, &c., in his royal seat, the poor men were so amazed, enamoured, and taken with the object, that they were pertaesi domestici et pristini tyrotarchi, as weary and ashamed of their own sordidity and manner of life. They would all be English forthwith; who but English! but when they had now submitted themselves, and lost their former liberty, they began to rebel some of them, others repent of what they had done, when it was too late. 'Tis so with us bachelors, when we see and behold those sweet faces, those gaudy shows that women make, observe their pleasant gestures and graces, give ear to their siren tunes, see them dance, &c., we think their conditions are as fine as their faces, we are taken, with dumb signs, in amplexum ruimus, we rave, we burn, and would fain be married. But when we feel the miseries, cares, woes, that accompany it, we make our moan many of us, cry out at length and cannot be released. If this be true now, as some out of experience will inform us, farewell wiving for my part, and as the comical poet merrily saith,
he hath married a wife and cannot come) a stop to all preferments, a rock on which many are saved, many impinge and are cast away: not that the thing is evil in itself or troublesome, but full of all contentment and happiness, one of the three things which please God, [5773]
when a man and his wife agree together,an honourable and happy estate, who knows it not? If they be sober, wise, honest, as the poet infers,
one man will never please thee;nor one woman many men. But as [5780]Pan replied to his father Mercury, when he asked whether he was married, Nequaquam pater, amator enim sum &c.
No, father, no, I am a lover still, and cannot be contented with one woman.Pythias, Echo, Menades, and I know not how many besides, were his mistresses, he might not abide marriage. Varietas delectat, 'tis loathsome and tedious, what one still? which the satirist said of Iberina, is verified in most,
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,
and what greater misery can there be than to beget children, to whom thou canst leave no other inheritance but hunger and thirst?[5788]cum fames dominatur, strident voces rogantium panem, penetrantes patris cor: what so grievous as to turn them up to the wide world, to shift for themselves? No plague like to want: and when thou hast good means, and art very careful of their education, they will not be ruled. Think but of that old proverb, ᾑρώων τέκνα πήματα, heroum filii noxae, great men's sons seldom do well; O utinam aut coelebs mansissem, aut prole carerem!
would that I had either remained single, or not had children,[5789]Augustus exclaims in Suetonius. Jacob had his Reuben, Simeon and Levi; David an Amnon, an Absalom, Adoniah; wise men's sons are commonly fools, insomuch that Spartian concludes, Neminem prope magnorum virorum optimum et utilem reliquisse filium: [5790]they had been much better to have been childless. 'Tis too common in the middle sort; thy son's a drunkard, a gamester, a spendthrift; thy daughter a fool, a whore; thy servants lazy drones and thieves; thy neighbours devils, they will make thee weary of thy life. [5791]
If thy wife be froward, when she may not have her will, thou hadst better be buried alive; she will be so impatient, raving still, and roaring like Juno in the tragedy, there's nothing but tempests, all is in an uproar.If she be soft and foolish, thou wert better have a block, she will shame thee and reveal thy secrets; if wise and learned, well qualified, there is as much danger on the other side, mulierem doctam ducere periculosissimum, saith Nevisanus, she will be too insolent and peevish, [5792]Malo Venusinam quam te Cornelia mater. Take heed; if she be a slut, thou wilt loathe her; if proud, she'll beggar thee, so [5793]
she'll spend thy patrimony in baubles, all Arabia will not serve to perfume her hair,saith Lucian; if fair and wanton, she'll make thee a cornuto; if deformed, she will paint. [5794]
If her face be filthy by nature, she will mend it by art,alienis et adscititiis imposturis,
which who can endure?If she do not paint, she will look so filthy, thou canst not love her, and that peradventure will make thee dishonest. Cromerus lib. 12. hist., relates of Casimirus,[5795]that he was unchaste, because his wife Aleida, the daughter of Henry, Landgrave of Hesse, was so deformed. If she be poor, she brings beggary with her (saith Nevisanus), misery and discontent. If you marry a maid, it is uncertain how she proves, Haec forsan veniet non satis apta tibi. [5796]If young, she is likely wanton and untaught; if lusty, too lascivious; and if she be not satisfied, you know where and when, nil nisi jurgia, all is in an uproar, and there is little quietness to be had; If an old maid, 'tis a hazard she dies in childbed; if a [5797]rich widow, induces te in laqueum, thou dost halter thyself, she will make all away beforehand, to her other children, &c.—[5798]dominam quis possit ferre tonantem? she will hit thee still in the teeth with her first husband; if a young widow, she is often insatiable and immodest. If she be rich, well descended, bring a great dowry, or be nobly allied, thy wife's friends will eat thee out of house and home, dives ruinam aedibus inducit, she will be so proud, so high-minded, so imperious. For—nihil est magis intolerabile dite,
there's nothing so intolerable,thou shalt be as the tassel of a goshawk, [5799]
she will ride upon thee, domineer as she list,wear the breeches in her oligarchical government, and beggar thee besides. Uxores divites servitutem exigunt (as Seneca hits them, declam. lib. 2. declam. 6.)—Dotem accepi imperium perdidi. They will have sovereignty, pro conjuge dominam arcessis, they will have attendance, they will do what they list. [5800]In taking a dowry thou losest thy liberty, dos intrat, libertas exit, hazardest thine estate.
with many such inconveniences:say the best, she is a commanding servant; thou hadst better have taken a good housewife maid in her smock. Since then there is such hazard, if thou be wise keep thyself as thou art, 'tis good to match, much better to be free.
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?
it cannot be believed(saith [5809]Ammianus)
with what humble service he shall be worshipped,how loved and respected:
If he want children, (and have means) he shall be often invited, attended on by princes, and have advocates to plead his cause for nothing,as [5810] Plutarch adds. Wilt thou then be reverenced, and had in estimation?
How happy had I been, if I had wanted a wife!If this which I have said will not suffice, see more in Lemnius lib. 4. cap. 13. de occult. nat. mir. Espencaeus de continentia, lib. 6. cap. 8. Kornman de virginitate, Platina in Amor. dial. Practica artis amandi, Barbarus de re uxoria, Arnisaeus in polit. cap. 3. and him that is instar omnium, Nevisanus the lawyer, Sylva nuptial, almost in every page.
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.
he took burning torches, and extinguished them in the river; his statute was to be seen in the temple of Venus Eleusina,of which Ovid makes mention, and saith
that all lovers of old went thither on pilgrimage, that would be rid of their love-pangs.Pausanias, in [5825] Phocicis, writes of a temple dedicated Veneri in spelunca, to Venus in the vault, at Naupactus in Achaia (now Lepanto) in which your widows that would have second husbands, made their supplications to the goddess; all manner of suits concerning lovers were commenced, and their grievances helped. The same author, in Achaicis, tells as much of the river [5826] Senelus in Greece; if any lover washed himself in it, by a secret virtue of that water, (by reason of the extreme coldness belike) he was healed, of love's torments, [5827]Amoris vulnus idem qui sanat facit; which if it be so, that water, as he holds, is omni auro pretiosior, better than any gold. Where none of all these remedies will take place, I know no other but that all lovers must make a head and rebel, as they did in [5828]Ausonius, and crucify Cupid till he grant their request, or satisfy their desires.
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.
there is no speedier or safer course, than to join the parties together according to their desires and wishes, the custom and form of law; and so we have seen him quickly restored to his former health, that was languished away to skin and bones; after his desire was satisfied, his discontent ceased, and we thought it strange; our opinion is therefore that in such cases nature is to be obeyed.Areteus, an old author, lib. 3. cap. 3. hath an instance of a young man, [5834]when no other means could prevail, was so speedily relieved. What remains then but to join them in marriage?
they may then kiss and coll, lie and look babies in one another's eyes,as heir sires before them did, they may then satiate themselves with love's pleasures, which they have so long wished and expected;
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.
They love and loathe of all sorts, he loves her, she hates him; and is loathed of him, on whom she dotes.Cupid hath two darts, one to force love, all of gold, and that sharp,—[5840]Quod facit auratum est; another blunt, of lead, and that to hinder;—fugat hoc, facit illud amorem,
this dispels, that creates love.This we see too often verified in our common experience. [5841]Choresus dearly loved that virgin Callyrrhoe; but the more he loved her, the more she hated him. Oenone loved Paris, but he rejected her: they are stiff of all sides, as if beauty were therefore created to undo, or be undone. I give her all attendance, all observance, I pray and intreat, [5842]Alma precor miserere mei, fair mistress pity me, I spend myself, my time, friends and fortunes, to win her favour, (as he complains in the [5843]Eclogue,) I lament, sigh, weep, and make my moan to her,
but she is hard as flint,—cautibus Ismariis immotior—as fair and hard as a diamond, she will not respect, Despectus tibi sum, or hear me,
She neglects me for all this, she derides me,contemns me, she hates me,
Phillida flouts me:Caute, feris, quercu durior Eurydice, stiff, churlish, rocky still.
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.
he would rather die than give consent.Psyche ran whining after Cupid,
Their love danceth in a ring, and Cupid hunts them round about; he dotes, is doted on again.Dumque petit petitur, pariterque accedit et ardet, their affection cannot be reconciled. Oftentimes they may and will not, 'tis their own foolish proceedings that mars all, they are too distrustful of themselves, too soon dejected: say she be rich, thou poor: she young, thou old; she lovely and fair, thou most ill-favoured and deformed; she noble, thou base: she spruce and fine, but thou an ugly clown: nil desperandum, there's hope enough yet: Mopso Nisa datur, quid non speremus amantes? Put thyself forward once more, as unlikely matches have been and are daily made, see what will be the event. Many leave roses and gather thistles, loathe honey and love verjuice: our likings are as various as our palates. But commonly they omit opportunities, oscula qui sumpsit, &c., they neglect the usual means and times.
Take her to you, God give you joy, sir.The fox in the emblem would eat no grapes, but why? because he could not get them; care not then for that which may not be had.
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.
denies that he so much as venially sins, that marries a maid for comeliness of person.The Jews, Deut. xxi. 11, if they saw amongst the captives a beautiful woman, some small circumstances observed, might take her to wife. They should not be too severe in that kind, especially if there be no such urgent occasion, or grievous impediment. 'Tis good for a commonwealth. [5864]Plato holds, that in their contracts
young men should never avoid the affinity of poor folks, or seek after rich.Poverty and base parentage may be sufficiently recompensed by many other good qualities, modesty, virtue, religion, and choice bringing up, [5865]
I am poor, I confess, but am I therefore contemptible, and an abject? Love itself is naked, the graces; the stars, and Hercules clad in a lion's skin.Give something to virtue, love, wisdom, favour, beauty, person; be not all for money. Besides, you must consider that Amor cogi non potest, love cannot be compelled, they must affect as they may: [5866]Fatum est in partibus illis quas sinus abscondit, as the saying is, marriage and hanging goes by destiny, matches are made in heaven.
O mistress, fortune hath made my body your servant, but not my soul!Affections are free, not to be commanded. Moreover it may be to restrain their ambition, pride, and covetousness, to correct those hereditary diseases of a family, God in his just judgment assigns and permits such matches to be made. For I am of Plato and [5869] Bodine's mind, that families have their bounds and periods as well as kingdoms, beyond which for extent or continuance they shall not exceed, six or seven hundred years, as they there illustrate by a multitude of examples, and which Peucer and [5870]Melancthon approve, but in a perpetual tenor (as we see by many pedigrees of knights, gentlemen, yeomen) continue as they began, for many descents with little alteration. Howsoever let them, I say, give something to youth, to love; they must not think they can fancy whom they appoint; [5871]Amor enim non imperatur, affectus liber si quis alius et vices exigens, this is a free passion, as Pliny said in a panegyric of his, and may not be forced: Love craves liking, as the saying is, it requires mutual affections, a correspondency: invito non datur nec aufertur, it may not be learned, Ovid himself cannot teach us how to love, Solomon describe, Apelles paint, or Helen express it. They must not therefore compel or intrude; [5872]quis enim (as Fabius urgeth) amare alieno animo potest? but consider withal the miseries of enforced marriages; take pity upon youth: and such above the rest as have daughters to bestow, should be very careful and provident to marry them in due time. Siracides cap. 7. vers. 25. calls it
a weighty matter to perform, so to marry a daughter to a man of understanding in due time:Virgines enim tempestive locandae, as [5873]Lemnius admonisheth, lib. 1. cap. 6. Virgins must be provided for in season, to prevent many diseases, of which [5874]Rodericus a Castro de morbis mulierum, lib. 2. cap. 3. and Lod. Mercatus lib. 2. de mulier. affect, cap. 4, de melanch. virginum et viduarum, have both largely discoursed. And therefore as well to avoid these feral maladies, 'tis good to get them husbands betimes, as to prevent some other gross inconveniences, and for a thing that I know besides; ubi nuptiarum tempus et aetas advenerit, as Chrysostom adviseth, let them not defer it; they perchance will marry themselves else, or do worse. If Nevisanus the lawyer do not impose, they may do it by right: for as he proves out of Curtius, and some other civilians, Sylvae, nup. lib. 2. numer. 30. [5875]
A maid past twenty-five years of age, against her parents' consent may marry such a one as is unworthy of, and inferior to her, and her father by law must be compelled to give her a competent dowry.Mistake me not in the mean time, or think that I do apologise here for any headstrong, unruly, wanton flirts. I do approve that of St. Ambrose (Comment. in Genesis xxiv. 51), which he hath written touching Rebecca's spousals,
A woman should give unto her parents the choice of her husband, [5876]lest she be reputed to be malapert and wanton, if she take upon her to make her own choice; [5877]for she should rather seem to be desired by a man, than to desire a man herself.To those hard parents alone I retort that of Curtius, (in the behalf of modester maids), that are too remiss and careless of their due time and riper years. For if they tarry longer, to say truth, they are past date, and nobody will respect them. A woman with us in Italy (saith [5878]Aretine's Lucretia) twenty-four years of age,
is old already, past the best, of no account.An old fellow, as Lycistrata confesseth in [5879]Aristophanes, etsi sit canus, cito puellam virginem ducat uxorem, and 'tis no news for an old fellow to marry a young wench: but as he follows it, mulieris brevis occasio est, etsi hoc non apprehenderit, nemo vult ducere uxorem, expectans vero sedet; who cares for an old maid? she may set, &c. A virgin, as the poet holds, lasciva et petulans puella virgo, is like a flower, a rose withered on a sudden.
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,
her beauty is a maiden's dower,and he doth well that will accept of such a wife. Eubulides, in [5887]Aristaenetus, married a poor man's child, facie non illaetabili, of a merry countenance, and heavenly visage, in pity of her estate, and that quickly. Acontius coming to Delos, to sacrifice to Diana, fell in love with Cydippe, a noble lass, and wanting means to get her love, flung a golden apple into her lap, with this inscription upon it,
Forego not a wife and good woman; for her grace is above gold.If she have fortunes of her own, let her make a man. Danaus of Lacedaemon had a many daughters to bestow, and means enough for them all, he never stood inquiring after great matches, as others used to do, but [5892]sent for a company of brave young gallants to his house, and bid his daughters choose every one one, whom she liked best, and take him for her husband, without any more ado. This act of his was much approved in those times. But in this iron age of ours, we respect riches alone, (for a maid must buy her husband now with a great dowry, if she will have him) covetousness and filthy lucre mars all good matches, or some such by-respects. Crales, a Servian prince (as Nicephorus Gregoras Rom. hist. lib. 6. relates it,) was an earnest suitor to Eudocia, the emperor's sister; though her brother much desired it, yet she could not [5893]abide him, for he had three former wives, all basely abused; but the emperor still, Cralis amicitiam magni faciens, because he was a great prince, and a troublesome neighbour, much desired his affinity, and to that end betrothed his own daughter Simonida to him, a little girl five years of age (he being forty-five,) and five [5894]years older than the emperor himself: such disproportionable and unlikely matches can wealth and a fair fortune make. And yet not that alone, it is not only money, but sometimes vainglory, pride, ambition, do as much harm as wretched covetousness itself in another extreme. If a yeoman have one sole daughter, he must overmatch her, above her birth and calling, to a gentleman forsooth, because of her great portion, too good for one of her own rank, as he supposeth: a gentleman's daughter and heir must be married to a knight baronet's eldest son at least; and a knight's only daughter to a baron himself, or an earl, and so upwards, her great dower deserves it. And thus striving for more honour to their wealth, they undo their children, many discontents follow, and oftentimes they ruinate their families. [5895]Paulus Jovius gives instance in Galeatius the Second, that heroical Duke of Milan, externas affinitates, decoras quidem regio fastu, sed sibi et posteris damnosas et fere exitiales quaesivit; he married his eldest son John Galeatius to Isabella the King of France his sister, but she was socero tam gravis, ut ducentis millibus aureorum constiterit, her entertainment at Milan was so costly that it almost undid him. His daughter Violanta was married to Lionel Duke of Clarence, the youngest son to Edward the Third, King of England, but, ad ejus adventum tantae opes tam admirabili liberalitate profusae sunt, ut opulentissimorum regum splendorem superasse videretur, he was welcomed with such incredible magnificence, that a king's purse was scarce able to bear it; for besides many rich presents of horses, arms, plate, money, jewels, &c., he made one dinner for him and his company, in which were thirty-two messes and as much provision left, ut relatae a mensa dapes decem millibus hominum sufficerent, as would serve ten thousand men: but a little after Lionel died, novae nuptae et intempestivis conviviis operam dans, &c., and to the duke's great loss, the solemnity was ended. So can titles, honours, ambition, make many brave, but unfortunate matches of all sides for by-respects, (though both crazed in body and mind, most unwilling, averse, and often unfit,) so love is banished, and we feel the smart of it in the end. But I am too lavish peradventure in this subject.
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.
O chastity(saith he)
thou art a rare goddess in the world, not so easily got, seldom continuate: thou mayst now and then be compelled, either for defect of nature, or if discipline persuade, decrees enforce:or for some such by-respects, sullenness, discontent, they have lost their first loves, may not have whom they will themselves, want of means, rash vows, &c. But can he willingly contain? I think not. Therefore, either out of commiseration of human imbecility, in policy, or to prevent a far worse inconvenience, for they hold some of them as necessary as meat and drink, and because vigour of youth, the state and temper of most men's bodies do so furiously desire it, they have heretofore in some nations liberally admitted polygamy and stews, a hundred thousand courtesans in Grand Cairo in Egypt, as [5920]Radzivilus observes, are tolerated, besides boys: how many at Fez, Rome, Naples, Florence, Venice, &c., and still in many other provinces and cities of Europe they do as much, because they think young men, churchmen, and servants amongst the rest, can hardly live honest. The consideration of this belike made Vibius, the Spaniard, when his friend [5921]Crassus, that rich Roman gallant, lay hid in the cave, ut voluptatis quam aetas illa desiderat copiam faceret, to gratify him the more, send two [5922]lusty lasses to accompany him all that while he was there imprisoned, And Surenus, the Parthian general, when he warred against the Romans, to carry about with him 200 concubines, as the Swiss soldiers do now commonly their wives. But, because this course is not generally approved, but rather contradicted as unlawful and abhorred, [5923]in most countries they do much encourage them to marriage, give great rewards to such as have many children, and mulct those that will not marry, Jus trium liberorum, and in Agellius, lib. 2. cap. 15. Elian. lib. 6. cap. 5. Valerius, lib. 1. cap. 9. [5924]We read that three children freed the father from painful offices, and five from all contribution.
A woman shall be saved by bearing children.Epictetus would have all marry, and as [5925]Plato will, 6 de legibus, he that marrieth not before 35 years of his age, must be compelled and punished, and the money consecrated to [5926]Juno's temple, or applied to public uses. They account him, in some countries, unfortunate that dies without a wife, a most unhappy man, as [5927]Boethius infers, and if at all happy, yet infortunio felix, unhappy in his supposed happiness. They commonly deplore his estate, and much lament him for it: O, my sweet son, &c. See Lucian, de Luctu, Sands fol. 83, &c.
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,
alas, poor Hippolitus, thou knowest not what thou sayest, 'tis otherwise, Hippolitus.[5933]Some make a doubt, an uxor literato sit ducenda, whether a scholar should marry, if she be fair she will bring him back from his grammar to his horn book, or else with kissing and dalliance she will hinder his study; if foul with scolding, he cannot well intend to do both, as Philippus Beroaldus, that great Bononian doctor, once writ, impediri enim studia literarum, &c., but he recanted at last, and in a solemn sort with true conceived words he did ask the world and all women forgiveness. But you shall have the story as he relates himself, in his Commentaries on the sixth of Apuleius. For a long time I lived a single life, et ab uxore ducenda semper abhorrui, nec quicquam libero lecto censui jucundius. I could not abide marriage, but as a rambler, erraticus ac volaticus amator (to use his own words) per multiplices amores discurrebam, I took a snatch where I could get it; nay more, I railed at marriage downright, and in a public auditory, when I did interpret that sixth Satire of Juvenal, out of Plutarch and Seneca, I did heap up all the dicteries I could against women; but now recant with Stesichorus, palinodiam cano, nec poenitet censeri in ordine maritorum, I approve of marriage, I am glad I am a [5934]married man, I am heartily glad I have a wife, so sweet a wife, so noble a wife, so young, so chaste a wife, so loving a wife, and I do wish and desire all other men to marry; and especially scholars, that as of old Martia did by Hortensius, Terentia by Tullius, Calphurnia to Plinius, Pudentilla to Apuleius, [5935]hold the candle whilst their husbands did meditate and write, so theirs may do them, and as my dear Camilla doth to me. Let other men be averse, rail then and scoff at women, and say what they can to the contrary, vir sine uxore malorum expers est, &c., a single man is a happy man, &c., but this is a toy. [5936]Nec dulces amores sperne puer, neque tu choreas; these men are too distrustful and much to blame, to use such speeches, [5937]Parcite paucorum diffundere, crimen in omnes.
They must not condemn all for some.As there be many bad, there be some good wives; as some be vicious, some be virtuous. Read what Solomon hath said in their praises, Prov. xiii. and Siracides, cap. 26 et 30,
Blessed is the man that hath a virtuous wife, for the number of his days shall be double. A virtuous woman rejoiceth her husband, and she shall fulfil the years of his life in peace. A good wife is a good portion(and xxxvi. 24),
an help, a pillar of rest,columina quietis, [5938] Qui capit uxorem, fratrem capit atque sororem. And 30,
He that hath no wife wandereth to and fro mourning.Minuuntur atrae conjuge curae, women are the sole, only joy, and comfort of a man's life, born ad usum et lusum hominum, firmamenta familiae,
A wife is a young man's mistress, a middle age's companion, an old man's nurse:Particeps laetorum et tristium, a prop, a help, &c.
He that will avoid trouble must avoid the world.(Eusebius praepar. Evangel. 5. cap. 50.) Some trouble there is in marriage I deny not, Etsi grave sit matrimonium, saith Erasmus, edulcatur tamen multis, &c., yet there be many things to [5945]sweeten it, a pleasant wife, placens uxor, pretty children, dulces nati, deliciae filiorum hominum, the chief delight of the sons of men; Eccles. ii. 8. &c. And howsoever though it were all troubles, [5946]utilitatis publicae causa devorandum, grave quid libenter subeundum, it must willingly be undergone for public good's sake,
have no commerce with a single man:Holding belike that a bachelor could not live honestly as he should, and with Georgius Wicelius, a great divine and holy man, who of late by twenty-six arguments commends marriage as a thing most necessary for all kinds of persons, most laudable and fit to be embraced: and is persuaded withal, that no man can live and die religiously, and as he ought, without a wife, persuasus neminem posse neque pie vivere, neque bene mori citra uxorem, he is false, an enemy to the commonwealth, injurious to himself, destructive to the world, an apostate to nature, a rebel against heaven and earth. Let our wilful, obstinate, and stale bachelors ruminate of this,
If we could live without wives,as Marcellus Numidicus said in [5954] Agellius,
we would all want them; but because we cannot, let all marry, and consult rather to the public good, than their own private pleasure or estate.It were an happy thing, as wise [5955]Euripides hath it, if we could buy children with gold and silver, and be so provided, sine mulierum congressu, without women's company; but that may not be:
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,
Why dost thou lie alone, let thy youth and best days to pass away?Marry whilst thou mayst, donec viventi canities abest morosa, whilst thou art yet able, yet lusty, [5958]Elige cui dicas, tu mihi sola places, make thy choice, and that freely forthwith, make no delay, but take thy fortune as it falls. 'Tis true,
Take me to thee, and thee to me,tomorrow is St. Valentine's day, let's keep it holiday for Cupid's sake, for that great god Love's sake, for Hymen's sake, and celebrate [5961]Venus' vigil with our ancestors for company together, singing as they did,
No, not in that severe family of Stoics, who shall refuse to submit his grave beard, and supercilious looks to the clipping of a wife,or disagree from his fellows in this point.
For what more willingly(as [5964]Varro holds)
can a proper man see than a fair wife, a sweet wife, a loving wife?can the world afford a better sight, sweeter content, a fairer object, a more gracious aspect?
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!
after many troubles and cares, the marriages of lovers are more sweet and pleasant.As we commonly conclude a comedy with a [5970]wedding, and shaking of hands, let's shut up our discourse, and end all with an [5971]Epithalamium.
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,
they both excel in gifts of body and mind, are both equal in years,youth, vigour, alacrity, she is fair and lovely as Lais or Helen, he as another Charinus or Alcibiades,
Go give a sweet smell as incense, and bring forth flowers as the lily:that we may say hereafter, Scitus Mecastor natus est Pamphilo puer. In the meantime I say,
so couple their hearts, that no irksomeness or anger ever befall them: let him never call her other name than my joy, my light, or she call him otherwise than sweetheart. To this happiness of theirs, let not old age any whit detract, but as their years, so let their mutual love and comfort increase.And when they depart this life,
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.
not of beauty, but lest they should miscarry, do amiss, or any way discredit, disgrace(as Vives notes)
or endanger themselves and us.[5989]Aegeus was so solicitous for his son Theseus, (when he went to fight with the Minotaur) of his success, lest he should be foiled, [5990]Prona est timori semper in pejus fides. We are still apt to suspect the worst in such doubtful cases, as many wives in their husband's absence, fond mothers in their children's, lest if absent they should be misled or sick, and are continually expecting news from them, how they do fare, and what is become of them, they cannot endure to have them long out of their sight: oh my sweet son, O my dear child, &c. Paul was jealous over the Church of Corinth, as he confesseth, 2 Cor. xi. 12.
With a godly jealousy, to present them a pure virgin to Christ;and he was afraid still, lest as the serpent beguiled Eve, through his subtlety, so their minds should be corrupt from the simplicity that is in Christ. God himself, in some sense, is said to be jealous, [5991]
I am a jealous God, and will visit:so Psalm lxxix. 5.
Shall thy jealousy burn like fire for ever?But these are improperly called jealousies, and by a metaphor, to show the care and solicitude they have of them. Although some jealousies express all the symptoms of this which we treat of, fear, sorrow, anguish, anxiety, suspicion, hatred, &c., the object only varied. That of some fathers is very eminent, to their sons and heirs; for though they love them dearly being children, yet now coming towards man's estate they may not well abide them, the son and heir is commonly sick of the father, and the father again may not well brook his eldest son, inde simultates, plerumque contentiones et inimicitiae; but that of princes is most notorious, as when they fear co-rivals (if I may so call them) successors, emulators, subjects, or such as they have offended. [5992] Omnisque potestas impatiens consortis erit:
they are still suspicious, lest their authority should be diminished,[5993]as one observes; and as Comineus hath it, [5994]
it cannot be expressed what slender causes they have of their grief and suspicion, a secret disease, that commonly lurks and breeds in princes' families.Sometimes it is for their honour only, as that of Adrian the emperor, [5995]
that killed all his emulators.Saul envied David; Domitian Agricola, because he did excel him, obscure his honour, as he thought, eclipse his fame. Juno turned Praetus' daughters into kine, for that they contended with her for beauty; [5996]Cyparissae, king Eteocles' children, were envied of the goddesses for their excellent good parts, and dancing amongst the rest, saith [5997]Constantine,
and for that cause flung headlong from heaven, and buried in a pit, but the earth took pity of them, and brought out cypress trees to preserve their memories.[5998]Niobe, Arachne, and Marsyas, can testify as much. But it is most grievous when it is for a kingdom itself, or matters of commodity, it produceth lamentable effects, especially amongst tyrants, in despotico Imperio, and such as are more feared than beloved of their subjects, that get and keep their sovereignty by force and fear. [5999]Quod civibus tenere te invitis scias, &c., as Phalaris, Dionysius, Periander held theirs. For though fear, cowardice, and jealousy, in Plutarch's opinion, be the common causes of tyranny, as in Nero, Caligula, Tiberius, yet most take them to be symptoms. For [6000]
what slave, what hangman(as Bodine well expresseth this passion, l. 2. c. 5. de rep.)
can so cruelly torture a condemned person, as this fear and suspicion? Fear of death, infamy, torments, are those furies and vultures that vex and disquiet tyrants, and torture them day and night, with perpetual terrors and affrights, envy, suspicion, fear, desire of revenge, and a thousand such disagreeing perturbations, turn and affright the soul out of the hinges of health, and more grievously wound and pierce, than those cruel masters can exasperate and vex their apprentices or servants, with clubs, whips, chains, and tortures.Many terrible examples we have in this kind, amongst the Turks especially, many jealous outrages; [6001]Selimus killed Kornutus his youngest brother, five of his nephews, Mustapha Bassa, and divers others. [6002]Bajazet the second Turk, jealous of the valour and greatness of Achmet Bassa, caused him to be slain. [6003]Suleiman the Magnificent murdered his own son Mustapha; and 'tis an ordinary thing amongst them, to make away their brothers, or any competitors, at the first coming to the crown: 'tis all the solemnity they use at their fathers' funerals. What mad pranks in his jealous fury did Herod of old commit in Jewry, when he massacred all the children of a year old? [6004]Valens the emperor in Constantinople, when as he left no man alive of quality in his kingdom that had his name begun with Theo; Theodoti, Theognosti, Theodosii, Theoduli, &c. They went all to their long home, because a wizard told him that name should succeed in his empire. And what furious designs hath [6005]Jo. Basilius, that Muscovian tyrant, practised of late? It is a wonder to read that strange suspicion, which Suetonius reports of Claudius Caesar, and of Domitian, they were afraid of every man they saw: and which Herodian of Antoninus and Geta, those two jealous brothers, the one could not endure so much as the other's servants, but made away him, his chiefest followers, and all that belonged to him, or were his well-wishers. [6006]Maximinus
perceiving himself to be odious to most men, because he was come to that height of honour out of base beginnings, and suspecting his mean parentage would be objected to him, caused all the senators that were nobly descended, to be slain in a jealous humour, turned all the servants of Alexander his predecessor out of doors, and slew many of them, because they lamented their master's death, suspecting them to be traitors, for the love they bare to him.When Alexander in his fury had made Clitus his dear friend to be put to death, and saw now (saith [6007]Curtius) an alienation in his subjects' hearts, none durst talk with him, he began to be jealous of himself, lest they should attempt as much on him,
and said they lived like so many wild beasts in a wilderness, one afraid of another.Our modern stories afford us many notable examples. [6008]Henry the Third of France, jealous of Henry of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, anno 1588, caused him to be murdered in his own chamber. [6009]Louis the Eleventh was so suspicious, he durst not trust his children, every man about him he suspected for a traitor; many strange tricks Comineus telleth of him. How jealous was our Henry the [6010]Fourth of King Richard the Second, so long as he lived, after he was deposed? and of his own son Henry in his latter days? which the prince well perceiving, came to visit his father in his sickness, in a watchet velvet gown, full of eyelet holes, and with needles sticking in them (as an emblem of jealousy), and so pacified his suspicious father, after some speeches and protestations, which he had used to that purpose. Perpetual imprisonment, as that of Robert [6011]Duke of Normandy, in the days of Henry the First, forbidding of marriage to some persons, with such like edicts and prohibitions, are ordinary in all states. In a word ([6012]as he said) three things cause jealousy, a mighty state, a rich treasure, a fair wife; or where there is a cracked title, much tyranny, and exactions. In our state, as being freed from all these fears and miseries, we may be most secure and happy under the reign of our fortunate prince:
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.
a fury, a continual fever, full of suspicion, fear, and sorrow, a martyrdom, a mirth-marring monster. The sorrow and grief of heart of one woman jealous of another, is heavier than death,Ecclus. xxviii. 6. as [6028]Peninnah did Hannah,
vex her and upbraid her sore.'Tis a main vexation, a most intolerable burden, a corrosive to all content, a frenzy, a madness itself; as [6029]Beneditto Varchi proves out of that select sonnet of Giovanni de la Casa, that reverend lord, as he styles him.
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.
an idle woman is presumed to be lascivious, and often jealous.Mulier cum sola cogitat, male cogitat: and 'tis not unlikely, for they have no other business to trouble their heads with.
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.
All women are slippery, often unfaithful to their husbands(as Aeneas Sylvius epist. 38. seconds him),
but to old men most treacherous:they had rather mortem amplexarier, lie with a corse than such a one: [6044]Oderunt illum pueri, contemnunt mulieres. On the other side many men, saith Hieronymus, are suspicious of their wives, [6045]if they be lightly given, but old folks above the rest. Insomuch that she did not complain without a cause in [6046]Apuleius, of an old bald bedridden knave she had to her good man:
Poor woman as I am, what shall I do? I have an old grim sire to my husband, as bald as a coot, as little and as unable as a child,a bedful of bones,
he keeps all the doors barred and locked upon me, woe is me, what shall I do?He was jealous, and she made him a cuckold for keeping her up: suspicion without a cause, hard usage is able of itself to make a woman fly out, that was otherwise honest,
bad usage aggravates the matter.Nam quando mulieres cognoscunt maritum hoc advertere, licentius peccant, [6048]as Nevisanus holds, when a woman thinks her husband watcheth her, she will sooner offend; [6049]Liberius peccant, et pudor omnis abest, rough handling makes them worse: as the goodwife of Bath in Chaucer brags,
we govern all the world abroad, and our wives at home rule us.These offend in one extreme; but too hard and too severe, are far more offensive on the other. As just a cause may be long absence of either party, when they must of necessity be much from home, as lawyers, physicians, mariners, by their professions; or otherwise make frivolous, impertinent journeys, tarry long abroad to no purpose, lie out, and are gadding still, upon small occasions, it must needs yield matter of suspicion, when they use their wives unkindly in the meantime, and never tarry at home, it cannot use but engender some such conceit.
to oversee his wife in his absence, (as Apollo set a raven to watch his Coronis) although she lived in his house with her father and mother, who be knew would have a care of her; yet that would not satisfy his jealousy, he would have his special friend Dionysius to dwell in his house with her all the time of his peregrination, and to observe her behaviour, how she carried herself in her husband's absence, and that she did not lust after other men. [6058]For a woman had need to have an overseer to keep her honest; they are bad by nature, and lightly given all, and if they be not curbed in time, as an unpruned tree, they will be full of wild branches, and degenerate of a sudden.Especially in their husband's absence: though one Lucretia were trusty, and one Penelope, yet Clytemnestra made Agamemnon cuckold; and no question there be too many of her conditions. If their husbands tarry too long abroad upon unnecessary business, well they may suspect: or if they run one way, their wives at home will fly out another, quid pro quo. Or if present, and give them not that content which they ought, [6059]Primum ingratae, mox invisae noctes quae per somnum transiguntur, they cannot endure to lie alone, or to fast long. [6060] Peter Godefridus, in his second book of Love, and sixth chapter, hath a story out of St. Anthony's life, of a gentleman, who, by that good man's advice, would not meddle with his wife in the passion week, but for his pains she set a pair of horns on his head. Such another he hath out of Abstemius, one persuaded a new married man, [6061]
to forbear the three first nights, and he should all his lifetime after be fortunate in cattle,but his impatient wife would not tarry so long: well he might speed in cattle, but not in children. Such a tale hath Heinsius of an impotent and slack scholar, a mere student, and a friend of his, that seeing by chance a fine damsel sing and dance, would needs marry her, the match was soon made, for he was young and rich, genis gratus, corpore glabellus, arte multiscius, et fortuna opulentus, like that Apollo in [6062]Apuleius. The first night, having liberally taken his liquor (as in that country they do) my fine scholar was so fuzzled, that he no sooner was laid in bed, but he fell fast asleep, never waked till morning, and then much abashed, purpureis formosa rosis cum Aurora ruberet; when the fair morn with purple hue 'gan shine, he made an excuse, I know not what, out of Hippocrates Cous, &c., and for that time it went current: but when as afterward he did not play the man as he should do, she fell in league with a good fellow, and whilst he sat up late at his study about those criticisms, mending some hard places in Festus or Pollux, came cold to bed, and would tell her still what he had done, she did not much regard what he said, &c. [6063]
She would have another matter mended much rather, which he did not conceive was corrupt:thus he continued at his study late, she at her sport, alibi enim festivas noctes agitabat, hating all scholars for his sake, till at length he began to suspect, and turned a little yellow, as well he might; for it was his own fault; and if men be jealous in such cases ([6064]as oft it falls out) the mends is in their own hands, they must thank themselves. Who will pity them, saith Neander, or be much offended with such wives, si deceptae prius viros decipiant, et cornutos reddant, if they deceive those that cozened them first. A lawyer's wife in [6065]Aristaenetus, because her husband was negligent in his business, quando lecto danda opera, threatened to cornute him: and did not stick to tell Philinna, one of her gossips, as much, and that aloud for him to hear:
If he follow other men's matters and leave his own, I'll have an orator shall plead my cause,I care not if he know it.
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.
stolen waters be more pleasant:or as Vitellius the emperor was wont to say, Jucundiores amores, qui cum periculo habentur, like stolen venison, still the sweetest is that love which is most difficultly attained: they like better to hunt by stealth in another man's walk, than to have the fairest course that may be at game of their own.
as a horse they neigh,saith [6082]Jeremiah, after their neighbours' wives,—ut visa pullus adhinnit equa: and if they be in company with other women, though in their own wives' presence, they must be courting and dallying with them. Juno in Lucian complains of Jupiter that he was still kissing Ganymede before her face, which did not a little offend her: and besides he was a counterfeit Amphitryo, a bull, a swan, a golden shower, and played many such bad pranks, too long, too shameful to relate.
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,
This vice([6090] saith mine author)
is so common with us in France, that he is of no account, a mere coward, not worthy the name of a soldier, that is not a notorious whoremaster.In Italy he is not a gentleman, that besides his wife hath not a courtesan and a mistress. 'Tis no marvel, then, if poor women in such cases be jealous, when they shall see themselves manifestly neglected, contemned, loathed, unkindly used: their disloyal husbands to entertain others in their rooms, and many times to court ladies to their faces: other men's wives to wear their jewels: how shall a poor woman in such a case moderate her passion? [6091]Quis tibi nunc Dido cernenti talia sensus?
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:
to be so free and familiar with every gallant, her immodesty and wantonness,(as [6100]Camerarius notes) it must needs yield matter of suspicion to him, when she still pranks up herself beyond her means and fortunes, makes impertinent journeys, unnecessary visitations, stays out so long, with such and such companions, so frequently goes to plays, masks, feasts, and all public meetings, shall use such immodest [6101]gestures, free speeches, and withal show some distaste of her own husband; how can he choose,
though he were another Socrates, but be suspicious, and instantly jealous?[6102] Socraticas tandem faciet transcendere metas; more especially when he shall take notice of their more secret and sly tricks, which to cornute their husbands they commonly use (dum ludis, ludos haec te facit) they pretend love, honour, chastity, and seem to respect them before all men living, saints in show, so cunningly can they dissemble, they will not so much as look upon another man in his presence, [6103]so chaste, so religious, and so devout, they cannot endure the name or sight of a quean, a harlot, out upon her! and in their outward carriage are most loving and officious, will kiss their husband, and hang about his neck (dear husband, sweet husband), and with a composed countenance salute him, especially when he comes home; or if he go from home, weep, sigh, lament, and take upon them to be sick and swoon (like Jocundo's wife in [6104]Ariosto, when her husband was to depart), and yet arrant, &c. they care not for him,
kiss their husbands, whom they had rather see hanging on a gallows, and swear they love him dearer than their own lives, whose soul they would not ransom for their little dog's,
to see and to be seen, to observe what fashions are in use, to meet some pander, bawd, monk, friar, or to entice some good fellow.For they persuade themselves, as [6107] Nevisanus shows,
That it is neither sin nor shame to lie with a lord or parish priest, if he be a proper man;[6108]
and though she kneel often, and pray devoutly, 'tis(saith Platina)
not for her husband's welfare, or children's good, or any friend, but for her sweetheart's return, her pander's health.If her husband would have her go, she feigns herself sick, [6109]Et simulat subito condoluisse caput: her head aches, and she cannot stir: but if her paramour ask as much, she is for him in all seasons, at all hours of the night. [6110]In the kingdom of Malabar, and about Goa in the East Indies, the women are so subtile that, with a certain drink they give them to drive away cares as they say, [6111]
they will make them sleep for twenty-four hours, or so intoxicate them that they can remember nought of that they saw done, or heard, and, by washing of their feet, restore them again, and so make their husbands cuckolds to their faces.Some are ill-disposed at all times, to all persons they like, others more wary to some few, at such and such seasons, as Augusta, Livia, non nisi plena navi vectorem tollebat. But as he said,
Now when those other circumstances of time and place, opportunity and importunity shall concur, what will they not effect?
showed his nakedness in his drunkenness, which for six hundred years he had covered in soberness.Lot lay with his daughters in his drink, as Cyneras with Myrrha,—[6120]quid enim Venus ebria curat? The most continent may be overcome, or if otherwise they keep bad company, they that are modest of themselves, and dare not offend,
confirmed by [6121]others, grow impudent, and confident, and get an ill habit.
If you leave her in such a place, you shall likely find her in company you like not, either they come to her, or she is gone to them.[6124]Kornmannus makes a doubting jest in his lascivious country, Virginis illibata censeatur ne castitas ad quam frequentur accedant scholares? And Baldus the lawyer scoffs on, quum scholaris, inquit, loquitur cum puella, non praesumitur ei dicere, Pater noster, when a scholar talks with a maid, or another man's wife in private, it is presumed he saith not a pater noster. Or if I shall see a monk or a friar climb up a ladder at midnight into a virgin's or widow's chamber window, I shall hardly think he then goes to administer the sacraments, or to take her confession. These are the ordinary causes of jealousy, which are intended or remitted as the circumstances vary.
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,
but in a rage ran upon a yellow-haired wench,with whom she suspected her husband to be naught,
cut off her hair, did beat her black and blue, and so dragged her about.It is an ordinary thing for women in such cases to scratch the faces, slit the noses of such as they suspect; as Henry the Second's importune Juno did by Rosamond at Woodstock; for she complains in a [6132]modern poet, she scarce spake,
The hatred of a jealous woman is inseparable against such as she suspects.
they geld innumerable infantsto this purpose; the King of [6138]China
maintains 10,000 eunuchs in his family to keep his wives.The Xeriffes of Barbary keep their courtesans in such a strict manner, that if any man come but in sight of them he dies for it; and if they chance to see a man, and do not instantly cry out, though from their windows, they must be put to death. The Turks have I know not how many black, deformed eunuchs (for the white serve for other ministeries) to this purpose sent commonly from Egypt, deprived in their childhood of all their privities, and brought up in the seraglio at Constantinople to keep their wives; which are so penned up they may not confer with any living man, or converse with younger women, have a cucumber or carrot sent into them for their diet, but sliced, for fear, &c. and so live and are left alone to their unchaste thoughts all the days of their lives. The vulgar sort of women, if at any time they come abroad, which is very seldom, to visit one another, or to go to their baths, are so covered, that no man can see them, as the matrons were in old Rome, lectica aut sella tecta, vectae, so [6139]Dion and Seneca record, Velatae totae incedunt, which [6140]Alexander ab Alexandro relates of the Parthians, lib. 5. cap. 24. which, with Andreas Tiraquellus his commentator, I rather think should be understood of Persians. I have not yet said all, they do not only lock them up, sed et pudendis seras adhibent: hear what Bembus relates lib. 6. of his Venetian history, of those inhabitants that dwell about Quilon in Africa. Lusitani, inquit, quorundum civitates adierunt: qui natis statim faeminis naturam consuunt, quoad urinae exitus ne impediatur, easque quum adoleverint sic consutas in matrimonium collocant, ut sponsi prima cura sit conglutinatas puellae oras ferro interscindere. In some parts of Greece at this day, like those old Jews, they will not believe their wives are honest, nisi pannum menstruatum prima nocte videant: our countryman [6141]Sands, in his peregrination, saith it is severely observed in Zanzynthus, or Zante; and Leo Afer in his time at Fez, in Africa, non credunt virginem esse nisi videant sanguineam mappam; si non, ad parentes pudore rejicitur. Those sheets are publicly shown by their parents, and kept as a sign of incorrupt virginity. The Jews of old examined their maids ex tenui membrana, called Hymen, which Laurentius in his anatomy, Columbus lib. 12. cap. 10. Capivaccius lib. 4. cap. 11. de uteri affectibus, Vincent, Alsarus Genuensis quaesit. med. cent. 4. Hieronymus Mercurialis consult. Ambros. Pareus, Julius Caesar Claudinus Respons. 4. as that also de [6142]ruptura venarum ut sauguis fluat, copiously confute; 'tis no sufficient trial they contend. And yet others again defend it, Gaspar Bartholinus Institut. Anat. lib. 1. cap. 31. Pinaeus of Paris, Albertus Magnus de secret. mulier. cap. 9 & 10. &c. and think they speak too much in favour of women. [6143] Ludovicus Boncialus lib. 4. cap. 2. muliebr. naturalem illam uteri labiorum constrictionem, in qua virginitatem consistere volunt, astringentibus medicinis fieri posse vendicat, et si defloratae sint, astutae [6144]mulieres (inquit) nos fallunt in his. Idem Alsarius Crucius Genuensis iisdem fere verbis. Idem Avicenna lib. 3. Fen. 20. Tract. 1, cap. 47. [6145]Rhasis Continent. lib. 24. Rodericus a Castro de nat. mul. lib. 1. cap. 3. An old bawdy nurse in [6146]Aristaenetus, (like that Spanish Caelestina, [6147]quae, quinque mille virgines fecit mulieres, totidemque mulieres arte sua virgines) when a fair maid of her acquaintance wept and made her moan to her, how she had been deflowered, and now ready to be married, was afraid it would be perceived, comfortably replied, Noli vereri filia, &c.
Fear not, daughter, I'll teach thee a trick to help it.Sed haec extra callem. To what end are all those astrological questions, an sit virgo, an sit casta, an sit mulier? and such strange absurd trials in Albertus Magnus, Bap. Porta, Mag. lib. 2. cap. 21. in Wecker. lib. 5. de secret, by stones, perfumes, to make them piss, and confess I know not what in their sleep; some jealous brain was the first founder of them. And to what passion may we ascribe those severe laws against jealousy, Num. v. 14, Adulterers Deut. cap. 22. v. xxii. as amongst the Hebrews, amongst the Egyptians (read [6148]Bohemus l. 1. c. 5. de mor. gen. of the Carthaginians, cap. 6. of Turks, lib. 2. cap. 11.) amongst the Athenians of old, Italians at this day, wherein they are to be severely punished, cut in pieces, burned, vivi-comburio, buried alive, with several expurgations, &c. are they not as so many symptoms of incredible jealousy? we may say the same of those vestal virgins that fetched water in a sieve, as Tatia did in Rome, anno ab. urb. condita 800. before the senators; and [6149]Aemilia, virgo innocens, that ran over hot irons, as Emma, Edward the Confessor's mother did, the king himself being a spectator, with the like. We read in Nicephorus, that Chunegunda the wife of Henricus Bavarus emperor, suspected of adultery, insimulata adulterii per ignitos vomeres illaesa transiit, trod upon red hot coulters, and had no harm: such another story we find in Regino lib. 2. In Aventinus and Sigonius of Charles the Third and his wife Richarda, an. 887, that was so purged with hot irons. Pausanias saith, that he was once an eyewitness of such a miracle at Diana's temple, a maid without any harm at all walked upon burning coals. Pius Secund. in his description of Europe, c. 46. relates as much, that it was commonly practised at Diana's temple, for women to go barefoot over hot coals, to try their honesties: Plinius, Solinus, and many writers, make mention of [6150]Geronia's temple, and Dionysius Halicarnassus, lib. 3. of Memnon's statue, which were used to this purpose. Tatius lib. 6. of Pan his cave, (much like old St. Wilfrid's needle in Yorkshire) wherein they did use to try, maids, [6151]whether they were honest; when Leucippe went in, suavissimus exaudiri sonus caepit Austin de civ. Dei lib. 10. c. 16. relates many such examples, all which Lavater de spectr. part. 1. cap. 19 contends to be done by the illusion of devils; though Thomas quaest. 6. de polentia, &c. ascribes it to good angels. Some, saith [6152]Austin, compel their wives to swear they be honest, as if perjury were a lesser sin than adultery; [6153]some consult oracles, as Phaerus that blind king of Egypt. Others reward, as those old Romans used to do; if a woman were contented with one man, Corona pudicitiae donabatur, she had a crown of chastity bestowed on her. When all this will not serve, saith Alexander Gaguinus, cap. 5. descript. Muscoviae, the Muscovites, if they suspect their wives, will beat them till they confess, and if that will not avail, like those wild Irish, be divorced at their pleasures, or else knock them on the heads, as the old [6154]Gauls have done in former ages. Of this tyranny of jealousy read more in Parthenius Erot. cap. 10. Camerarius cap. 53. hor. subcis. et cent. 2. cap. 34. Caelia's epistles, Tho. Chaloner de repub. Aug. lib. 9. Ariosto lib. 31. stasse 1. Felix Platerus observat. lib. 1. &c.
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.
the nails of it be pared before they grow too long.No better means to resist or repel it than by avoiding idleness, to be still seriously busied about some matters of importance, to drive out those vain fears, foolish fantasies and irksome suspicions out of his head, and then to be persuaded by his judicious friends, to give ear to their good counsel and advice, and wisely to consider, how much he discredits himself, his friends, dishonours his children, disgraceth his family, publisheth his shame, and as a trumpeter of his own misery, divulgeth, macerates, grieves himself and others; what an argument of weakness it is, how absurd a thing in its own nature, how ridiculous, how brutish a passion, how sottish, how odious; for as [6172]Hierome well hath it, Odium sui facit, et ipse novissime sibi odio est, others hate him, and at last he hates himself for it; how harebrain a disease, mad and furious. If he will but hear them speak, no doubt he may be cured. [6173]Joan, queen of Spain, of whom I have formerly spoken, under pretence of changing air was sent to Complutum, or Alcada de las Heneras, where Ximenius the archbishop of Toledo then lived, that by his good counsel (as for the present she was) she might be eased. [6174]
For a disease of the soul, if concealed, tortures and overturns it, and by no physic can sooner be removed than by a discreet man's comfortable speeches.I will not here insert any consolatory sentences to this purpose, or forestall any man's invention, but leave it every one to dilate and amplify as he shall think fit in his own judgment: let him advise with Siracides cap. 9. 1.
Be not jealous over the wife of thy bosom;read that comfortable and pithy speech to this purpose of Ximenius, in the author himself, as it is recorded by Gomesius; consult with Chaloner lib. 9. de repub. Anglor. or Caelia in her epistles, &c. Only this I will add, that if it be considered aright, which causeth this jealous passion, be it just or unjust, whether with or without cause, true or false, it ought not so heinously to be taken; 'tis no such real or capital matter, that it should make so deep a wound. 'Tis a blow that hurts not, an insensible smart, grounded many times upon false suspicion alone, and so fostered by a sinister conceit. If she be not dishonest, he troubles and macerates himself without a cause; or put case which is the worst, he be a cuckold, it cannot be helped, the more he stirs in it, the more he aggravates his own misery. How much better were it in such a case to dissemble or contemn it? why should that be feared which cannot be redressed? multae tandem deposuerunt (saith [6175]Vives) quum flecti maritos non posse vident, many women, when they see there is no remedy, have been pacified; and shall men be more jealous than women? 'Tis some comfort in such a case to have companions, Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris; Who can say he is free? Who can assure himself he is not one de praeterito, or secure himself de futuro? If it were his case alone, it were hard; but being as it is almost a common calamity, 'tis not so grievously to be taken. If a man have a lock, which every man's key will open, as well as his own, why should he think to keep it private to himself? In some countries they make nothing of it, ne nobiles quidem, saith [6176]Leo Afer, in many parts of Africa (if she be past fourteen) there's not a nobleman that marries a maid, or that hath a chaste wife; 'tis so common; as the moon gives horns once a month to the world, do they to their husbands at least. And 'tis most part true which that Caledonian lady, [6177]Argetocovus, a British prince's wife, told Julia Augusta, when she took her up for dishonesty,
We Britons are naught at least with some few choice men of the better sort, but you Romans lie with every base knave, you are a company of common whores.Severus the emperor in his time made laws for the restraint of this vice; and as [6178]Dion Nicaeus relates in his life, tria millia maechorum, three thousand cuckold-makers, or naturae monetam adulterantes, as Philo calls them, false coiners, and clippers of nature's money, were summoned into the court at once. And yet, Non omnem molitor quae fluit undam videt,
the miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill:no doubt, but, as in our days, these were of the commonalty, all the great ones were not so much as called in question for it. [6179]Martial's Epigram I suppose might have been generally applied in those licentious times, Omnia solus habes, &c., thy goods, lands, money, wits are thine own, Uxorem sed habes Candide cum populo; but neighbour Candidus your wife is common: husband and cuckold in that age it seems were reciprocal terms; the emperors themselves did wear Actaeon's badge; how many Caesars might I reckon up together, and what a catalogue of cornuted kings and princes in every story? Agamemnon, Menelaus, Philippus of Greece, Ptolomeus of Egypt, Lucullus, Caesar, Pompeius, Cato, Augustus, Antonius, Antoninus, &c., that wore fair plumes of bull's feathers in their crests. The bravest soldiers and most heroical spirits could not avoid it. They have been active and passive in this business, they have either given or taken horns. [6180]King Arthur, whom we call one of the nine worthies, for all his great valour, was unworthily served by Mordred, one of his round table knights: and Guithera, or Helena Alba, his fair wife, as Leland interprets it, was an arrant honest woman. Parcerem libenter (saith mine [6181]author) Heroinarum laesae majestati, si non historiae veritas aurem vellicaret, I could willingly wink at a fair lady's faults, but that I am bound by the laws of history to tell the truth: against his will, God knows, did he write it, and so do I repeat it. I speak not of our times all this while, we have good, honest, virtuous men and women, whom fame, zeal, fear of God, religion and superstition contains: and yet for all that, we have many knights of this order, so dubbed by their wives, many good women abused by dissolute husbands. In some places, and such persons you may as soon enjoin them to carry water in a sieve, as to keep themselves honest. What shall a man do now in such a case? What remedy is to be had? how shall he be eased? By suing a divorce? this is hard to be effected: si non caste, tamen caute they carry the matter so cunningly, that though it be as common as simony, as clear and as manifest as the nose in a man's face, yet it cannot be evidently proved, or they likely taken in the fact: they will have a knave Gallus to watch, or with that Roman [6182]Sulpitia, all made fast and sure,
she will hardly be surprised by her husband, be he never so wary.Much better then to put it up: the more he strives in it, the more he shall divulge his own shame: make a virtue of necessity, and conceal it. Yea, but the world takes notice of it, 'tis in every man's mouth: let them talk their pleasure, of whom speak they not in this sense? From the highest to the lowest they are thus censured all: there is no remedy then but patience. It may be 'tis his own fault, and he hath no reason to complain, 'tis quid pro quo, she is bad, he is worse: [6183]
Bethink thyself, hast thou not done as much for some of thy neighbours? why dost thou require that of thy wife, which thou wilt not perform thyself?Thou rangest like a town bull, [6184]
why art thou so incensed if she tread, awry?
teach her not an evil lesson against thyself,which as Jansenius, Lyranus, on his text, and Carthusianus interpret, is no otherwise to be understood than that she do thee not a mischief. I do not excuse her in accusing thee; but if both be naught, mend thyself first; for as the old saying is, a good husband makes a good wife.
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.
Those jealous Italians do very ill to lock up their wives; for women are of such a disposition, they will most covet that which is denied most, and offend least when they have free liberty to trespass.It is in vain to lock her up if she be dishonest; et tyrranicum imperium, as our great Mr. Aristotle calls it, too tyrannical a task, most unfit: for when she perceives her husband observes her and suspects, liberius peccat, saith [6194]Nevisanus. [6195]Toxica Zelotypo dedit uxor moecha marito, she is exasperated, seeks by all means to vindicate herself, and will therefore offend, because she is unjustly suspected. The best course then is to let them have their own wills, give them free liberty, without any keeping.
I shall always be Penelope the wife of Ulysses.And as Phocias' wife in [6196]Plutarch, called her husband
her wealth, treasure, world, joy, delight, orb and sphere,she will hers. The vow she made unto her good man; love, virtue, religion, zeal, are better keepers than all those locks, eunuchs, prisons; she will not be moved:
Sir, 'tis not common:she is wholly reserved to her husband. [6201]Bilia had an old man to her spouse, and his breath stunk, so that nobody could abide it abroad;
coming home one day he reprehended his wife, because she did not tell him of it: she vowed unto him, she had told him, but she thought every man's breath had been as strong as his.[6202]Tigranes and Armena his lady were invited to supper by King Cyrus: when they came home, Tigranes asked his wife, how she liked Cyrus, and what she did especially commend in him?
she swore she did not observe him; when he replied again, what then she did observe, whom she looked on? She made answer, her husband, that said he would die for her sake.Such are the properties and conditions of good women: and if she be well given, she will so carry herself; if otherwise she be naught, use all the means thou canst, she will be naught, Non deest animus sed corruptor, she hath so many lies, excuses, as a hare hath muses, tricks, panders, bawds, shifts, to deceive, 'tis to no purpose to keep her up, or to reclaim her by hard usage.
Fair means peradventure may do somewhat.[6203] Obsequio vinces aptius ipse tuo. Men and women are both in a predicament in this behalf, no sooner won, and better pacified. Duci volunt, non cogi: though she be as arrant a scold as Xanthippe, as cruel as Medea, as clamorous as Hecuba, as lustful as Messalina, by such means (if at all) she may be reformed. Many patient [6204]Grizels, by their obsequiousness in this kind, have reclaimed their husbands from their wandering lusts. In Nova Francia and Turkey (as Leah, Rachel, and Sarah did to Abraham and Jacob) they bring their fairest damsels to their husbands' beds; Livia seconded the lustful appetites of Augustus: Stratonice, wife to King Diotarus, did not only bring Electra, a fair maid, to her good man's bed, but brought up the children begot on her, as carefully as if they had been her own. Tertius Emilius' wife, Cornelia's mother, perceiving her husband's intemperance, rem dissimulavit, made much of the maid, and would take no notice of it. A new-married man, when a pickthank friend of his, to curry favour, had showed him his wife familiar in private with a young gallant, courting and dallying, &c. Tush, said he, let him do his worst, I dare trust my wife, though I dare not trust him. The best remedy then is by fair means; if that will not take place, to dissemble it as I say, or turn it off with a jest: hear Guexerra's advice in this case, vel joco excipies, vel silentio eludes; for if you take exceptions at everything your wife doth, Solomon's wisdom, Hercules' valour, Homer's learning, Socrates' patience, Argus' vigilance, will not serve turn. Therefore Minus malum, [6205]a less mischief, Nevisanus holds, dissimulare, to be [6206]Cunarum emptor, a buyer of cradles, as the proverb is, than to be too solicitous. [6207]
A good fellow, when his wife was brought to bed before her time, bought half a dozen of cradles beforehand for so many children, as if his wife should continue to bear children every two months.[6208]Pertinax the Emperor, when one told him a fiddler was too familiar with his empress, made no reckoning of it. And when that Macedonian Philip was upbraided with his wife's dishonesty, cum tot victor regnorum ac populorum esset, &c., a conqueror of kingdoms could not tame his wife (for she thrust him out of doors), he made a jest of it. Sapientes portant cornua in pectore, stulti in fronte, saith Nevisanus, wise men bear their horns in their hearts, fools on their foreheads. Eumenes, king of Pergamus, was at deadly feud with Perseus of Macedonia, insomuch that Perseus hearing of a journey he was to take to Delphos, [6209]set a company of soldiers to intercept him in his passage; they did it accordingly, and as they supposed left him stoned to death. The news of this fact was brought instantly to Pergamus; Attalus, Eumenes' brother, proclaimed himself king forthwith, took possession of the crown, and married Stratonice the queen. But by-and-by, when contrary news was brought, that King Eumenes was alive, and now coming to the city, he laid by his crown, left his wife, as a private man went to meet him, and congratulate his return. Eumenes, though he knew all particulars passed, yet dissembling the matter, kindly embraced his brother, and took his wife into his favour again, as if on such matter had been heard of or done. Jocundo, in Ariosto, found his wife in bed with a knave, both asleep, went his ways, and would not so much as wake them, much less reprove them for it. [6210]An honest fellow finding in like sort his wife had played false at tables, and borne a man too many, drew his dagger, and swore if he had not been his very friend, he would have killed him. Another hearing one had done that for him, which no man desires to be done by a deputy, followed in a rage with his sword drawn, and having overtaken him, laid adultery to his charge; the offender hotly pursued, confessed it was true; with which confession he was satisfied, and so left him, swearing that if he had denied it, he would not have put it up. How much better is it to do thus, than to macerate himself, impatiently to rave and rage, to enter an action (as Arnoldus Tilius did in the court of Toulouse, against Martin Guerre his fellow-soldier, for that he counterfeited his habit, and was too familiar with his wife), so to divulge his own shame, and to remain for ever a cuckold on record? how much better be Cornelius Tacitus than Publius Cornutus, to condemn in such cases, or take no notice of it? Melius sic errare, quam Zelotypiae curis, saith Erasmus, se conficere, better be a wittol and put it up, than to trouble himself to no purpose. And though he will not omnibus dormire, be an ass, as he is an ox, yet to wink at it as many do is not amiss at some times, in some cases, to some parties, if it be for his commodity, or some great man's sake, his landlord, patron, benefactor, (as Calbas the Roman saith [6211]Plutarch did by Maecenas, and Phayllus of Argos did by King Philip, when he promised him an office on that condition he might lie with his wife) and so let it pass:
it never troubles me(saith Amphitrio)
to be cornuted by Jupiter,let it not molest thee then; be friends with her;
Receive Alcmena to your grace again;let it, I say, make no breach of love between you. Howsoever the best way is to contemn it, which [6214]Henry II. king of France advised a courtier of his, jealous of his wife, and complaining of her unchasteness, to reject it, and comfort himself; for he that suspects his wife's incontinency, and fears the Pope's curse, shall never live a merry hour, or sleep a quiet night: no remedy but patience. When all is done according to that counsel of [6215]Nevisanus, si vitium uxoris corrigi non potest, ferendum est: if it may not be helped, it must be endured. Date veniam et sustinete taciti, 'tis Sophocles' advice, keep it to thyself, and which Chrysostom calls palaestram philosophiae, et domesticum gymnasium a school of philosophy, put it up. There is no other cure but time to wear it out, Injuriarum remedium est oblivio, as if they had drunk a draught of Lethe in Trophonius' den: to conclude, age will bereave her of it, dies dolorem minuit, time and patience must end it.
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,
as many mortal men marry precipitately and inconsiderately, when they are effete and old: the second when they marry unequally for fortunes and birth: the third, when a sick impotent person weds one that is sound, novae nuptae spes frustratur: many dislikes instantly follow.Many doting dizzards, it may not be denied, as Plutarch confesseth, [6250]
recreate themselves with such obsolete, unseasonable and filthy remedies(so he calls them),
with a remembrance of their former pleasures, against nature they stir up their dead flesh:but an old lecher is abominable; mulier tertio nubens, [6251]Nevisanus holds, praesumitur lubrica, et inconstans, a woman that marries a third time may be presumed to be no honester than she should. Of them both, thus Ambrose concludes in his comment upon Luke, [6252]
they that are coupled together, not to get children, but to satisfy their lust, are not husbands, but fornicators,with whom St. Austin consents: matrimony without hope of children, non matrimonium, sed concubium dici debet, is not a wedding but a jumbling or coupling together. In a word (except they wed for mutual society, help and comfort one of another, in which respects, though [6253]Tiberius deny it, without question old folks may well marry) for sometimes a man hath most need of a wife, according to Puccius, when he hath no need of a wife; otherwise it is most odious, when an old Acherontic dizzard, that hath one foot in his grave, a silicernium, shall flicker after a young wench that is blithe and bonny,
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.
Such [6273]a mother, such a daughter;mali corvi malum ovum., cat to her kind.
If the mother be dishonest, in all likelihood the daughter will matrizare, take after her in all good qualities,
If the dam trot, the foal will not amble.My last caution is, that a woman do not bestow herself upon a fool, or an apparent melancholy person; jealousy is a symptom of that disease, and fools have no moderation. Justina, a Roman lady, was much persecuted, and after made away by her jealous husband, she caused and enjoined this epitaph, as a caveat to others, to be engraven on her tomb:
when you are in bed, take heed of your wife's flattering speeches over night, and curtain, sermons in the morning.Let them do their endeavour likewise to maintain them to their means, which [6277]Patricius ingeminates, and let them have liberty with discretion, as time and place requires: many women turn queans by compulsion, as [6278]Nevisanus observes, because their husbands are so hard, and keep them so short in diet and apparel, paupertas cogit eas meretricari, poverty and hunger, want of means, makes them dishonest, or bad usage; their churlish behaviour forceth them to fly out, or bad examples, they do it to cry quittance. In the other extreme some are too liberal, as the proverb is, Turdus malum sibi cacat, they make a rod for their own tails, as Candaules did to Gyges in [6279]Herodotus, commend his wife's beauty himself, and besides would needs have him see her naked. Whilst they give their wives too much liberty to gad abroad, and bountiful allowance, they are accessory to their own miseries; animae uxorum pessime olent, as Plautus jibes, they have deformed souls, and by their painting and colours procure odium mariti, their husband's hate, especially,—[6280] cum misere viscantur labra mariti. Besides, their wives (as [6281]Basil notes) Impudenter se exponunt masculorum aspectibus, jactantes tunicas, et coram tripudiantes, impudently thrust themselves into other men's companies, and by their indecent wanton carriage provoke and tempt the spectators. Virtuous women should keep house; and 'twas well performed and ordered by the Greeks,
going for to see the daughters of the land,lost her virginity, she may be defiled and overtaken of a sudden: Imbelles damae quid nisi praeda sumus? [6283]
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.
Love melancholy(saith he)
is twofold; the first is that (to which peradventure some will not vouchsafe this name or species of melancholy) affection of those which put God for their object, and are altogether about prayer, fasting, &c., the other about women.Peter Forestus in his observations delivereth as much in the same words: and Felix Platerus de mentis alienat. cap. 3. frequentissima est ejus species, in qua curanda saepissime multum fui impeditus; 'tis a frequent disease; and they have a ground of what they say, forth of Areteus and Plato. [6310]Areteus, an old author, in his third book cap. 6. doth so divide love melancholy, and derives this second from the first, which comes by inspiration or otherwise. [6311]Plato in his Phaedrus hath these words,
Apollo's priests in Delphos, and at Dodona, in their fury do many pretty feats, and benefit the Greeks, but never in their right wits.He makes them all mad, as well he might; and he that shall but consider that superstition of old, those prodigious effects of it (as in its place I will shew the several furies of our fatidici dii, pythonissas, sibyls, enthusiasts, pseudoprophets, heretics, and schismatics in these our latter ages) shall instantly confess, that all the world again cannot afford so much matter of madness, so many stupendous symptoms, as superstition, heresy, schism have brought out: that this species alone may be paralleled to all the former, has a greater latitude, and more miraculous effects; that it more besots and infatuates men, than any other above named whatsoever, does more harm, works more disquietness to mankind, and has more crucified the souls of mortal men (such hath been the devil's craft) than wars, plagues, sicknesses, dearth, famine, and all the rest.
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.
tomorrow I will cause a contest between a Libyan and a Pontic minstrel), and the day following this enigma was understood; for with a great south wind which came from Libya, she quite overwhelmed Mithridates' army. What prodigies and miracles, dreams, visions, predictions, apparitions, oracles, have been of old at Delphos, Dodona, Trophonius' den, at Thebes, and Lebaudia, of Jupiter Ammon in Egypt, Amphiaraus in Attica, &c.; what strange cures performed by Apollo and Aesculapius? Juno's image and that of [6380]Fortune spake, [6381]Castor and Pollux fought in person for the Romans against Hannibal's army, as Pallas, Mars, Juno, Venus, for Greeks and Trojans, &c. Amongst our pseudo-Catholics nothing so familiar as such miracles; how many cures done by our lady of Loretto, at Sichem! of old at our St. Thomas's shrine, &c. [6382]St. Sabine was seen to fight for Arnulphus, duke of Spoleto. [6383]St. George fought in person for John the Bastard of Portugal, against the Castilians; St. James for the Spaniards in America. In the battle of Bannockburn, where Edward the Second, our English king, was foiled by the Scots, St. Philanus' arm was seen to fight (if [6384]Hector Boethius doth not impose), that was before shut up in a silver cap-case; another time, in the same author, St. Magnus fought for them. Now for visions, revelations, miracles, not only out of the legend, out of purgatory, but everyday comes news from the Indies, and at home read the Jesuits' Letters, Ribadineira, Thurselinus, Acosta, Lippomanus, Xaverius, Ignatius' Lives, &c., and tell me what difference?
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,
Dreams, toys, and old wives' tales.Yet as so many [6414]whetstones to make other tools cut, but cut not themselves, though they be of no religion at all, they will make others most devout and superstitious, by promises and threats, compel, enforce from, and lead them by the nose like so many bears in a line; when as their end is not to propagate the church, advance God's kingdom, seek His glory or common good, but to enrich themselves, to enlarge their territories, to domineer and compel them to stand in awe, to live in subjection to the See of Rome. For what otherwise care they? Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur,
since the world wishes to be gulled, let it be gulled,'tis fit it should be so. And for which [6415]Austin cites Varro to maintain his Roman religion, we may better apply to them: multa vera, quae vulgus scire non est utile; pleraque falsa, quae tamen uliter existimare populum expedit; some things are true, some false, which for their own ends they will not have the gullish commonalty take notice of. As well may witness their intolerable covetousness, strange forgeries, fopperies, fooleries, unrighteous subtleties, impostures, illusions, new doctrines, paradoxes, traditions, false miracles, which they have still forged, to enthral, circumvent and subjugate them, to maintain their own estates. [6416]One while by bulls, pardons, indulgencies, and their doctrines of good works, that they be meritorious, hope of heaven, by that means they have so fleeced the commonalty, and spurred on this free superstitious horse, that he runs himself blind, and is an ass to carry burdens. They have so amplified Peter's patrimony, that from a poor bishop, he is become Rex Regum, Dominus dominantium, a demigod, as his canonists make him (Felinus and the rest), above God himself. And for his wealth and [6417] temporalities, is not inferior to many kings: [6418]his cardinals, princes' companions; and in every kingdom almost, abbots, priors, monks, friars, &c., and his clergy, have engrossed a [6419]third part, half, in some places all, into their hands. Three princes, electors in Germany, bishops; besides Magdeburg, Spire, Saltsburg, Breme, Bamberg, &c. In France, as Bodine lib. de repub. gives us to understand, their revenues are 12,300,000 livres; and of twelve parts of the revenues in France, the church possesseth seven. The Jesuits, a new sect, begun in this age, have, as [6420]Middendorpius and [6421]Pelargus reckon up, three or four hundred colleges in Europe, and more revenues than many princes. In France, as Arnoldus proves, in thirty years they have got bis centum librarum millia annua, 200,000l. I say nothing of the rest of their orders. We have had in England, as Armachanus demonstrates, above 30,000 friars at once, and as [6422]Speed collects out of Leland and others, almost 600 religious houses, and near 200,000l. in revenues of the old rent belonging to them, besides images of gold, silver, plate, furniture, goods and ornaments, as [6423]Weever calculates, and esteems them at the dissolution of abbeys, worth a million of gold. How many towns in every kingdom hath superstition enriched? What a deal of money by musty relics, images, idolatry, have their mass-priests engrossed, and what sums have they scraped by their other tricks! Loretto in Italy, Walsingham in England, in those days. Ubi omnia auro nitent,
where everything shines with gold,saith Erasmus, St. Thomas's shrine, &c., may witness. [6424]Delphos so renowned of old in Greece for Apollo's oracle, Delos commune conciliabulum et emporium sola religions manitum; Dodona, whose fame and wealth were sustained by religion, were not so rich, so famous. If they can get but a relic of some saint, the Virgin Mary's picture, idols or the like, that city is for ever made, it needs no other maintenance. Now if any of these their impostures or juggling tricks be controverted, or called in question: if a magnanimous or zealous Luther, an heroical Luther, as [6425]Dithmarus Calls him, dare touch the monks' bellies, all is in a combustion, all is in an uproar: Demetrius and his associates are ready to pull him in pieces, to keep up their trades, [6426]
Great is Diana of the Ephesians:with a mighty shout of two hours long they will roar and not be pacified.
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.
the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament declares his handy work,Psalm xix.
Every creature will evince it;Praesentemque refert quaelibet herba deum. Nolentes sciunt, fatentur inviti, as the said Tyrius proceeds, will or nill, they must acknowledge it. The philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Pythagoras, Trismegistus, Seneca, Epictetus, those Magi, Druids, &c. went as far as they could by the light of nature; [6435]multa praeclara, de natura Dei seripta reliquerunt,
writ many things well of the nature of God, but they had but a confused light, a glimpse,
as he that walks by moonshine in a wood,they groped in the dark; they had a gross knowledge, as he in Euripides, O Deus quicquid es, sive coelum, sive terra, sive aliud quid, and that of Aristotle, Ens entium miserere mei. And so of the immortality of the soul, and future happiness. Immortalitatem animae (saith Hierom) Pythagoras somniavit, Democritus non credidit in consolalionem damnationis suae Socrates in carcere disputavit; Indus, Persa, Cothus, &c. Philosophantur. So some said this, some that, as they conceived themselves, which the devil perceiving, led them farther out (as [6437]Lemnius observes) and made them worship him as their God with stocks and stones, and torture themselves to their own destruction, as he thought fit himself, inspired his priests and ministers with lies and fictions to prosecute the same, which they for their own ends were as willing to undergo, taking advantage of their simplicity, fear and ignorance. For the common people are as a flock of sheep, a rude, illiterate rout, void many times of common sense, a mere beast, bellua multorum capitum, will go whithersoever they are led: as you lead a ram over a gap by the horns, all the rest will follow, [6438]Non qua eundum, sed qua itur, they will do as they see others do, and as their prince will have them, let him be of what religion he will, they are for him. Now for those idolaters, Maxentius and Licinius, then for Constantine a Christian. [6439]Qui Christum negant male pereant, acclamatum est Decies, for two hours' space; qui Christum non colunt, Augusti inimici sunt, acclamatum est ter decies; and by and by idolaters again under that Apostate Julianus; all Arians under Constantius, good Catholics again under Jovinianus,
And little difference there is between the discretion of men and children in this case, especially of old folks and women,as [6440] Cardan discourseth,
when, as they are tossed with fear and superstition, and with other men's folly and dishonesty.So that I may say their ignorance is a cause of their superstition, a symptom, and madness itself: Supplicii causa est, sappliciumque sui. Their own fear, folly, stupidity, to be deplored lethargy, is that which gives occasion to the other, and pulls these miseries on their own heads. For in all these religions and superstitions, amongst our idolaters, you shall find that the parties first affected, are silly, rude, ignorant people, old folks, that are naturally prone to superstition, weak women, or some poor, rude, illiterate persons, that are apt to be wrought upon, and gulled in this kind, prone without either examination or due consideration (for they take up religion a trust, as at mercers' they do their wares) to believe anything. And the best means they have to broach first, or to maintain it when they have done, is to keep them still in ignorance: for
ignorance is the mother of devotion,as all the world knows, and these times can amply witness. This hath been the devil's practice, and his infernal ministers in all ages; not as our Saviour by a few silly fishermen, to confound the wisdom of the world, to save publicans and sinners, but to make advantage of their ignorance, to convert them and their associates; and that they may better effect what they intend, they begin, as I say, with poor, [6441]stupid, illiterate persons. So Mahomet did when he published his Alcoran, which is a piece of work (saith [6442]Bredenbachius)
full of nonsense, barbarism, confusion, without rhyme, reason, or any good composition, first published to a company of rude rustics, hog-rubbers, that had no discretion, judgment, art, or understanding, and is so still maintained.For it is a part of their policy to let no man comment, dare to dispute or call in question to this day any part of it, be it never so absurd, incredible, ridiculous, fabulous as it is, must be believed implicite, upon pain of death no man must dare to contradict it,
God and the emperor, &c.What else do our papists, but by keeping the people in ignorance vent and broach all their new ceremonies and traditions, when they conceal the scripture, read it in Latin, and to some few alone, feeding the slavish people in the meantime with tales out of legends, and such like fabulous narrations? Whom do they begin with but collapsed ladies, some few tradesmen, superstitious old folks, illiterate persons, weak women, discontent, rude, silly companions, or sooner circumvent? So do all our schismatics and heretics. Marcus and Valentinian heretics, in [6443]Irenaeus, seduced first I know not how many women, and made them believe they were prophets. [6444]Friar Cornelius of Dort seduced a company of silly women. What are all our Anabaptists, Brownists, Barrowists, familists, but a company of rude, illiterate, capricious, base fellows? What are most of our papists, but stupid, ignorant and blind bayards? how should they otherwise be, when as they are brought up and kept still in darkness? [6445]
If their pastors(saith Lavater)
have done their duties, and instructed their flocks as they ought, in the principles of Christian religion, or had not forbidden them the reading of scriptures, they had not been as they are.But being so misled all their lives in superstition, and carried hoodwinked like hawks, how can they prove otherwise than blind idiots, and superstitious asses? what else shall we expect at their hands? Neither is it sufficient to keep them blind, and in Cimmerian darkness, but withal, as a schoolmaster doth by his boys, to make them follow their books, sometimes by good hope, promises and encouragements, but most of all by fear, strict discipline, severity, threats and punishment, do they collogue and soothe up their silly auditors, and so bring them into a fools' paradise. Rex eris aiunt, si recte facies, do well, thou shalt be crowned; but for the most part by threats, terrors, and affrights, they tyrannise and terrify their distressed souls: knowing that fear alone is the sole and only means to keep men in obedience, according to that hemistichium of Petronius, primus in orbe deos fecit timor, the fear of some divine and supreme powers, keeps men in obedience, makes the people do their duties: they play upon their consciences; [6446]which was practised of old in Egypt by their priests; when there was an eclipse, they made the people believe God was angry, great miseries were to come; they take all opportunities of natural causes, to delude the people's senses, and with fearful tales out of purgatory, feigned apparitions, earthquakes in Japonia or China, tragical examples of devils, possessions, obsessions, false miracles, counterfeit visions, &c. They do so insult over and restrain them, never hoby so dared a lark, that they will not [6447]offend the least tradition, tread, or scarce look awry: Deus bone ([6448]Lavater exclaims) quot hoc commentum de purgatorio misere afflixit! good God, how many men have been miserably afflicted by this fiction of purgatory!
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:
than they that now scoff at them, curse them, persecute and revile them, shall be coheirs and brethren with them, or have any part or fellowship with their Messiah, they would crucify their Messiah ten times over, and God himself, his angels, and all his creatures, if it were possible, though they endure a thousand hells for it.Such is their malice towards us. Now for Papists, what in a common cause, for the advancement of their religion they will endure, our traitors and pseudo-Catholics will declare unto us; and how bitter on the other side to their adversaries, how violently bent, let those Marian times record, as those miserable slaughters at Merindol and Cabriers, the Spanish inquisition, the Duke of Alva's tyranny in the Low Countries, the French massacres and civil wars. [6487]Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
Such wickedness did religion persuade.Not there only, but all over Europe, we read of bloody battles, racks and wheels, seditions, factions, oppositions.
my name(saith [6489]Luther)
is more odious to them than any thief or murderer.So it is with all heretics and schismatics whatsoever: and none so passionate, violent in their tenets, opinions, obstinate, wilful, refractory, peevish, factious, singular and stiff in defence of them; they do not only persecute and hate, but pity all other religions, account them damned, blind, as if they alone were the true church, they are the true heirs, have the fee-simple of heaven by a peculiar donation, 'tis entailed on them and their posterities, their doctrine sound, per funem aureum de coelo delapsa doctrinci,
let down from, heaven by a golden rope,they alone are to be saved, The Jews at this day are so incomprehensibly proud and churlish, saith [6490]Luther, that soli salvari, soli domini terrarum salutari volunt. And as [6491]Buxtorfius adds,
so ignorant and self-willed withal, that amongst their most understanding Rabbins you shall find nought but gross dotage, horrible hardness of heart, and stupendous obstinacy, in all their actions, opinions, conversations: and yet so zealous with all, that no man living can be more, and vindicate themselves for the elect people of GOD.'Tis so with all other superstitious sects, Mahometans, Gentiles in China, and Tartary: our ignorant Papists, Anabaptists, Separatists, and peculiar churches of Amsterdam, they alone, and none but they can be saved. [6492]
Zealous(as Paul saith, Rom. x. 2.)
without knowledge,they will endure any misery, any trouble, suffer and do that which the sunbeams will not endure to see, Religionis acti Furiis, all extremities, losses and dangers, take any pains, fast, pray, vow chastity, wilful poverty, forsake all and follow their idols, die a thousand deaths as some Jews did to Pilate's soldiers, in like case, exertos praebentes jugulos, et manifeste prae se ferentes, (as Josephus hath it) cariorem esse rita sibi legis patriae observationem, rather than abjure, or deny the least particle of that religion which their fathers profess, and they themselves have been brought up in, be it never so absurd, ridiculous, they will embrace it, and without farther inquiry or examination of the truth, though it be prodigiously false, they will believe it; they will take much more pains to go to hell, than we shall do to heaven. Single out the most ignorant of them, convince his understanding, show him his errors, grossness, and absurdities of his sect. Non persuadebis etiamsi persuaseris, he will not be persuaded. As those pagans told the Jesuits in Japona, [6493]they would do as their forefathers have done: and with Ratholde the Frisian Prince, go to hell for company, if most of their friends went thither: they will not be moved, no persuasion, no torture can stir them. So that papists cannot brag of their vows, poverty, obedience, orders, merits, martyrdoms, fastings, alms, good works, pilgrimages: much and more than all this, I shall show you, is, and hath been done by these superstitious Gentiles, Pagans, Idolaters and Jews: their blind zeal and idolatrous superstition in all kinds is much at one; little or no difference, and it is hard to say which is the greatest, which is the grossest. For if a man shall duly consider those superstitious rites amongst the Ethnics in Japan, the Bannians in Gusart, the Chinese idolaters, [6494]Americans of old, in Mexico especially, Mahometan priests, he shall find the same government almost, the same orders and ceremonies, or so like, that they may seem all apparently to be derived from some heathen spirit, and the Roman hierarchy no better than the rest. In a word, this is common to all superstition, there is nothing so mad and absurd, so ridiculous, impossible, incredible, which they will not believe, observe, and diligently perform, as much as in them lies; nothing so monstrous to conceive, or intolerable to put in practice, so cruel to suffer, which they will not willingly undertake. So powerful a thing is superstition. [6495]
O Egypt(as Trismegistus exclaims)
thy religion is fables, and such as posterity will not believe.I know that in true religion itself, many mysteries are so apprehended alone by faith, as that of the Trinity, which Turks especially deride, Christ's incarnation, resurrection of the body at the last day, quod ideo credendum (saith Tertullian) quod incredible, &c. many miracles not to be controverted or disputed of. Mirari non rimari sapientia vera est, saith [6496]Gerhardus; et in divinis (as a good father informs us) quaedam credenda, quaedam admiranda, &c. some things are to be believed, embraced, followed with all submission and obedience, some again admired. Though Julian the apostate scoff at Christians in this point, quod captivemus intellectum in obsequium fidei, saying, that the Christian creed is like the Pythagorean Ipse dixit, we make our will and understanding too slavishly subject to our faith, without farther examination of the truth; yet as Saint Gregory truly answers, our creed is altioris praestantiae, and much more divine; and as Thomas will, pie consideranti semper suppetunt rationes, ostendentes credibilitatem in mysteriis supernaturalibus, we do absolutely believe it, and upon good reasons, for as Gregory well informeth us; Fides non habet meritum, ubi humana ratio quaerit experimentum; that faith hath no merit, is not worth the name of faith, that will not apprehend without a certain demonstration: we must and will believe God's word; and if we be mistaken or err in our general belief, as [6497]Richardus de Sancto Victore, vows he will say to Christ himself at the day of judgment;
Lord, if we be deceived, thou alone hast deceived us:thus we plead. But for the rest I will not justify that pontificial consubstantiation, that which [6498]Mahometans and Jews justly except at, as Campanella confesseth, Atheismi triumphat. cap. 12. fol. 125, difficillimum dogma esse, nec aliud subjectum magis haereticorum blasphemiis, et stultis irrisionibus politicorum reperiri. They hold it impossible, Deum in pane manducari; and besides they scoff at it, vide gentem comedentem Deum suum, inquit quidam Maurus. [6499]Hunc Deum muscae et vermes irrident, quum ipsum polluunt et devorant, subditus est igni, aquae, et latrones furantur, pixidem auream humi prosternunt, et se tamen non defendit hic Deus. Qui fieri potest, ut sit integer in singulis hostiae particulis, idem corpus numero, tam multis locis, caelo, terra, &c. But he that shall read the [6500]Turks' Alcoran, the Jews' Talmud, and papists' golden legend, in the mean time will swear that such gross fictions, fables, vain traditions, prodigious paradoxes and ceremonies, could never proceed from any other spirit, than that of the devil himself, which is the author of confusion and lies; and wonder withal how such wise men as have been of the Jews, such learned understanding men as Averroes, Avicenna, or those heathen philosophers, could ever be persuaded to believe, or to subscribe to the least part of them: aut fraudem non detegere: but that as [6501]Vanninus answers, ob publicae, potestatis formidinem allatrare philosophi non audebant, they durst not speak for fear of the law. But I will descend to particulars: read their several symptoms and then guess.
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,
When a good man dies, his body is buried, but his soul, ex homine daemon evadit, becomes forthwith a demigod, nothing disparaged with malignity of air, or variety of forms, rejoiceth, exults and sees that perfect beauty with his eyes. Now being deified, in commiseration he helps his poor friends here on earth, his kindred and allies, informs, succours, &c. punisheth those that are bad and do amiss, as a good genius to protect and govern mortal men appointed by the gods, so they will have it, ordaining some for provinces, some for private men, some for one office, some for another. Hector and Achilles assist soldiers to this day; Aesculapius all sick men, the Dioscuri seafaring men, &c. and sometimes upon occasion they show themselves. The Dioscuri, Hercules and Aesculapius, he saw himself (or the devil in his likeness) non somnians sed vigilans ipse vidi:So far Tyrius. And not good men only do they thus adore, but tyrants, monsters, devils, (as [6509] Stuckius inveighs) Neros, Domitians, Heliogables, beastly women, and arrant whores amongst the rest.
For all intents, places, creatures, they assign gods;
As children make babies(so saith [6510]Morneus),
their poets make gods,et quos adorant in templis, ludunt in Theatris, as Lactantius scoffs. Saturn, a man, gelded himself, did eat his own children, a cruel tyrant driven out of his kingdom by his son Jupiter, as good a god as himself, a wicked lascivious paltry king of Crete, of whose rapes, lusts, murders, villainies, a whole volume is too little to relate. Venus, a notorious strumpet, as common as a barber's chair, Mars, Adonis, Anchises' whore, is a great she-goddess, as well as the rest, as much renowned by their poets, with many such; and these gods so fabulously and foolishly made, ceremoniis, hymnis, et canticis celebrunt; their errors, luctus et gaudia, amores, iras, nuptias et liberorum procreationes ([6511]as Eusebius well taxeth), weddings, mirth and mournings, loves, angers, and quarrelling they did celebrate in hymns, and sing of in their ordinary songs, as it were publishing their villainies. But see more of their originals. When Romulus was made away by the sedition of the senators, to pacify the people, [6512]Julius Proculus gave out that Romulus was taken up by Jupiter into heaven, and therefore to be ever after adored for a god amongst the Romans. Syrophanes of Egypt had one only son, whom he dearly loved; he erected his statue in his house, which his servants did adorn with garlands, to pacify their master's wrath when he was angry, so by little and little he was adored for a god. This did Semiramis for her husband Belus, and Adrian the emperor by his minion Antinous. Flora was a rich harlot in Rome, and for that she made the commonwealth her heir, her birthday was solemnised long after; and to make it a more plausible holiday, they made her goddess of flowers, and sacrificed to her amongst the rest. The matrons of Rome, as Dionysius Halicarnassaeus relates, because at their entreaty Coriolanus desisted from his wars, consecrated a church Fortunes muliebri; and [6513]Venus Barbata had a temple erected, for that somewhat was amiss about hair, and so the rest. The citizens [6514]of Alabanda, a small town in Asia Minor, to curry favour with the Romans (who then warred in Greece with Perseus of Macedon, and were formidable to these parts), consecrated a temple to the City of Rome, and made her a goddess, with annual games and sacrifices; so a town of houses was deified, with shameful flattery of the one side to give, and intolerable arrogance on the other to accept, upon so vile and absurd an occasion. Tully writes to Atticus, that his daughter Tulliola might be made a goddess, and adored as Juno and Minerva, and as well she deserved it. Their holy days and adorations were all out as ridiculous; those Lupercals of Pan, Florales of Flora, Bona dea, Anna Perenna, Saturnals, &c., as how they were celebrated, with what lascivious and wanton gestures, bald ceremonies, [6515]by what bawdy priests, how they hang their noses over the smoke of sacrifices, saith [6516]Lucian, and lick blood like flies that was spilled about the altars. Their carved idols, gilt images of wood, iron, ivory, silver, brass, stone, olim truncus eram, &c., were most absurd, as being their own workmanship; for as Seneca notes, adorant ligneos deos, et fabros interim qui fecerunt, contemnunt, they adore work, contemn the workman; and as Tertullian follows it, Si homines non essent diis propitii, non essent dii, had it not been for men, they had never been gods, but blocks, and stupid statues in which mice, swallows, birds make their nests, spiders their webs, and in their very mouths laid their excrements. Those images, I say, were all out as gross as the shapes in which they did represent them: Jupiter with a ram's head, Mercury a dog's, Pan like a goat, Heccate with three heads, one with a beard, another without; see more in Carterius and [6517]Verdurius of their monstrous forms and ugly pictures: and, which was absurder yet, they told them these images came from heaven, as that of Minerva in her temple at Athens, quod e coelo cecidisse credebant accolae, saith Pausanias. They formed some like storks, apes, bulls, and yet seriously believed: and that which was impious and abominable, they made their gods notorious whoremasters, incestuous Sodomites (as commonly they were all, as well as Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Mercury, Neptune, &c.), thieves, slaves, drudges (for Apollo and Neptune made tiles in Phrygia), kept sheep, Hercules emptied stables, Vulcan a blacksmith, unfit to dwell upon the earth for their villainies, much less in heaven, as [6518]Mornay well saith, and yet they gave them out to be such; so weak and brutish, some to whine, lament, and roar, as Isis for her son and Cenocephalus, as also all her weeping priests; Mars in Homer to be wounded, vexed; Venus ran away crying, and the like; than which what can be more ridiculous? Nonne ridiculum lugere quod colas, vel colere quod lugeas? (which [6519]Minutius objects) Si dii, cur plangitis? si mortui, cur adoratis? that it is no marvel if [6520]Lucian, that adamantine persecutor of superstition, and Pliny could so scoff at them and their horrible idolatry as they did; if Diagoras took Hercules' image, and put it under his pot to seethe his pottage, which was, as he said, his 13th labour. But see more of their fopperies in Cypr. 4. tract, de Idol. varietat. Chrysostom advers. Gentil. Arnobius adv. Gentes. Austin, de civ. dei. Theodoret. de curat. Graec. affect. Clemens Alexandrinus, Minutius Felix, Eusebius, Lactantius, Stuckius, &c. Lamentable, tragical, and fearful those symptoms are, that they should be so far forth affrighted with their fictitious gods, as to spend the goods, lives, fortunes, precious time, best days in their honour, to [6521]sacrifice unto them, to their inestimable loss, such hecatombs, so many thousand sheep, oxen with gilded horns, goats, as [6522]Croesus, king of Lydia, [6523] Marcus Julianus, surnamed ob crebras hostias Victimarius, et Tauricremus, and the rest of the Roman emperors usually did with such labour and cost; and not emperors only and great ones, pro communi bono, were at this charge, but private men for their ordinary occasions. Pythagoras offered a hundred oxen for the invention of a geometrical problem, and it was an ordinary thing to sacrifice in [6524]Lucian's time,
a heifer for their good health, four oxen for wealth, a hundred for a kingdom, nine bulls for their safe return from Troja to Pylus,&c. Every god almost had a peculiar sacrifice—the Sun horses, Vulcan fire, Diana a white hart, Venus a turtle, Ceres a hog, Proserpine a black lamb, Neptune a bull (read more in [6525] Stuckius at large), besides sheep, cocks, corals, frankincense, to their undoings, as if their gods were affected with blood or smoke.
And surely([6526]saith he)
if one should but repeat the fopperies of mortal men, in their sacrifices, feasts, worshipping their gods, their rites and ceremonies, what they think of them, of their diet, houses, orders, &c., what prayers and vows they make; if one should but observe their absurdity and madness, he would burst out a laughing, and pity their folly.For what can be more absurd than their ordinary prayers, petitions, [6527]requests, sacrifices, oracles, devotions? of which we have a taste in Maximus Tyrius, serm. 1. Plato's Alcibiades Secundus, Persius Sat. 2. Juvenal. Sat. 10. there likewise exploded, Mactant opimas et pingues hostias deo quasi esurienti, profundunt vina tanquam sitienti, lumina accendunt velut in tenebris agenti (Lactantius, lib. 2. cap. 6). As if their gods were hungry, athirst, in the dark, they light candles, offer meat and drink. And what so base as to reveal their counsels and give oracles, e viscerum sterquiliniis, out of the bowels and excremental parts of beasts? sordidos deos Varro truly calls them therefore, and well he might. I say nothing of their magnificent and sumptuous temples, those majestical structures: to the roof of Apollo Didymeus' temple, ad branchidas, as [6528]Strabo writes, a thousand oaks did not suffice. Who can relate the glorious splendour, and stupend magnificence, the sumptuous building of Diana at Ephesus, Jupiter Ammon's temple in Africa, the Pantheon at Rome, the Capitol, the Sarapium at Alexandria, Apollo's temple at Daphne in the suburbs of Antioch. The great temple at Mexico so richly adorned, and so capacious (for 10,000 men might stand in it at once), that fair Pantheon of Cusco, described by Acosta in his Indian History, which eclipses both Jews and Christians. There were in old Jerusalem, as some write, 408 synagogues; but new Cairo reckons up (if [6529]Radzivilus may be believed) 6800 mosques; Fez 400, whereof 50 are most magnificent, like St. Paul's in London. Helena built 300 fair churches in the Holy Land, but one Bassa hath built 400 mosques. The Mahometans have 1000 monks in a monastery; the like saith Acosta of Americans; Riccius of the Chinese, for men and women, fairly built; and more richly endowed some of them, than Arras in Artois, Fulda in Germany, or St. Edmund's-Bury in England with us: who can describe those curious and costly statues, idols, images, so frequently mentioned in Pausanias? I conceal their donaries, pendants, other offerings, presents, to these their fictitious gods daily consecrated. [6530]Alexander, the son of Amyntas, king of Macedonia, sent two statues of pure gold to Apollo at Delphos. [6531]Croesus, king of Lydia dedicated a hundred golden tiles in the same place with a golden altar: no man came empty-handed to their shrines. But these are base offerings in respect; they offered men themselves alive. The Leucadians, as Strabo writes, sacrificed every year a man, averruncandae, deorum irae, causa, to pacify their gods, de montis praecipitio dejecerent, &c. and they did voluntarily undergo it. The Decii did so sacrifice, Diis manibus; Curtius did leap into the gulf. Were they not all strangely deluded to go so far to their oracles, to be so gulled by them, both in war and peace, as Polybius relates (which their argurs, priests, vestal virgins can witness), to be so superstitious, that they would rather lose goods and lives than omit any ceremonies, or offend their heathen gods? Nicias, that generous and valiant captain of the Greeks, overthrew the Athenian navy, by reason of his too much superstition, [6532] because the augurs told him it was ominous to set sail from the haven of Syracuse whilst the moon was eclipsed; he tarried so long till his enemies besieged him, he and all his army were overthrown. The [6533]Parthians of old were so sottish in this kind, they would rather lose a victory, nay lose their own lives, than fight in the night, 'twas against their religion. The Jews would make no resistance on the Sabbath, when Pompeius besieged Jerusalem; and some Jewish Christians in Africa, set upon by the Goths, suffered themselves upon the same occasion to be utterly vanquished. The superstition of the Dibrenses, a bordering town in Epirus, besieged by the Turks, is miraculous almost to report. Because a dead dog was flung into the only fountain which the city had, they would die of thirst all, rather than drink of that [6534]unclean water, and yield up the city upon any conditions. Though the praetor and chief citizens began to drink first, using all good persuasions, their superstition was such, no saying would serve, they must all forthwith die or yield up the city. Vix ausum ipse credere (saith [6535]Barletius) tantam superstitionem, vel affirmare levissimam hanc causam tantae rei vel magis ridiculam, quum non dubitem risum potius quum admirationem posteris excitaturam. The story was too ridiculous, he was ashamed to report it, because he thought nobody would believe it. It is stupend to relate what strange effects this idolatry and superstition hath brought forth of the latter years in the Indies and those bordering parts: [6536]in what feral shapes the [6537]devil is adored, ne quid mali intentent, as they say; for in the mountains betwixt Scanderoon and Aleppo, at this day, there are dwelling a certain kind of people called Coords, coming of the race of the ancient Parthians, who worship the devil, and allege this reason in so doing: God is a good man and will do no harm, but the devil is bad and must be pleased, lest he hurt them. It is wonderful to tell how the devil deludes them, how he terrifies them, how they offer men and women sacrifices unto him, a hundred at once, as they did infants in Crete to Saturn of old, the finest children, like Agamemnon's Iphigenia, &c. At [6538]Mexico, when the Spaniards first overcame them, they daily sacrificed viva hominum corda e viventium corporibus extracta, the hearts of men yet living, 20,000 in a year (Acosta lib. 5. cap. 20) to their idols made of flour and men's blood, and every year 6000 infants of both sexes: and as prodigious to relate, [6539]how they bury their wives with husbands deceased, 'tis fearful to report, and harder to believe,
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.
Because God is immense and infinite, and his nature cannot perfectly be known, it is convenient he should be as diversely worshipped, as every man shall perceive or understand.It was impossible, he thought, for one religion to be universal: you see that one small province can hardly be ruled by one law, civil or spiritual; and
how shall so many distinct and vast empires of the world be united into one? It never was, never will beBesides, if there be infinite planetary and firmamental worlds, as [6610]some will, there be infinite genii or commanding spirits belonging to each of them; and so, per consequens (for they will be all adored), infinite religions. And therefore let every territory keep their proper rites and ceremonies, as their dii tutelares will, so Tyrius calls them,
and according to the quarter they hold,their own institutions, revelations, orders, oracles, which they dictate from time to time, or teach their own priests or ministers. This tenet was stiffly maintained in Turkey not long since, as you may read in the third epistle of Busbequius, [6611]
that all those should participate of eternal happiness, that lived a holy and innocent life, what religion soever they professed.Rustan Bassa was a great patron of it; though Mahomet himself was sent virtute gladdi, to enforce all, as he writes in his Alcoran, to follow him. Some again will approve of this for Jews, Gentiles, infidels, that are out of the fold, they can be content to give them all respect and favour, but by no means to such as are within the precincts of our own church, and called Christians, to no heretics, schismatics, or the like; let the Spanish inquisition, that fourth fury, speak of some of them, the civil wars and massacres in France, our Marian times. [6612]Magillianus the Jesuit will not admit of conference with a heretic, but severity and rigour to be used, non illis verba reddere, sed furcas, figere oportet; and Theodosius is commended in Nicephorus, lib. 12. cap. 15. [6613]
That he put all heretics to silence.Bernard. Epist. 180, will have club law, fire and sword for heretics, [6614]
compel them, stop their mouths not with disputations, or refute them with reasons, but with fists;and this is their ordinary practice. Another company are as mild on the other side; to avoid all heart-burning, and contentious wars and uproars, they would have a general toleration in every kingdom, no mulct at all, no man for religion or conscience be put to death, which [6615]Thuanus the French historian much favours; our late Socinians defend; Vaticanus against Calvin in a large Treatise in behalf of Servetus, vindicates; Castilio, &c., Martin Ballius and his companions, maintained this opinion not long since in France, whose error is confuted by Beza in a just volume. The medium is best, and that which Paul prescribes, Gal. i.
If any man shall fall by occasion, to restore such a one with the spirit of meekness, by all fair means, gentle admonitions;but if that will not take place, Post unam et alteram admonitionem haereticum devita, he must be excommunicate, as Paul did by Hymenaeus, delivered over to Satan. Immedicabile vulnus ense recidendum est. As Hippocrates said in physic, I may well say in divinity, Quae ferro non curantur, ignis curat. For the vulgar, restrain them by laws, mulcts, burn their books, forbid their conventicles; for when the cause is taken away, the effect will soon cease. Now for prophets, dreamers, and such rude silly fellows, that through fasting, too much meditation, preciseness, or by melancholy, are distempered: the best means to reduce them ad sanam mentem, is to alter their course of life, and with conference, threats, promises, persuasions, to intermix physic. Hercules de Saxonia, had such a prophet committed to his charge in Venice, that thought he was Elias, and would fast as he did; he dressed a fellow in angel's attire, that said he came from heaven to bring him divine food, and by that means stayed his fast, administered his physic; so by the meditation of this forged angel he was cured. [6616]Rhasis an Arabian, cont. lib. 1. cap. 9, speaks of a fellow that in like case complained to him, and desired his help:
I asked him(saith he)
what the matter was; he replied, I am continually meditating of heaven and hell, and methinks I see and talk with fiery spirits, and smell brimstone, &c., and am so carried away with these conceits, that I can neither eat, nor sleep, nor go about my business: I cured him(saith Rhasis)
partly by persuasion, partly by physic, and so have I done by many others.We have frequently such prophets and dreamers amongst us, whom we persecute with fire and faggot: I think the most compendious cure, for some of them at least, had been in Bedlam. Sed de his satis.
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.
Their God is their belly,as Paul saith, Sancta mater saturitas;—quibus in solo vivendi causa palato est. The idol, which they worship and adore, is their mistress; with him in Plautus, mallem haec mulier me amet quam dii, they had rather have her favour than the gods'. Satan is their guide, the flesh is their instructor, hypocrisy their counsellor, vanity their fellow-soldier, their will their law, ambition their captain, custom their rule; temerity, boldness, impudence their art, toys their trading, damnation their end. All their endeavours are to satisfy their lust and appetite, how to please their genius, and to be merry for the present, Ede, lude, bibe, post mortem nulla voluptas.[6621]
The same condition is of men and of beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other,Eccles. iii. 19. The world goes round,
Our life is short and tedious, and in the death of a man there is no recovery, neither was any man known that hath returned from the grave; for we are born at all adventure, and we shall be hereafter as though we had never been; for the breath is as smoke in our nostrils, &c., and the spirit vanisheth as the soft air.[6625]
Come let us enjoy the pleasures that are present, let us cheerfully use the creatures as in youth, let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, let not the flower of our life pass by us, let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are withered,&c. [6626]Vivamus mea Lesbia et amemus, &c. [6627]
Come let us take our fill of love, and pleasure in dalliance, for this is our portion, this is our lot.
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,
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong(Eccles. ix. 11.),
nor yet bread to the wise, favour nor riches to men of understanding, but time and chance comes to all.There was a great plague in Athens (as Thucydides, lib. 2. relates), in which at last every man, with great licentiousness, did what he list, not caring at all for God's or men's laws.
Neither the fear of God nor laws of men(saith he)
awed any man, because the plague swept all away alike, good and bad; they thence concluded it was alike to worship or not worship the gods, since they perished all alike.Some cavil and make doubts of scripture itself: it cannot stand with God's mercy, that so many should be damned, so many bad, so few good, such have and hold about religions, all stiff on their side, factious alike, thrive alike, and yet bitterly persecuting and damning each other;
It cannot stand with God's goodness, protection, and providence(as [6644]Saint Chrysostom in the Dialect of such discontented persons)
to see and suffer one man to be lame, another mad, a third poor and miserable all the days of his life, a fourth grievously tormented with sickness and aches, to his last hour. Are these signs and works of God's providence, to let one man be deaf, another dumb? A poor honest fellow lives in disgrace, woe and want, wretched he is; when as a wicked caitiff abounds in superfluity of wealth, keeps whores, parasites, and what he will himself:Audis Jupiter haec? Talia multa connectentes, longum reprehensionis sermonem erga Dei providentiam contexunt. [6645]Thus they mutter and object (see the rest of their arguments in Marcennus in Genesin, and in Campanella, amply confuted), with many such vain cavils, well known, not worthy the recapitulation or answering: whatsoever they pretend, they are interim of little or no religion.
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:
from which he infers, that it cannot be distinguished which is the true religion, Judaism, Mahommedanism, or Christianity,&c. [6669]Marinus Mercennus suspects Cardan for his subtleties, Campanella, and Charron's Book of Wisdom, with some other Tracts, to savour of [6670]atheism: but amongst the rest that pestilent book de tribus mundi impostoribus, quem sine horrore (inquit) non legas, et mundi Cymbalum dialogis quatuor contentum, anno 1538, auctore Peresio, Parisiis excusum, [6671]&c. And as there have been in all ages such blasphemous spirits, so there have not been wanting their patrons, protectors, disciples and adherents. Never so many atheists in Italy and Germany, saith [6672]Colerus, as in this age: the like complaint Mercennus makes in France, 50,000 in that one city of Paris. Frederic the Emperor, as [6673]Matthew Paris records licet non sit recitabile (I use his own words) is reported to have said, Tres praestigiatores, Moses, Christus, et Mahomet, uti mundo dominarentur, totum populum sibi contemporaneum se duxisse. (Henry, the Landgrave of Hesse, heard him speak it,) Si principes imperii institutioni meae adhaererent, ego multo meliorem modum credendi et vivendi ordinarem.
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:
that fashion themselves to this world,which [6675]Paul forbids, and like Mercury, the planet, are good with good, bad with bad. When they are at Rome, they do there as they see done, puritans with puritans, papists with papists; omnium horarum homines, formalists, ambidexters, lukewarm Laodiceans. [6676]All their study is to please, and their god is their commodity, their labour to satisfy their lusts, and their endeavours to their own ends. Whatsoever they pretend, or in public seem to do, [6677]
With the fool in their hearts, they say there is no God.Heus tu—de Jove quid sentis?
Hulloa! what is your opinion about a Jupiter?Their words are as soft as oil, but bitterness is in their hearts; like [6678]Alexander VI. so cunning dissemblers, that what they think they never speak. Many of them are so close, you can hardly discern it, or take any just exceptions at them; they are not factious, oppressors as most are, no bribers, no simoniacal contractors, no such ambitious, lascivious persons as some others are, no drunkards, sobrii solem vident orientem, sobrii vident occidentem, they rise sober, and go sober to bed, plain dealing, upright, honest men, they do wrong to no man, and are so reputed in the world's esteem at least, very zealous in religion, very charitable, meek, humble, peace-makers, keep all duties, very devout, honest, well spoken of, beloved of all men: but he that knows better how to judge, he that examines the heart, saith they are hypocrites, Cor dolo plenum; sonant vitium percussa maligne, they are not sound within. As it is with writers [6679]oftentimes, Plus sanctimoniae, in libello, quam libelli auctore, more holiness is in the book than in the author of it: so 'tis with them: many come to church with great Bibles, whom Cardan said he could not choose but laugh at, and will now and then dare operam Augustino, read Austin, frequent sermons, and yet professed usurers, mere gripes, tota vitae ratio epicurea est; all their life is epicurism and atheism, come to church all day, and lie with a courtesan at night. Qui curios simulant et Bacchanalia vivunt, they have Esau's hands, and Jacob's voice: yea, and many of those holy friars, sanctified men, Cappam, saith Hierom, et cilicium induunt, sed intus latronem tegunt. They are wolves in sheep's clothing, Introrsum turpes, speciosi pelle decora,
Fair without, and most foul within.[6680]Latet plerumque sub tristi amictu lascivia, et deformis horror vili veste tegitur; ofttimes under a mourning weed lies lust itself, and horrible vices under a poor coat. But who can examine all those kinds of hypocrites, or dive into their hearts? ]f we may guess at the tree by the fruit, never so many as in these days; show me a plain-dealing true honest man: Et pudor, et probitas, et timor omnis abest. He that shall but look into their lives, and see such enormous vices, men so immoderate in lust, unspeakable in malice, furious in their rage, flattering and dissembling (all for their own ends) will surely think they are not truly religious, but of an obdurate heart, most part in a reprobate sense, as in this age. But let them carry it as they will for the present, dissemble as they can, a time will come when they shall be called to an account, their melancholy is at hand, they pull a plague and curse upon their own heads, thesaurisant iram Dei. Besides all such as are in deos contumeliosi, blaspheme, contemn, neglect God, or scoff at him, as the poets feign of Salmoneus, that would in derision imitate Jupiter's thunder, he was precipitated for his pains, Jupiter intonuit contra, &c. so shall they certainly rue it in the end, ([6681]in se spuit, qui in coelum spuit), their doom's at hand, and hell is ready to receive them.
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:
the queen of causes, and moderator of things,now she pulls down the proud, now she rears and encourageth those that are good; he gives instance in his Eusebius; Nicephorus, lib. 10. cap. 35. eccles. hist. in Maximinus and Julian. Fearful examples of God's just judgment, wrath and vengeance, are to be found in all histories, of some that have been eaten to death with rats and mice, as [6734]Popelius, the second King of Poland, ann. 830, his wife and children; the like story is of Hatto, Archbishop of Mentz, ann. 969, so devoured by these vermin, which howsoever Serrarius the Jesuit Mogunt. rerum lib. 4. cap. 5. impugn by twenty-two arguments, Tritemius, [6735]Munster, Magdeburgenses, and many others relate for a truth. Such another example I find in Geraldus Cambrensis Itin. Cam. lib. 2. cap. 2. and where not?
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,
even in their greatest delights, singing, dancing, dalliance, they are still(saith [6739]Lemnius)
tortured in their souls.It consumes them to nought,
I am like a pelican in the wilderness (saith David of himself, temporally afflicted), an owl, because of thine indignation,Psalm cii. 8, 10, and Psalm lv. 4.
My heart trembleth within me, and the terrors of death have come upon me; fear and trembling are come upon me, &c. at death's door,Psalm cvii. 18.
Their soul abhors all manner of meats.Their [6740]sleep is (if it be any) unquiet, subject to fearful dreams and terrors. Peter in his bonds slept secure, for he knew God protected him; and Tully makes it an argument of Roscius Amerinus' innocency, that he killed not his father, because he so securely slept. Those martyrs in the primitive church were most [6741]cheerful and merry in the midst of their persecutions; but it is far otherwise with these men, tossed in a sea, and that continually without rest or intermission, they can think of nought that is pleasant, [6742]
their conscience will not let them be quiet,in perpetual fear, anxiety, if they be not yet apprehended, they are in doubt still they shall be ready to betray themselves, as Cain did, he thinks every man will kill him;
and roar for the grief of heart,Psalm xxxviii. 8, as David did; as Job did, xx. 3, 21, 22, &c.,
Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to them that have heavy hearts? which long for death, and if it come not, search it more than treasures, and rejoice when they can find the grave.They are generally weary of their lives, a trembling heart they have, a sorrowful mind, and little or no rest. Terror ubique tremor, timor undique et undique terror.
Fears, terrors, and affrights in all places, at all times and seasons.Cibum et potum pertinaciter aversantur multi, nodum in scirpo quaeritantes, et culpam imaginantes ubi nulla est, as Wierus writes de Lamiis lib. 3. c. 7.
they refuse many of them meat and drink, cannot rest, aggravating still and supposing grievous offences where there are none.God's heavy wrath is kindled in their souls, and notwithstanding their continual prayers and supplications to Christ Jesus, they have no release or ease at all, but a most intolerable torment, and insufferable anguish of conscience, and that makes them, through impatience, to murmur against God many times, to rave, to blaspheme, turn atheists, and seek to offer violence to themselves. Deut. xxviii. 65, 68.
In the morning they wish for evening, and for morning in the evening, for the sight of their eyes which they see, and fear of hearts.[6743]Marinus Mercennus, in his comment on Genesis, makes mention of a desperate friend of his, whom, amongst others, he came to visit, and exhort to patience, that broke out into most blasphemous atheistical speeches, too fearful to relate, when they wished him to trust in God, Quis est ille Deus (inquit) ut serviam illi, quid proderit si oraverim; si praesens est, cur non succurrit? cur non me carcere, inertia, squalore confectum liberat? quid ego feci? &c. absit a me hujusmodi Deus. Another of his acquaintance broke out into like atheistical blasphemies, upon his wife's death raved, cursed, said and did he cared not what. And so for the most part it is with them all, many of them, in their extremity, think they hear and see visions, outcries, confer with devils, that they are tormented, possessed, and in hell-fire, already damned, quite forsaken of God, they have no sense or feeling of mercy, or grace, hope of salvation, their sentence of condemnation is already past, and not to be revoked, the devil will certainly have them. Never was any living creature in such torment before, in such a miserable estate, in such distress of mind, no hope, no faith, past cure, reprobate, continually tempted to make away themselves. Something talks with them, they spit fire and brimstone, they cannot but blaspheme, they cannot repent, believe or think a good thought, so far carried; ut cogantur ad impia cogitandum etiam contra voluntatem, said [6744]Felix Plater, ad blasphemiam erga deum, ad multa horrenda perpetranda, ad manus violentas sibi inferendas, &c., and in their distracted fits and desperate humours, to offer violence to others, their familiar and dear friends sometimes, or to mere strangers, upon very small or no occasion; for he that cares not for his own, is master of another man's life. They think evil against their wills; that which they abhor themselves, they must needs think, do, and speak. He gives instance in a patient of his, that when he would pray, had such evil thoughts still suggested to him, and wicked [6745]meditations. Another instance he hath of a woman that was often tempted to curse God, to blaspheme and kill herself. Sometimes the devil (as they say) stands without and talks with them, sometimes he is within them, as they think, and there speaks and talks as to such as are possessed: so Apollodorus, in Plutarch, thought his heart spake within him. There is a most memorable example of [6746]Francis Spira, an advocate of Padua, Ann. 1545, that being desperate, by no counsel of learned men could be comforted: he felt (as he said) the pains of hell in his soul; in all other things he discoursed aright, but in this most mad. Frismelica, Bullovat, and some other excellent physicians, could neither make him eat, drink, or sleep, no persuasion could ease him. Never pleaded any man so well for himself, as this man did against himself, and so he desperately died. Springer, a lawyer, hath written his life. Cardinal Crescence died so likewise desperate at Verona, still he thought a black dog followed him to his death-bed, no man could drive the dog away, Sleiden. com. 23. cap. lib. 3. Whilst I was writing this Treatise, saith Montaltus, cap. 2. de mel. [6747]
A nun came to me for help, well for all other matters, but troubled in conscience for five years last past; she is almost mad, and not able to resist, thinks she hath offended God, and is certainly damned.Felix Plater hath store of instances of such as thought themselves damned, [6748] forsaken of God, &c. One amongst the rest, that durst not go to church, or come near the Rhine, for fear to make away himself, because then he was most especially tempted. These and such like symptoms are intended and remitted, as the malady itself is more or less; some will hear good counsel, some will not; some desire help, some reject all, and will not be eased.
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
But his natural genius,says Wood,
leading him to the studies of heraldry, genealogies, and antiquities, he became excellent in those obscure and intricate matters; and look upon him as a gentleman, was accounted, by all that knew him, to be the best of his time for those studies, as may appear by his 'Description of Leicestershire.'His weak constitution not permitting him to follow business, he retired into the country, and his greatest work,
The Description of Leicestershire,was published in folio, 1623. He died at Falde, after suffering much in the civil war, 6th April, 1645, and was buried in the parish church belonging thereto, called Hanbury.
printed at Paris 1624, seven years after Burton's first edition.As, however, the editions after that of 1621, are regularly marked in succession to the eighth, printed in 1676, there seems very little reason to doubt that, in the note above alluded to, either 1624 has been a misprint for 1628, or seven years for three years. The numerous typographical errata in other parts of the work strongly aid this latter supposition.
Taught by that Power that pities me, I learn to pity them.
impious war rages throughout the whole world
Good people are scarce.
The citadel par excellance.
Let no one in our city be a beggar.
whereby they are supported, and do not become vagrants by being less accustomed to labour.
which must not now be whispered in the ear.
Liberty never is more gratifying than under a pious king.
For who would cultivate virtue itself, if you were to take away the reward?
We hate the hawk, because he always lives in battle.
O Physicians! open the middle vein.
They are borne in the bark of folly, and dwell in the grove of madness.
Majesty and Love do not agree well, nor dwell together.
No one is wise at all hours,—no one born without faults,—no one free from crime,—no one content with his lot,—no one in love wise,—no good, or wise man perfectly happy.
From the Rising Sun to the Maeotid Lake, there was not one that could fairly be put in comparison with them.
Let not any one take these things to himself, they are all but fictions.
Emaciation, and a new cohort of fevers broods over the earth.
Too bright an object destroys the organ.
We, who may take up our abode in wild beasts, or be lodged in the breasts of cattle.
Besides, we observe that the mind is born with the body, grows with it, and decays with it.
The bloodless shades without either body or bones wanter.
We are neither able to contend against them, nor only to make way.
By gazing steadfastly on the sun illuminated with his brightest rays.
Coveting nothing more than the admiration of mankind.
They seek nothing more earnestly than the fear and admiration of men.
It is scarcely possible to describe the impotent ardour with which these malignant spirits aspire to the honour of being divinely worshipped.
They who invite us to a supper, only conduct us to our tomb.
The highest-priced dishes afford the greatest gratification.
They perish in clouds of sand.Maginus Pers.
The body oppressed by yesterday's vices weighs down the spirit also.
The heart alters the countenance to good or evil, and distraction of the mind causeth distemperature of the body.
all shame has vanished from human transactions.Persius. Sat. V.
Ambition always is a foolish confidence, never a slothful arrogance.
I perceive such an ocean of troubles before me, that no means of escape remain.
One indulges in wine, another the die consumes, a third is decomposed by venery.
That momentary pleasure blots out the eternal glory of a heavenly life..
As Camelus in the novel, who lost his ears while he was looking for a pair of horns.
If you will accept divine honours, we will willingly erect and consecrate altars to you.
Applauded virtue grows apace, and glory includes within it an immense impulse.
There is nothing which overlauded power will not presume to imagine of itself.
A thing of wood and wires by others played.Following the paste as the parrot, they stutter out anything in hopes of reward: obsequious parasites, says Erasmus, teach, say, write, admire, approve, contrary to their conviction, anything you please, not to benefit the people but to improve their own fortunes. They subscribe to any opinions and decisions contrary to the word of God, that they may not offend their patron, but retain the favour of the great, the applause of the multitude, and thereby acquire riches for themselves; for they approach Theology, not that they may perform a sacred duty, but make a fortune: nor to promote the interests of the church, but to pillage it: seeking, as Paul says, not the things which are of Jesus Christ, but what may be their own: not the treasure of their Lord, but the enrichment of themselves and their followers. Nor does this evil belong to those of humbler birth and fortunes only, it possesses the middle and higher ranks, bishops excepted.
O Pontiffs, tell the efficacy of gold in sacred matters!Avarice often leads the highest men astray, and men, admirable in all other respects: these find a salvo for simony; and, striking against this rock of corruption, they do not shear but flay the flock; and, wherever they teem, plunder, exhaust, raze, making shipwreck of their reputation, if not of their souls also. Hence it appears that this malady did not flow from the humblest to the highest classes, but vice versa, so that the maxim is true although spoken in jest—
he bought first, therefore has the best right to sell.For a Simoniac (that I may use the phraseology of Leo) has not received a favour; since he has not received one he does not possess one; and since he does not possess one he cannot confer one. So far indeed are some of those who are placed at the helm from promoting others, that they completely obstruct them, from a consciousness of the means by which themselves obtained the honour. For he who imagines that they emerged from their obscurity through their learning, is deceived; indeed, whoever supposes promotion to be the reward of genius, erudition, experience, probity, piety, and poetry (which formerly was the case, but nowadays is only promised) is evidently deranged. How or when this malady commenced, I shall not further inquire; but from these beginnings, this accumulation of vices, all her calamities and miseries have been brought upon the Church; hence such frequent acts of simony, complaints, fraud, impostures— from this one fountain spring all its conspicuous iniquities. I shall not press the question of ambition and courtly flattery, lest they may be chagrined about luxury, base examples of life, which offend the honest, wanton drinking parties, &c. Yet; hence is that academic squalor, the muses now look sad, since every low fellow ignorant of the arts, by those very arts rises, is promoted, and grows rich, distinguished by ambitious titles, and puffed up by his numerous honours; he just shows himself to the vulgar, and by his stately carriage displays a species of majesty, a remarkable solicitude, letting down a flowing beard, decked in a brilliant toga resplendent with purple, and respected also on account of the splendour of his household and number of his servants. There are certain statues placed in sacred edifices that seem to sink under their load, and almost to perspire, when in reality they are void of sensation, and do not contribute to the stony stability, so these men would wish to look like Atlases, when they are no better than statues of stone, insignificant scrubs, funguses, dolts, little different from stone. Meanwhile really learned men, endowed with all that can adorn a holy life, men who have endured the heat of mid-day, by some unjust lot obey these, dizzards, content probably with a miserable salary, known by honest appellations, humble, obscure, although eminently worthy, needy, leading a private life without honour, buried alive in some poor benefice, or incarcerated for ever in their college chambers, lying hid ingloriously. But I am unwilling to stir this sink any longer or any deeper; hence those tears, this melancholy habit of the muses; hence (that I may speak with Secellius) is it that religion is brought into disrepute and contempt, and the priesthood abject; (and since this is so, I must speak out and use a filthy witticism of the filthy) a foetid. crowd, poor, sordid, melancholy, miserable, despicable, contemptible.
The pupil's faculties are perverted by the indiscretion of the master.
Let him feast, drink, perfume himself at my expense: If he be in love, I shall supply him with money. Has he broken in the gates? they shall be repaired. Has he torn his garments? they shall be replaced. Let him do what he pleases, take, spend, waste, I am resolved to submit.
He that spareth the rod hates his son.
Provided he can only excite laughter, he spares not his best friend.
Every reproach uttered against one already condemned is mean-spirited.
He may have Danae to wife.
A diadem is purchased with gold; silver opens the way to heaven; philosophy may be hired for a penny; money controls justice; one obolus satisfies a man of letters; precious metal procures health; wealth attaches friends.
more worthless than rejected weeds.
Who daily faint beneath the burdens they are compelled to carry from place to place: for they carry and draw the loads which oxen and asses formerly used, &c.
A narrow breast conceals a narrow soul.
Publius Scipio, Laelius and Furius, three of the most distinguished noblemen at that day in Rome, were of so little service to him, that he could scarcely procure a lodging through their patronage.
Though he be instant, yet they will not.
Since cruel fortune has made Sinon poor, she has made him vain and mendacious.
They cannot easily rise in the world who are pinched by poverty at home.
Reduced to the greatest necessity, he withdrew from the gaze of the public to the most remote village in Greece.
Oh sweet offspring; oh my very blood; oh tender flower, &c.
Without thee, ah! wretched me, the lillies lose their whiteness, the roses become pallid, the hyacinth forgets to blush neither the myrtle nor the laurel retains its odours.
They became fallen in feelings, as the great forest laments its fallen leaves.
Must I be deprived of this life,—of those possessions?
To profess a disinclination for that knowledge which is beyond our reach, is pedantic ignorance.
Dark care rides behind him.
At Rome, wishing for the fields, in the country, extolling the city to the skies.
And like the children of nobility, require to eat pap, and, angry at the nurse, refuse her to sing lullaby.
A most agreeable mental delusion.
Lest you may imagine that I patronise that widow or this virgin, I shall not add another word.
O mother! I beseech you not to persecute me with those horrible-looking furies. See! see! they attack, they assault me!
Peace! peace! unhappy being, for you do not see what you think you see.
Finding that he would be destined to endure excruciating pain of the feet, and additional tortures, he abstained from food altogether.
No one ever died in this way, who would not have died some time or other; but what does it signify how life itself may be ended, since he who comes to the end is not obliged to die a second time?
And now when Ambrociotes was bidding farewell to the light of day, and about to cast himself into the Stygian pool, although he had not been guilty of any crime that merited death: but, perhaps, he had read that divine work of Plato upon Death.
To offer the sailors' garments to the deity of the deep.
The leech never releases the skin until he is filled with blood.
When you are again lean, seek an exit through that hole by which lean you entered.
Whoever has allayed his thirst with the water of the Clitorius, avoids wine, and abstemious delights in pure water only.
He who lives medically lives miserably.
Whilst these blockheads avoid one fault, they fall into its opposite.
I shall now enter upon a bold and memorable exploit; one never before attempted in this age. I shall explain this night's transactions in the kingdom of the moon, a place where no one has yet arrived, save in his dreams.
They seem to think they were born to idleness,—nay more, for the destruction of themselves and others.
The furniture glitters with brilliant gems, with yellow jasper, and the couches dazzle with their purple dye.
The timbers were concealed by solid gold.
For neither was the contest for the hide of a bull, nor for a beeve, which are the usual prizes in the race, but for the life and soul of the great Hector.
thirsting Tantalus gapes for the water that eludes his lips.
I may desire, but can't enjoy.
What shall I say of their spectacles produced with the most magnificent decorations,—a degree of costliness never indulged in even by the Romans.
In a moment of fleeting time it changes masters and submits to new control.
It is better to dig than to dance.
No sensible man dances.
Study is the delight of old age, the support of youth, the ornament of prosperity, the solace and refuge of adversity, the comfort of domestic life, &c.
What is more subtle than arithmetical conclusions; what more agreeable than musical harmonies; what more divine than astronomical, what more certain than geometrical demonstrations?
It allures the mind by its agreeable attraction, on account of the incredible variety and pleasantness of the subjects, and excites to a further step in knowledge.
To learn the mysteries of the heavens, the secret workings of nature, the order of the universe, is a greater happiness and gratification than any mortal can think or expect to obtain.
It is more honourable and glorious to understand these truths than to govern provinces, to be beautiful or to be young.
Who explain what is fair, foul, useful, worthless, more fully and faithfully than Chrysippus and Crantor?
If the lamp burn brightly, then the man is cheerful and healthy in mind and body; if, on the other hand, he from whom the blood is taken be melancholic or a spendthrift, then it will burn dimly, and flicker in the socket.
That you may sleep calmly on either ear.
The tipsy sailor and his travelling companion sing the praises of their absent sweethearts.
Neither the shrines of the gods, nor the deities themselves, send down from the heavens those dreams which mock our minds with those flitting shadows,—we cause them to ourselves.
I have not a single friend this day, to whom I dare to disclose my secrets.
You shall not cure the eye, unless you cure the whole head also; nor the head, unless the whole body; nor the whole body, unless the soul besides.
If the world think that nothing can be happy without love and mirth, then live in love and jollity.
You will find him beside some cutthroat, along with sailors, or thieves, or runaways.
What does it signify whether I perish by disease or by the sword!
Although you swear that you dread the night air.
The insane consolations of a foolish mind.
For there is no pleasure perfect, some anxiety always intervenes.
You know the value of a thing from wanting more than from enjoying it.
The way from the earth to the stars is not so downy.
Go now, brave fellows, whither the lofty path of a great example leads. Why do you stupidly expose your backs? The earth brings the stars to subjection.
If the fates give you large proportions, do you not require faculties?
When we are sick we are most amiable.
Does such presumption in your origin possess you?
A shepherd, or something that I should rather not tell.
Nobility without wealth is more worthless than seaweed.
It is a thing deserving of our notice, that most great men were born in obscurity, and of unchaste mothers.
If children be proud, haughty, foolish, they defile the nobility of their kindred,Eccl. xxii, 8.
For fierce eagles do not procreate timid ring-doves.
And although he boast of his wealth, Fortune has not changed his nature.
Effeminate riches have destroyed the age by the introduction of shameful luxury.
Although a hundred thousand bushels of wheat may have been threshed in your granaries, your stomach will not contain more than mine.
God shall deliver his soul from the power of the grave,Psal. xlix. 15.
How contemptible stolid minds! They covet riches and titles, and when they have obtained these commodities of false weight and measures, then, and not before, they understand what is truly valuable.
O protecting quality of a poor man's life, frugal means, gifts scarce yet understood by the gods themselves.
Let whosoever covets it, occupy the highest pinnacle of fame, sweet tranquillity shall satisfy me.
The immortal Muses confer imperishable pride of origin.
If your table afford frugal fare with peace, seek not, in strife, to load it lavishly.
There is no space left on our bodies for a fresh stripe.
My brethren, count it an exceeding joy, when you fall into divers temptations.
Hope on, Battus, tomorrow may bring better luck; while there's life there's hope.
Let us cast our jewels and gems, and useless gold, the cause of all vice, into the sea, since we truly repent of our sins.
I do not desire riches, nor that a price should be set upon me.
It matters little whether we are enslaved by men or things.
I live now, nor as yet relinquish society and life, but I shall resign them.
Overcome by grief, and unable to endure it, she exclaimed, 'Not to be able to die through sorrow for thee were base.'
The colour suddenly fled her cheek, the distaff forsook her hand, the reel revolved, and with dishevelled locks she broke away, wailing as a woman.
Transfix me, O Rutuli, if you have any piety: pierce me with your thousand arrows.
It is proper that, having indulged in becoming grief for one whole day, you should commit the dead to the sepulchre.
What of ancient Athens but the name remains?
Nor can its own structure preserve the solid globe.
My breast was not conscious of this first wound, for I have endured still greater.
I live like a king without any of these acquisitions.
But all my labour was unprofitable; for while death took off some of my friends, to others I remain unknown, or little liked, and these deceive me with false promises. Whilst I am canvassing one party, captivating another, making myself known to a third, my age increases, years glide away, I am put off, and now tired of the world, and surfeited with human worthlessness. I rest content.
Slaves govern; asses are decked with trappings; horses are deprived of them.
Learn how to grow rich.
O wretched virtue! you are therefore nothing but words, and I have all this time been looking upon you as a reality, while you are yourself the slave of fortune.
The muse forbids the praiseworthy man to die.
He adjudicates judgment again, and punishes with a still greater penalty.
Why should you regard the harmless shafts of a vain-speaking tongue—does the exalted Diana care for the barking of a dog?
'Twas not the will but the way that was wanting.
How does the surgeon differ from the doctor? In this respect: one kills by drugs, the other by the hand; both only differ from the hangman in this way, they do slowly what he does in an instant.
Medicine cannot cure the knotty gout.
Bacchus dissipates corroding cares.
In Brutus' presence Lucretia blushed and laid my book aside; when he retired, she took it up again and read.
He has accomplished every point who has joined the useful to the agreeable.
This he took to be his only business, that the plays which he wrote should please the people.
The poet himself should be chaste and pious, but his verses need not imitate him in these respects; they may therefore contain wit and humour.
This that I write depends sometimes upon the opinion and authority of others: nor perhaps am I frantic, I only follow madmen: But thus far I may be deranged: we have all been so at some one time, and yourself, I think, art sometimes insane, and this man, and that man, and I also.
I am mortal, and think no humane action unsuited to me.
That, overcome by the solicitations of friends, who requested me to enlarge and improve my volumes, I have devoted my otherwise reluctant mind to the labour; and now for the sixth time have I taken up my pen, and applied myself to literature very foreign indeed to my studies and professional occupations, stealing a few hours from serious pursuits, and devoting them, as it were, to recreation.
I am compelled to reverse my sails, and retrace my former course.
Although I was by no means ignorant that new calumniators would not be wanting to censure my new introductions.
What I tell you, do you tell to the multitude, and make this treatise gossip like an old woman.
O Arethusa smile on this my last labour.
Where charity prevails, sweet desire, joy, and love towards God are also present.
bust of a beautiful woman with the tail of a fish.
The priest of wisdom, perpetual dictator, ornament of literature, wonder of Europe.
Oh incredible excellence of genius, &c., more comparable to gods' than man's, in every respect, we venerate your writings on bended knees, as we do the shield that fell from heaven.
She excelled all others in beauty.
It is sweet to die for one's country.
The sister of justice, honour inviolate, and naked truth.
He divides the empire of the sea with Thetis,—of the Shades, with Aeacus,—of the Heaven, with Jove.
Trees are influenced by love, and every flourishing tree in turn feels the passion: palms nod mutual vows, poplar sighs to poplar, plane to plane, and alder breathes to alder.
Venus keeps the keys of the air, earth, sea, and she alone retains the command of all.
For it is a shame to speak of those things which are done of them in secret,Eph. v. 12.
And he who has not felt the influence of love is either a stone or a beast.
One whom no maiden's beauty has ever affected.
As matter seeks form, so woman turns towards man.
She grows old in love and in years together.
Whithersoever enraged you fly there is no escape. Although you reach the Tanais, love will still pursue you.
What have lust and unrestrained desire left chaste or enviolate upon earth?
Sight, conference, association, kisses, touch.
Virtue appears more gracefully in a lovely personage.
The king of the gods on account of this beauty became a bull, a shower, a swan.
If you will restore me to my parents, and my beautiful lover, what thanks, what honour shall I owe you, what provender shall I not supply you?
And with her hand wiping off the drops from her green tresses, thus began to relate the loves of Alpheus. I was formerly an Achaian nymph.
Their lips resound with thousand kisses, their arms are pallid with the close embrace, and their necks are mutually entwined by their fond caresses.
We wonder how great the vapour, and whence it comes.
My limbs became relaxed, I was overcome from head to foot, all self-possession fled, so great a stupor overburdened my mind.
She alone hath captivated my feelings, and fixed my wavering mind.
The wretched Cynthia first captivates with her sparkling eyes.
And the body naturally seeks whence it is that the mind is so wounded by love.
For why do you exhibit your 'milky way,' your uncovered bosoms? What else is it but to say plainly. Ask me, ask me, I will surrender; and what is that but love's call?
Neither draped Diana nor naked Venus pleases me. One has too much voluptuousness about her, the other none.
They take a year to deck and comb themselves.
A distorted dwarf, an Europa.
That was the first hour of destruction, and the first beginning of my miseries.
Place modesty itself in such a situation, desire will intrude.
The sweet sound of his voice reanimates my soul through my covetous ears.
The mind is delighted as much by eloquence as beauty.
Venus hath imbued with the quintessence of her nectar.
You may conquer with the sword, but you are conquered by a kiss.
Only attempt to touch her person, and immediately your members will be filled with a glow of delicious warmth.
She folded her arms around my neck.
Perhaps you may expect that a Gaditanian with a tuneful company may begin to wanton, and girls approved with applause lower themselves to the ground in a lascivious manner, a provocative of languishing desire.
Trust not your heart to women, for the wave is less treacherous than their fidelity.
They have made the same promises to a thousand girls that they make to you.
Three hundred verses would not comprise their indecencies.
These harlots send little maidens down to the quays to ascertain the name and nation of every ship that arrives, after which they themselves hasten to address the new-comers.
Whence that heat to waters bubbling from the cold moist earth? Cupid, once upon a time, playfully dipped herein his arrows of steel, and delighted with the hissing sound, he said, boil on for ever, and retain the memory of my quiver. From that time it is a thermal spring, in which few venture to bathe, but whosoever does, his heart is instantly touched with love.
The more it is concealed the more it struggles to break through its concealment.
Sweeter than honey it pleases me, more bitter than gall, it teases me.
Although the presence of her fair form is wanting, the love which it kindled remains.
The works are interrupted, promises of great walls, and scaffoldings rising towards the skies, are all suspended.
The shuttle stops, and the web hangs unfinished from her hands.
No rest, no business pleased my lovesick breast, my faculties became dormant, my mind torpid, and I lost my taste for poetry and song.
Whoever is in love is in slavery, he follows his sweetheart as a captive his captor, and wears a yoke on his sumbissibe neck.
She began to speak but stopped in the middle of her discourse.
What reason requires, raging love forbids.
Oh fraud, and love, and distraction of mind, whither have you led me?
These very things please him, as the wen of Agna did Balbinus.
Her beauty excels the Tyndarian Helen's, which caused such dreadful wars.
It is envy evidently that prompts you, because Polyphemus does not love you as he does me.
Nor will the rude rocks affright, me, nor the crooked-tusked bear, so that I shall not visit my mistress in pleasant mood.
When she dies my love shall also be at rest in the tomb.
For if the object of your love be absent, her image is present, and her sweet name is still familiar in my ears.
Some token snatched from her arm or her gently resisting finger.
And distracted will imprint kisses on the doors.
Ye alpine winds, ye mountain breezes, bear these gifts to her.
Oh, if I might only dally with thee, and alleviate the wasting sorrows of my mind.
He is happy who sees thee, more happy who hears, a god who enjoys thee.
For love both inspires us with stratagems, and suggests to us frauds.
Who can deceive a lover.
He resembled a god as to his head and shoulders, for his mother had made his hair seem beautiful, bestowed upon him the lovely bloom of youth, and given the happiest lustre to his eyes.
I am not so deformed, I lately saw myself in the tranquil glassy sea, as I stood upon the shore.
Thus youth dies, thus in death he loves.
None shall excel me in poetry, neither the Thracian Orpheus, nor Apollo.
I am not in love, nor do I know what love may be.
Oh Corydon, Corydon! what madness possesses you?
But let me die, she says, thus; thus it is better to descend to the shades.
Whom cruel love with its wasting power destroyed.
And a myrtle grove overshadow thee; nor do cares relinquish thee even in death itself.
Love yields to business; be employed, and you'll be safe.
Poverty has not the means of feeding her passion.
Remove and throw her quite out of doors, she who has drank my lovesick blood.
It is best to shun the semblance and the food of love, to abstain from it, and totally avert the mind from the object.
Fly the cherished shore. It is advisable to withdraw from the places near it.
Depart, and take a long journey—safety is in flight only.
You will easily find another if this Alexis disdains you.
I recommend you to have two mistresses.
One love extracts the influence of another.
For what limit has love?
He calls Mnestheus, Surgestus, and the brave Cloanthus, and orders them silently to prepare the fleet.
He is moved by no tears, he cannot he induced to hear her words.
If you quietly reflect upon what passes through her mouth, nostrils, and other conduits of her body, you never saw viler stuff.
When the wrinkled skin becomes flabby, and the teeth black.
Because wrinkles and hoary locks disfigure you.
Beautiful cheeks, rosy lips, and languishing eyes.
Beauty is a gift of dubious worth to mortals, and of brief duration.
Bright eyes and snow-white neck.
Let my Melita's eyes be like Juno's, her hand Minerva's, her breasts Venus', her leg Ampbitiles'.
Let her eyes be as bright as the stars, her neck smell like the rose, her hair shine more than gold, her honied lips be ruby coloured; let her beauty be resplendent, and superior to Venus, let her be in all respects a deity,&c.
Show me your company and I'll tell you who you are.
Hark, you merry maids, do not dance so, for see the he-goat is at hand, ready to pounce upon you.
Snares of the human species, torments of life, spoils of the night, bitterest cares of day, the torture of husbands, the ruin of youths.
Avaunt, ye nymphs, maidens, ye are a deceitful race, no married life for me,&c.
Who thrusts his foolish neck a second time into the halter.
She will sink your whole establishment by her fecundity.
I would rather have a Venusinian wench than thee, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi,&c.
Perhaps she will not suit you.
Who can endure a virago for a wife?
To be a father is very pleasant, but to be a freeman still more so.
As the flower that grows in the secret inclosure of the garden, unknown to the flocks, impressed by the ploughshare, which also the breezes refresh, the heat strengthens, the rain makes grow: so is a virgin whilst untouched, whilst dear to her relatives, but when once she forfeits her chastity,&c.
If you wish to be master of your house, let no little ones play in your halls, nor any little daughter yet more dear, a barren wife makes a pleasant and affectionate companion.
I have married a wife; what misery it has entailed upon me! sons were born and other cares followed.
The moral is, vehement fear expels love.
Stricken by the gad-fly of love, rushed headlong from the summit.
The rise and remedy of love the same.
How shall I begin?
The efficacious one is golden.
Having no compassion for my tears, she avoids my prayers, and is inflexible to my plaints.
To captivate the men, but despise them when captive.
He will marry the daughter of rich parents, a red-haired, blear-eyed, big-mouthed, crooked-nosed wench.
The stars in the skies preside over our persons, for they are made of humble matter. They cannot bind a rational mind, for that is under the control of God only.
That is, make the best of it, and take his lot as it falls.
Their beauty is inconsistent with their vows.
There is nothing better, nothing preferable to a single life.
Neither despise agreeable love, nor mirthful pleasure.
He who chooses a wife, takes a brother and a sister.
The delight of mankind, the solace of life, the blandishments of night, delicious cares of day, the wishes of older men, the hopes of young.
How harmoniously do a loving wife and constant husband lead their lives.
He lives contemptibly by whom no other lives.
Find her to whom you may say, 'thou art my only pleasure.'
Unhappy the man who has met a bad wife, happy who found a good one.
To marry, and not to marry, are equally base.
Happy both, if my verses have any charms, nor shall time ever detract from the memorable example of your lives.
Has not every one of the slaves that went to meet him returned this night from the supper?
And now she requires other youths and other loves, calls me the imbecile and decrepit old man.
Often has the serpent lain hid beneath the coloured grass, under a beauliful aspect, and often has the evil inclination affected a sale without the husband's privity.
What now must have been Dido's sensations when she witnessed these doings?
And belches out the smell of onions and garlic.
Neither a god honoured him with his table, nor a goddess with her bed.
Such beauty shines in his graceful features.
Sitting close to her, and shaking her hand lovingly.
After wine the mistress is often unable to distinguish her own lover.
Love of gain induces one to break her marriage vow, a wish to have associates to keep her in countenance actuates others.
These thunders pour down their peculiar showers.
How badly steers of different ages are yoked to the plough.
Maidens shun their embraces; Love, Venus, Hymen, all abhor them.
An old man that dotes,&c.
He was lately a match for a maid, and contended not ingloriously.
Alecto herself holds the torch at such nuptials, and malicious Hymen sadly howls.
More salacious than the sparrow in spring, or the snow-white ring-doves.
If you would marry suitably, marry your equal in every respect.
Parental virtue is a rich inheritance, as well as that chastity which habitually avoids a second husband.
If your wife seem deformed, your maid beautiful, still abstain from the latter.
Not the most fair but the most virtuous pleases me.
He cannot kiss his wife for paint.
That a matron should not be seen in public without her husband as her spokesman.
Helpless deer, what are we but a prey?
One who delights in the labour of the distaff, and beguiles the hours of labour with a song: her duties assume an air of virtuous beauty when she is busied at the wheel and the spindle with her maids.
Whoever guards his wife with bolts and bars will repent his narrow policy.
Ye gods avert such a pestilence from the world.
Proceed, ye muses, nor desert me in the middle of my journey, where no footsteps lead me, no wheeltracks indicate the transit of former chariots.
The devil divides the empire with Jupiter.
O great master of war, whom our youths worship as if he were Mars self.
If a religion be false, only let it be supposed to be true, and it will tame mental ferocity, restrain lusts, and make loyal subjects.
By themselves sustain the brunt of every battle.
He gave to man an upward gaze, commanding him to fix his eyes on heaven.
Having proceeded to deify leeks and onions, you, oh Egypt, worship such gods.
There is a contest amongst the living wives as to which shall follow the husband, and not be allowed to die for him is accounted a disgrace.
Kings' daughters shall attend on him,&c.
Bound to the dictates of no master.
Whilst these fools avoid one vice they run into another of an opposite character.
Saturn is dead, his laws died with him; now that Jupiter rules the world, let us obey his laws.
That there are many ghosts and subterranean realms, and a boat-pole, and black frogs in the Stygian gulf, and that so many thousands pass over in one boat, not even boys believe, unless those not as yet washed for money.
Eat, drink, be merry; there is no more pleasure after death.
One day succeeds another, and new moons hasten to their wane.
Time glides away, and we grow old by years insensibly accumulating.
Oh! Jupiter, do you hear those things? Collecting many such facts, they weave a tissue of reproaches against God's providence.
In cities, kings, religions, and in individual men, these things are true and obvious, as Aristotle appears to imply, and daily experience teaches to the reader of history: for what was more sacred and illustrious, by Gentile law, than Jupiter? what now more vile and execrable? In this way celestial objects suggest religions for worldly motives, and when the influx ceases, so does the law,&c.
And again a great Achilles shall be sent against Troy: religions and their ceremonies shall be born again; however affairs relapse into the same track, there is nothing now that was not formerly and Will not be again,&c.
There are those who ascribe everything to chance, and believe that the world is made without a director, nature influencing the vicissitudes,&c.
They place fear, fate, and the sound of craving Acheron under their feet.
Eternity, that word, that tremendous word, more threatening than thunders and the artillery of heaven—Eternity, that word, without end or origin. No torments affright us which are limited to years: Eternity, eternity, occupies and inflames the heart—this it is that daily augments our sufferings, and multiplies our heart-burnings a hundredfold.
O wretched Orestes, what malady consumes you?
Conscience, for I am conscious of evil.
Night and day they carry their witnesses in the breast.
And Nemesis pursues and notices the steps of men, lest you commit any evil.
He who repents of his sins is well nigh innocent.
Licinus lies in a marble tomb, but Cato in a mean one; Pomponius has none, who can think therefore that there are Gods?
It can't be true that Just Jove reigns.
Not from pleasures to pleasures.
Let him avert his thoughts from the painful object.
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