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 tha