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 liunc 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?

[3355] "Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicunt."

Nay, what shall the Scripture itself? Which is like an apothecary's shop,
wherein are all remedies for all infirmities of mind, purgatives, cordials,
alteratives, corroboratives, lenitives, &c. "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_,