ord,--_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 queri