us Melancholy be
warrantable, it may be controverted.

[6303] "Pergite Pieridies, medio nec calle vagantem
Linquite me, qua nulla pedum vestigia ducunt,
Nulla rotae currus testantur signa priores."

I have no pattern to follow as in some of the rest, no man to imitate. No
physician hath as yet distinctly written of it as of the other; all
acknowledge it a most notable symptom, some a cause, but few a species or
kind. [6304]Areteus, Alexander, Rhasis, Avicenna, and most of our late
writers, as Gordonius, Fuchsius, Plater, Bruel, Montaltus, &c. repeat it as
a symptom. [6305]Some seem to be inspired of the Holy Ghost, some take upon
them to be prophets, some are addicted to new opinions, some foretell
strange things, _de statu mundi et Antichristi_, saith Gordonius. Some will
prophesy of the end of the world to a day almost, and the fall of the
Antichrist, as they have been addicted or brought up; for so melancholy
works with them, as [6306]Laurentius holds. If they have been precisely
given, all their meditations tend that way, and in conclusion produce
strange effects, the humour imprints symptoms according to their several
inclinations and conditions, which makes [6307]Guianerius and [6308]Felix
Plater put too much devotion, blind zeal, fear of eternal punishment, and
that last judgment for a cause of those enthusiastics and desperate
persons: but some do not obscurely make a distinct species of it, dividing
love melancholy into that whose object is women; and into the other whose
object is God. Plato, in _Convivio_, makes mention of two distinct furies;
and amongst our neoterics, Hercules de Saxonia _lib. 1. pract. med. cap.
16. cap. de Melanch._ doth expressly treat of it in a distinct species.
[6309] "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 inspi