ts, round
in all places but where they blaze, _caetera sani_, they have impregnable
wits many of them, and discreet otherwise, but in this their madness and
folly breaks out beyond measure, _in infinitum erumpit stultitia._ They are
certainly far gone with melancholy, if not quite mad, and have more need of
physic than many a man that keeps his bed, more need of hellebore than
those that are in Bedlam.

SUBSECT. IV.--_Prognostics of Religious Melancholy_.

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 other