cious of all, wayward,
covetous, hard" (saith Tully,) "self-willed, superstitious, self-conceited,
braggers and admirers of themselves," as [1305]Balthazar Castilio hath
truly noted of them. [1306]This natural infirmity is most eminent in old
women, and such as are poor, solitary, live in most base esteem and
beggary, or such as are witches; insomuch that Wierus, Baptista Porta,
Ulricus Molitor, Edwicus, do refer all that witches are said to do, to
imagination alone, and this humour of melancholy. And whereas it is
controverted, whether they can bewitch cattle to death, ride in the air
upon a cowl-staff out of a chimney-top, transform themselves into cats,
dogs, &c., translate bodies from place to place, meet in companies, and
dance, as they do, or have carnal copulation with the devil, they ascribe
all to this redundant melancholy, which domineers in them, to [1307]
somniferous potions, and natural causes, the devil's policy. _Non laedunt
omnino_ (saith Wierus) _aut quid mirum faciunt_, (_de Lamiis, lib. 3. cap.
36_), _ut putatur, solam vitiatam habent phantasiam_; they do no such
wonders at all, only their [1308]brains are crazed. [1309]"They think they
are witches, and can do hurt, but do not." But this opinion Bodine,
Erastus, Danaeus, Scribanius, Sebastian Michaelis, Campanella _de Sensu
rerum, lib. 4. cap. 9._ [1310]Dandinus the Jesuit, _lib. 2. de Animae
explode_; [1311]Cicogna confutes at large. That witches are melancholy,
they deny not, but not out of corrupt phantasy alone, so to delude
themselves and others, or to produce such effects.

SUBSECT. VI.--_Parents a cause by Propagation_.

That other inward inbred cause of Melancholy is our temperature, in whole
or part, which we receive from our parents, which [1312]Fernelius calls
_Praeter naturam_, or unnatural, it being an hereditary disease; for as he
justifies [1313]_Quale parentum maxime patris semen obtigerit, tales
evadunt similares spermaticaeque paries, quocunque etiam morbo Pater quum
generat tenetur, cum semine transfert, in Prolem_; such as the temperature
of the father is, such is the son's, and look what disease the father had
when he begot him, his son will have after him; [1314]"and is as well
inheritor of his infirmities, as of his lands. And where the complexion and
constitution of the father is corrupt, there ([1315]saith Roger Bacon) the
complexion and constitution of the son must needs be corrupt, and so the
corruption is derived from the