The Pope is more then a man, as his parats often make him, a demi-god, and besides his holinesse cannot erre, in Cathedrâ belike: and yet some of them have been Magicians, Hereticks, Atheists, children, and as Platina saith of John 22. Etsi vir literatus, multa stoliditatem & lævitatem præ se ferentia egit, stolidi & socordis vir ingenii, a scholar sufficient, yet many things he did foolishly, lightly.

I can say no more then in particular, but in general terms to the rest, they are all mad, their wits are evaporated, and as Ariosto faigns l. 34. kept in jars above the Moon. Some lose their wits with love, some with ambition, Some following Lords and men of high condition. Some in fair jewels rich and costly set, Others in Poetry their wits forget. Another thinks to be an Alcumist, Till all be spent, and that his number’s mist.

Convict fools they are, mad men upon record; and I am afraid past cure many of them, crepunt inguina, the Symptomes are manifest, they are all of Gotam parish: Quum furor haud dubius, quum sit manifesta phrenesis, what remains then but to send for Lorarios, these Officers to carry them all together for company to Bedlam, and set Rablais to be their physitian.

If any man shall ask in the mean time, who I am that so boldly censure others, tu nullane habes vitia? have I no faults? Yes more then thou hast, whatsoever thou art. Nos numerus sumus, I confesse it again, I am as foolish, as mad as any one. Insanus vobis videor, non deprecor ipse, Quo minus insanus,——

I do not deny it, demens de populo dematur. My comfort is, I have more fellows, and those of excellent note. And though I be not so right, or so discreet as I should be, yet not so mad, so bad neither as thou perhaps takest me to be.

To conclude, this being granted, that all the world is melancholy, or mad, dotes, and every member of it, I have ended my task, and sufficiently illustrated that which I took upon me to demonstrate at first. At this present I have no more to say; His sanam mentem Democritus, I can but wish my self, & them a good Physitian, and all of us a better minde.

And although for the abovenamed reasons, I had a just cause to undertake this subject, to point at these particular species of dotage, that so men might acknowledg their imperfections, and seek to reform what is amisse; yet I have a more serious intent at this time; and to omit all impertinent digressions, to say no more of such as are improperly melancholy, or metaphorically mad, lightly mad, or in disposition,

as stupid, angry, drunken, silly, sottish, sullen, proud, vain glorious, ridiculous, beastly, peevish, obstinate, impudent, extravagant, dry, doting, dull, desperate, harebrain, &c. mad, frantick, foolish, hetoroclites, which no new Hospitall can hold, no physick help:

my purpose and endeavor is, in the following discourse to anatomize this humor of melancholy, through all his parts and species, as it is an habit, or an ordinary disease, and that philosophically, medicinally, to shew the causes, symptoms, and severall cures of it, that it may be the better avoyded.

Moved thereunto for the generality of it, and to do good, it being a disease so frequent, as Mercurialis observes, in these our dayes; so often happening, (saith Laurentius, in our miserable times, as few there are that feel not the smart of it. Of the same minde is Ælian Montalus, Melancton, and others;

Julius Cæsar Claudinus cals it the fountain of all other diseases, and so common in this crased age of ours, that scarce one of a thousand is free from it: and that Splenetick Hypocondriacal winde especially, which proceeds from the spleen and short ribs.

Being then it is a disease so grievous, so common, I know not wherein to do a more generall service, and spend my time better, then to prescribe means how to prevent and cure so universall a malady, an Epidemical disease, that so often, so much crucifies the body and minde.

If I have overshot my self in this which hath been hitherto said, or that it is, which I am sure some will object, too phantastical, too light and comicall for a Divine, too satyricall for one of my profession, I will presume to answer with Erasmus, in like case, Tis not I, but Democritus, Democritus dixit:

you must consider what it is to speak in ones own or anothers person, an assumed habit and name; a difference betwixt him that affects or acts a Princes, a Philosophers, a Magistrates, a Fools part, and him that is so indeed; and what liberty those old Satyrists have had, it is a Cento collected from others, not I, but they that say it.

Dixero si quid fortè jocosius, hoc mihi juris Cum veniâ dabis—— Take heed you mistake me not. If I do a little forget my self, I hope you will pardon it. And to say truth, why should any man be offended, or take exceptions at it?

——Licuit, semperque licebit, Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis. It lawfull was of old, and still will be, To speak of vice, but let the name go free: I hate their vices, not their persons.

If any be displeased, or take ought unto himself, let him not expostulate or cavil with him that said it (so did Erasmus excuse himself to Dorpius, si parva licet componere magnis) and so do I, but let him be angry with himself, that so betrayed and opened his own faults in applying it to himself:

If he be guilty and deserve it, let him amend whoever he is, and not be angry. He that hateth correction is a fool, Prov. 12. 1. If he be not guilty, it concerns him not; it is not my freenesse of speech, but a guilty conscience, a gauled back of his own that makes him winch.

Suspitione si quis errabit suâ, Et rapiet ad se, quod erit commune omnium, Stultè nudabit animi conscientiam. I deny not this which I have said savors a little of Democritus; Quamvis ridentem dicere verum quid vetat; one may speak in jest, and yet speak truth.