MEMB. 3. Whether it be lawfull to seek to Saints for aide in this disease.

That we must pray to God, no man doubts: but whether we should pray to Saints in such cases, or whether they can do us any good, it may be lawfully controverted. Whether their images, shrines, Reliques, consecrated things, holy water, medals, benedictions, those divine amulets, holy exorcismes, and the signe of the crosse be availeable in this disease.

The papists one the on side stifly maintaine, how many melancholy, mad, dæmoniacall persons are daily cured at St. Anthonies Church in Padua, at St. Vitus in Germany, by our Lady of Lauretta in Italy, our Lady of Sichem in the Low Countries: Quæ & cæcis lumen, ægris salutem, mortuis vitam, claudis gressum reddit, omnes morbos corporis, animi, curat, & in ipsos dæmones imperium exercet; she cures halt, lame, blinde, all diseases of body and minde, and commands the devil himself, saith Lipsius.

25000 in a day come thither, quis nisi numen in illum locum sic induxit? who brought them? in auribus, in oculis omnium gesta, nova novitia; New news lately done, our eyes and ears are full of her cures, and who can relate them all?

They have a proper Saint almost for every peculiar infirmity, for poyson, gouts, agues, Petronella: St Romanus for such as are possessed: Valentinæ for the falling sickness; St Vitus for mad men, &c. And as of old Pliny reckons up Gods for all diseases, (Febri fanum dicatum est) Lilius Giraldus repeats many of her ceremonies:

all affections of the mind were heretofore accounted gods, Love, & Sorrow, Vertue, Honor, Liberty, Contumely, Impudency, had their Temples, Tempests, Seasons, Crepitus Ventris, dea Vucuna, dea Cloacina, there was a goddess of idleness, a goddess of the draught, or jakes, Premâ, Premunda, Priapus, bawdy gods, and gods for all offices.

Varro reckons up 30000 gods; Lucian makes Podagra the gout a goddess, and assignes her priests and ministers: and melancholy comes not behind; for as Austin mentioneth lib. 4. de Civit. Dei, cap. 9. there was of old Angerona dea, and she had her Chappell and Feasts, to whom (saith Macrobius) they did offer sacrifice yearly, that she might be pacified as well as the rest.

’Tis no new thing, you see this of Papists; and in my judgment, that old doting Lipsius, might have fitter dedicated his pen after all his labours, to this our goddess of Melancholy, then to his Virgo Halensis, and been her Chaplain, it would have becomed him better:

But he, poor man, thought no harme in that which he did, and will not be persuaded but that he doth well, he hath so many patrons, and honorable precedents in the like kinde, that justifie as much, as largely, and more then he there saith of his Lady and Mistress:

read but superstitious Coster and Gretsers Tract de Cruce. Laur. Arcturus Fanteus de Invoc. Sanct. Bellarmine, Delrio dis. mag. Tom. 3. l. 6. quæst. 2. sect 3. Greg. Tolosanus Tom. 2. lib. 8. cap. 24. Syntax. Strozius Cicogna lib. 4. cap. 9. Tyreus, Hieronymus Mengus, and you shall finde infinite examples of cures done in this kinde, by holy waters, reliques, crosses, exorcismes, amulets, images, consecrated beads, &c.

Barradius the Jesuite, boldly gives it out, that Christs countenance, and the virgin Maries, would cure melancholy, if one had looked steadfastly on them. P. Morales the Spaniard in his book de pulch. Jes. & Mar. confirms the same out of Carthusianus, and I know not whom, that it was a common proverb in those daies, for such as were troubled in minde to say, Eamus ad videndum filium Mariæ, let us see the son of Mary, as they do now, post to St. Anthonies in Padua, or to St. Hillaries at Poictiers in France.

In a closet of that church, there is at this day St. Hillaries bed to be seen, to which thy bring all the mad men in the country, and after some prayers, and other ceremonies, they lay them down there to sleep, and so they recover. It is an ordinary thing in those parts, to send all their mad men to S. Hillaries cradle. They say the like of S. Tubery in another place.

Giraldus Cambrensis Itin. Camb. c. 1. tells strange stories of S. Ciricus staffe, that would cure this, & all other diseases. Others say as much (as Hospinian observes) of the three kings of Colen: their names written in parchment, and hung about a patients neck, with the signe of the crosse, will produce like effects.

Read Lipomannus, or that golden legend of Jacobus de Voragine, you shall have infinite stories, or of these new relations of our Jesuits in Iapona and China, of Mat. Riccius, Acosta, Loiola, Xaverius life &c. Iasper Belga a Jesuit, cured a mad woman by hanging S. Johns Gospel about her necke, and many such: Holy-water did as much in Iapona, &c. Nothing so familiar in their works, as such examples.

But we on the other side, seeke to God alone. We say with David, Ps. 46.1. God is our hope and strength, and helpe in trouble, ready to be found. For their catalogue of examples, we make no other answer, but that they are false fictions, or diabolicall illusions, counterfeit miracles.

We cannot deny but that it is an ordinary thing on S. Anthonies day in Padua, to bring divers mad men and dæmonicall persons to be cured: yet we make a doubt whether such parties be so affected indeed, but prepared by their priests, by certain oyntments and drams, to cosen the commonalty, as Heldeheim well saith; the like is commonly practised in Bohemia as Mathiolus gives us to understand in his preface to his comment upon Dioscorides.

But we need not run so far for examples in this kinde, we have a just volume published at home to this purpose. A declaration of Egregious popish impostures, to with-draw the hearts of religious men under pretence of casting out of devils, practised by Father Edmunds, alias Weston a Jesuite, and divers Romish priests his wicked associates, with the severall parties names, confessions, examinations, &c. which were pretended to be possessed. But these ordinary tricks only to get opinion and mony, mere impostures.