Its object God; what his beauty is; How it allureth. The parts and parties affected.

That there is such a distinct Species of love Melancholy, no man hath ever yet doubted; but whether this subdivision of Religious Melancholy be warrantable, it may be controverted.

Pergite Pierides, medio nec calle vagantem Linquite me, quà nulla pedum vestigia ducunt, Nulla rotæ currus testantur signa priores.

I have no pattern to follow as in some of the rest, no man to imitate. No Physitian hath as yet distinctly written of it as of the other; all acknowledge it a most notable Symptome, some a cause, but few a species or kinde. Areteus, Alexander, Rhasis, Avicenna, and most of our late writers, as Gordonius, Fuchsius, Plater, Bruel, Montaltus, &c. repeat it as a Symptome.

Some seem to bee inspired of the holy Ghost, some take upon them to bee Prophets, some are addicted to new opinions, some foretell strange things, de statu mundi & Antichristi, saith Gordonius. Some will prophecy 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 Laurentius holds.

If they have been precisely given, all their meditations tend that way, and in conclusion produce strange effects: the humour imprints symptomes according to their several inclinations and conditions, which makes Guianerius and Felix Plater put too much devotion, blinde zeal, fear of eternal punishment, and that last judgement for a cause of those enthusiasticks 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 Neotericks, Hercules de Saxonia lib. 1. pract. med. cap. 16. cap. de Melanch. doth expresly treat of it in a distinct Species.

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 sæpissimè multum fui impeditus; ’tis a frequent disease; and they have a ground of what they say, forth of Areteus and Plato.

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 inspiration or otherwise. Plato in his Phædrus hath these words, Apollo’s Priests in Delphos, and at Dodona, in their fury do many pretty feats, and benefit the Greeks, but never in their right wits. He makes them all mad, as well he might;

and he that shall but consider that superstition of old, those prodigious effects of it (as in its place I will shew the several furies of our Fatidici dii, Pythonissæ, Sibyls, Enthusiasts, Pseudoprophets, Hereticks and Schismaticks in these our latter ages) shall instantly confess, that all the world again cannot afford so much matter of madness, so many stupend symptomes, as superstition, heresie, schisme hath brought out;

that this species alone may be parallel’d to all the former, hath a greater latitude, and more miraculous effects; that it more besots and infatuates men, than any other above named whatsoever, doth more harm, work more disquietness to mankinde, and hath more crucified the souls of mortal men (such hath been the divels craft) than wars, plagues, sicknesses, dearth, famine, and all the rest.

Give me but a little leave, and I will set before your eyes in breif a stupend, vast, infinite Ocean of incredible madness and folly: a sea full of shelves and rocks, sands, gulfes, Euripes and contrary tides, full of fearfull monsters, uncouth shapes, roaring waves, tempests, and Siren calmes, Halcyonian seas; unspeakable misery, such Comædies and Tragedies, such absurd and ridiculous, ferall and lamentable fits, that I know not whether they are more to be pitied or derided, or may bee beleived, but that we daily see the same still practised in our dayes, fresh examples, nova novitia, fresh objects of misery and madness in this kind that are still represented unto us, abroad, at home, in the midst of us, in our bosomes.

But before I can come to treat of these several errours and obliquities, their causes, symptomes, affections, &c. I must say something necessarily of the object of this love, God himself, what this love is, how it allureth, whence it proceeds, and (which is the cause of all our miseries) how we mistake, wander and swerve from it.

Amongst all those divine attributes that God doth vindicate to himself, eternity, omnipotency, immutability, wisdome, majesty, justice, mercy, &c. his beauty is not the least, One thing saith David, have I desired of the Lord, and that I will still desire, to behold the beauty of the Lord, Psal. 27.4. And out of Sion which is the perfection of beauty hath God shined, Psal. 50.2.

All other creatures are fair, I confess, and many other objects do much enamour us, a fair house, a fair horse, a comely person. I am amazed, saith Austin, when I look up to heaven and behold the beauty of the stars, the beauty of Angels, principalities, powers, who can express it? who can sufficiently commend, or set out this beauty which appears in us? so fair a body, so fair a face, eyes, nose, cheeks, chin, brows, all fair and lovely to behold; besides the beauty of the soul which cannot be discerned. If we so labour and be so much affected with the comeliness of creatures, how should we be ravished with that admirable lustre of God himself?