If you shall at any time see (saith Guatinerius) a Religious person over superstitious, too solitary or much given to fasting, that man will certainly be melancholy, thou maist boldly say it, he will be so. P. Forestus hath almost the same words, and Cardan subtil. lib.18. & cap.40.lib.8. de rerum varietate, solitariness, fasting, and that melancholy humour, are the causes of all Hermites illusions.

Lavater, de spect.cap.19.part.1. and part.1.cap.10. puts solitariness a main cause of such spectrums and apparitions; none, saith he, so melancholy as Monkes and Hermites, the divels bath melancholy, none so subject to visions and dotage in this kinde, as such as live solitary lives, they hear and act strange things in their dotage.

Polydore Virgil lib.2. de prodigiis, holds that those prophesies and Monkes revelations, Nunnes dreams, which they suppose come from God, do proceed wholly ab instinctu dæmonum, by the Divels means: and so those Enthusiasts, Anabaptists, pseudo-Prophets from the same cause.

Fracastorius lib.2. de intellect. will have all your Pythonisses, Sibyls, and pseudo-prophets to be meer melancholy: so doth Wierus prove, lib.1.cap.8. & l.3.cap.7. and Arculanus in 9. Rhasis, that melancholy is a sole cause, and the Divell together, with fasting and solitariness, of such Sibylline prophesies, if there were ever such, which with Casaubon and others I justly except at;

for it is not likely that the Spirit of God should ever reveal such manifest revelations and predictions of Christ, to those Pythonissæ, witches, Apollo’s priests, the Divels ministers, (they were no better) and conceal them from his own prophets: for these Sibyls set down all particular circumstances of Christs coming, and many other future accidents far more perspicuous and plain than ever any prophet did.

But howsoever there be no Phœbades or Sibyls, I am assured there be other Enthusiasts, prophets, dii Fatidici, Magi, (of which read Io. Boissardus, who hath laboriously collected them into a great volume of late, with elegant pictures, and epitomized their lives) &c. ever have been in all ages, and still proceeding from those causes, qui visiones suas enarrant, somniant futura, prophetisant, & ejusmodi deliriis agitati, Spiritum Sanctum sibi communicari putant.

That which is written of Saint Francis five wounds, and other such monasticall effects, of him and others, may justly be referred to this our Melancholy; and that which Matthew Paris relates of the Monk of Evesham, who saw heaven and hell in a vision; of Sir Owen, that went down into Saint Patrickes purgatory in King Stephens dayes, and saw as much: Walsingham of him that was shewed as much by Saint Julian.

Beda lib.5.cap.13.14.15. & 20. reports of King Sebba, lib.4.cap.11. eccles. hist. that saw strange visions; and Stumphius Helvet. Cornic. a cobler of Basil, 1520 that beheld rare apparitions at Ausborough in Germany.

Alexander ab Alexandro, gen. dier. lib.6.cap.21. of an Enthusiasticall prisoner, (all out as probable as that of Eris Armenius, in Plato’s tenth dialogue de Repub. that revived again ten dayes after he was killed in a battell, and told strange wonders, like those tales Ulysses related to Alcinous in Homer, or Lucians vera historia it self) was still after much solitariness, fasting, or long sickness, when their brains were addle, and their bellies as empty of meat as their heads of wit.

Florilegus hath many such examples, fol.191. one of Saint Gultlake of Crowalde that fought with Divels, but still after long fasting, overmuch solitariness, the Divell perswaded him therefore to fast, as Moses and Elias did, the better to delude him.

In the same Authour is recorded Carolus Magnus vision An.185. or extasis, wherein he saw heaven and hell after much fasting and meditation. So did the Divell of old with Apollos priests, Amphiaraus and his fellowes, those Ægyptians,

still enjoyn long fasting before he would give any Oracles, triduum à cibo & vino abstinere, before they gave any answers, as Volateran lib.13.cap.4. records, and Strabo Geog. lib.14. describes Charons den, in the way betwixt Tralles and Nissum, whither the Priests led sick and fanaticke men: but nothing performed without long fasting, no good to be done.

That scoffing Lucian conducts his Menippus to hell by the directions of that Chaldean Mithrobarzanes, but after long fasting, and such like idle preparation.

Which the Jesuites right well perceiving of what force this fasting and solitary meditation is, to alter mens minds, when they would make a man mad, ravish him, improve him beyond himself, to undertake some great business of moment, to kill a King, or the like, they bring him into a melancholy dark chamber, where he shall see no light for many dayes together; no company, little meat, gastly pictures of Divels all about him,

and leave him to lie as he will himself, on the bare floor in this chamber of meditation, as they call it, on his back, side, belly, till by this strange usage they make him quite mad and beside himself. And then after some ten dayes, as they find him animated and resolved, they make use of him. The Divell hath many such factours, many such engines, which what effect they produce, you shall hear in these following Symptomes.