“At melius fuerat non scribere, namque tacere
Tutum semper erit,”------[162]

’Tis a general fault, so Severinus the Dane complains [163]in physic, “unhappy men as we are, we spend our days in unprofitable questions and disputations,” intricate subtleties, de lana caprina about moonshine in the water, “leaving in the mean time those chiefest treasures of nature untouched, wherein the best medicines for all manner of diseases are to be found, and do not only neglect them ourselves, but hinder, condemn, forbid, and scoff at others, that are willing to inquire after them.”  These motives at this present have induced me to make choice of this medicinal subject.

If any physician in the mean time shall infer, Ne sutor ultra crepidam, and find himself grieved that I have intruded into his profession, I will tell him in brief, I do not otherwise by them, than they do by us.  If it be for their advantage, I know many of their sect which have taken orders, in hope of a benefice, ’tis a common transition, and why may not a melancholy divine, that can get nothing but by simony, profess physic?  Drusianus an Italian (Crusianus, but corruptly, Trithemius calls him) [164]"because he was not fortunate in his practice, forsook his profession, and writ afterwards in divinity.”  Marcilius Ficinus was semel et simul; a priest and a physician at once, and [165]T.  Linacer in his old age took orders.  The Jesuits profess both at this time, divers of them permissu superiorum, chirurgeons, panders, bawds, and midwives, &c.  Many poor country-vicars, for want of other means, are driven to their shifts; to turn mountebanks, quacksalvers, empirics, and if our greedy patrons hold us to such hard conditions, as commonly they do, they will make most of us work at some trade, as Paul did, at last turn taskers, maltsters, costermongers, graziers, sell ale as some have done, or worse.  Howsoever in undertaking this task, I hope I shall commit no great error or indecorum, if all be considered aright, I can vindicate myself with Georgius Braunus, and Hieronymus Hemingius, those two learned divines; who (to borrow a line or two of mine [166]elder brother) drawn by a “natural love, the one of pictures and maps, prospectives and chorographical delights, writ that ample theatre of cities; the other to the study of genealogies, penned theatrum genealogicum.”  Or else I can excuse my studies with [167]Lessius the Jesuit in like case.  It is a disease of the soul on which I am to treat, and as much appertaining to a divine as to a physician, and who knows not what an agreement there is betwixt these two professions?  A good divine either is or ought to be a good physician, a spiritual physician at least, as our Saviour calls himself, and was indeed, Mat. iv. 23; Luke, v. 18; Luke, vii. 8.  They differ but in object, the one of the body, the other of the soul, and use divers medicines to cure; one amends animam per corpus,