of diverse others that had conference with angels, were saints, prophets.  Wierus, lib. 3. de Lamiis c. 7. makes mention of a prophet of Groning that said he was God the Father; of an Italian and Spanish prophet that held as much.  We need not rove so far abroad, we have familiar examples at home:  Hackett that said he was Christ; Coppinger and Arthington his disciples; [6589]Burchet and Hovatus, burned at Norwich.  We are never likely seven years together without some such new prophets that have several inspirations, some to convert the Jews, some fast forty days, go with Daniel to the lion’s den; some foretell strange things, some for one thing, some for another.  Great precisians of mean conditions and very illiterate, most part by a preposterous zeal, fasting, meditation, melancholy, are brought into those gross errors and inconveniences.  Of those men I may conclude generally, that howsoever they may seem to be discreet, and men of understanding in other matters, discourse well, laesam habent imaginationem, they are like comets, round in all places but where they blaze, caetera sani, they have impregnable wits many of them, and discreet otherwise, but in this their madness and folly breaks out beyond measure, in infinitum erumpit stultitia. They are certainly far gone with melancholy, if not quite mad, and have more need of physic than many a man that keeps his bed, more need of hellebore than those that are in Bedlam.

SUBSECT.  IV.—­Prognostics of Religious Melancholy.

You may guess at the prognostics by the symptoms.  What can these signs fore tell otherwise than folly, dotage, madness, gross ignorance, despair, obstinacy, a reprobate sense, [6590]a bad end?  What else can superstition, heresy produce, but wars, tumults, uproars, torture of souls, and despair, a desolate land, as Jeremy teacheth, cap. vii. 34. when they commit idolatry, and walk after their own ways? how should it be otherwise with them? what can they expect but “blasting, famine, dearth,” and all the plagues of Egypt, as Amos denounceth, cap. iv. vers. 9. 10. to be led into captivity?  If our hopes be frustrate, “we sow much and bring in little, eat and have not enough, drink and are not filled, clothe and be not warm,” &c.  Haggai i. 6. “we look for much and it comes to little, whence is it?  His house was waste, they came to their own houses,” vers. 9. “therefore the heaven stayed his dew, the earth his fruit.”  Because we are superstitious, irreligious, we do not serve God as we ought, all these plagues and miseries come upon us; what can we look for else but mutual wars, slaughters, fearful ends in this life, and in the life to come eternal damnation?  What is it that hath caused so many feral battles to be fought, so much Christian blood shed, but superstition!  That Spanish inquisition, racks, wheels, tortures, torments, whence do they proceed? from superstition.  Bodine the Frenchman, in his [6591]_method. hist._