dreams, &c.

Symptoms of nuns, maids, and widows melancholy, in body and mind, &c.
[_Subs. 4_]

A reason of these symptoms. _Memb. 3._

Why they are so fearful, sad, suspicious without a cause, why
solitary, why melancholy men are witty, why they suppose they hear
and see strange voices, visions, apparitions.

Why they prophesy, and speak strange languages; whence comes their
crudity, rumbling, convulsions, cold sweat, heaviness of heart,
palpitation, cardiaca, fearful dreams, much waking, prodigious
fantasies.

C. Prognostics of melancholy. _Sect. 4._

Tending to good, as
Morphew, scabs, itch, breaking out, &c.
Black jaundice.
If the hemorrhoids voluntarily open.
If varices appear.

Tending to evil, as
Leanness, dryness, hollow-eyed, &c.
Inveterate melancholy is incurable.
If cold, it degenerates often into epilepsy, apoplexy, dotage, or
into blindness.
If hot, into madness, despair, and violent death.

Corollaries and questions.
The grievousness of this above all other diseases.
The diseases of the mind are more grievous than those of the body.
Whether it be lawful, in this case of melancholy, for a man to offer
violence to himself. _Neg._
How a melancholy or mad man offering violence to himself, is to be
censured.

THE FIRST PARTITION.

THE FIRST SECTION, MEMBER, SUBSECTION.
_Man's Excellency, Fall, Miseries, Infirmities; The causes of them_.

_Man's Excellency_.] Man the most excellent and noble creature of the
world, "the principal and mighty work of God, wonder of Nature," as
Zoroaster calls him; _audacis naturae miraculum_, "the [820]marvel of
marvels," as Plato; "the [821]abridgment and epitome of the world," as
Pliny; _microcosmus_, a little world, a model of the world, [822]sovereign
lord of the earth, viceroy of the world, sole commander and governor of all
the creatures in it; to whose empire they are subject in particular, and
yield obedience; far surpassing all the rest, not in body only, but in
soul; [823]_imaginis imago_, [824]created to God's own [825]image, to that
immortal and incorporeal substance, with all the faculties and powers
belonging unto it; was at first pure, divine, perfect, happy, [826]
"created after God in true holiness and righteousness;" _Deo congruens_,
free from all manner of infirmities, and put