spirits and substance, and increasing of adust humours; therefore [1301]
Melancthon avers out of Aristotle, as an undoubted truth, _Senes plerunque
delirasse in senecta_, that old men familiarly dote, _ob atram bilem_, for
black choler, which is then superabundant in them: and Rhasis, that Arabian
physician, in his _Cont. lib. 1. cap. 9_, calls it [1302]"a necessary and
inseparable accident," to all old and decrepit persons. After seventy years
(as the Psalmist saith) [1303]"all is trouble and sorrow;" and common
experience confirms the truth of it in weak and old persons, especially
such as have lived in action all their lives, had great employment, much
business, much command, and many servants to oversee, and leave off _ex
abrupto_; as [1304]Charles the Fifth did to King Philip, resign up all on a
sudden; they are overcome with melancholy in an instant: or if they do
continue in such courses, they dote at last, (_senex bis puer_,) and are
not able to manage their estates through common infirmities incident in
their age; full of ache, sorrow and grief, children again, dizzards, they
carl many times as they sit, and talk to themselves, they are angry,
waspish, displeased with every thing, "suspicious of all, wayward,
covetous, hard" (saith Tully,) "self-willed, superstitious, self-conceited,
braggers and admirers of themselves," as [1305]Balthazar Castilio hath
truly noted of them. [1306]This natural infirmity is most eminent in old
women, and such as are poor, solitary, live in most base esteem and
beggary, or such as are witches; insomuch that Wierus, Baptista Porta,
Ulricus Molitor, Edwicus, do refer all that witches are said to do, to
imagination alone, and this humour of melancholy. And whereas it is
controverted, whether they can bewitch cattle to death, ride in the air
upon a cowl-staff out of a chimney-top, transform themselves into cats,
dogs, &c., translate bodies from place to place, meet in companies, and
dance, as they do, or have carnal copulation with the devil, they ascribe
all to this redundant melancholy, which domineers in them, to [1307]
somniferous potions, and natural causes, the devil's policy. _Non laedunt