must be, and it shall be, contra gentes, he will have it so. But most especially in passions and affections, it shows strange and evident effects: what will not a fearful man conceive in the dark? What strange forms of bugbears, devils, witches, goblins? Lavater imputes the greatest cause of spectrums, and the like apparitions, to fear, which above all other passions begets the strongest imagination (saith [1607]Wierus), and so likewise love, sorrow, joy, &c. Some die suddenly, as she that saw her son come from the battle at Cannae, &c. Jacob the patriarch, by force of imagination, made speckled lambs, laying speckled rods before his sheep. Persina, that Ethiopian queen in Heliodorus, by seeing the picture of Persius and Andromeda, instead of a blackamoor, was brought to bed of a fair white child. In imitation of whom belike, a hard-favoured fellow in Greece, because he and his wife were both deformed, to get a good brood of children, Elegantissimas imagines in thalamo collocavit, &c. hung the fairest pictures he could buy for money in his chamber, That his wife by frequent sight of them, might conceive and bear such children. And if we may believe Bale, one of Pope Nicholas the Third's concubines by seeing of [1608]a bear was brought to bed of a monster. If a woman (saith [1609] Lemnius), at the time of her conception think of another man present or absent, the child will be like him. Great-bellied women, when they long, yield us prodigious examples in this kind, as moles, warts, scars, harelips, monsters, especially caused in their children by force of a depraved phantasy in them: Ipsam speciem quam animo effigiat, faetui inducit: She imprints that stamp upon her child which she [1610]conceives unto herself. And therefore Lodovicus Vives, lib. 2. de Christ, faem., gives a special caution to great-bellied women, [1611]that they do not admit such absurd conceits and cogitations, but by all means avoid those horrible objects, heard or seen, or filthy spectacles. Some will laugh, weep, sigh, groan, blush, tremble, sweat, at such things as are suggested unto them by their imagination. Avicenna speaks of one that could cast himself into a palsy when he list; and some can imitate the tunes of birds and beasts that they can hardly be discerned: Dagebertus' and Saint Francis' scars and wounds, like those of Christ's (if at the least any such were), [1612]Agrippa supposeth to have happened by force of imagination: that some are turned to wolves, from men to women, and women again to men (which is constantly believed) to the same imagination; or from men to asses, dogs, or any other shapes. [1613]Wierus ascribes all those famous transformations to imagination; that in hydrophobia they seem to see the picture of a dog, still in their water, [1614]that melancholy men and sick men conceive so many fantastical visions, apparitions to themselves, and have such absurd apparitions, as that they are kings, lords, cocks, bears, apes, owls;