and thereby interrupteth the course of the more needful and present operation of the soul. For since it may fall out, that unto the same faculty, from diversity of occasions, contrary operations may prove arguments of worth; a restraint unto one manner of working, is an argument of weakness and defect, in that it straiteneth and defraudeth the power of those advantages, which it might receive by a timely application of the other. There may be a time, when the fancy may have a liberty to expatiate; but again, some object will require a more fixed and permanent act. And therefore, to have a vanishing and lightening fancy, that knoweth not how to stay and fasten upon any particular, but, as a hanging of divers colours shall, in one view, present unto the understanding a heap of species, and so distracts its intention, argues not sufficiency, but weakness and distemper in this faculty.

The last corruption observed, is in the other extreme; I mean, that heaviness and sluggish fixedness, whereby it is disabled from being serviceable to the understanding, in those actions which require despatch, variety, and suddenness of execution. From which peremptory adhesion, and too violent intention of the fancy on some particular objects, doth many times arise not only a dulness of mind, a syncope, and kind of benumbedness of the soul, but oftentimes madness, distraction, and torment: many examples of which kind of depravation of the phantasy in melancholy men, we every where meet withal'; some thinking themselves turned into wolves, horses, or other beasts; others pleasing themselves with conceits of great wealth and principalities; some framing to themselves fears, and others hopes; being all but the delusions and waking dreams of a distempered fancy.

"His ego sæpe lupum fieri, et se condere silvis
Morin, sæpe animas imis excire sepulcris,

Atque satas alio vidi traducere messes."

Here often have I seen this Moris work
Himself into a wolf, and in woods lurk ;

y Arist. Prob. Sect. 29.

z Lucian, in Lucio sive Asino. Apul. in Asino. Plin. 1. 7. c. 22. Olav. Magnus de Region. Septentrion. 1. 18. c. 45, 46, 47. Wierus de Præstig. 1. 3. c. 21. Thrasylaus omnes, ad littus Pyræum appellentes, naves suas credidit; apud Athen..

Oft have I seen him raise up ghosts from hell,

And growing corn translate by magic spell.-Virg. Eclog. 8. And upon this over-strong working and stay of the fancy upon some one or other object, it hath oftentimes come to pass, that some men, out of depth of contemplation on some difficulties of learning, (as is reported of Aristotle, in his meditation on the cause of the ebbing and flowing of the sea) others, out of some strong and predominant passion, as love, fear, despair, drawing all the intention of the mind unto them,-have attempted such strange practises on themselves and others, as could not proceed but from a smothered and entangled reason. And thus much briefly shall suffice, touching the honour of man's common and inferior faculties.

CHAP. V.

Of Passions, their nature, and distribution; of the motions of natural creatures guided by a knowledge without them; and of rational creatures, guided by a knowledge within them : of passions mental, sensitive, and rational.

I Now proceed unto the soul of man: of which I must speak in a double reference, either according to its motions and impressions which it makes on the body, and receiveth from it; or according to those more eminent perfections which it hath within itself. Under the former of these, come to be considered the passions of man's mind, with the more notable perfections and corruptions (as far as my weakness can discover) which the soul and body contracteth from them.

Passions are nothing else, but those natural, perfective, and unstrained motions of the creatures unto that advancement of their natures, which they are, by the wisdom, power, and providence of their Creator, in their own several spheres, and according to the proportion of their capacities, ordained to receive, by a regular inclination to those objects, whose goodness beareth a natural convenience or virtue of satisfaction unto them;-or by an antipathy and aversation from those, which bearing a contrariety to the good they desire, must needs be noxious and destructive, and, by consequent,

odious to their natures. This being the property of all unconstrained self-motions, it followeth, that the root and ground of all passions, is principally the good; and secondarily, or by consequent, the evil of things: as one beareth with it rationem convenientiæ,' a quieting and satisfactory, -the other, rationem disconvenientiæ,' a disturbing and destroying, nature.

This being premised touching the nature and general essence of passions, the division of them must be thereon grounded: because (as philosophy teacheth us) faculties and operations receive their essential distinctions from their objects and those several respects, wherewith they, in order to the faculty, are qualified. Now since all appetite (being a blind power) is dependent upon the direction of some knowledge, from the diversity of knowledge in or annexed unto things, may be gathered the prime distinction of passions.

Knowledge, in respect of created agents, may be considered either as disjoined and extrinsecal to the things moved, or as intrinsecal and united thereunto; both which serve as a law and rule, to regulate the inclinations of each nature, that they might not swerve into disordered and confused, or into idle and vain motions; but might ever work towards that due end, which God hath appointed them to move unto.

Passions which proceed from knowledge severed and extrinsecal, are those motions of merely natural agents, which are guided to their general or particular ends, by the wisdom and power of him that made them. And this it is which causeth that peremptory and uniform order, observed by these kind of agents in their natural course, never either swerving or desisting therefrom, so far as the condition of the matter and subject whereon they work permitteth them; because they are all governed by an immutable, most wise, and most constant law, proceeding from a will, with which there is no variableness nor shadow of changing. And therefore we find those aberrations and irregularities of nature, wherein it swerveth from this law only, or at least, principally, in these inferior things; wherein, partly, from the deficiency and languishing of secondary agents, and, partly, from the excesses, defects, mutability, and the like exigencies

of matter, we find sundry times error and enormity in their several works and ends. Which, whether it be to set forth the beauty of regular operations, which, by deformity and confusion, will appear more beautiful;—or whether the original thereof be divine malediction, which, for the sin of man, he pleaseth to lay upon his fellow-creatures, which were all created for his comfort and service, (which Saint Paul calleth the vanity of the creature') it proceedeth certainly from the will and power of that law-giver, (who is only able) for reasons best known to his own wisdom, to dispense sometimes with that otherwise unalterable law, which he gave all his creatures to observe. So that all the miracles which ever God hath been pleased to work, for the conversion of men unto the faith, or confirmation in it, were but so many exceptions and dispensations from that general law.

But, as I said, those irregularities and deviations, before spoken of, are seen principally in inferior things. The faith, being the principal creature that did bear the curse of man's fall, which made (if we will believe that relation, though I rather suppose it to be fictitious) the heathen philosopher, upon observation of that wonderful eclipse of the sun at the passion of our Saviour, to cry out, "Aut Deus naturæ patitur, aut mundi machina dissolvetur;" either the God of nature suffereth, or the frame of nature dissolveth; either something hindereth that universal power, which sustaineth and animateth all the creatures; or he doth at least willingly detain that virtue and the vigour of that law, without execution whereof, there cannot but follow a laxation of the whole frame-which particular I have the rather observed, to note, that the more raised and heavenly a nature is, the more stable and constant likewise it is, to every divine law imposed on it.

Now this natural passion which I speak of, is called by sundry names amongst philosophers, "the law, the equity, the weight, the instinct, the bond, the love, the covenant and league of natural things," in order to the conservation of themselves, propagation of their kind, perfection, and order of the universe, service of man, and glory of the Creator: which are the alone ends of all natural agents.

By all which we are given to understand, that when, at

any time, the ordinary course of nature is intermitted, when any creature forsakes its native motion, and falleth into confusion and disorder; there is then admitted a breach of a law; or as Aristotle calls it, auaprla, an error,' which, Saint John telleth us, is avoμía, 'an iniquity' of nature; also a certain levity, unusefulness, and emptiness of true worth, which I call, in Saint Paul's phrase, the vanity of the creature:' Thirdly, looseness, decay, and dissolution; and thereupon discord and unserviceableness towards the other parts, with which it should jointly conspire for the glory of the whole.

These are the inconveniences that follow nature's; how much greater are those which follow reason's, disobedience! For all this, touching the passions of nature, I have observed only to give light unto those of reason; there being the same proportion of government in them all; saving that, what in things destitute of all knowledge, is guided by the law-giver himself, is, in the rest, performed by a knowledge conjoined, and intrinsecal to the worker. And this is either mental, or sensitive, or rational; from all which, arise sundry degrees of motions or passions. Mental passions are those high, pure, and abstracted delights, or other the like agitations of the supreme part of the understanding, which Aristotle calleth Nous,-the Latins,' mens,' or 'apex animæ ;' which are most simple actions of the mind, wherein is the least intermixion or commerce with inferior and earthly faculties. Which motions are grounded first on an extraordinary knowledge, either of vision and revelation, or of an exquisite natural apprehension; both which are beyond the compass of usual industry, here to attain unto. The former of these, I call with the schoolmen, 'extasy' and rapture;' such as St. Paul's was, (for so himself calleth it) "novi hominem raptum :" and such as were the passions of the mind, in the prophets and holy men of God; when they were inspired with such heavenly revelations, as did slide into the soul with that lustre and abundance of light, that they could not but be ravished with ineffable and glorious delight. And such, no doubt, is that "joy unspeakable, and peace past understanding," which the apostle makes to be the fruit of the Spirit of God,' in those hearts, wherein he lodgeth,— whereby the purest and most abstracted part of the soul, the mind, is lifted up to some glimpses and apprehensions of