A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soul of man With the…A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soule of man With the…

He wept indeed, but in his stable mind You could no shakings or distempers find.

^bAnd therefore indeed, this Controversy between the Peripatetics and Stoics, was rather a strife of Words, than a difference of Judgements, because they did not agree in the Subject of the Question; the one, making Passions to be Natural; the other, ^cPreternatural, and disorderly motions. For the Peripatetics confessed, That wise men ought to be fixed & immovable in their virtuous resolutions, and not to be at all by hopes or fears ⟨p. 50⟩^adeterred or diverted from them: but as a Dye, to be ^bfour-square; and which way ever they be cast, to fall upon a sure & firm bottom. Which is the same with that severe and unmovable constancy of Mind in Virtue, in defence whereof the Stoics banished Affections from wise men: not intending thereby to make men like ^cCaeneus in the Poet, such as could not be violated with any source, (for they acknowledge subjection to the first motions of Passion) but only to show, that they wisdom of Virtue should so compose & consolidate the Mind, and settle it in such stability, that it should not all be bended from the Right, by any sensitive perturbations or impulsions. As they then who pull down houses adjoining unto Temples, ⁶do yet suffer that part of them to stand still, which are continued to the Temple: so in the demolishing of inordinate Passions, we must take heed, that we offer not violence to so much of them, as is contiguous unto Right Reason; whereunto so long as they are conformable, they are the most vigorous instruments, both for the expression, and improvement, and derivation of Virtue on others, of any in Mans Nature.