A10663:352
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…
A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soul of man With the several dignities and corruptions thereunto belonging. By Edward Reynolds, late preacher to the honourable society of Lincoln's Inn: and now rector of the Church of Braunston in Northamptonshire.A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soule of man With the severall dignities and corruptions thereunto belonging. By Edvvard Reynoldes, late preacher to the honorable society of Lincoln's Inne: and now rector of the Church of Braunston in Northamptonshire.
London: printed by R. Hearne and John Norton for Robert Bostock, 1640
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
And besides cruelty doth usually proceed from cowardice, as Amianus Marcellinus hath observed, and fearful men, when they have any advantage to be cruel, do seldom hold any measure therein, as being ever in doubt, if they leave ⟨p. 152⟩any fire unquenched, that themselves shall be burned with it. And therefore we never read of any Emperors, which were more cruel, than those who were most fearful and effeminate, as1 Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Commodus, &c. As they say that wounded beasts, when they die, bite hardest;2 their fear and despair making them furious: So there is no wrath or Cruelty to that which proceeds from weakness, when it hath either jealousy, or advantage, or despair to set it on. Yea, so violent it is, that it hath transported men unto profaneness, and made them violate Nature and Religion. As we see in the cruelty of Tiberius towards the family of Sejanus, who, because3 it was an unheard and prodigious thing for4 a little tender virgin to be strangled, gave command that the daughter of that late Favourite, should first be deflowered, that so she might be the fitter to be slain. And Boniface the eighth5 Pope of that name being, according to the Ceremony of that Church, on Ash-wednesday to sprinkle ashes on the heads of such Bishops, as kneeled at his feet, and in some serious manner to mind them of their mortalities; when Prochetus Bishop of Genua, whom he bitterly hated, tendered himself at his fees to receive this Ceremony, he threw the Ashes in his eyes, with this benediction, A Ghibelline thou art, and as a Ghibelline thou shalt die: so powerful was his malice to profane the rites of his religion! Yea, so far will hatred proceed in this desperate contempt of God, that, if we may believe so prodigious a villainy, ⟨p. 153⟩it hath sometimes turned the very cup of the Lord into a Cup of poison: as it is reported of Pope Victor the third, that he was poisoned in the