A10663:443
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.
First then for the Object of our Delight; it is only that which can yield some manner of satisfaction unto our nature, not as it is a corrupt and erring, but as it is an Empty and perfectible nature. Whatsoever then is either Medicinal for the Repairing, or Natural for the Conserving, or any way helpful for the advancing of a Creature, is the only true and allowable object of its Delight. Other pleasures which eat out and undermine Nature, as water which by little & little insensibly consumeth the bank against which it beateth, or as *•vie which seemeth to adorn the Tree unto which it cleaveth, but indeed sucketh out and stealeth away the sap thereof, may haply yield ⟨p. 199⟩some measure of vanishing content to minds, which taste every thing with a corrupted palate; but certainly such sophistical premises can never infer in the conclusion any other than a perfunctory and tottering content. And therefore2 Seneca is bold to find an impropriety in Virgils Epithet, Mala Gaudia, Joys which issue from a polluted fountain; as not having in them that inseparable attribute of absolute Delight; which is to be unvariable. For how can a mind (unless blinded with its own impostures, and entangled in the errors of a mis led affection) receive any nourishing and solid content in that, which is in it self vanishing, and unto its Subject destructive? Whatsoever then may be delighted in, must have some one of the forenamed conditions, tending either to the Restitution of decayed nature,3 to the preservation of entire nature, or to the Perfection of Empty nature. And to the former and •mperfecter sort of these, Aristotle referreth all corporeal and sensitive Pleasures (unto which he4 •herefore granteth a secondary and accidental goodness) which he calleth [Greek or Hebrew] the Medicines of an indigent nature; whereby the defects •hereof are made up, and it self disburdened of hose cares, which for the most part use to follow he want of them.