A10663:66
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.
Now, the liberty of the Imagination in this particular, is three-sold; Creation, as I may so speak, and n•w making of Objects; Composition, or new mixing them; and Translation, or new placing them: unto some of which three, will be reduced all Poetical Fictions, fabulous Transmutations, high Metaphors, and Rhetorical Allegories; things of excellent use, and ornament in speech.
Now, the libertie of the Imagination in this particular, is three-sold; Creation, as I may so speake, and n•w making of Objects; Composition, or new mixing them; and Translation, or new placing them: unto some of which three, will be reduced all Poeticall Fictions, fabulous Transmutations, high Metaphors, and Rhetoricall Allegories; things of excellent use, and ornament in speech.
Now, for the Corruptions and Diseases of this Faculty, I conceive the principal to be1 these three, Error, Levity, and dull fixedness: The Error of the Imagination may be taken both actively, and passively; the Error which it produceth, and the Error which it suffereth: That the Fancy is fruitful in producing Error, is as manifest, as it is difficult to show the manner how it doth it. Hence, those strange and yet strong delusions, whereby the Mind of melancholy men (in whom this Faculty hath the most deep and piercing operation) have been peremptorily possessed: Hence, those vanishing and shadowy Assurances, Hopes, Fears, Joys, Visions, which the Dreams of men (the immediate issues of this Faculty) do produce: Hence those ghastly Apparitions, dreadful Sounds, black Thoughts, Tremblings, and Horrors, which the strong working of Imagination doth present unto, or produce in men; disquieted either with the ugliness of their Sins, or heaviness of their Natures, making them to fear, where no fear is: which, whether it be done by affecting only the Fancy, or by the impression of such forms and shapes upon the Spirits, which go unto the outward senses, as may thereby affect them with the same Images (not by reception from without, but by impression and transfusion from within) it is manifest, not only by various relations, but by continual experience, what strong and strange effects those distempers have produced.