be witty, argue, infer, purfue long chains of confequences, and impart to man that vivacity and fprightfulness of fpirit, and the vafinefs of genius, that difplays itfelf in him.

In a word, if any one is made wifer, but efpecially better by what is here offer'd I have my end.

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THE

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GOVERNMENT

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THOUGHT S.

CHA P. I.

Haded gell the world, in the firft E that defigns to write of Thoughts, place, what he means by the subject of his difcourfe, for this is a vaft argument in the general as wide as the exercife and dominion of all the powers and faculties of the foul, and had need therefore be determined to fome particular kind or fpecies of its operations; for there is no failing to any profit or pleasure in fo wide an ocean, without knowing firft whither you are bound, and what determinate port you fteer for.

I. THEN by Thoughts we do not underftand those motions that pafs in the lower region of the foul, the paffions or affec

tions that are excited in the will, or in the fenfitive appetite, as fome love to speak ; thefe may indeed be touched upon now and then, by the by, but no otherwife. For befides that, it is not my defign here to write a book of Ethicks, as the argument confidered in that latitude would oblige me to do. The paffions or affections are not Thoughts, in propriety of fpeech, but the effects or products of them: Thoughts are the parents, paffions the offspring, for by thinking, reflecting, and the brooding of the upper powers of our fouls, our paffions are form'd and brought forth in us; as the musing on an agreeable object, that we apprehend as prefent, raises in us joy; on one that is yet in expectation, hope, and desire : as, on the contrary, the Thoughts of an object that is difagreeble, creates in us fear, anger, or forrow, according as we conceive it prefent, or in futurity. Nor

II. Do I intend to speak here of all the feveral operations that are transacted in the upper region of the foul, the understanding, as of its fimple perceptions, forming of propofitions, difcuffive, and retaining or recollecting power; the government of the Thoughts, in this acceptation of the word,

would

would oblige me to direct how to form true, and discover false reasonings, which is the province of the Logicians, and would oblige ine to run out into thofe jejune and dry fpeculations, that are improper for practical defign.

I mean then by Thoughts here, neither the paffions, nor yet the reasoning, deliberating, and arguing faculty of the Mind, but that power chiefly, whereby we first of all gaze at, contemplate, mufe upon, and converse with thofe images of things, which our senses, for the most part originally reprefent to our fancies, and our fancies from them, paint forth in our minds. Any man who gives himself the liberty to think, and can make his Understanding the object of its own contemplations, is confcious to himself of these primary interviews of his mind with the objects let into it, and must own them antecedent to, and confequently distinct from, both his paffions and reasonings about them; for a man must first think, or look upon and view the ideas in his mind, before he can be any ways affected with, or argue or deliberate about them; as a man, for inftance, muft first think upon a formidable object, before he fears it, or reasons with himself

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