TIIE DOCTRINE OF THE PASSIONS,. SUCTION LThe various Senses ofthe Word. THE word passion, in the abstracted and logical sense of it, denotes the receiving of the action of some agent : As if an archer bend his bow, the archer is the agent ; the bow is the pa- ',dent the bending, as it comes from the archer, is the action ; 'but as it terminates in the bow, it is called the passion. But this is entirely a philosophical sense of the word, and never used in common life therefore I dismiss it. Yet we may just take notice, that the term passion sometimes signifies any painfulsuffer- ing of soul and body : For, it is in this sense we use it, when we ,speak of the passion of Christ, whereby we' mean his agony in the garden, and especially his death on the cross ; and so it is used in our translation of thebible ; Acts i. 3. He skewedhimself alive after his passion. Passions, in this discourse, signify the same with natural affections in general, such as love, hatred, joy, hope, anger, .sor- row, &c. Here wemay observe, that the term passion is often used in conversation in a more limited sense, to denote one of these particular affections, viz. anger or sudden resentment; as the word affection is used sometimes also in a limited sense, and signifies love. 'So we say, Moses was once in a passion, whereby we mean he was angry ; or Jonah was a passionate man, that is, he was given tosudden and violent resentments : And, in the samemanner, we say, David had an affection for Jonathan, that is, he loved him : Or St. John was a very affec- tionate man, that is, he was of a loving and kind disposition. 'But in this discourse we take passion and affection to mean the same thing, and to extend to any of these powers or principles in human nature, which we just mentioned; such as love, joy, &c. The name of passion seems to have been given originally to these affections ofhuman nature, either from the impressions or commotions which the animal powers receive by the soul's percep- tion of that object which raises the passion, or from-the impres- sion or sensation which the soul receives by this commotionof the animal powers, or perhaps from both these, as this subject will be afterward explained.
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