dictamen rationis, conscience; so that in all there be fourteen species of the understanding, of which some are innate, as the three last mentioned; the other are gotten by doctrine, learning, and use.  Plato will have all to be innate:  Aristotle reckons up but five intellectual habits; two practical, as prudency, whose end is to practise; to fabricate; wisdom to comprehend the use and experiments of all notions and habits whatsoever.  Which division of Aristotle (if it be considered aright) is all one with the precedent; for three being innate, and five acquisite, the rest are improper, imperfect, and in a more strict examination excluded.  Of all these I should more amply dilate, but my subject will not permit.  Three of them I will only point at, as more necessary to my following discourse.

Synteresis, or the purer part of the conscience, is an innate habit, and doth signify “a conversation of the knowledge of the law of God and Nature, to know good or evil.”  And (as our divines hold) it is rather in the understanding than in the will.  This makes the major proposition in a practical syllogism.  The dictamen rationis is that which doth admonish us to do good or evil, and is the minor in the syllogism.  The conscience is that which approves good or evil, justifying or condemning our actions, and is the conclusion of the syllogism:  as in that familiar example of Regulus the Roman, taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, and suffered to go to Rome, on that condition he should return again, or pay so much for his ransom.  The synteresis proposeth the question; his word, oath, promise, is to be religiously kept, although to his enemy, and that by the law of nature. [1014]"Do not that to another which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.”  Dictamen applies it to him, and dictates this or the like:  Regulus, thou wouldst not another man should falsify his oath, or break promise with thee:  conscience concludes, therefore, Regulus, thou dost well to perform thy promise, and oughtest to keep thine oath.  More of this in Religious Melancholy.

SUBSECT.  XI.—­Of the Will.

Will is the other power of the rational soul, [1015]"which covets or avoids such things as have been before judged and apprehended by the understanding.”  If good, it approves; if evil, it abhors it:  so that his object is either good or evil.  Aristotle calls this our rational appetite; for as, in the sensitive, we are moved to good or bad by our appetite, ruled and directed by sense; so in this we are carried by reason.  Besides, the sensitive appetite hath a particular object, good or bad; this an universal, immaterial:  that respects only things delectable and pleasant; this honest.  Again, they differ in liberty.  The sensual appetite seeing an object, if it be a convenient good, cannot but desire it; if evil, avoid it:  but this is free in his essence, [1016]"much now depraved, obscured, and fallen from his first perfection; yet in some of his operations