a violent passion of the mind, consisting in a propensity to take vengeance on the author of some real or supposed injury done the offended party.

Anger is either deliberative or instinctive; and the latter kind is rash and ungovernable, because it operates blindly, without affording time for deliberation or foresight. Bishop Butler very justly observes, that anger is far from being a selfish passion, since it is naturally excited by injuries offered to others as well as to ourselves; and was designed by the Author of nature not only to excite us to act vigorously in defending ourselves from evil, but to interest us in the defence or rescue of the injured and helpless, and to raise us above the fear of the proud and mighty oppressor.

Neither, therefore, is all anger sinful; hence the precept, "Be ye angry and sin not."—It becomes sinful, however, and contradicts the rule of scripture, when it is conceived upon slight and inadequate provocations, and when it continues long. It is then contrary to the amiable spirit of charity, which "suffereth long, and is not easily provoked." Hence these other precepts, "Let every man be slow to anger;" and, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."

These precepts, and all reasoning indeed upon the subject, suppose the passion of anger to be within our power; and this power consists not so much in any faculty we have of appeasing our wrath at the time (for we are passive under the smart which an injury or affront occasions, and all we can then do is to prevent its breaking out into action), as in so mollifying our minds minds by habits of just reflection, as to be less irritated by impressions of injury, and to be sooner pacified.

As reflections proper for this purpose, and which may be called the sedatives of anger, the following are suggested by Archdeacon Paley in his excellent treatise of Moral and Political Philosophy:

"The possibility of mistaking the motives from which the conduct that offends us proceeded; how often our offences have been the effect of inadvertency, when they were mistaken for malice; the inducement which prompted our adversary to act as he did, and how powerfully the same inducement has, at one time or other, operated upon ourselves; that he is suffering perhaps under a contrition, which he is ashamed, or wants opportunity, to confess; and how ungnerous it is to triumph by coldness or insult over a spirit already humbled in secret; that the returns of kindness are sweet, and that there is neither honour nor virtue nor use in resisting them—for some persons think themselves bound to cherish and keep alive their indignation, when they find it dying away of itself. We may remember that others have their passions, their prejudices, their favourite aims, their fears, their cautions, their interests, their sudden impulses, their varieties of apprehension, as well as we: we may recollect what hath sometimes passed in our own minds, when we have got on the wrong side of a quarrel, and imagine the same to be passing in our adversary's mind now; when we became sensible of our misbehaviour, what palliatives we perceived in it, and expected others to perceive; how we were affected by the kindness, and felt the superiority, of a generous reception and ready forgiveness; how persecution revived our spirits with our enmity, and seemed to justify the conduct in ourselves which we before blamed. Add to this, the indecency of extravagant anger; how it renders us, whilst it lasts, the scorn and sport of all about us, of which it leaves us, when it ceases, sensible and ashamed; the inconveniences and irretrievable misconduct into which our irascibility has sometimes betrayed us; the friendships it has lost us; the distresses and embarrassments in which we have been involved by it, and the sore repentance which on one account or other it always costs us.

"But the reflection calculated above all others to allay that haughtiness of temper which is ever finding out provocations, and which renders anger so impetuous, is that which the gospel proposes; namely, that we ourselves are, or shortly shall be, suppliants for mercy and pardon at the judgment-seat of God. Imagine our secret sins all disclosed and brought to light; imagine us thus humbled and exposed; trembling under the hand of God; casting ourselves on his compassion; crying out for mercy—imagine such a creature to talk of satisfaction and revenge, refusing to be intreated, disdaining to forgive, extreme to mark and to resent what is done amiss: imagine, I say, this; and you can hardly feign to yourself an instance of more impious and unnatural arrogance."

Physicians and naturalists afford instances of very extraordinary effects of this passion. Borrichius cured a woman of an inveterate tertian ague, which had baffled the art of physic, by putting the patient in a furious fit of anger. Valeriola made use of the same means, with the like success, in a quartan ague. The same passion has been equally salutary to paralytic, gouty, and even dumb persons; to which last it has sometimes given the use of speech. Etmuller gives divers instances of very singular cures wrought by anger; among others, he mentions a person laid up in the gout, who, being provoked by his physician, flew upon him, and was cured. It is true, the remedy is somewhat dangerous in the application, when a patient does not know how to use it with moderation. We meet with several instances of princes to whom it has proved mortal; e.g., Valentinian the first, Wenceslas, Matthias Corvinus king of Hungary, and others. There are also instances wherein it has produced the epilepsy, jaundice, cholera-morbis, diarrhoea, &c. In fact, this passion is of such a nature, that it quickly throws the whole nervous system into preternatural commotions, by a violent stricture of the nervous and muscular parts; and surprizingly augments not only the sytote of the heart and of its contiguous vessels, but also the tone of the fibrous parts in the whole body. It is also certain, that this passion, by the spasmodic stricture it produces in the parts, exerts its power principally on the stomach and intestines, which are highly nervous and membranous parts; whence the symptoms are more dangerous, in proportion to the greater consent of the stomach and intestines, with the other nervous parts, and almost with the whole body.—The unhappy influence of anger likewise, on the biliary and hepatic ducts, is very surprizing; since by an intense constrictions of these, the liver is not only rendered scirrhouss, but stones also are often generated in the gall-bladder and biliary ducts: these accidents have scarcely any other origin than an obstruction of the free motion and efflux of the bile, by means of this violent stricture. From such a stricture of these ducts likewise proceeds the jaundice, which in process of time lays a foundation for calculous concretions in the gall-bladder. Lastly, by increasing the motion of the fluid, or the spasms of the fibrous parts, by means of anger, a larger quantity of blood is propelled with an impetus to certain parts; whence it happens that they are too much distended, and the orifices of the veins distributed there opened. It is evident from experience, that anger has a great tendency to excite enormous hemorrhagies, either from the nose, the aperture of the pulmonary artery, the veins of the anus; or in women, from the uterus, especially in those previously accustomed and disposed to such evacuations.