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And, in truth, in all secular and sublunary desires, we shall ever find that they are like the apples of Sodom, 'quæ contacta cinerescunt, which have ashes hidden with their beauty, and death lurking under them. All the matter of our secular or sensitive desires, are just like the meats we eat,—which go much more into excrement, than into nourishment and substance. Like the cypress tree, which they say is very fair, but bears no fruit'. Like the Egyptian temples, which are beautiful in frontispicio,' but ridiculous in penetrali.' And if we look well on them, we shall find, that as they are mortal themselves, so they come to us through mortality. It was a bold, but true guapov of Seneca, Mortibus vivimus; we live by the deaths of other things: our fullest tables furnished with death, nothing but 'feretra,' the biers of birds and beasts: our richest garments the bowels and skins of other creatures, which work out their own lives to preserve ours. Silk is a grave to the worm, that weaves it, before it is a garment for us. Our offices and honours seldom come to us, but by the mortality of those that prepossessed them; and our mortality makes them the fitter objects of other men's desires.

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3. These desires as they are forgetful, so they are envious, and look with an evil eye upon others' competition, accounting their success our own damage. If a man should draw the genealogy of all the injuries and emulations of the world, we should find the root of that great tree to be nothing but lust. It was desire and inordinate appetite, by which the devil persuaded our first parents to pick a quarrel with their Maker. "Whence come wars and fightings," saith Saint James, "but from lusts which war in your members? When a man hath war within, no wonder if he have no peace without. He that cannot agree with himself, will disagree with all the world besides. The sea tosseth every thing which comes into it, not because it is wronged, but because it is unquiet; and a lustful man will contend with every innocent man that prospers, not because this man doth him injury, but because he grudgeth this man's pro

Tert. Apol. c. 40.

1. 3. c. 3.

1 Phocion apud Plut. Apophth. Clem. Alex. Pæd. m Vid. Sen. de Ira, l. 3. c. 31.-Alienis gemitibus libenter emolumenta conquirit. Ammian. Marcel. 1. 31.-Egregium exemplum invidiæ, etiam Ecclesiasticæ, ex cupiditatibus ortæ, apud eundem Marcellinum inter Damascum et Urcisinum, 1. 27.

sperity. As the sea representeth every straight thing that is put into it crooked, so lust every harmless thing perverse; and as Seneca speaks", hathodium sine inimico,' hatred without an enemy. Greedy desires are like a swollen and envious spleen, which sucks away substance from all the rest of the body.

4. These desires are hydropical, and like a Bouxía in the stomach, which is not quenched, but enraged with that which feeds it". Unnatural desires being herein very like unto natural motions; the further they proceed, the stronger and swifter they are like wind in a bladder, they never fill the heart, but enlarge it. The Grecians began their drinkings in little cups, but proceeded unto flaggons P. And, many times, those appetitions which begin in modesty, go on unto impudence; and the more our lives hasten to leave the world, the more our lusts hasten to possess it. As it is noted of the Parthians, that the more they drink, the more they thirst. And, which is a marvellous illogical stupidity, the more continual experience men have of the vanity of the world, the more greedy experiments they make to find out solidity in it. Like your melancholy searchers after the philosopher's stone, that never dote so much upon their project, as then when it hath deluded them; and never flatter themselves with stronger hopes to be enriched by their art, than when it hath brought them to beggary.

b

Lastly, from hence it comes to pass, that these kinds of desires are base, and deject the mind unto sordid and ignoble resolutions. For, "cui nihil satis, nihil turpe:" He that hath never enough, will count nothing base whereby he may get more. As the historian saith of Otho, that he did "Adorare vulgus, jacere oscula, et omnia serviliter pro imperio;" adore the people, dispense and scatter abroad his courtesies, crouch unto any servile expressions to advance his ambitious designs. Like Antæus in the Poets, fall to the earth, so he may grow the stronger by it. As Zopyrus and Pisistratus, who wounded, mangled, deformed themselves, that they might thereby insinuate, and gain their ends. As the scripture noteth of Absalom, and the historian of

" Epist. 105. • Calius Rhodig. 1. Anacharsi, 1. 1.-Sen. de Benef. 1. 2. c. 27.

bus. Ep. c. 120.

Todol. Thalia.

Plin. 1. 15. c. 22.

Plut. in Solone.

C

c. 39. 1. 14. c. 1.
P Laert. in
Nihil satis morituris, imò morienti-
b Tacit. Hist. 1. 1.

• He

Julian, that out of affectation of popularity, they stooped and delighted to converse with the lowest of the people. Which cunning humility, or rather sordidness of ambition, Menelaus in the Tragedian', hath thus elegantly objected in a contentious debate unto Agamemnon,

Οἶσθ ̓, ὅτ ̓ ἐσπούδαζες ἄρχειν Δαναΐδαις πρὸς Ἴλιον,
Τῷ δοκεῖν μὲν οὐχὶ χρήζων, τῷ δὲ βούλεσθαι θέλων,
Ως ταπεινὸς ἧς, ἁπάσης δεξιᾶς προσθιγγάνων,
Καὶ θύρας ἔχων ἀκλείστους τῷ θέλοντι δημοτῶν,
Καὶ διδοὺς πρόσρησιν ἑξῆς πᾶσι, κεί μή τις θέλοι,
Τοῖς τρόποις ζητῶν πρίασθαι τὸ φιλότιμον ἐκ μέσου ; &c.

You know, how you the rule o'er Grecians got,
In show declining what in truth you sought.
How low, how plausible you apprehended

The hands of meanest men: how then you bended
To all you met: how your gates open flew,
And spake large welcome to the pop'lar crew:
What sweetened words you gave even unto those
Who did decline, and hate to see you gloze.
How thus with serpentine and guileful arts,
You screw'd and wound yourself into the hearts
O' th' vulgar and thus bought the power, which now
Makes you forget, how then you us'd to bow.

CHAP. XVIII.

Rules touching our Desires. Desires of lower objects must not be either hasty, or unbounded: such are unnatural, turbid, unfruitful, unthankful: desires of heavenly objects fixed, permanent, industrious: connexion of virtues, sluggish de

sires.

UNTO the things already delivered touching this affection, I shall here add two or three rules, pertaining to the moral use, and managing of it. And they are, first, concerning objects of an inferior and transitory nature, that our desires be neither hasty and precipitate, nor vast and unlimited. And in matters more high and noble, that they be not either

• Am. Marcel. 1. 25,

f Eurip. Iphig. Aul. 337.

wavering and interrupted desires, or lazy and negligent desires.

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1. For the first of these, we have a rule in Solomon, concerning riches, which will hold in all other objects of an immoderate desire: "He that maketh haste to be rich, shall not be without sin:" I may add, "Not without cares neither:" for we know the nature of all earthly things;-they have something of the serpent in them, to deceive.' The way of riches and profit, is a thorny way; the way of honour and ambition, a slippery and giddy way; the way of carnal pleasures, a deep and a foul way; the way of learning itself, (the noblest of all sublunary things) an involved and intricate way. And certainly he had need have better eyes than a blind passion, who, in so ill ground, will make good haste and good speed together." In labyrintho properantes ipsa velocitas implicat; He is not the likeliest man to get first out of a maze, who runs fastest. An over-nimble desire is like the stomach of a sick man newly recovered; more greedy than strong, and fuller of appetite than digestion. Whence arise immature and unconcocted counsels, blind and ungoverned resolutions: like those monstrous people whom Pliny speaks of, whose feet go backward, and behind their eyes. For when the mind of man is once possessed with conceit of contentment to be found in worldly glories; when the insinuations and sweet enchantments of honour, profit, pleasure, power, and Satan's Hæc omnia,' hath once crept upon the affection, and lulled reason asleep; it is then sufficient that we know the end, which we desire we have not the patience to enquire after the right way unto it, because it is the suspicion of our greedy desires, that the true means are commonly the most tedious; and that honesty, for the most part, goes the farthest way about. And hence withal it usually cometh to pass, that these hasty and preposterous appetitions do hinder ends, and intercept advantages which slowness with maturity might have made use of. As the Roman soldiers, by their greediness on their prey, missed of taking Mithridates, who otherwise could not have escaped them; and therefore it was wise counsel of Nestor in the Poet,

a Prov. xxviii. 20, 21. • Plutarch, in Lucullo.

b 'Ev ód μÝ σrevdew. Chilo apud Laert. lib. 1. d Iliad. '. 70.

Μήτις νῦν ἐνάρων ἐπιβαλλόμενος, μελόπισθε
Μιμνέτω, ὡς κεν πλείστα φέρων ἐπὶ νῆας ἵκηται·
Αλλ' ἄνδρας κλείνωμεν· ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τὰ ἔκηλοι
Νεκροὺς ἀμπεδίον συλήσετε τεθνειώτας.

Let none go ling'ring after spoil, and stay
To load himself with a too hasty prey.

But first let 's kill: w' are sure after such fight,

Carcasses being rifled cannot bite.

e

2. The next rule to keep this passion in order with reference unto inferior objects, is, that it be not an infinite and unlimited desire. Appetite should answer our power to procure, and our strength to bear and to digest. We should not go about to swallow a camel, when a gnat doth make us strain. Immoderate desires can neither be satisfied, nor concocted. And this unboundedness of desires we are to take heed of, for these reasons :

·-

1. First, for the unnaturalness of it: for all unnatural and unnecessary desires are infinite, as the philosopher hath observed as he that is out of his way, may wander infinitely. An unlimited desire is only there requisite, where the object thereof is infinite, and ordained to perfect man's nature; but not where it is only a means appointed for his benefit and comfort. Wherein he ought therefore then to enjoy his contentment, when it is sufficient, not to fill his mind which is immortal; and therefore not able to be replenished with any perishing happiness, nor to out-reach the vastness of his opinion, which being erroneous, is likewise infinite ", (for, Omnis error immensus,' as Seneca speaks) but then only when it affords such conveniences, as wherewithal the seasonable and virtuous employments of nature may, with content, be exercised. It is then a corrupt desire, which proceeds not from our want, but from our vice: as that is not a ural thirst, but a disease and distemper of the body, which

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Now the miseries of unnatural desires are, First, that' they

Senec. de Tranq. 1. 2. Arrian. Epict. lib. 1. c 26. 1. cap. 6.-Senec. Ep. 16, 39. de Benef. 1. 2. c. 27. bonum, sed condiunt, Sen. Epist. 66.

Arist. Polit. lib. & Extranea non augent Nunquam finem invenit libido.

Cicer. Tusc. Malum infinitum. Arist. Ethic. lib. 2. cap. 6. Polit. 1. 3. c. 5. Exiguum natura, opinio immensum, Epic. apud Sen.

et de Sanit, tuenda.

i Plutarch. in Gryllo,

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