Subsect. 11. Concupiscible Appetite, as Desires, Ambition, Causes.

These Concupiscible and Irascible Appetites are as the two twists of a rope, mutually mixt one with the other, and both twining about the Heart: both good, as Austin holds l.14. c.9. de civ. Dei: if they be moderate: both pernitious if they be exorbitant. This Concupiscible appetite, howsoever it may seem to carry with it a shew of pleasure and delight, and our concupiscences most part affect us with content and a pleasing object, yet if they be in extreames, they rack and wring us on the other side.

A true saying it is, Desire hath no rest: is infinite in it self, endless: and as one cals it, a perpetual rack, or horse-mill, according to Austin, still going round as in a ring. They are not so continual, as divers, facilius atomos denumerare possem, saith Bernard, quam motus cordis; nunc hæc, nunc illa cogito, you may as well reckon up the motes in the Sun, as them.

It extends it self to every thing, as Guianerius will have it, that is superfluously sought after: or to any fervent desire, as Fernelius interprets it; be it in what kinde soever, it tortures if immoderate, and is (according to Plater and others) an especial cause of Melancholy. Multuosis concupiscentiis dilaniantur cogitationes meæ, Austin confessed, that he was torne a pieces with his manifold desires:

and so doth Bernard complain, that he could not rest for them a minute of an houre: this I would have, and that, and then I desire to be such and such. ’Tis a hard matter therefore to confine them, being they are so various and many, unpossible to apprehend all. I will only insist upon some few of the chief, and most noxious in their kind, as that exorbitant Appetite and Desire of Honor, which we commonly call Ambition:

Love of money, which is Covetousness, and that greedy desire of gain: self-love, pride, and inordinate desire of Vain-glory or applause, Love of study in excess: Love of women, (which will require a just volume of it self) of the other I will briefly speak, and in their order.

Ambition, a proud covetousness, or a dry thirst of Honor, a great torture of the minde, composed of envy, pride, and covetousness, a gallant madness, one defines it, a pleasant poison, Ambrose, a canker of the soul, an hidden plague: Bernard, a secret poyson, the father of livor, and mother of hypocrisie, the moth of holiness, and cause of madness, crucifying and disquieting all that it takes hold of.

Seneca cals it, rem solicitam, timidam, vanam, ventosam, a windy thing, a vain, solicitous, and fearful thing. For commonly they that like Sysiphus, role this restless stone of Ambition, are in a perpetuall agony, still perplexed, semper taciti, tristesque recedunt, (Lucretius) doubtful, timorous, suspicious, loath to offend in word or deed,

still cogging and collogueing, embracing, capping, cringing, applauding, flattering, fleering, visiting, waiting at mens doors, with all affability, counterfeit honesty and humility. If that will not serve, if once this humor (as Cyprian describes it) possess his thirsty soul, ambitionis salsugo ubi bibulam animam possidet, by hooke and by crook he will obtain it, and from his hole he will clime to all honors and offices, if it be possible for him to get up, flattering one, bribing another, he will leave no meanes unassay’d to win all.

It is a wonder to see how slavishly these kinde of men subject themselves, when they are about a sute, to every inferior person: what pains they will take, run, ride, cast, plot, countermine, protest and swear, vow, promise, what labors undergo, earely up, down late; how obsequious and affable they are, how popular and courteous, how they grin and fliere upon every man they meet; with what feasting and inviting, how they spend themselves and their fortunes, in seeking that many times, which they had much better be without, as Cyneas the Orator told Pyrrhus:

with what waking nights, painful houres, anxious thoughts, and bitterness of minde, inter spemque metumque, distracted and tired, they consume the interim of their time. There can be no greater plague for the present. If they do obtain their sute, which with such cost and solicitude they have sought, they are not so freed, their anxiety is anew to begin, for they are never satisfied, nihil aliud nisi imperium spirant, their thoughts, actions, endeavors are all for Soveraignty and Honor,

like Lues Sforzia that huffing Duke of Milan, a man of singular wisdom, but profound ambition, borne to his own, and to the destruction of Italy, though it be to their own ruin, and friends undoing, they will contend, they may not cease, but as a dog in a wheele, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so Budæus compares them; they climbe and climbe still, with much labor, but never make an end, never at the top.

A Knight would be a Baronet, and then a Lord, and then a Vicount, and then an Earl, &c. a Doctor, a Dean, and then a Bishop: from Tribune to Prætor: from Bailiffe, to Maior: first this office, and then that; as Pyrrhus in Plutarch, they will first have Greece, then Africk, and then Asia, and swell with Æsops frog so long, till in the end they burst, or come down with Sejanus, ad Gemonias scalas, and break their own necks:

or as Evangelus the piper in Lucian, that blew his his pipe so long, till he fell down dead. If he chance to miss, and have a canvas, he is in a hell on the other side; so dejected, that he is ready to hang himself, turn Heretick, Turk, or Traitor in an instant. Enraged against his enemies, he railes, swears, fights, slanders, detracts, envies, murders: