corrupt and expel those which are natural: as multitudes. of strangers in a city, do eat out the natives: thus in luxurious men, strange love doth extinguish that which is conjugal.

Secondly, They ever bring vexation to the mind with them. As immoderate laughter, so immoderate lusts are never without pain and convulsions of nature. Morbid desires of the mind are like an itch or ulcer in the body, which is with the same nails both angered and delighted, and hath no pleasure but with vexation.

Thirdly, They are ever attended with repentance; both because, in promises, they disappoint, and in performances, they deceive: and when they make offers of pleasure, do expire in pains: as those delicates which are sweet in the mouth, are many times heavy in the stomach; and after they have pleased the palate, do torment the bowels. The mind surfeits on nothing sooner than on unnatural desires.

m

Fourthly, For this reason they are ever changing and making new experiments ; as weak and wanton stomachs, which are presently cloyed with a uniform diet, and must have not only a painful, but a witty cook, whose inventions may be able with new varieties to gratify and humour the niceness of their appetite. As Nero had an officer who was called

him.

Elegantiæ Arbiter,' the inventor of new lusts for

Lastly, Unlimited desires are, for the most part, envious. and malignant: for he who desires every thing, cannot choose but repine to see another have that, which himself wanteth. And therefore Dionysius, the tyrant, did punish Philoxenus the musician, because he could sing,—and Plato the philosopher, because he could dispute, better than himself. In which respect he did wisely, who was contented not to be esteemed a better orator than he, who could command thirty legions. P

Secondly, Unbounded desires do work anxiety and perturbation of mind; and by that means disappoint nature of

* Plut. de Sanit. tuenda.-Sen. de Tranq. cap. 2. tatem nostram et pœnitentiam vices sunt. Sen. de Orig. de Benef. 1. 3. c. 3. Quod ministerium fuerat, ars ̓Απληστος ἡ τοῦ ἡδέος ὄρεξις, Eth. 1. c. 12. • Plut. de Tranq.

Alternæ inter cupidiSap. cap. 27. m Sen.

haberi cœpta, Liv. 1. 39. n Tacit. Annal. lib. 16.

P Favorinus apud Elium Spart. in Adr.

that proper end, which this passion was ordained unto; namely, to be a means of obtaining some farther good; whereas those desires which are in their executions turbid, or in their continuance permanent, are no more likely to lead unto some farther end, than either a misty and dark, or a winding and circular way is to bring a man at last unto his journey's end; whereof the one is dangerous, the other, vain. And together with this, they do distract our noble cares, and quite avert our thoughts from more high and holy desires. Martha her many things, and Mary's one thing, will very hardly consist together.

Lastly, There is one corruption more in these unlimited desires; they make a man unthankful for former benefits: as first, because Caduca memoria futuro imminentium.'s It is a strong presumption that he seldom looks back upon what is past, who is earnest in pursuing something to come. It is St. Paul's profession and argument in a matter of greater consequence, "I forget those things which are behind, and reach forth unto those things which are before." And secondly, though a man should look back, yet the thoughts of such a benefit would be but slight and vanishing; because the mind, finding present content in the liberty of a roving desire, is marvellous unwilling to give permanent entertainment unto thoughts of another nature; which likewise (were they entertained) would be rather thoughts of murmuring than of thankfulness ;-every such man being willing rather to conceive the benefit small, than to acknowledge the vice and vastness of his own desires.

The next rule which I observed for the government of those passions, doth respect those higher and more glorious objects of man's felicity: and herein,

1. Our desires are not to be wavering and inconstant, but resolute and full of quickness and perseverance. First, because though we be poor and shallow vessels, yet so narrow and almost shut up are those passages, by which we should give admittance unto the matter of our true happiness; yea, so full are we already of contrary qualities, as that our greatest vehemency will not be enough, either to empty ourselves of the one, or to fill ourselves with the other. And, therefore, the true desires of this nature are, in the scripture, set

q Sen. de Benef. lib. 3.

6

forth by the most pathetical and strong similitudes of hunger and thirst; and those not common neither; but the panting of a tired hart after the rivers of water, and the gaping of the dry ground after a seasonable shower. Secondly; every desirable object the higher it goes, is ever the more united within itself, and drives the faster unto a unity. It is the property of errors to be at variance: whereas truth is one, and all parts thereof do mutually strengthen and give light unto each other. So likewise in things good, the more noble, the more knit they are: Scelera dissident :' it is for sins to be at variance amongst themselves. And those lower goods of riches, pleasure, nobility, beauty, though they are not incompatible, yet they have no natural connection to each other; and have therefore the less power to draw a constant and continued desire. But for nobler and immaterial goods, we see how the philosopher hath observed a connection between all his moral virtues, whereby a man that hath one, is naturally drawn to a desire of all the rest for the mind, being once acquainted with the sweetness of one, doth not only apprehend the same sweetness in the other; but, besides, findeth itself not sufficiently possest of that which it hath, unless it be thereby drawn to procure the rest all whose properties it is, by an excellent mutual service, to give light and lustre, strength and validity, and, in some sort, greater unity unto each other.

And lastly, For the highest and divinest good; the truth of religion, that is in itself most of all other, one; as being a beam of that light and revelation of that will, which is unity itself. And therefore though we distinguish the creed into twelve articles, yet St. Paul calleth them all but Mia wioris, one faith, as having but one Lord for the object and end of them. Now then where the parts of good are so united, as that the one draweth on the other, there is manifestly required united desire to carry the soul thereunto.

II. The last rule which I observed, was, that our desires. ought not to be faint and sluggish, but industrious and painful; both for the arming us to avoid and withstand all oppositions and difficulties, which we are every where likely to meet withal in the pursuit of our happiness; and also for the wise and discreet applying of the several furtherances • Εὐμετάβολος ὁ πονηρός.

Ethic. 1. 6. c. 12.

Ephes. iv. 5.

requisite thereunto. And indeed that is no true, which is not an operative desire: a velleity it may be, but a will it is not for whatever a man will have, he will seek in the use of such means, as are proper to procure it. Children may wish for mountains of gold, and Balaam may wish for a happy death, and an atheist may wish for a soul as earthly in substance as in affection; but these are all the ejaculations rather of a speculative fancy, than of an industrious affection. True desires as they are right in regard of their object, so are they laborious in respect of their motion. And, therefore, those which are idle and impatient of any pains, which stand like the carman in the fable, crying to Hercules, when his wain stuck in the mud, to help it out, without stretching out his own hands to touch it,-are, first, unnatural desires; it being the formal property of this passion to put the soul upon some motion or other :-and therefore we see wheresoever nature hath given it, she hath given likewise some manner of motion or other to serve it. And, secondly, they are, by consequence, undutiful and disobedient desires; in that they submit not themselves unto that law which requireth, that we manifest the life and strength of our love by the quickness and operation of it in our desires. And lastly, such desires are unuseful and fruitless: for how can an object which standeth in a fixed distance from the nature, which it should perfect, be procured by idle and standing affections? "The desires of the sluggard," (saith Solomon) " slay him, because his hands refuse to labour."-Those affections must have life in them, which bring life after them: Dead desires are deadly desires.

CHAP. XIX.

Of the affection of Joy or Delight: the several objects thereof, corporal, moral, intellectual, divine.

THE next passions, in order, belonging to the concupiscible faculty, are those two, which are wrought by the presence of, and union to, an object: and that is, when either we, by

u Prov. xxi. 15. xii. 4.

our desire, have reached the object, which worketh joy and delight; or when, in our flight, the object hath overtaken us, which worketh grief and sorrow. And these two do bear the most inward relation unto, and influence upon, all our actions. Whereupon Aristotle, in his Ethicks, hath made them the foundation of our virtues, and rules of our working. And the reason is natural; because the end of our motion is to attain rest, and avoid perturbation. Now delight is nothing else but the sabbath of our thoughts, and that sweet tranquillity of mind which we receive from the presence and fruition of that good, whereunto our desires. have carried us. And therefore the philosopher in one place calls it a motion of the soul with a sensible and felt instauration of nature;' yet elsewhere he as truly telleth us, that it standeth rather in rest than motion ; as on the other side grief is the straitening and anguish of our minds, wrought out of the sense and burden of some present evil oppressing our nature. Now these passions are divers, according to the diversity of the objects, which are either sensitive and bodily; and then delight is called voluptas,' pleasure, being a medicine and supply against bodily indigence and defects :-or intellectual and divine, and then it is called 'gaudium,' joy, being a sweet and delightful tranquillity of mind, resting in the fruition and possession of a good. So also is the other passion of sadness considered; which in respect of the body is called a sense of pain; in respect of the soul, a sense of grief.

First then for the object of our delight: it is only that which can yield some manner of satisfaction unto our nature, not as it is a corrupt and erring, but as it is an empty and perfectible, nature. Whatsoever then is either medicinal for the repairing, or natural for the conserving, or any way helpful for the advancing, of a creature,-is the only true and allowable object of its delight. Other pleasures which eat out and undermine nature, as water which, by little and

• Κανονίζομεν καὶ τὰς πράξεις ἡδονῇ καὶ λύπῃ. Ethic: 1. 2. c. 3. b Cicer. Tusc. 1. 4. λoyos éñapois, Zeno apud Laert. 1. 7.-Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. 2. κίνησις τῆς ψυχῆς, Rhet. 1. 1. c. 11. • Ήδονὴ μᾶλλον ἐν ἡρεμίᾳ ἐστιν ἢ d Gaudere in sinu. Cic. 'Ev Svμê xaipei,

dv kivýσei, Ech. 1. 7. c. ult.

Hom. Qui sapit, in tacito gaudeat ille sinu. Tibul.-Vid. Damascen. de Orthodox. fide, lib. 2. cap. 13. et Nemes. de Anima, c. 18.