Envy and malice are two links of this chain, and both, as Guianerius, Tract. 15. cap. 2, proves out of Galen, 3 Aphorism, com. 22, [1688] “cause this malady by themselves, especially if their bodies be otherwise disposed to melancholy.”  ‘Tis Valescus de Taranta, and Felix Platerus’ observation, [1689]"Envy so gnaws many men’s hearts, that they become altogether melancholy.”  And therefore belike Solomon, Prov. xiv. 13, calls it, “the rotting of the bones,” Cyprian, vulnus occultum;

[1690]  ------“Siculi non invenere tyranni
Majus tormentum”------

The Sicilian tyrants never invented the like torment.  It crucifies their souls, withers their bodies, makes them hollow-eyed, [1691]pale, lean, and ghastly to behold, Cyprian, ser. 2. de zelo et livore. [1692]"As a moth gnaws a garment, so,” saith Chrysostom, “doth envy consume a man;” to be a living anatomy:  a “skeleton, to be a lean and [1693]pale carcass, quickened with a [1694]fiend”, Hall in Charact. for so often as an envious wretch sees another man prosper, to be enriched, to thrive, and be fortunate in the world, to get honours, offices, or the like, he repines and grieves.

[1695]  ------“intabescitque videndo
Successus hominum—­suppliciumque suum est.”

He tortures himself if his equal, friend, neighbour, be preferred, commended, do well; if he understand of it, it galls him afresh; and no greater pain can come to him than to hear of another man’s well-doing; ’tis a dagger at his heart every such object.  He looks at him as they that fell down in Lucian’s rock of honour, with an envious eye, and will damage himself, to do another a mischief:  Atque cadet subito, dum super hoste cadat.  As he did in Aesop, lose one eye willingly, that his fellow might lose both, or that rich man in [1696]Quintilian that poisoned the flowers in his garden, because his neighbour’s bees should get no more honey from them.  His whole life is sorrow, and every word he speaks a satire:  nothing fats him but other men’s ruins.  For to speak in a word, envy is nought else but Tristitia de bonis alienis, sorrow for other men’s good, be it present, past, or to come:  et gaudium de adversis, and [1697]joy at their harms, opposite to mercy, [1698]which grieves at other men’s mischances, and misaffects the body in another kind; so Damascen defines it, lib. 2. de orthod. fid. Thomas, 2. 2. quaest. 36. art. 1. Aristotle, l. 2.  Rhet. c. 4. et 10. Plato Philebo.  Tully, 3.  Tusc.  Greg.  Nic. l. de virt. animae, c. 12. Basil, de Invidia.  Pindarus Od. 1. ser. 5, and we find it true.  ’Tis a common disease, and almost natural to us, as [1699]Tacitus holds, to envy another man’s prosperity.  And ’tis in most men an incurable disease. [1700]"I have read,” saith Marcus Aurelius, “Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee authors; I have consulted with many wise men for a remedy for envy, I could