These concupiscible and irascible appetites are as the two twists of a rope, mutually mixed one with the other, and both twining about the heart:  both good, as Austin, holds, l. 14. c. 9. de civ.  Dei, [1802]"if they be moderate; both pernicious if they be exorbitant.”  This concupiscible appetite, howsoever it may seem to carry with it a show of pleasure and delight, and our concupiscences most part affect us with content and a pleasing object, yet if they be in extremes, they rack and wring us on the other side.  A true saying it is, “Desire hath no rest;” is infinite in itself, endless; and as [1803]one calls it, a perpetual rack, [1804]or horse-mill, according to Austin, still going round as in a ring.  They are not so continual, as divers, felicius atomos denumerare possem, saith [1805]Bernard, quam motus cordis; nunc haec, nunc illa cogito, you may as well reckon up the motes in the sun as them. [1806]"It extends itself to everything,” as Guianerius will have it, “that is superfluously sought after:"’ or to any [1807]fervent desire, as Fernelius interprets it; be it in what kind soever, it tortures if immoderate, and is (according to [1808] Plater and others) an especial cause of melancholy. Multuosis concupiscentiis dilaniantur cogitationes meae, [1809]Austin confessed, that he was torn a pieces with his manifold desires:  and so doth [1810] Bernard complain, “that he could not rest for them a minute of an hour:  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, impossible 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 honour, which we commonly call ambition; love of money, which is covetousness, and that greedy desire of gain:  self-love, pride, and inordinate desire of vainglory or applause, love of study in excess; love of women (which will require a just volume of itself), of the other I will briefly speak, and in their order.

Ambition, a proud covetousness, or a dry thirst of honour, a great torture of the mind, composed of envy, pride, and covetousness, a gallant madness, one [1811]defines it a pleasant poison, Ambrose, “a canker of the soul, an hidden plague:”  [1812]Bernard, “a secret poison, the father of livor, and mother of hypocrisy, the moth of holiness, and cause of madness, crucifying and disquieting all that it takes hold of.” [1813]Seneca calls it, rem solicitam, timidam, vanam, ventosam, a windy thing, a vain, solicitous, and fearful thing.  For commonly they that, like Sisyphus, roll this restless stone of ambition, are in a perpetual agony, still [1814] perplexed, semper taciti, tritesque recedunt (Lucretius), doubtful, timorous, suspicious, loath to offend in word or deed, still cogging and colloguing, embracing, capping, cringing, applauding, flattering, fleering, visiting, waiting at men’s doors, with all affability,