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,