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formed, and contemptible, the voice horrid, the eyes cruel, the face pale or fiery, the gait fierce, the speech clamorous and loud. 6. It is neither manly nor ingenuous. 7. It proceeds from softness of spirit and pusillanimity; which makes that women are more angry than men, sick persons more than healthful, old men more than young, unprosperous and calamitous people than the blessed and fortunate. 8. It is a passion fitter for flies and insects than for persons professing nobleness and bounty. 9. It is troublesome not only to those that suffer it, but to them that behold it; there being no greater incivility of entertainment than for the cook's fault, or the negligence of the servants, to be cruel, or outrageous, or unpleasant in the presence of the guests. 10. It makes marriage to be a necessary and unavoidable trouble; friendships, and societies, and familiarities to be intolerable. 11. It multiplies the evils of drunkenness, and makes the levities of wine to run into madness. 12. It makes innocent jesting to be the beginning of tragedies. 13. It turns friendship into hatred; it makes a man lose himself, and his reason and his argument in disputation. It turns the desires of knowledge into an itch of wrangling. It adds insolency to power. It turns justice into cruelty, and judgment into oppression. It changes discipline into tediousness and hatred of liberal institution. It makes a prosperous man to be envied, and the unfortunate to be unpitied. It is a confluence of all the irregular passions: there is in it envy and sorrow, fear and scorn, pride and prejudice, rashness and inconsideration, rejoicing in evil and a desire to inflict it, selflove, impatience and curiosity. And lastly, though it be very troublesome to others, yet it is most troublesome to him that hath it.

In the use of these arguments and the former exercises be diligent to observe, lest in your desires to suppress anger you be passionate and angry at yourself for being angry; like physicians, who give a bit

ter potion when they intend to eject the bitterness of choler; for this will provoke the person, and increase the passion. But placidly and quietly set upon the mortification of it; and attempt it first for a day, resolving that day not at all to be angry; and to be watchful and observant for a day is no great trouble : but then, after one day's watchfulness it will be as easy to watch two days, as at first it was to watch one day and so you may increase until it becomes easy and habitual.

Only observe that such an anger alone is criminal, which is against charity to myself or my neighbour; but anger against sin is a holy zeal, and an effect of love to God and my brother, for whose interest I am passionate like a concerned person: and if I take care that my anger makes no reflection of scorn and cruelty upon the offender, or of pride and violence, or transportation to myself, anger becomes charity and duty.

3. Remedies against Covetousness, the third

Enemy of Mercy.

Covetousness is also an enemy to alms, though not to all the effects of mercifulness: but this is to be cured by the proper motives to charity before mentioned, and by the proper rules of justice; which being secured, the arts of getting money are not easily made criminal. To which also we may add,

1. Covetousness makes a man miserable; because riches are not means to make a man happy: and unless felicity were to be bought with money, he is a vain person, who admires heaps of gold and rich possessions. Riches were excellent things, if the richest man were certainly the wisest and the best: but as they are, they are nothing to be wondered at, because they contribute nothing toward felicity: which appears, because some men choose to be miserable that they may be rich, rather than be happy with the expence of money and doing noble things.

2. Riches are useless and unprofitable; for beyond our needs and conveniences nature knows no use of riches. No man can with all the wealth in the world buy so much skill as to be a good lutenist; he must go the same way that poor people do, he must learn and take pains: much less can he buy constancy, or chastity, or courage; nay, not so much as the contempt of riches: and by possessing more than we need, we cannot obtain so much power over our souls, as not to require more. And certainly riches must deliver me from no evil, if the possession of them cannot take away the longing for them. If any man be thirsty, drink cools him, if he be hungry, eating meat satisfies him and when a man is cold and calls for a warm cloak, he is pleased if you give it him; but you trouble him if you load him with six or eight cloaks. Nature rests and sits still when she hath her portion; but that which exceeds it, is a trouble and a burthen and therefore in true philosophy, no man is rich, but he that is poor according to the common account for when God hath satisfied those needs which he made; that is, all that is natural, whatsoever is beyond it, is thirst and a disease, and unless it be sent back again in charity or religion, can serve no end but vice or vanity: it can increase the appetite, to represent the man poorer, and full of a new and artificial, unnatural need; but it never satisfies the need it makes, or makes the man richer. No wealth can satisfy the covetous desire of wealth.

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3. Riches are troublesome; but the satisfaction of those appetites which God and nature have made are cheap and easy for who ever paid use-money for bread and onions and water to keep him alive? But I consider, that as those who drink on still when their thirst is quenched, or eat after they have well dined, are forced to vomit not only their superfluity, but even that which at first was necessary: so those that covet more than they can temperately use, are oftentimes forced to part even with that patrimony, which would

have supported their persons in freedom and honour, and have satisfied all their reasonable desire.

4. Contentedness is therefore health, because covetousness is a direct sickness: and it was well said, If any man after much eating and drinking be still unsatisfied, he hath no need of more meat or more drink, but of a physician; he more needs to be purged than to be filled and therefore since covetousness cannot be satisfied, it must be cured by emptiness and evacuation. The man is without remedy, unless he be reduced to the scantling of nature, and the measures of his personal necessity. Give to a poor man a house and a few cows, pay his little debt, and set him on work, and he is provided for, and quiet: but when a man enlarges beyond a fair possession, and desires another lordship, you spite him if you let him have it ; for by that he is one degree the farther off from rest in his desires and satisfaction; and now he sees himself in a bigger capacity to a larger fortune; and he shall never find his period, till you begin to take away something of what he hath; for then he will begin to be glad to keep that which is left: but reduce him to nature's measures, and there he shall be sure to find rest: for there no man can desire beyond his bellyfull, and when he wants that, any one friend or charitable man can cure his poverty; but all the world cannot satisfy his covetousness.

5. Covetousness is the most fantastical and contradictory disease in the whole world; it must therefore be incurable, because it strives against its own cure. No man therefore abstains from meat, because he is hungry, nor from wine, because he loves it and needs it: but the covetous man does so; for he desires it passionately, because he says he needs it, and when he hath it, he will need it still, because he dares not use it. He gets clothes because he cannot be without them; but when he hath them then he can: as if he needed corn for his granary, and clothes for his wardrobe, more than for his back and belly. For covet

ousness pretends to heap much together for fear of want; and yet after all his pains and purchase, he suffers that really, which at first he feared vainly; and by not using what he gets, he makes that suffering to be actual, present, and necessary, which in his lowest condition was but future, contingent and possible. It stirs up the desire, and takes away the pleasure of being satisfied. It increases the appetite and will not content it. It swells the principal to no purpose, and lessens the use to all purposes; disturbing the order of nature, and the designs of God; making money not to be the instrument of exchange or charity, nor corn to feed himself or the poor, nor wool to clothe himself or his brother, nor wine to refresh the sadness of the afflicted, nor his oil to make his own countenance cheerful; but all these to look upon, and to tell over, and to take accounts by, and make himself considerable, and wondered at by fools, that while he lives he may be called rich. And yet it is considerable; if the man can be content to feed hardly, and labour extremely, and watch carefully, and suffer affronts and disgrace, that he may get money more than he uses in his temperance and just needs, with how much ease might this man be happy? and with how great uneasiness and trouble does he make himself miserable? For he takes pains to get content, and when he might have it, he lets it go. He might better be content with a virtuous and quiet poverty, than with an artificial, troublesome and vicious. The same diet and a less labour would at first make him happy, and for ever after rewardable.

6. The sum of all is that which the apostle says, "Covetousness is idolatry ;" that is, it is an admiring money for itself, not for its use; it relies upon money, and loves it more than it loves God and religion. And "it is the root of all evil;" it teaches men to be cruel and crafty, industrious and evil, full of care and malice; it devours young heirs, and grinds the face of the poor, and undoes those, who specially belong to God's

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