ing colde: he
aduentured among theeues to seeke them, and hauing found them,
theeues and robbers on all sides, runne mainely on him: he
laboured to dig them out of the earth, and now is enforced to
redig, and rehide them. Finally comming from all his voiages he
comes into a prison: and for an ende of his bodely trauels, is
taken with endlesse trauails of the minde. And what at length
hath this poore soule attained after so many miseries? This
Deuill of couetise by his illusions, and enchantments, beares
him in hand that he hath some rare and singuler thing: and so it
fareth with him, as with those seely creatures, whome the Deuill
seduceth vnder couler of releeuing their pouertie, who finde
their hands full of leaues, supposing to finde them full of
crownes. He possesseth or rather is possessed by a thing,
wherein is neither force nor vertue: more vnprofitable, and more
base, then the least hearbe of the earth. Yet hath he heaped
togither this vile excrement, and so brutish is growne, as
therewith to crowne his head, which naturally he should tread
vnder his feete. But howsoeuer it be, is he therewith content?
Nay contrarywise lesse now, then euer. We commend most those
drinks that breede an alteration, and soonest extinguish thyrst:
and those meates, which in least quantitie do longest resist
hunger. Now hereof the more a man drinkes, the more he is a
thirst, the more he eates, the more an hungred: It is a dropsie,
(and as they tearme it) the dogs hunger: sooner may he burst
then be satisfied. And which is worse, so strange in some is
this thyrst, that it maketh them dig the pits, and painefully
drawe the water, and after will not suffer them to drinke. In
the middest of a riuer they are dry with thirst: and on a heape
of corne cry out of famine: they haue goodes and dare not vse
them: they haue ioyes it seemes, and do not enioy them: they
neither haue for themselues, nor for another: but of all they
haue, they haue nothing: and yet haue want of all they haue not.
Let vs then returne to that, that the attaining of all these
deceiuable goods is nothing else but weerines of body, and the
possession for the most part, but weerines of the minde: which
certenly is so much the greater, as is more sensible, more
subtile, and more tender the soule then the body. But the heape
of all misery is when they come to loose them: when either
shipwracke, or sacking, or inuasion, or fire, or such like
calamities, to which these frail