Diseases of the soul a discourse divine, moral, and physical. By Tho. AdamsDiseases of the soule a discourse diuine, morall, and physicall. By Tho. Adams

Signs and Symptoms.

Signes and Symptomes.

The Signs of the disease are best discerned by the patients words. The cause of Ambition is a strong opinion of honour; how well he could become a high place, or a high place him. It is a proud covetousness, a glorious and Court-madness. The head of his reason caught a bruise on the right side, his understanding; and ever since he follows affection, as his principal guide. He professeth a new quality, called the art of climbing: wherein he teacheth others by pattern, not so much to aspire, as to break their necks. No stair pleaseth him, if there be a higher; and yet ascended to the top, he complains of lowness. He is not so soon laid in his bed of honour, but he dreams of a higher preferment, and would not sit on a seat, long enough to make it warm. His advancement gives him a fresh provocation; and he now treads on that with a disdainful foot, which ere-while he would have kissed to obtain. He climbs falling towers, and the hope to scale them, swallows all fear of toppling down. He is himself an Intelligencer to greatness, yet not without under officers ⟨p. 41⟩of the same rank. You shall see him narrow-eyed with watching, affable and open-breasted like Absalom, full of insinuation so long as he is at the stair-foot: but when authority hath once spoken kindly to him, with Friend, sit up higher, he looks rougher then Hercules; so big, as if the river of his blood would not be banked within his veins. His tongue is flabellum Diaboli, and flagellum justi: bent to scourge some, flatter others, infect, infest all. Agrippina, Neros mother, being told by an Astrologer, that her son should be Emperor, but to her sorrow: answered, Let my sorrow be what it will, so my son may get the Empire. He hath high desires, low deserts. As Tully for his Pindinessus, he spends much money about a little preferment; and with greater cost then the captain bought his Burgesship, he purchaseth incorporeal fame; which passeth away, as swift, as time doth follow motion; & whose weight is nothing but in her name, whereas a lower place well managed, leaves behind it a deathless memory. Like a great wind, he blows down all friends that stand in his way to rising. Policy is his post-horse, and he rides all upon the spur, till he come to None-such. His greatest plague is a Rivall. Nec quemquam jam ferre potest Caesarue priorem, Pompeiusue parem.