our hearts, as that Babylonian garment and [4512]
golden wedge did Achan in the camp, the very sight and hearing sets on fire
his soul with desire of it. It will make a man run to the antipodes, or
tarry at home and turn parasite, lie, flatter, prostitute himself, swear
and bear false witness; he will venture his body, kill a king, murder his
father, and damn his soul to come at it. _Formosior auri massa_, as [4513]
he well observed, the mass of gold is fairer than all your Grecian
pictures, that Apelles, Phidias, or any doting painter could ever make: we
are enamoured with it,

[4514] "Prima fere vota, et cunctis notissima templis,
Divitiae ut crescant."------

All our labours, studies, endeavours, vows, prayers and wishes, are to get,
how to compass it.

[4515] "Haec est illa cui famulatur maximus orbis,
Diva potens rerum, domitrixque pecunia fati."

"This is the great goddess we adore and worship; this is the sole object of
our desire." If we have it, as we think, we are made for ever, thrice
happy, princes, lords, &c. If we lose it, we are dull, heavy, dejected,
discontent, miserable, desperate, and mad. Our estate and _bene esse_ ebbs
and flows with our commodity; and as we are endowed or enriched, so are we
beloved and esteemed: it lasts no longer than our wealth; when that is
gone, and the object removed, farewell friendship: as long as bounty, good
cheer, and rewards were to be hoped, friends enough; they were tied to thee
by the teeth, and would follow thee as crows do a carcass: but when thy
goods are gone and spent, the lamp of their love is out, and thou shalt be
contemned, scorned, hated, injured. [4516]Lucian's Timon, when he lived in
prosperity, was the sole spectacle of Greece, only admired; who but Timon?
Everybody loved, honoured, applauded him, each man offered him his service,
and sought to be kin to him; but when his gold was spent, his fair
possessions gone, farewell Timon: none so ugly, none so deformed, so odious
an object as Timon, no man so ridiculous on a sudden, they gave him a penny
to buy a rope, no man would know him.

'Tis the general humour of the world, commodity steers our affections
throughout, we love those that are fortunate and rich, that thrive, or by
whom we may receive mutual kindness, hope for like courtesies, get any
good, gain, or profit; hate those, and abhor on the other side, which are
poor and miserable, or by whom we may sustain loss or inconvenience