To the Church (Against Avarice)

Timothy, least of the servants of God, to the catholic church spread throughout the whole world: grace to you and peace from God our Father and from Christ Jesus our Lord, with the Holy Spirit. Amen. Among the other grave and deadly diseases of ruinous pestilence which that most ancient and most foul serpent breathes into you, with the most grievous envy of his death-bringing jealousy and with the most hideous breath of his venomous mouth, I do not know whether any wastes you with a more bitter plague upon faithful souls and a more hideous stain upon your children than this: that most of your own think it a small thing if in this life they cling, without any fruit of mercy and kindness, to the goods that God entrusted to them for a holy work, unless they also extend their greed, that is, the slavery of idolatry, into the times to come after death.

Perhaps you look around and keep looking around to see which of your own they are whom I am addressing. You need no long search to find them. All, I say, almost all are what I speak of. For that outstanding and surpassing blessedness of your first people has long since departed, by which all who acknowledged Christ turned the perishable means of worldly things into the everlasting wealth of heavenly possessions, fining themselves of the use of present things for the splendid hope of things to come, buying immortal riches at the present cost of poverty. What then?

What of the fact that now, in place of all these, greed, covetousness, plunder, and their companions, joined to them as if by kinship, have taken their place: envies, enmities, cruelties, debauchery, unchastity, ruin, because those former goods now serve the uses of these men? And so, by your prosperity somehow fighting against yourself, the more peoples have been added to you, the more vices almost; the more abundance has come to you, the more discipline has gone away; and prosperity has come with gains at a great interest of losses.

For as the peoples of the faith have multiplied, faith has diminished, and as her children grow the mother sickens. You have become, O church, weaker through the increase of your fruitfulness, and by your growth you have slid back, as if less strong in strength. You have spread through the whole world members bearing the name of religion without the power of religion, and so you have begun to be rich in crowds and poor in faith: the richer in multitude, the needier in devotion; broader in body, narrower in mind; and, if I may say so, at once greater and smaller in yourself, by a new and almost unheard-of kind of advance and retreat, growing and shrinking at the same time.

Where now is that outstanding beauty of yours and the loveliness of the whole body? Where is the testimony of the divine letters concerning your living virtues, which says: “Now the multitude of those who believed was of one heart and soul, and no one said that anything of what he possessed was his own”? Of this, O grief and lamentation, you now have only the reading, not the virtue; in this you are present in knowledge only and absent in conscience.

For the greatest part of your children is now a trader in deadly wares, and, like hucksters and tavern-keepers, it busies itself with earthly, or rather hellish, markets, which perish and destroy at once. Buying loss of life with the gain of money, to acquire what is not their own they squander what is their own; they commit to the earth mournful treasures that will bring brief joy to their heirs and long grief to those who gathered them; they defraud both others and themselves of the use of present things; they hide hellish wealth in deep caverns, burying at once their money and their hope, according, of course, to that saying of our Lord in which he says: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

So they begrudge their own salvation and press down into the earth with earthly weights their own souls, which are called to heaven. For the mind of the one who lays up treasure follows his treasure and is changed, as it were, into the nature of an earthly substance, not only now but also in the future and forever. For since, as it is written, life and death are set alike before man, and he stretches out his hand to whichever he wishes, each man must possess in eternity what he has here seized, as it were, with his own hand; and, given over to his own will and judgment, he will cling in the future by his condition to the things to which he clung here by desire.

But some, no doubt, think themselves free of this offense because perhaps they do not keep their gold and wealth in the ground, though they keep it hidden somewhere. Let no one deceive himself with ridiculous opinions. Whoever serve earthly desire by increasing their wealth are always burying gold in the earth. For this is what the Savior teaches in the gospel, saying: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth”; and again: “but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” These words cannot be understood according to a fleshly hearing. Do all the wicked place their bodily treasures in the earth, or all the good in heaven? Certainly not.

And so the force of the sacred saying expressed the effects and powers of spiritual things. Because earthly and hellish things are owed to covetousness and greed, but heavenly and everlasting things to mercy and generosity, the difference between earthly and heavenly treasure was set down, so that those who lay up treasure for covetousness and greed might know that they place their wealth in hell, while those who lay up for mercy and kindness might rejoice that they are preparing heavenly treasures. Thus he named the places of the treasures from the merits of those who lay them up; for the treasures are said to be already there, where those who lay them up will be.

But perhaps the judgment may seem severe that calls all equally to perfection and binds all by one law, since the condition of all is certainly not one. To this it could most rightly be said that, since all wish to live forever, all ought to act so that they can share in life, because it is most ill-advised and most foolish for some to act so that what they want by desire and prayer they seem not to want in fact and deed.

Yet let us consider that part of the Christians, that is, of your children, which is called back from perfection by certain hindrances of circumstance and, as it thinks, by unbreakable bonds of family ties. First in this group, I think, are those who claim that they are driven to seek money and to enlarge their wealth very widely by care for their dear ones and, as it were, by a violent love of their children. As though whoever are fathers neither can nor ought to be anything but rich, and cannot love their children without multiplying wealth; or as though greed and covetousness were the strength and marrow of affection, because, as they think, just as a body cannot exist without marrow, so love cannot exist without covetousness.

If this is so, then without doubt family affection is the cause of every evil, and in it are not the feelings of good affection but the incitements of vices. And where then is that sacred oracle of divine authority: “Godliness is profitable for all things”? For in this way it would not only not be profitable for all things but harmful in nearly all. For if it is the mother of covetousness, it contains in itself far more evil than good, according to that word of sacred Scripture:

“The root of all evils is covetousness.” Therefore, if covetousness is the root of all evils, and it is born from the womb of family affection and nourished, as it were, on its poisonous milk, then it is not so much covetousness, born of affection as its parent, that must be blamed as affection itself, from which such a daughter is produced. It would follow that, if affection is so pestilent and so harmful, it is profitable neither to love nor to be loved, since parents ought not to seek a love harmful to themselves, nor children to desire one that will injure their parents.

And yet that disease harms not only the parents but also the children, for it is grievous both to those who beget ruinous inheritances and to those who are brought up as wicked heirs amid most wicked gain. Hence it is that nearly all children succeed their parents no more in their estates than in their vices, and take up no more their fathers’ means than their depravities; and so, passing always into the ways of their fathers, they begin to possess their wickedness before their substance. For they possess the goods of their parents only when these are dead, but their ways while they are still alive and strong; and so, before they begin to hold their fathers’ property in their own ownership, they hold their fathers themselves in their minds, and before they have the things falsely called goods, they have the things truly proved to be evils.

What then? Since this is so, do I seem perhaps to forbid parents’ affection for their children? Not at all. For what would be so savage, so inhuman, so contrary to the law, as for us to say that children should not be loved, when we confess that enemies are to be loved? Or for us to forbid the affection that nature supplies, when we spend ourselves to instil even the one that nature forbids? Or to wrench from the mind the love it has, when we try to plant in it even the love it does not have?

It is not so. We say that children are to be loved, and loved especially and above all things, with nothing at all set before them except God alone. For this too is to love them especially: to set before the children him whom it is never profitable to set after them. How then, and in what way, do we say children are to be loved? Surely in no other way than as God himself has appointed. For there is no better love of children than the one taught by him who gave the children themselves; nor can dear ones be better loved than if they are loved in him by whom they were given. How, then, has God commanded children to be loved?

I do not say it; let the divine word itself say it, which speaks thus to all fathers in general: “that they should hand on the commandments of God to their children, that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of their God, and seek out his commandments.” Elsewhere also: “And you, fathers,” it says, “do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord.”

You see what wealth God commands parents to prepare for their children: not treasures of money nor sacks heavy with gold, which have much weight indeed but still more iniquity; not proud houses towering over lofty cities; not roofs raised above human sight, nor gables thrust into the clouds with a dweller of the air; not, finally, boundless estates exceeding even their owner’s knowledge, which think it unworthy to endure partners and regard neighbourliness as an injury.

God does not command these things, nor does he extend the care of fatherly affection into servile duties of earthly management. Few are the things he commands, but saving; easy, but holy; sparing in precept, but great in fruit; brief in writing, but everlasting in blessedness. “Parents,” he says, “do not provoke your children to indignation, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord,” so that, as the prophet said, “they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of their God, and seek out his commandments.”

See what riches God loves, see what wealth he requires to be stored up for our dear ones, see what means he commands to be prepared: faith, of course, and the fear of God, modesty, holiness, discipline; not earthly, not cheap, not perishing, not fleeting things, but things truly splendid. For since God is the God of the living, not of the dead, he rightly commanded that those things be prepared for children by which they would live forever, not those by which they would die for eternity. For no one doubts that for nearly all the wicked and unbelieving, worldly riches are a cause of death rather than of life, according to what God says: “How hard it is for those who have money to enter the kingdom of heaven!” And again: “It is easier,” he says, “for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Hence also is that which he specially commands, saying: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”

By the words before and after, two kinds of treasure are shown: one which fathers lay up for their children, the other which they lay up for themselves. For their children, how? By instructing them in the service and fear of God. For themselves, how? By laying up for themselves treasures in heaven. Wonderfully so: because money is fleeting and discipline immortal, and nearly all parents love their children more than themselves, let them bestow fleeting goods on themselves and everlasting goods on their children. So they will provide both for their affection and for their salvation with a double and immortal good: through things that are eternal they will make their children eternal, and, to gain blessedness for themselves, they will turn by good works into eternal things those things that are by nature fleeting. Why then are you inflamed, fatherly affection?

Why are you stretched to gain earthly and perishing things? You can give your children nothing greater than that through you they should have a good which they will never wholly lose. There is no need, then, for you to store up earthly treasures for your son: by nothing will you make him richer than if you make your son himself a treasure of God.

Although these things are so, and are true and most wholesome, I will not speak as though I were wholly excluding children from their fathers’ goods and means. But of this we will argue later. Meanwhile, since some do not think they will be guilty if they bestow their substance not on the honor of the gospel, not on their own salvation, nor on any service of God, but out of whim and unbelief transfer it, with impious and pagan vanity, to any heirs at all, irreligious or rich, let us briefly see by whom these means were given and why they were given, so that once we have shown the giver and the reason for the gift, we may more easily prove to whom it should be returned and to what use it should be put.

No man, I think, doubts that all worldly substance is given to all by God’s gift, if only he can be counted among men; unless perhaps someone is so wise as to think that, while the world itself was given by God to the human race, the things in the world were not given by God to men. Therefore, if God has granted all things to all, no one doubts that what we have received by God’s gift we ought to return to God’s worship, and spend in his work what we have received from his generosity.

For this is to acknowledge God’s gift and to use the divine benefits well: to honor with his gifts the one from whom you received them. Examples from human affairs also teach this. For if the use of certain things is granted to a man by the kindness and generosity of another, and he, forgetful of the one from whom he obtained the enjoyment of them, tries to divert the ownership of the thing lent from the very one who lent it and to alienate it, would he not be judged the most ungrateful and faithless of all, who, forgetting a kind and most generous man, wishes to strip of his right of ownership the very man who enriched him with the possession of its use?

So we too have received only the use of the things we hold; for we use means lent by God and are possessors, as it were, on sufferance. In short, when we depart from this world, willing or not, we leave everything here. Why then, since we are holders of a life-interest, do we try to divert from the owner’s title and alienate what we cannot take with us? Why do we not use in good faith the little things God has given? We held them as long as we were allowed; we held them as long as he who lent them permitted.

What is more right, what more honorable, than that, when the property departs from the one who had its use, the possession should return to the one who granted it to be used? Indeed, the very voices of God through the tongues of the sacred writings command this, saying to each one of us: “Honor the Lord from your substance.” And elsewhere: “Pay your debt,” he says. How kind and indulgent is the Lord our God, inviting us to spend the resources of our earthly substance! “Honor the Lord,” he says, “from your substance.” Though all that we have received from him is his, he calls it ours so that we may give, calling the property of the possession ours precisely so that the reward of the one who acts may be greater, since the giver must have more fruit when the gift appears to come from his own.

But lest the human mind grow insolent precisely because the Lord had said this substance was ours, he added: “Pay your debt”; that is, the one whom devotion did not entice to give, necessity would compel to pay; and the one whom his own faith did not draw to the holy work, necessity at least would constrain. First he says: “Honor the Lord from your substance”; then he says: “Pay your debt.” That is to say: if you are devout, give as though it were yours; if undevout, pay back as though it were not yours. So he rightly set down both the willingness to give and the necessity to pay.

This is to say to every man: toward the holy work you are both urged by exhortation and bound by exaction: give, if you will; pay back, if you will not. The apostle too, urging the same thing, commands the rich not to be haughty nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches but in the living God, “who supplies us,” he says, “with all things to enjoy, in the will to do good works.” In one saying he taught both who gives riches and why he gives them.

For in saying that one must hope in God, who supplies all things, he showed that the rich are made rich by God; and in adding “in the will to do good works,” he teaches that what he said is granted by God is supplied only for the sake of good works. “For he supplies all things,” he says, “in the will to do good works”: that is, he makes men rich in substance for this purpose, that they may be rich in good working; that is, that they may exchange the riches they have received and, placing these means in good works, may by using them well make everlasting the wealth of God which they have temporarily in this age; and so, acknowledging the gifts of God, they may rejoice in a double good, since those who are rich in this age may deserve to be rich also in heaven.

In this way, then, riches are to be had, to be sought, to be kept, to be increased. Otherwise it is an incalculable evil not to use well the goods given by God. For “nothing is more wicked than the miser,” says sacred Scripture, and the worst and deadliest kind of disease is “riches kept to the harm of their owner.” It is true. For what is worse or more wretched than for someone to turn present goods into future evils, and through the very things God gave so that everlasting blessedness of life might be won from them, to seek death and everlasting damnation?

In this we must also consider that, if riches kept are kept to a man’s harm, how much more are they heaped up to greater harm! For how many of the rich now are of such restraint as to be content to guard their wealth and not wish to pile it up further? O the misery of the times and of the church’s people, to what has it been reduced! Though it is written that to keep riches is a kind of great crime, not to increase them is now thought a kind of virtue.

Therefore, as we said above, how can some think themselves not guilty at all if they have not provided for themselves even at death by disposing of their substance, when they are guilty even from this, that they kept everything until death? Or how will they not be guilty who have passed on their means to any men at all with most faithless vanity, when even those will be guilty who did not deprive themselves in this life of some part of their goods for the honor of God? Our Lord shows this through the apostle, saying: “Come now, you rich, weep in the miseries that will come upon you: your riches have rotted and your garments have been eaten by moths, your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.”

Apart from that severity of the divine words which, hidden in the mystery, is far greater and more terrible, I think what is plain is enough to bring fear and trembling to all. For he speaks specially to the rich. He commands them to lament, he announces future evils, he threatens everlasting fire. And, so that the threats themselves may be feared the more, this is not on account of murders, not on account of sexual immorality, not for sacrilegious impieties or other vices that slay souls with a deadly sword and perpetual killing, but on account of wealth alone, on account of mad covetousness, on account of the hunger for gold and silver, to show that these things are enough for a man’s eternal damnation even if there were no other guilt. What could be said more simply, what more plainly?

He does not say to the rich man: “You must be tormented because you are a murderer, you must be tormented because you are a fornicator,” but “you must be tormented” solely “because you are rich,” that is, because you use riches badly, because you do not understand that riches were given to you for a holy work. For riches are not harmful in themselves, but the minds of those who use them badly are guilty; nor is wealth itself the cause of a man’s punishment, but the rich make punishment for themselves out of wealth, because while they refuse to use riches well, they turn those very riches into torments for themselves. “You have laid up treasure,” he says, “in the last days.”

Well did he add, after saying “you have laid up treasure,” the words “in the last days,” so that the guilt of those who lay up treasure might be greater, since they heaped up the odium of treasures even at the end of the age. “You have laid up treasure,” he says, “in the last days.” By “treasures” covetousness is accused, by “the last days” unbelief. And so the offense is double, both of covetousness and of unbelief: for while to covet treasures was certainly a crime at any other time, according to what God says, “You shall not covet,” it is without doubt a greater crime, through unbelief itself, to pile them up even at the end of the world.

Perhaps someone has judged my discourse so far to be harsh. And truly it is harsh if it has urged anything not drawn from the authority of the sacred testimonies; let it be thought harsh if it contains anything such as the apostle preached here. And we do not add that saying of our Lord in which he declared all wholly unworthy of him who had not renounced all that they possessed.

Since this is so, ought not what we have said, I ask, to be thought most indulgent and most gentle, since for men to whom we cannot give perfect health we seek at least help for a despaired-of salvation, and whose life we cannot heal we try to ease in death? For what is perfect health? What but to act well in this life? What is the last remedy? What but to procure a good provision for the journey at least at the end? What is perfect health? What but to use well the things God has entrusted? What is the last remedy? What but at least afterwards to do what you regret not having done before?

Someone thinks what I say is harsh. Let it be thought harsh, plainly harsh, unless it is such as to seem soft and lenient in comparison with the apostle’s severity. For the apostle calls the rich to lamentation, we to remedy; the apostle names riches fire, we wish to make from riches waters that put out the fire, according to that saying: “As water extinguishes fire, so almsgiving extinguishes sin.”

The apostle testifies that there is damnation in riches badly kept; I desire to win everlasting life for all from the things which he says bring eternal death. Not, indeed, that I think it enough for eternal life for anyone entangled in fleshly vices if, having grown old in shameful deeds until death, he disposes of everything well at his death, unless he has first renounced his sins, cast off that filthy and muddy tunic of crimes, and received the new garment of conversion and holiness from the hand of the preaching apostle.

Otherwise the man does not cease to sin whom, placed at the end, only impossibility, not will, makes withdraw from crimes. For he who departs from evil deeds only by death does not leave his crimes but is left by them; and so, shut out from vices by necessity, he still sins, I think, even when they have ceased, because as far as his mind goes he has not yet stopped who would still wish to sin if he could. So he does not rest on good hopes who sins in life only to buy off the mass of his sins at death, and thinks he will escape not because he is good but because he is rich.

As though God sought not men’s life but their money, and wished to receive from all who do evil in the hope of buying off their wickedness only coins in exchange for crimes, and like corrupt judges demanded silver so as to sell sins.

It is not so. For it is certain that generosity is of very great benefit, but not to those who live badly in the final hope of future generosity, who commit crimes trusting to buy themselves immunity, but to those who, deceived by the slipperiness of youth, or the cloud of error, or the fault of ignorance, or finally by a lapse of human frailty, begin at last to come to their senses, as if after the death of a most grievous sickness or the grief of a troubled mind; and as madmen return to their senses after their frenzy, so these return after their error, differing from them in one thing only: the former rejoice after they have escaped sickness, the latter lament after they have received health.

And not without reason. For the former rejoice the more, the more health they feel they have gained; the latter are the more ashamed, the more clearly they recognize the disease of their error. So it must be that the former exult and the latter mourn, because the former blame their sickness on their health, the latter blame their errors on themselves; and so the former are glad of the remedy and the latter anxious about their guilt.

Therefore I admonish all, and especially those whom the terror of grave sins torments and in whom a more unhappy conscience sighs at the memory of sins deserving punishment: first, that though they have fallen, they should not linger in their fall, nor wallow in their mire like swine, which, when they have plunged their heated bellies in the mud, are in no way satisfied in their filthy pleasures unless they roll every limb wholly in the muck. Let them not follow these creatures’ natural filth, nor rest content in falls that flatter wickedly, nor, lingering in the abyss of lusts, bury themselves in their own ruins; but let them rise at once where they fell, and in their very fall at once think of rising; and, if it can in any way be done by the swiftness of repentance, let the remedy of the one rising be so quick that scarcely a trace of his collapse can appear.

So in such cases the first work of healing is that the sick should dread their diseases, that the wounded should hasten to treat their wounds, and that those struck should pull the arrows from their bodies at once. For a poultice or a clasp is best applied to wounds while still warm, and the flesh of a wound knits more quickly when it is not left gaping long. For an ulcer in the body spreads if it festers, and if gangrene follows the wound, death must follow the gangrene.

These evils, then, sinners must first flee, and no place must be given to the devil, so that he who pushed them while standing into ruin may not hurl them, once fallen, into death. But if the force of the disease, or the neglect of the sick, is so great that it drags out the corruption of health to the last days, I do not know what to say and I am wholly at a loss what to promise. To call back those in danger from seeking a last remedy is harsh and impious; but to promise anything in so late a cure is rash.

Yet it is without doubt better that hands withered by long paralysis should be lifted to heaven with some effort than be wholly undone by deadly despair; better to leave nothing untried than to treat a dying man with nothing at all; especially because I do not know whether to try something at the end is a cure, but to try nothing is certainly ruin. And one thing I know: whoever has brought the last stage of a long illness into this misery, it is beyond words how much lamentation he owes his errors, who never acknowledged his faults.

And what will happen meanwhile? When will he mourn who has lost the days of mourning? When will he make satisfaction who has lost the time of satisfaction? He will take refuge, no doubt, in long fasts. This is indeed something, if mixed with almsgiving, according to that saying: “Fasting with almsgiving is good.” But how will a long confession help one placed at the end? He will wear down his flesh with sackcloth and soil it with ashes and dust, so that the hardships of the present may make up for the softness of past pleasure, and the service of an injury that pleads for him may discharge the guilt of long luxuries. But when will he do such great things, when, his death already near, he is shut out even from doing moderate ones?

In short, the severity of faith, as judge, will subject the guilty man in his own body to the crosses of various hardships, so that he may earn the indulgence of eternal pardon by courting present punishment. But when the body is already failing, where will the mind as censor exercise its office of strictness? For a judge cannot exercise the decision of severity when the accused can no longer bear to be judged.

There is one thing, then, which, when all other aids and supports are lost, can help one who is tottering and forsaken: that he take refuge in that holy and wholesome counsel of the most blessed Daniel, who, wishing to heal the Babylonian king of the sores he had contracted by offense, compounded a poultice of mercy, saying: “Therefore, O king, let my counsel please you: redeem your sins by mercies and your iniquities by compassion to the poor; perhaps the Lord will be patient with your offenses.” Let this man, then, do as Daniel said.

Let him use for his own wounds the medicine offered to another; let him fear the example of disobedient obstinacy; let him consider what he himself will suffer in death, when he sees what the Assyrian king endured in life. It is a plain lesson about pride and rebellion. Let him consider whether he will escape when dead if he does not listen, when he sees that the king who did not listen lost himself while alive. Let him offer, then, even while dying, to free his soul from everlasting punishments, since he can do nothing else, at least his substance; but let him offer it with compunction, with tears; let him offer it with sorrow, with mourning.

For offerings made otherwise do not profit, because they please not by their price but by the disposition. The giver’s mind is not commended by the gifts, but the gifts by the mind; money does not recommend faith, but faith money. And so whoever wishes what he offers to God to profit him should offer it in this way. For man confers no benefit on God in what he gives, but God on man in what he accepts, since even what man has is the gift of God his Lord. And so in what is offered by man, man does not return what is his own; the Lord receives back what is his.

So when anyone offers his means to God, let him offer not with the presumption of a donor but with the humility of a debtor paying; let him not believe that he is absolving his sins but lightening them; let him offer not with confidence of redemption but in the service of supplication; not as returning the whole debt but as wishing to return at least a little of much, because even if he hands over what he has according to the measure of his property, he does not pay what he owes according to the greatness of his sins. And therefore, though he offers, let him pray God that his offering may please, lamenting the very fact that he offers late, lamenting and repenting that he did not do so before. So it will be that, according to the prophet, God will perhaps be propitious to your offenses.

But someone says: “Is he then to offer God all he has?” Let him not offer all he has, if he does not think he owes all he has. I do not ask whose is what is offered, or from whom what is returned was first received. I say only this: let him not offer all as a debt if he does not think he owes all for his guilt. “All, then,” says someone, though a sinner, “is he to offer?” Rather nothing, if not with faith; rather nothing, if not with eager zeal; rather nothing, if not with prayer; rather nothing, if not in this spirit: that he count this very thing among the chief benefits of God, that God gave him the will to offer, and think that more is granted him in what he leaves to God than in what he had before; because what a man has is temporary, but what is left to God is everlasting.

“All,” someone says, “is he to offer?” But I say that this “all” is little. Why? Does anyone yet know whether what is offered balances the measure of his sins? Does anyone yet know whether there is as much in the work of appeasement as in the danger of the offense? If any man knows how much he can redeem his sins for, let him use that knowledge for redemption. But if he does not know, why should he not offer as much as he can, so that if he cannot balance his sins by the size of the price, he may at least balance them by the devotion of his mind? For he shows the perfect fruit of conscience who leaves nothing within his conscience.

Some no doubt complain that this is harsh and immoderate, especially because the prophet of whom we spoke seems to have advised the Babylonian king only to give much, not to sell off everything. For now I do not bring forward the testimonies of the gospel, nor take refuge in the voice of God speaking; I do not say that one thing was commanded by the old law and another by the new. Hence the apostle too says: “Behold, the old things have passed away, all things have become new; but all are from God,” by which he certainly teaches that we must do not the old things according to the letter but the new according to God.

For now I am content with this alone, what the prophet said. For he was speaking with a king, and indeed with a king not of one city but, as it then seemed, of the whole world, who certainly could not hand over the peoples he ruled to the needy by testament, nor give barbarian nations to the poor like coins, nor turn kingdoms spread far and wide into alms for paupers. So the prophet said: “Redeem your sins by mercies”; that is: give gold to the needy, since you cannot give a kingdom; distribute your means, since you cannot hand on your power. And by this he seems to have ordered him to give everything, since he did not order him to distribute only what he could not give away.

Perhaps we exaggerate the matter in words and raise it too high; let us see, then, what it is. “Redeem your sins,” he says, “by mercies.” What is it to redeem something? To pay, I think, the price of the things redeemed. I do not ask what that king’s sins were; let him know how much he had to pay to redeem what he did. I speak to you, whose cause it is; I call on you, whose peril is at stake. Do what the prophet said: “Redeem your sins by mercies.” Do not leave God as much as you have, if you do not think as much as you have necessary for your sins.

Reckon most carefully the faults you have committed; reckon the varieties of your sins. See what you owe for lies, what for curses and perjuries, what for carelessness of thought, what for impurity of speech, what finally for every impulse of evil will. Add at last, if any of these are in your conscience, those of which the apostle speaks: adulteries, sexual immorality, unchastity, drunkenness, uncleanness hateful to God, greed the servant of idolatry; and after these, perhaps, some crimes contracted even by the shedding of human blood.

And when you have reckoned the number of all, weigh the prices of each. And after this I do not ask that you hand over to God all you have for your sins; only pay what you owe. But I add after all this that, when you have handled and assessed your offenses, you will owe the more for your evils the more cheaply you value your sins, since “if anyone thinks himself to be something,” says the apostle, “when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” Not to mention that that king, who was yet to live and was perhaps young, was told nevertheless to hasten to redeem his sins; but you owe the more for yourself because you are doing this either while dying or on the very point of death.

For it will need great munificence and devotion to make up for this, that you return these things to your Lord only when you can no longer have them yourself; especially since to all this is added that the prophet himself, who calls that king to the redemption of his crimes, by the very things he says should be done, shows him not so much the security of pardon as a way of seeking salvation. For in saying “Redeem your sins by mercies, and perhaps God will be propitious to your offenses,” the very word “perhaps” indicates hope; it does not promise certainty.

From this it can be understood how hard it is for sinners already at the end to arrive at full pardon by any munificence, when the prophet himself, who urges seeking God’s propitiation, still did not dare to promise that it would be won. He gives counsel about the act and yet doubts about the effect; he makes himself an exhorter to act, not a guarantor of obtaining. Why so? Because all sinners ought to try everything for themselves even at the end, though they can presume nothing. For if the prophet does not promise that king full pardon through generosity in good works alone, the sinner who has not done penance for his errors can understand how great and how lavish a munificence he needs at the end, who wishes to obtain from the Lord by late devotion what he cannot claim by law.

We have spoken of the remedies for sins, or rather of the hopes and consolations of remedies: that the first aid in seeking salvation is that the sinner repent of his error; then that, according to the sacred word, he at once redeem his sins by mercies; finally, if he has not done so, that at least when dying he leave nothing untried, so that he may help himself at least by a last offering of his goods. But perhaps the reply will be this: if sinful men are bound by this necessity of redeeming crimes, then without doubt the holy, who are free of crimes, are not bound, and so they have no reason to give away their substance, since they have nothing that they need to redeem by generosity. I hear it; but what this amounts to we shall soon see.

Meanwhile, even if there are no past evils which a holy man must redeem with all his goods, there are still everlasting goods which he ought to buy at a great price. But of this more fully later. Now I say this freely and affirm it firmly: there is no one at all among the holy who is not God’s debtor in many things, and so whatever he gives to his Lord he does not so much donate as pay.

And first, to speak of the general benefits: whoever you are, holy or rich, you were first born, nourished, and brought up by the kindness and gift of God; you were furnished with things necessary for life, enriched even with things not necessary; your Lord granted you more for use than the measure of use required; in short, he extended his gifts beyond your hopes, and, what is greatest and rarest, his gifts surpassed even your prayers.

And I add after all this that the same Lord who first begot you by his gift afterwards also saved you by his passion; that for your sake, O man, earth and clay, or rather a tiny part of earth and clay, the Lord of all things came to earth, came forth from flesh and in flesh alike, humbled even to the shame of human beginnings, the filth of swaddling-clothes, and the lowliness of a manger, enduring the sufferings of this life unworthy of him: the weary alternations of eating and drinking, sleep and waking, the humiliating necessities of this perishable way of life, and finally the foul company of the men who lived around him, peoples of sinners smeared with mud and filth, always guilty of the deeds of an evil conscience, breathing out the stench of their shameful acts and therefore incapable of heavenly precepts and unable to bear the radiance of holy light, because the splendor of the divine light overwhelmed eyes darkened by sins.

And not only this; but after all this add the insolent contradictions of a proud people; add insults, add curses, impious persecution, false testimony, a bloody trial, the mockery of the people, spittings, scourgings, punishments most bitter indeed but indignities more bitter than the punishments: the crown of thorns, the cup of vinegar, the food of gall; the Lord of all condemned by men, the salvation of the human race hanging on the gibbet, God dying by the law of earthly condition.

Since this is so, whoever you are, holy or believing yourself holy, tell me, I ask: can these things alone be paid back, even if nothing else were owed? For whatever a man may bear for God, what God suffered for man can in no way be repaid, because even if the suffering itself does not differ in the kind of punishment, it must differ greatly by the difference of those who suffer. But perhaps you say that what we have described is a debt common to all men, and that the whole human race is liable for it without distinction. That is true.

But does anyone owe less because another owes the same? Or if a hundred men’s bonds are written for a hundred sesterces each, is the debt of one lightened because all are debtors for the same amount? “For each one,” says the apostle, “will bear his own burden,” and “each will give an account for himself.” In no way, then, is one man’s weight lightened by another’s, nor is the accused acquitted by the company of many. Nor is anyone’s damnation the less dreadful if the condemned man seems to have many partners in punishment.

So what I said above, though it is a general debt, is no doubt also particular; though common to all, it belongs nonetheless to each individually; it reaches all equally in such a way that nothing of the total is taken away from each. For as Christ suffered for all, so he suffered for each; he spent himself equally on all and on each, and gave himself wholly to all and wholly to each. So whatever the Savior bestowed by his passion, as all owe him the whole of it, so does each; except that each owes almost more than all, since each received as much as all. For where one receives what all receive, even if the measure is equal, the obligation is greater. Hence, though he receives the same, he seems to owe more, because one man becomes more liable when he is set on a level with all. So much, then, on this, because some of the holy do not think themselves debtors to God, since they cannot estimate the debt.

But perhaps someone says, not that the holy are not debtors, but that the debts of worldly men, who have more sins, are much greater. This is as if someone were to say: “I am innocent because another is more guilty; I am just because another is unjust; I am exceedingly good because another is singularly wicked.” First, it is unbecoming to a holy mind to think that its own goods grow by others’ evils, and to judge itself better by comparison with the worse. For it is a most unhappy kind of consolation to take comfort from the miseries of sinful men, when the apostle commands us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, and for each to think not of his own things but of those of others.

But suppose a comparison of this kind seems just and honorable: can it also be thought trustworthy? For who is sure enough about that great and terrible future judgment of God? Or who can say: “I owe less, he owes more”? Who, finally, can presume about himself or despair about another? “For we shall all stand,” says the apostle, “before the judgment seat of Christ,” and

“each will bear his own burden.” “Is there then no difference,” someone says, “between the holy and sinners?” Much, plainly, and almost immeasurable. But since Scripture says, “Blessed is the man who is always fearful,” and the mind of the wise is never secure about its own salvation, though there is much difference between the holy and sinners, still I ask of all who profess religion: who is holy enough for himself in his own conscience? Who does not tremble at the dreadful severity of that future examination? Who is secure of everlasting safety?

And if no one is, as no one ought to be, let any man tell me, I beg, why he does not strive with the whole strength of his substance to redeem, at least by devotion at death, whatever he has contracted by offense in life? Yet I want all who read what I say to know that I am not speaking of all the holy, but only of those who, though they have professed religion, do not give up their riches.

For of those who, freed of every burden, follow the way of the Savior and purchase Christ, the Lord of the laws, not only by holiness but also by poverty, nothing can be said except only what the prophet also said: “But to me your friends, O God, are exceedingly honored.” For I honor all these as nothing other than imitators of Christ; I revere them as nothing other than images of Christ; I look up to them as nothing other than members of Christ; and I remember them only so that I may become worthy of their remembrance.

But perhaps what we said above may seem injurious to religious profession. “For what,” someone says, “if a widow is rich, yet does not abandon her widowhood amid great abundance of wealth? What if a virgin has professed integrity and is devoted to the holiness of an unpolluted body? What if a married couple live without the marital act, denying themselves to each other and having one another as though not having? What if a monk has served as God’s soldier from the cradle? What if a cleric fulfils the service of the sacred ministry with faithful servitude? Are even these in danger of losing the fruit of eternal salvation if they keep their wealth intact while living, or do not leave it to the needy at death?”

My word and authority are slight for pronouncing judgment on such a question. Let us see, then, what the tongues of the sacred volumes and the voices of the heavenly precepts declare about all these, and then we shall most rightly direct the rule of our opinion by the norm God has given. And first, there is no reason for anyone to think he must now take refuge in the comfort of old examples, saying that some holy men, either under the law or before the law, were perhaps rich. That time has gone; the principle has changed. For before the law all were free to choose whether to have or even

to pursue wealth, because then they were not yet chastened by the rod of heavenly prohibitions. “For where there is no law,” says the apostle, “there is no transgression.” So the law made something unlawful: “for I would not have known covetousness,” says the apostle, “unless the law had said, You shall not covet.”

And so man freely possessed wealth, which God had not reproved before the law. Under the law too almost the same right belonged to all, because the law did not at all forbid a man to have what he wished, provided he had it justly. So then all the holy used all their means within the limits prescribed by the law, walking, as we read, “in all the commandments and ordinances of God blameless.”

So indeed walked those of whom these things are recorded: Anna the prophetess, living in fasts and prayers; Nathanael, of whom we read, exalted by the praise of a true Israelite and wonderful by the witness of the Lord and God himself; Tobit, who, exceeding the precepts of the law by the greatness of his devotion, served in burying the dead even at the risk of death, and, providing for the needy even to his own need, came to such a disposition of generosity that he assigned to his hired man a share of all his goods; and this, to make it the more wonderful, when he was already rich, and, more wonderful still, rich after being poor, since wealth after want generally rouses a greater desire to possess.

Such, then, were the holy at that time: having all things according to the law, leaving all things according to the law. Thus everyone who obeyed the law was perfect, and he who then under the law did less was as devout as he who now under the gospel does more; for then the law was, as it were, the gospel. Hence whoever then showed himself obedient to the law, in a sense fulfilled the gospel. There is no reason, then, for anyone to think he must now take refuge in the law; for “the old things,” as the apostle says, “have passed away; all things have become new.”

There was more indulgence then and more license. Then the eating of meat was proclaimed, now abstinence; then in a whole life there were very few days of fasting, now the whole of life is, as it were, one fast; then vengeance was available to the injured, now patience; then the law served the angry, now it opposes them; then it held out the sword to the accuser, now love; then the law indulged even fleshly allurement, now the gospel does not indulge even a look; then bodily pleasures had a certain license, now even the eyes are commanded to keep strict watch; then the law widened the bed of one husband to receive many wives, now by the devotion of chaste affection it restrains even to the exclusion of one.

“For it remains,” says the apostle, “that those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who weep as though not weeping, and those who rejoice as though not rejoicing, and those who buy as though not possessing, and those who use this world as though not using it; for the form of this world is passing away.” See how briefly the teacher sent by God has regulated everything and enclosed all in one perfection, not only forbidding what is unlawful but also restricting what is lawful: cutting back the use of marriage, the faithlessness of weeping, the excess of joys, the lust of possessing and the desire of buying, and finally the brief and shadowy pleasure of this world itself. And why all this?

Why, indeed, unless, as he himself said, because “the form of this world is passing away”? How far, then, are they from God’s command, who, when God has ordered them to renounce wealth while living, desire to possess it even when dead in their relatives! Or how far are they from that devotion of disinheriting themselves for God’s sake, who will not disinherit even strangers for their own sake! To them I would gladly say freely: “What madness is this, O most wretched men! To make any others whatever your heirs, you disinherit yourselves of your own; to leave others rich, even briefly, you condemn yourselves to eternal beggary.”

But perhaps someone asks why God now demands more of Christians through the gospel than formerly of the Jews through the law. The reason is clear: we now pay our Lord more because we owe more. For the Jews once had the shadow of things, we the truth; the Jews were servants, we adopted sons; the Jews received a yoke, we freedom; the Jews curses, we grace; the Jews the letter that kills, we the Spirit that gives life; to the Jews a servant was sent as teacher, to us the Son; the Jews passed through the sea to the desert, we enter the kingdom through baptism; the Jews ate manna, we Christ; the Jews the flesh of birds, we the body of God; the Jews the dew of heaven, we the God of heaven, who, as the apostle says, “though he was in the form of God, humbled himself unto death, even the death of the cross,” not content, indeed, to undergo a simple death for us, unless he heaped on the acceptance of a voluntary death the endurance of the greatest torments.

For this alone, then, what can a man pay, for whom Christ spent himself through the ultimate bitterness of punishments? Or what worthy return will he make to the Lord for himself, who owes the very God by whom he was redeemed? This, then, is why the Lord wants us to be more devoted to him: because he purchased our devotion at so great a price. And so the most blessed Paul says: “Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” The apostle does not say that we owe God only money or only riches, but tribulation, distress, famine, sword, suffering, the shedding of blood, the breathing out of the soul, and finally death seasoned with every kind of punishment. From this let all the religious understand that they do not give back enough to God even if they give all their means, because though they dispense all their goods, they still owe themselves.

And so, as we had begun to say above, if any woman is a widow, let her in no way think the name of widowhood enough for eternal salvation, but let her see what kind of widow God commands her to be in the apostle, saying: “She who is truly a widow, left alone, hopes in the Lord and continues in prayers night and day; for she who lives in pleasures is dead while she lives.” By one and the same precept the apostle has expressed two forms of widowhood, one of life and the other of death: he placed death in pleasures. Without doubt, therefore, he does not want her to be rich whom he does not allow to live in pleasures, since all the fruit of riches lies in the use of pleasures; otherwise, when the use of pleasures is removed, no reasons for wealth remain.

Since, then, the apostle declared that there is death in a widow’s pleasures, it is plain that he wants everything to be distributed for the fruit of eternal life, since he wants nothing kept for the use of death. And so he says: “She who is truly a widow, left alone, hopes in the Lord,” teaching that it is little for a widow not to live in pleasure and not to be rich unless she clings to God, is devoted to prayer, is left alone from all the allurements of the world, and through all this is truly a widow.

If this is so, any woman who wishes to be a widow of life and not of death should not think it enough to have denied herself pleasures and riches for God’s sake, unless by prayer and labor she has earned the right to be seen as God’s widow; for there is no doubt that as anyone has clung to Christ in this world, so he will remain in Christ’s body, according to the saying: “My soul has clung after you; your right hand has upheld me.” By this it is declared that God’s right hand will uphold in the future only that soul which has clung to God in this world.

This, then, is the rule of widowhood. As for married people who have professed continence and are full of the Spirit of God, who should doubt that those who have banished themselves from the world will not want their goods to serve worldly heirs? For how will they assign to others what belongs to them, who deny themselves to themselves? Endowed with so new a virtue, trampling with the austerity of admirable continence the pleasures of the body which are permitted and, what is more, already experienced, how will they not vow something of their goods to God, who have made God himself dwell within them? So that, in my judgment, it can most rightly be said even of such a marriage: “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry out, you who are not in labor, for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband.”

For such a marriage is barren, because it does not bear; desolate, because it has separated itself from all the allurements of the world; and without a husband, because, without the use of a husband, it has a husband as though it seemed not to have one. Who, then, would doubt that such couples, while they live, live to God in their substance as in themselves, and when they depart from life, go with their means to God, to whom they lived? Otherwise, if any of them leaves his goods to people given to the world, and leaves them to the world itself, he has inscribed the name of religion on himself in vain: he seems always to have lived for the one for whom he dies. So much on married people.

Let us pass on to the sacred virgins, for whom the Savior himself prescribed the law of devotion by the example of the ten virgins, of whom he says the number of the foolish girls was to be given over to everlasting punishments only because the work of mercy would be lacking to them. By this saying he most plainly taught at how great a price he valued abundant mercy, without which, he said, not even integrity itself would profit a virgin.

But perhaps some flatter themselves and think it enough if, having much in their means, they give at least a little. Nor do I refuse to believe it is so, if the reasoning holds. Let little be given, if it will suffice to have given little; but I do not know that little suffices; rather, I know for certain that little does not suffice. If they know otherwise, let them know it for themselves; I know one thing: God says the lamps of the foolish virgins went out, having no oil of good works.

But you, whoever you are, do you think you have oil in abundance? Those foolish virgins of whom I spoke certainly thought so; for unless they had believed they had it, they would have provided for having it. For since afterwards, as the Lord says, they wanted to borrow and sought it with every effort and eagerness, they would no doubt have sought it before, had not confidence in having it deceived them. And so you too, whatever virgin you are, see that you do not lack it in this way, though you believe you have it; for you bear the same name as they, the same profession. You are a virgin, and they were virgins.

You presume that you are wise, and they did not think themselves foolish. You judge that your lamp has light, and they surely lost their light through presuming on light to come. For this is why they are written to have trimmed their lamps, because they believed they would give light. What more? I even think some light shone in them.

For since, as we read, they feared that their lamps were about to go out, they certainly had something they feared would be put out. Nor was the opinion of those who feared false: for they were put out and blinded. For it profited that integrity nothing that the light of virginity appeared in it, since it failed when the supply of oil was not furnished. From this we understand that what is little is as nothing, since it does little good for a light to be lit only to go out at once; it helps nothing for something to shine that sets at its very rising, and to have the beginning of a living thing only so as to have the beginning of a dying one.

So a full lamp is needed for the light to last. For if in the very lamps men use for a short time the light grows faint and fails unless oil has been poured in abundantly, how much, whoever you are, how great an abundance of oil do you need for your lamp to shine forever? So it is not enough for anyone for everlasting life to think he has what he does not have; for foolish presumptions are causes of perdition, not of salvation: “for if anyone thinks himself to be something,” says the apostle, “when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”

Unless perhaps, whoever you are, the measure of generosity has been revealed to you by God, and you have limits of giving prescribed by the Holy Spirit, which you think it a sin to exceed, and you would judge it a kind of transgression if you were more religious than God commands. If so, I do not forbid you to use the knowledge granted by God. But if this is as false as it is frivolous, what madness is it not to do all you can, out of cautious and timid foresight, when you are wholly ignorant of what is needed for your salvation?

It remains to say something of the ministers and the priests, though perhaps some things may be said superfluously. For whatever has been said of all the others belongs without doubt more to those who ought to be an example to all, and who should surpass the rest in devotion as much as they surpass all in dignity. For what is high rank without loftiness of merit but a title of honor without substance? Or what is dignity in the unworthy but an ornament in the mud? And so all who stand high on the platform of the sacred altar ought to excel as much in merit as in rank.

For if God gave such and so perfect a rule of life to men placed among the people and to women weaker by their very sex, how much more perfect does he command those to be by whom all are to be taught so that they may be perfect, and whom God willed to be so great an example in all things that he bound them to a singular norm of life by the severity not only of the new law but also of the old? For although the ancient decree gave all a broad freedom to increase their wealth, it confined all the Levites and priests within a fixed limit of possession, permitting them to have neither field of grain nor vineyard nor any land at all.

From this it can be understood whether our God now wants his clergy, living under the gospel, to leave to worldly heirs after them what he did not want even those under the law to possess. Hence the Savior himself in the gospel imposes on them the duty of perfection, not as a voluntary one as for others, but as a command. For what do we read that he said to that young layman? “If you wish to be perfect, sell what you have and give to the poor.” But what to his ministers? “Do not possess,” he says, “gold or silver or money in your belts; no bag for the journey, nor two tunics, nor shoes, nor staff.”

See how great the difference is between these two words of God. To the layman he said: “If you wish, sell what you possess”; but to the minister: “I do not want you to possess.” And he thought it too little to take from him the possession of larger means, unless he also took away the very bag from the apostle about to make a long journey and fined him down to a single tunic. And what then? Not even this is enough. He commands his servants to travel the world on bare feet besides, and took the shoes from soles stiff with frost.

What more can be said? He snatched the staff from the apostle’s hand and did not leave his ministers, as they travelled the whole world, the use of a single little rod. And after this it is too little for their successors, that is, the Levites and priests, who discharge so great a ministry of divine things, to be rich themselves, unless they also leave rich heirs. Let us blush, I beg, at this unbelief. Let it be enough for us that we seem to despise God to the end of life: why do we act so as to extend our contempt of him even after death?

We have spoken of the persons and offices of each, and all this because, as we said above, some who have professed religion thought that they did not owe their substance to the Lord as other worldly people do, or certainly owed less, when in fact they owe it the more, because “the servant who knows his master’s will and does not do it will be beaten with many stripes, but the one who does not know it will be beaten with few.”

Religion is the knowledge of God, and so every religious person, by the very fact that he follows religion, testifies that he knows God’s will. The profession of religion, therefore, does not remove the debt but increases it, because taking on the name of religious is a pledge of devotion; and so the more one has promised by profession, the more he owes in deed, according to the saying: “It is better not to vow than, after vowing, not to pay what was promised.”

But perhaps someone says: “If this is so, then irreligion is safer than religion.” Not at all. For the religious man is a debtor by what he professes, the irreligious by what he has neglected; and so both have their debt according to the difference of their condition. The religious owes whatever he professed to have acknowledged; the irreligious owes even what he does not deign to acknowledge, according to what the divine word specially says of such a man: “He would not understand, that he might do well.”

But since we seem to have burdened the religious in this matter by saying that the profession of the name is a pledge of religion, let us remove this burden; let us suppose that what I said is not so. Let us consider what we ought to do not by profession but by reason, not by vow but for our very well-being.

Tell me, I beg, all you religious: is there any man who does not do everything he does for the sake of his salvation or at least his advantage? No one, I think; for all are led to the desire and pursuit of their own advantage by the teaching and impulse of nature itself. So soldiers think their service honorable for them, traders think it profitable, farmers think it fruitful. What more? Even thieves and robbers and poisoners and assassins and every kind of wicked way of life think what they do suits them; not that evil suits anyone, but that he who practices evil believes what is evil suits him.

So we too, I think, sought the philosophy of religion for no other reason than that we judged it fitting for us, considering the brevity of present things and the eternity of future things, how small this is and how great that; considering also the coming Judge and the grave outcomes of the dreadful judgment, the burning valley of everlasting tears in the midst of the surrounding peoples, which it is an incalculable and supreme evil not only to enter and endure but even to see and fear is a part of the supreme evil;

considering also, in contrast to these horrors and torments, those splendid and most blessed things: the new heavens and the new earth, the more beautiful face of all things, the eternal dwelling of righteousness, the fresh building of creation, the golden houses of all the saints above the old heavens, halls polished with sparkling gems and precious with the gleam of immortal metals, light there sevenfold brighter, ever shining with crimson splendor, a blessedness rich in ineffable goods, an eternity glad with its inhabitants, the company of the patriarchs, the fellowship of the prophets, the brotherhood of the apostles, the dignity of the martyrs, and in all the saints a likeness to the angels, abundance of heavenly wealth, overflow of immortal delights, a life shared with God.

Thinking of these things, then, and contemplating them, we took refuge in the worship and service of holy religion, adopted it as a supporter, as it were, for obtaining these goods and an advocate of most effective intercession, and committed ourselves with eager humility to its protection and patronage.

Since, then, we have both thought of and sought such great things, let us now see and weigh most carefully whether there is anything in our deeds or in our substance by which we can buy such great things from God. If there is not, why, I ask, should not each of us offer for himself all he has, since he cannot offer all he owes? Especially since our Savior and God himself has said that nothing is safer and more wholesome for every man than to place his property and substance in the use of mercy, and has specially commanded it in both the old and the new law, saying that those who share their own become richer, and that mercy frees from death.

And elsewhere, of the holy man: “He has scattered, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” In the gospel too: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,” he says. And again: “You cannot serve God and mammon.” And again: “Woe to you, rich, who have your consolation.” And to the greedy and those guilty of the crime of inhumanity: “Go,” he says, “into the eternal fire, which my Father prepared for the devil and his angels.”

It is easily understood what their punishment will always be, whose lot is assigned with the devil. Yet by these greatest torments it is not those most atrocious crimes of sexual immorality, murder, or sacrilege that are punished in them, but only greed and the inhumanity that renounces mercy.

From this we ought to understand what those will suffer whom greed has made guilty besides other sins, when those whom the crime of greed alone, free of all other sins, has condemned to death are to suffer the highest punishment. If we believe all this will come, we must certainly avoid it. If we do not avoid it, we surely do not believe. And if we do not believe, we are not Christians at all; for we cannot call anyone a Christian who does not think Christ is to be believed.

But suppose we, though guilty, do not fear the punishments we mentioned above: can we also hope for a reward without deserving it? So if we do not give our wealth to redeem our sins, let us at least give it to buy blessedness; if we do not give so as not to be condemned, let us at least give so as to be rewarded. For even if there are no past evils which the holy must redeem, there are still everlasting goods which they ought to buy at a great price; even if there is no punishment to fear, there is still a kingdom to strive for; and so, even if the holy have nothing to redeem, they still have something to buy. Unless perhaps someone fears loss in the purchase: that he may lend more than he receives back, that small returns may be made to one who lent much, that repayment may not match the gift, that once a great price is paid the buyer’s money may be at risk, and that if he entrusts something great to the Lord on earth, Christ may perhaps have nothing with which to repay him in heaven.

Plainly, if there is this doubt, I urge that nothing be done, since nothing at all profits the one who doubts. For work is vain if faith is not certain; he lends in vain who despairs of repayment. For Christ, as we believe, is the rewarder of all deeds. If, then, you think him either too poor to be able to repay, or faithless and unwilling, how can you hope for repayment from one whom you yourself have condemned for both inability and faithlessness?

But if it is not so, and you do not doubt that he will do what he said, what folly or what error is it not to give him as much as you can, when you have no doubt that you will receive back much more than you gave? What misery, finally, to prefer to receive back nothing of what you leave behind, when you could possess wholly all that you believe? But, wretch that I am, I think God is not believed. And as to my saying “I think,” would that I thought it doubtfully and did not plainly recognize it! I would perhaps labor within myself to overcome my opinions, and force my mind not to believe doubtful things, so as to turn it to better ones.

But what are we to do? We are overcome not by doubtful things, and we are pressed by evident ones. For who believes the Lord in mind and does not believe him with his means? Who hands over his soul to God and denies him his money? Who lends faith to the heavenly promises and does not act so as to be a sharer in the promises? So when we see men not doing these things, we are forced to recognize openly and plainly that they do not believe. We may not think they have faith in God when they proclaim by their deeds that they deny it.

In this the unbelief of almost all men must be lamented and mourned. O misery, O perversity! Man is believed by man, and God is not believed; hope is lent to human promises and denied to God. In short, hope of the future drives everything in human affairs; this temporary life itself is fed and sustained only by hope.

For this reason we entrust grain to the earth, so that we may receive back with interest what we entrusted; for this reason the greatest labor is put into vineyards, because the hope of vintage consoles men; for this reason traders empty their treasures on purchases, while they hope to heap them up by sales; for this reason sailors trust their lives to winds and storms, so that they may gain their hopes and wishes. What more? Even peace among wild and barbarian nations rests on hope and is confirmed by pledged faith. Even robbers and bloodthirsty men do not deny each other faith, and trust that what they have promised one another will be kept. In short, as I said, everything among men is done by hope. God alone is the one about whom men despair; and though our Lord has made the elements themselves and the nature of the world trustworthy, he alone is not believed by almost all, who alone made it possible for all things to be trusted.

But perhaps it may be said here that men’s use of their goods is sometimes a matter not of unbelief but of necessity, and that the religious do not disbelieve God but keep what is necessary for life and use; for many holy people are sometimes kept from the highest perfection of dispensing their wealth by sex, or age, or the very weakness of a frailer body.

Granted this may be tolerated; yet even if it is tolerated, it must be tolerated so that, according to the nature of the needs and reasons, what suffices is kept and what is excessive is cut off. “For having food and clothing,” says the apostle, “let us be content with these. For those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and the snare of the devil.” So, as we see, salvation lies in necessary things only, a snare in superfluous ones; God’s grace in moderation, the devil’s chain in riches. And what does the apostle add at once? “Which plunge a man into destruction and perdition.”

So if riches contain destruction in them, let us avoid opulence, so as not to fall into destruction. Ample and rich means are said to bring perdition: ample possession must be fled, so that deep perdition does not follow. And so whether sex or age or infirmity requires necessities, they ought to be content with what suffices, so that the religious duty may consume whatever exceeds temporary use.

But if you, man or woman of holy profession, gape after keeping wealth or heaping up means, you plead infirmity to no purpose. Can the weaker sex not live otherwise unless it stretches the cares of its mind across the management of a huge patrimony? Can a consecrated girl or a widow devoted to chastity not keep unharmed the perseverance of her holy profession unless she broods over weights of silver and gold and knows that she possesses within her conscience more wealth than the use of the possessor requires?

Or, since quiet is especially necessary to this sex and to modesty, does any woman perhaps think it impossible to keep an inviolate quiet among the few services of attendants, unless the din of a huge household beats on her ears and the tumultuous clamor of crowds resounding round her deafens her? Indeed, for a holy soul that desires true quiet, too great a disturbance is not only to be suffered but even in a way to be seen; and even if one wished to subject such crowds to discipline and silence, one could not suppress their disquiet while keeping one’s own quiet: so much is even the correction of another’s disquiet a disturbance of our own quiet.

What we have said of this sex applies to all and fits equally every age, sex, and infirmity. There is no reason, then, for anyone to think riches are suitable or harmless to religion: they are hindrances, not helps; burdens, not supports. For religion is not propped up by the possession and use of wealth but overthrown, according to what the Lord himself says: “The care of this age and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word of God, and it becomes unfruitful.” Fittingly and very beautifully he called riches deceitful: for they are thought and called goods, and so they deceive men with the name of present goods, when they are causes of eternal evils.

But though these things are as God himself foretold, let us nevertheless give way to the miseries and weaknesses of some who think they cannot live at all without great wealth. Granted, whoever you are, man or woman of holy name and profession: granted, have your riches, have your abundance to the end of this life, so long as at least at the end you bestow it on yourself; granted, be willing to use your goods and means in this life, so long as even when dying you do not forget yourself and remember to return your substance to the worship and honor of him by whose gift you know you received it.

What is asked of all of you, O rich of this world, is humane and even pleasant. If it cannot be obtained from each of you that he be willing to be poor in this age, let him at least ensure that he does not beg in eternity. You who so flee present want, why do you not dread it forever? Fearful in short things, avoid things long and endless. Why do you so shudder at poverty in this life, why are you so terrified? What you fear here is much less.

If you count temporary scarcity grievous, what, I ask, will that be like which will never end? We are pleading your own mind’s case, as it were, and your own wish. If you do not want to be wholly without the use of your goods, act so that you are never without them. We ask of you something pleasant and delightful. You who will not consent to be without riches at all, act so that you can always be rich, according to the saying: “If then you delight in thrones and sceptres, O kings of the people, love wisdom, that you may reign forever.”

Otherwise, what error or what madness is it that there can be any man who, having spent his life to the last day amid ample wealth, which alone suffices for guilt, is not mindful of himself generously and wholesomely even at the final departure, and does not help himself from his own goods even at that sick extremity (especially since in riches, which of themselves accuse their master according to the saying “Woe to you rich,” other kinds of sins are not lacking to the master, which have sprouted in the very bosom and womb of riches as in a natural tinder), and does not at least at his end do this, labor at this, earn this with all the eager use of his goods: that he may not go out guilty, not depart guilty, not leave his soul to be tortured now and his body to be tortured afterwards?

Who, then, is so unbelieving or so mad as not to think of these things, not to fear them, but to provide with his substance for others rather than himself, and, stripped of every support of the hope of this life, to lose the one plank to which, like a shipwrecked man in mid-sea, he could still cling; and not only to lose it, but to throw it away and push it wholly from himself, laboring in every way to leave himself nothing at all by which he might escape when about to perish?

Since this is so, tell me, I beg, all who love Christ: can any men at all be so savage and cruel against their enemies as these are against themselves? There are none so fierce, so inhuman, as not to stop pursuing their adversaries when they are already desperate and dying; these men pursue themselves even when placed in death.

Is this not persecution, or can there be any greater, for a man to be disinherited by himself, to be made an exile from all his goods, and to be driven, as it were, into exile by himself? And this not in a common or usual way, but in a new and most cruel one, where the soul itself is sent into exile and the spirit is cut off from its own means. O how much milder are outside and fleshly enemies! For they are enemies of bodies only; you are enemies of souls too.

Their hatred is slight, then, in comparison with your deeds. For whatever harms in the present age is light; that is grave, that is deadly, which will slay in eternity. And so the Savior himself says: “Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” Light, then, is the hatred that harms the body and does not harm the soul, because when the body is harmed the soul is beyond damage, and the blessedness of spirits is not interrupted by the sufferings of the flesh. That, then, is the inexpiable evil, that which cannot be estimated at all, which will condemn the whole man without end. And so your enemies are milder to you than you yourselves. For every enmity is dissolved by death; you act against yourselves so that you do not escape your enmities even after death.

In the two preceding books, O my lady, church of God, we spoke, as it were separately, with two parts of your children: the one a lover of the world, the other bearing the appearance of religion. In this one, if God permits, we wish to speak to both, as the case and reason require, addressing now one or the other separately, now both together. It remains that each, recognizing its own part in the course of the reading, receive with love of God whatever is said by us for love of God.

Since, then, in all that we have already said we have recalled that mercy and generosity are the special good of all Christians, and have proved by suitable and, I think, many witnesses that both the merits of the holy and the remedies of sinners are chiefly contained in them, I do not think anyone expects more, especially since, if anyone is eager for more, he should go to the books of God themselves, which are so full of many great witnesses that the testimony of almost all the heavenly writings is one.

It remains to say something against the reasons for unbelieving answers that some are accustomed to put forward for the sake of a deadly excuse. The Savior, speaking in the gospel, says that wealth and money are lent to men by the Lord so that what is lent may be returned with manifold interest, saying to the most grasping debtor: “Wicked and slothful servant, you knew that I reap where I do not sow and gather where I have not scattered. You ought therefore to have given my money to the bankers, and at my coming I would have received what is mine with interest. Take the talent from him, then, and give it to him who has ten talents.” And a little later: “And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Although this can also be referred to something else, it fits this place and case not unprofitably. For since the Savior’s bankers are rightly understood as the poor and needy, because money given out to such is increased, without doubt whatever is paid out to the needy is returned by God with interest. Hence elsewhere the Lord himself more plainly commands the rich to distribute the wealth of the world and make themselves purses that do not grow old. And through his chosen vessel too he shows that riches are given by the Lord to the wealthy so that they may grow rich in good work.

And so I too, least and most unworthy of the servants of God, say that the first and most wholesome duty of religion is that a rich Christian, while he is in this life, spend the riches of this world for the name and honor of God; and the second, that if, hindered by fear or weakness or some necessity, he has perhaps not done so, he at least dispose of everything when dying.

But perhaps he says: “I have children.” The page of the first book has already said fitting, I think, and not a few things on this; and the Lord’s word is quite enough on this matter, saying: “He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”; and also that prophetic word which says that neither fathers are to be judged for sons nor sons for parents, but each man either saved by his own righteousness or perishing by his own iniquity. And so, whatever riches a man heaps up for his children, it will in no way help him at the judgment that he left a rich heir.

But suppose parents can be pardoned if they leave part of their hereditary means to their children, provided, however, that they are good, that they are holy; suppose also they can be pardoned if they leave something even to bad and vicious ones. They seem to have some appearance of excuse, saying: “Affection conquered, the force of blood compelled, nature itself drew us into its right as if by the hand of love. We knew what God’s justice required, what sacred truth demanded; but we were subdued, we confess, by the yoke of fleshly kinship and gave our captive hands to the bonds of love; faith yielded to blood, and the rights of family affection overcame the devotion of religion.”

Something can be said, though it cannot be said wholesomely: it is the shadow of a little excuse that does not excuse, giving the accused the appearance of a little plea, not security from guilt. For I in no way promise anyone that he can have a firm support in any matter who has loved anything more than God, according to what is written, that the judgment will be in this, that light has come into this world and men loved darkness rather than light. For no one doubts that whatever a man prefers to divine love will be darkness to him. These things, then, are so.

But suppose, as I said, parents can be indulged when they indulge nature unwholesomely. What of the fact that some who have no children nevertheless turn wholly away from regard for their own salvation and the remedy of their sins, and, though they lack offspring of their own blood, still seek any others at all to whom they may assign the substance of their own means, that is, on whom they may inscribe some shadowy name of kinship, whom as imaginary parents they make, as it were, their adopted children, so that these may succeed, by the begetting of faithlessness, into the place of dear ones who do not exist?

And so all the most wretched and impious, though not bound by the bonds of children, prepare bonds for themselves with which to bind the unhappy necks of their souls; though there is no force of domestic danger, they summon danger from outside; and though causes of peril are lacking, they rush, as it were, into voluntary destruction. With what feeling their most unhappy errors are to be received may seem almost uncertain to some: whether one should be angry with them or grieve.

For error deserves grief, impiety execration: we are drawn to weeping by unhappiness, to anger by unbelief. In one respect we have reason to mourn for men’s folly; in another, to be moved for the love of God: that any man at all can be found or exist who, having run through the brief span of this unhappy life, hanging now at its very end, about to go at once to the judgment seat of God, should think of anything other than his end, anything other than his departure, anything other than his peril, and, neglecting his hope and his soul, which he ought to help to some extent even at his last with all zeal, all effort, all his goods and substance, should think of this alone, turn this alone over in his mind: how lavishly his heir will eat up his goods!

Most wretched of all, why are you anxious, why do you seethe, why do you make yourself the provider of perishing things? Are you perhaps afraid that there will be none to devour what you leave when you are dead? I do not want you to fear, I do not want you to be anxious. Would that you were saved as easily as all your things will perish! O unbelief, O perversity! It is even a common saying that all wish better for themselves than for another. This is a new kind of monster: for someone to want to provide for anyone at all, only not for himself.

Behold, most unhappy of all, you are about to go to the sacred examination, to that dreadful and unbearable judgment, where for the soul on its journey and in anguish there can be no comfort at all except only a good conscience, except only an innocent life, or, what is next to a good life, mercy; where for guilty man there is no help except only a generous mind, a fruitful repentance, and abundant alms like strong hands; where, finally, according to the difference of merits, you will find either the highest good or the highest evil, either an immortal reward or torment without end.

And you think of enriching any heirs at all, you sigh over the wealth of relatives on your father’s and mother’s side: whom above all you should make richer by your patrimony, to whom you should transfer the ornaments of varied furniture, whose storerooms you should fill with your supplies, to whom you should leave the larger number of slaves. Most unhappy of all, you think how well others will live after you; you do not think how badly you yourself will die. Tell me, I beg, O wretched, O unbelieving man!

When you divide your patrimony among many, when you enrich many with your means, have you deserved so ill of yourself alone that you do not make a place for yourself as heir even among strangers? Behold, the officers of the sacred tribunal await you as you are about to leave this life; the torturing angels await, the terrible ministers of immortal torments; and you turn over in your mind the future pleasures of worldly heirs after you, you dwell on the delights of others: how well, no doubt, your heir will dine on what is yours after you, with what supplies he will fill his belly, how he will stretch his sated innards overflowing to the point of nausea.

Most unhappy of all, what have you to do with these dirges, what with these ravings, what with the folly of this error, what with the perdition of this vanity? Will it be able to help you amid the supreme torments if the man who prodigally eats up your goods belches well after a lavish meal?

But on the matter of which we are now speaking we will add something later too, if the matter and reason require. Meanwhile I say this specially and warn with a particular admonition, that no one at all should prefer any dear one, however dear, to his own soul. Nor is it unjust for any Christian to amass less in this age even for lawful heirs, provided he helps himself in many ways in eternity; because it is easier for children to lack something here than for parents in the future, and present scarcity is much lighter than eternal poverty. Especially since there not only poverty but also death and punishment are feared, it is certainly easier for heirs to lack something of the patrimony here than for testators to lack salvation there; and those to whom the inheritance is left, if they have any affection in them, ought especially to wish this, that those who leave it may not perish. If they do not wish it, they are much less worthy to have anything left to them, because the wise testator does not unjustly withhold what an impious heir does not deserve.

So it is best that each provide for himself and leave all to his soul and salvation, even though there may sometimes be not only children, to whom more seems naturally owed, but also other dear ones whose merit or condition is such that justice itself and the worship of God speak for giving and bestowing something on them, and to whom something is not only piously left but would be irreligiously withheld:

namely, if there are parents in calamity, or faithful brothers, or holy wives, or, to extend the gift of affection further, poor kinsmen or needy in-laws, or finally the destitute of any relationship, or certainly, what is above all, those devoted to God. For this is the chief and supreme thing: that what someone does from the duty of family affection he does from the love of religion.

For blessed is he who loves his own with the spirit of divine love, whose love is the worship of Christ, who in the bond of nature thinks of God the Father of natures, and, turning the gifts of love into sacrifices, prepares for himself so much immortal gain and blessed fruit that, while he lends to his Lord what he gives his dear ones, by the very fact that he gives his own a temporary liberality he brings forth for himself an everlasting reward.

But now, quite contrariwise and most impiously, to none is less left by their own than to those to whom more is owed out of reverence for God; family affection regards none less than those whom religion especially commends. In short, if any children are offered to God by their parents, those offered are put after all the other children: they are judged unworthy of inheritance because they were worthy of consecration; and so they become cheap to their parents for this one reason, that they have begun to be precious to God. From this it can be understood that almost nothing among men is cheaper than God, through contempt of whom it comes about that parents especially despise those children who have begun to belong to God.

But those who do this give, no doubt, a splendid account of their plan, saying: “What need is there for an equal share of the inheritance to be left to children already religious?” Nothing, then, is more just, nothing more fitting, than that, because they have begun to be religious, they should beg; not that this will crush them with beggary, that they are cut off from earthly means, since, possessing heaven in hope, they will soon possess it in fact, with their God ruling and protecting them, who rewards them with the immortal hope of eternal things and also with sufficiency of temporal ones; but, as far as the inhumanity of their parents goes, they are in want, being left by them so as to be in want. Certainly even those who are not wholly cast out of the house, and are not, as it were, banished and forbidden fire and water, are left so far below their brothers that, even if they do not lack by poverty, they seem to lack by comparison.

You ask what need the religious have of a fair portion of the patrimony? I answer: so that they may perform the duty of religion; so that religion may be enriched by the goods of the religious; so that they may give, may be generous, so that by their having, all who do not have may have; or rather, if their faith and perfection are so great that they soon will not have what they have, more blessed indeed, after having, in not having.

Why, I ask, O most inhuman parents, do you impose on them the necessity of a most unworthy poverty? Leave this to religion itself, to which you handed over your children: it is more fitting that they become poor by their own act. If you so want them to be needy, grant it to their own devotion. Let them, we beg, be allowed to want to become poor: they ought to choose poverty, not endure it. Finally, even if they endure it, let them bear it by devotion, not suffer it as condemnation.

Why do you drive them out, as it were, from nature and disown them from the right of blood? I too do not want them to be poor, except that poverty itself may have its reward, and that by a splendid exchange they may choose want out of plenty, so that from the choice of want they may obtain plenty. And yet why do I strive to draw you to humanity and affection through the very office of a most holy reason, when that very thing most stands in the way, and the thing which ought to make parents pious makes them impious?

For though you ought to leave more of your patrimony to religious children precisely so that something of your means might reach God at least through your children, you leave nothing to your children precisely so that they may have nothing to leave to God. By a splendid reasoning and caution, no doubt, you are content not to acknowledge them as your children, so that they may not recognize themselves as children of God, making a magnificent return for sacred benefits, while you most carefully see to it that the honor of God may not get anything even through your own, when you have everything by God’s gift. Why, I ask, so faithlessly, why so impiously?

We do not require you to give your own to the Lord: return something of his own to God. Why do you act so greedily, so impiously? What you deny is not yours. Do you think it unjust, then, to make your religious children equal in substance to your worldly ones? You act, then, so that those whom religion has made cheap in your eyes may regret the religion they have begun. The Lord is good and kind, who preserves in them their purpose and profession; but, as far as lies in you, you act so as to make worshippers of the world of those to whom you prefer your worldly children. For what is this but to forbid religion, to hold it in contempt for religion’s sake?

But perhaps we may seem unjust in accusing all parents equally in this business, since not all deal with their children with equal iniquity. “For there are,” someone says, “there are many parents who make equal portions for their children, except that they distinguish them by one condition only: that in the very portions which seem to be assigned to the religious, they order the use to belong to them and the ownership to others.”

But this is much worse and more faithless. For it seems a more tolerable impiety to leave less to one’s children with ownership than to take ownership of the goods from them altogether. That condition can be tolerated to some extent if something is left under this law to friends or in-laws or relatives; but he who does not give his children ownership of the goods leaves them nothing. But the most unjust faithlessness of parents has found how to exclude God wholly from their patrimony, by taking ownership of the goods from their religious children. For it gave them the use, so that they might have something to live on; it took away ownership, so that they might have nothing to leave to God.

O new ingenuity of an irreligious mind! It has found how to seem to provide for its children by a greater impiety toward God. For it has made the holy offspring, having the use of the goods but not the right to them, live as if rich but die as if beggars; and so the most faithless testator can depart this world in full security, knowing that nothing at all of his can reach God. And yet even what I said above, that religious children possess some image of wealth through the use of the goods, is not really so; for though use seems to have something, the conscience has nothing: no one can believe himself rich even briefly who knows he has nothing of his own.

What are you doing, most wretched unbelief, error of a, so to speak, pagan irreligion? Do you so hate God that you can fail to love even your children only because they belong to God? Some leave their freedmen in a better condition than you leave your children. For it is in daily practice that slaves, if not of the best, at least of no bad service, are granted Roman freedom by their masters, in which they both take ownership of their savings and gain the right to make a will, so that while living they may hand their goods to whom they wish and at death transfer them by gift; and not only this, but they are not forbidden to take from their masters’ house what they acquired while in slavery. Sometimes the kindness of patronal generosity grants them so much that it takes from its own right what it bestows on the freedmen’s ownership.

How much, O most faithless father, whoever you are, how much better do those masters deal with their freedmen than you with your children! They give what they give by perpetual right, you by temporary; they give their freedmen the choice of making a will, you take it from your children; they, finally, give their slaves to freedom, you, as it were, sentence your children to slavery. For what else is it to sentence to slavery than not to want them to possess anything as freeborn?

You follow, then, the custom of those who, judging slaves who have not deserved well of them unworthy of Roman citizenship, sentence them to the yoke of Latin freedom: they order them to live under the title of freedmen, but do not want them to have anything when dying. For, being denied the choice of a last will, they cannot give at death even what they have while alive.

So you too order your religious children to be, as it were, Latin freedmen, so that they live as freeborn and die as slaves, and, bound to their brothers’ right as by the chain of Latin freedom, even if they seem their own masters while they live, they die as though placed under the others’ power. What great crime, I ask, do you think lies in the title of religion, that you do not believe those who are religious to be your children because they have begun to be children of God? In what way have they been made guilty before you of good will, as if of a sin, so that you think they must be held worse because they wish to be better?

But you say this is not done by you in that spirit. Which is just as if someone said that evil things are done by him with a good intention and a crime of impiety committed with a pious mind. What does it help, O most inhuman parents, that you assert your religious children are dishonored by you with good intention? The fact itself rejects this; the fact refutes it. What you say with bare assertions counts for little: you yourselves by your acts are witnesses against yourselves. Do you think it unfitting, then, that holy dear ones pleasing to God should be put on a level with children serving the world? That is true, and you would think rightly, if you used that judgment justly and in the opposite direction: that is, if you thought bad children not to be compared with good ones nor sinners with saints, and those who excel before God in life and merits also surpassed others before you in favor and honor.

For what is more right, what more just, than that those who are better should also be more honored, that those who win by judgment should also win in reward, that those who stand first in the sacred gospel should also stand first in a human will, and that in this at least the affection and will of parents should agree with the will of Christ, so that those whom God had set first by choice parents too would set first in dignity? But not only is this not done; everything is done the opposite way. The defiled are set before the pure, the impious before the faithful, darkness before light, earth before heaven, the world before God. And do parents of this kind think they will escape the judgment of God even in this alone, who trample on the worship of God and the dignity of his judgment by such indignity?

But, no doubt, parents say that they do this not from contempt of God but for cause and reason. “For to whom,” they say, “will they leave the substance left them, since they have no children?” I will say to whom, and I will not name those I mentioned above, God’s poor, not strangers or those far off, lest it seem harsh or inhuman. I mean those dear and inseparable ones whom even you who have many offspring rightly prefer to your children: themselves, I say, O most faithless parents, themselves, I say, we mean. Can anything closer, anything dearer to anyone be found than himself? We commend to each of you his own soul, his own salvation, his own hope.

And do you call yourselves affectionate because you love your children? Nothing can plainly be called harder, nothing more inhuman, nothing so savage, nothing so impious than you, from whom it cannot be obtained at all that you love yourselves. “Skin,” says the devil in the sacred Scriptures, “skin for skin, and all that a man has he will give for his soul.” Even the devil did not deny that his soul is most dear to man; and he who strives to turn all away from love of their souls confesses nevertheless that souls must be most dear to all.

What madness, then, is it that your souls are held cheap by you, which even the devil thinks precious? What madness that they are held cheap by you, which even he who tries to make them cheap says ought to be dear to you? And so all who neglect their souls love themselves even below the judgment of the devil. Since this is so, see, you who think the religious have no one to leave their substance to, see, even by the devil’s opinion, see whether they have no one, who have themselves.

I think what we have said is quite enough for this part of the business now in hand; but perhaps you may want this shown to us not only by the force of the facts but also by the authority of examples. I could indeed say that the commands of God are greater than all examples, and that it makes no difference to increasing the authority of the divine words whether men fulfil them or not, because their force is certainly grounded in the person of the Lord, not in the obedience of servants, and nothing can be added to them or taken from them by us, whose honor through God their author is always the same.

Yet if human weakness wishes to be helped also by the examples of men, so that it may more easily do now what it knows others did before, we showed in the first book that these things, which are still done even now by some imitators of Christ, were fulfilled not moderately but abundantly, not by very few but by whole peoples, not in the most ancient times but almost in the most recent. For what do the Acts of the Apostles, new and still almost before our eyes, say? “All,” I say, “who believed had all things in common.” And again: “Great grace was upon them all; for there was no one needy among them. For whoever were owners of lands and houses sold them and brought the price of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” Elsewhere also: “And no one said that anything of what he possessed was his own.”

And this was no small number of believers, lest the authority of the writings move someone less because he thinks these are the examples of a few. How great the multitude of the first church was then can be known from this alone, that at the very beginning eight thousand men are reported to have joined the church in two days; and it is open to estimate what a multitude of every kind grew on the other days, when only two days, apart from differences of age and sex, produced so great a number of men.

Since the people was then already so innumerable and so perfect, I ask you, all parents with whom I am speaking: among those so many thousands of believers then, living in such perfection of faith, were all with children, or all without children? Neither, I think; for no church congregation is not mixed of both. So whoever among Christians has no children can understand to whom they ought to leave their substance, when they see to whom those without children then left it. And if they have children, let them learn what they too ought to do, when they see that parents then preferred the love of God to their children.

Every age, then, every condition has something to follow: whoever shares in the faith should make himself a sharer in the blessed example. If they then, giving all they had for God, disinherited even themselves while alive, learn, we beg, at least to make yourselves heirs of your own goods when dying. For you must, believe me, not forget your salvation and your souls even among your children. It is certain enough that your dear ones are near and very closely joined to you; but, believe me, no one is nearer to you, no one more closely joined, than yourselves. Love, then, we do not oppose it, love your children, but in the second rank after yourselves: love them so that you do not seem to hate yourselves; for that love is ill-advised and foolish which remembers another and forgets itself. “The son,” says sacred Scripture, “shall not bear the iniquity of the father, nor shall the father bear the iniquity of his son.” And the apostle: “Each one,” he says, “will bear his own burden.”

So riches left to children do not free parents from beggary; rather, means left immoderately to children are the parents’ everlasting beggary, and so none are more harmful to parents than children loved too much. For while they abound in their father’s goods, the parents are tormented in eternity. Even if a son is so devoted that, to cool his father’s punishment, he wishes afterwards to share the goods left with his father, he will not be able: for a son’s devotion cannot give back to a father after death what each man’s own lack of devotion and unbelief has denied him.

So, according to the apostle, let each consider his own loads, because each man will bear his own burdens. The flames of unhappy dead men are not cooled by the riches of their heirs. That rich man in the gospel who was clothed in purple and fine linen, who no doubt had been wealthy in this age himself, had also enriched his heirs by his death. But it helped him not at all that his rich brothers brooded over his wealth and talents, and he could not obtain a drop of refreshment. They were in abundance but he in want, they in rejoicing but he in pain, they in riches but he in torments, they perhaps continually in luxury but he always in flame.

O unhappy and pitiable condition! With his goods he had prepared blessedness for others and affliction for himself; joys for others and tears for himself; brief pleasure for others and everlasting fire for himself. Where then were his in-laws, where his relatives, where his children, if he had any, or his brothers, whom he remembered and whom he certainly loved with such love that he did not forget them even when placed in torment? What did they help him, what support did they give?

The unhappy man was tormented, and while others devoured his wealth, burning, he begged a drop of refreshment and could not obtain it. And, if anything can be added to the punishment, he asked that it be given him through the one he had once despised, through the one who had rotted in pus and gore, the one whose stench and filth he had shunned from afar, who had fed dogs with the sores of his limbs, whom swarming masses of worms had furrowed even in the recesses of his eaten body. O condition too grievous and lamentable!

The poor man bought blessedness by beggary, the rich man punishment by his means; the poor man, though he had nothing at all, bought eternal riches by want. O how much more easily could the rich man, with so great a possession of goods, have purchased them, who, burning amid torments and crying out amid punishments, said: “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.” Then, no doubt, that rich man did not shudder at the hand of Lazarus, once a poor man, nor disdain his help: he asked that his fingers be put into his mouth and that the unbearable flames of his throat be soothed by the service of that once foul and filthy hand. O how great a change of things had taken place! He then desired to be touched by one whom he had before disdained even to look at.

Let the rich, then, think of these things, who will not redeem themselves with their means so as not to suffer them. He of whom we now speak was rich; rich too are these to whom we now speak. They share one name; let them beware lest they share one condition too. For rich children will not free guilty parents, nor will the opulent heir, abounding in delights, put out the flames of the wretched testator. It is hard for someone to leave little to children and relatives:

it is much harder to be tormented in eternity. For I think that rich man, when he was tormented, was not so much delighted by his heir’s wealth as he was tortured by the torments of his own body; not so much delighted that his heir feasted well as tortured that he himself was cruelly racked; not so much delighted that his heir abounded in exquisite delights as tortured that he himself was melting in unbearable fires; not so much delighted that his heir fed parasites and gluttons with his supplies as tortured that he himself fed the flames with his own marrow.

And I think that, if someone had then given him the choice whether he would rather his heirs be rich or himself not be in miseries and torments, he would certainly have wanted them stripped of all goods, provided he could be freed from all evils; he would have wanted to offer all he had possessed, provided he could escape what he was enduring; he would have wanted to give for himself all that substance he had, the temporal treasures of silver and gold, so that, if in any way he could, he might put out the continual crosses of immortal punishments and that everlasting burning by throwing the mass of his riches upon them, and hold back the overflowing balls of fire by setting against them the immensity of his huge means.

And why should I say he would have wanted to redeem that endless evil with his means? I say something more: he would have wanted to hand over all his substance if, placed in the flames, he could have bought himself the rest of a single hour. For desiring, to soothe the flames of his throat, even the poor man’s finger dipped in water, how would he not have chosen to buy rest at any price at all, who begged a small drop of refreshment with such great entreaty?

But what use were these things then, or what did it help the wretch that he then wished to offer all for himself, who earlier had wickedly refused? Or what use was it then that he desired to give everything, which he had already lost, who had given nothing for himself when he possessed everything? For late, as the Holy Spirit says in the Scriptures, late is the repentance of the dead. How so? “For there is no one,” says the divine word to God the Father, “there is no one in death who remembers you; and in hell who will confess to you?”

It declares that the dead sinner is wholly shut out from confession of sin, and that no one can afterwards remember God who forgot himself in this life. So completely is every hope cut off from him and every approach to life barred, that, since the one way of salvation for the guilty is to pour out prayers to God and unceasingly to beg heavenly mercy, the sinner is condemned even from this by the punishment of a deadly forgetfulness, so that not even the memory of God, from whom he should hope, is left to him.

Let them think of these things, then, who, while they desire to have rich children after death, do not remember future punishments even in death; let them think of these things who, to have rich heirs in this fleeting and brief life, condemn themselves to eternal death. In this they do not so much love them as hate themselves, because a love that provides for a short time is not as wholesome as a hatred that will torment in eternity is grievous. And so our God, as we said long ago in the first book, commands parents to lay up discipline for their children, not money; he directs them to bestow everlasting, not perishing, things. For such things, a holy work, profit children and parents alike: children through training in discipline, parents through the generosity of munificence. For discipline gives children this, that they gain perpetual salvation, and generosity gives parents this, that they escape eternal death.

But to whom do we say this, or why do we say it? Where shall we be able to find open ears or seeing eyes? For all, as we read of the impious, almost all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is almost not even one. For a new madness has seized men, worldly ones and even some who profess religion. As we began to say before, they now assign the goods of their own means, that is, the price of their redemption, not only to children or grandchildren, which can be tolerated because of the bond of nature, but even to relatives on the father’s and on the mother’s side, and not only, as they say, in the direct line but also in the oblique and collateral lines, or rather to those coming from the averse and perverse line.

And now it makes almost no difference to men for whom they provide, as long as they do not provide for themselves at all. For if any of those of whom we speak have no children as death approaches, they most faithlessly seek people to call their relatives or in-laws, or, if perhaps these are lacking, they seek at least some feigned names of new relationships. Nor does it matter to them, as I said, whom they remember, as long as they forget themselves; it does not matter whom they say they love, as long as they hate their own souls; nor does it matter whom they make rich, as long as they consume themselves in eternal beggary.

O unhappiness, O madness! How, I ask, have these most wretched of all deserved so ill of themselves that, while serving the pleasures of others, they persecute themselves forever! For you may see some, with most unhappy vanity, searching out new and noble relatives; you may see the shameful names of unknown kinships and ridiculous inventions of recent and very powerful connections, when someone says of some adopted and sudden relative: “I make that man my kinsman my heir”; or some widow or girl of holy profession: “I write that man, my nearest, as heir.” And so some suddenly at the end have as relatives those whom all their life they had held as outsiders and strangers, and those who were always strangers to the living begin to be kin of the dead.

For they suddenly bring into their will those whom they never brought into their affection, and this especially, as I said, the rich or noble or holders of office, who, if they were not powerful, would perhaps not have been relatives. Ridiculous ambition of the wretched testator, paying out the value of his own means to purchase a lie of kinship, buying the name of heir at the price of the inheritance, and laboring with the whole strength of his patrimony that the one who is written heir may not deny being his relative, and that the most unhappy testator, by the most foolish and wretched vanity of making a noble his heir, may seem more honored in death who seemed lower in his life. O blindness, O madness!

With what zeal, most unhappy men, you bring it about that you are wretched in eternity! With how much less care, less effort, you could have ensured that you might always be blessed! I can find no other cause of this at all except only unbelief and faithlessness: that is, that men either do not think they will be judged by God or do not believe they will rise at all. For there is no one who is certain that he will rise and be judged by God for good and evil works who does not attend either to his hope and blessedness, so as to receive everlasting goods for good deeds, or to his fear and danger, so as not to suffer eternal evils for evil deeds.

But it seems, no doubt, abhorrent to the Christian name to be said not to believe in things to come. What reason is there, then, that, if he believes what God said, he does not fear what God threatens? If he does not believe the words God spoke, will he not believe the rewards God promises? For he does not prove that he believes God’s promises who does not act so as to be able to reach the rewards promised by God.

For in this human life itself, if someone knows that he is to be judged by this human power and dragged before an earthly tribunal, he seeks advocates, engages patrons, buys the favor and goodwill of the court officials, and does all this from fear of the coming judgment, although he cannot purchase the outcome of the judgment. So, though he cannot buy the victory itself, he buys the hope of victory at a great price.

Tell me, whoever you are, who say you believe in God’s judgment: if you believed, even after the example of the men just mentioned, that you would be judged by God, would you not purchase your hope and salvation at any price? But you certainly do not believe, you do not believe; and though you wish to assert your belief in words, you do not believe; for, as the apostle says, you confess in words but deny in deeds.

Finally, to prove your unbelief to you by yourself, tell me, I beg, whoever you are, who leave your substance to some rich relative or in-law, or, if these are perhaps lacking, even to a stranger: why did you not give it away when you were healthy and well? Why did you not hand it over to your heirs while safe and vigorous, but in the will itself you most providently stipulate, and carefully and diligently write: “When I have departed from human affairs, then be you, my dearest so-and-so, my heir”?

Tell me, I beg, why you give this “dearest,” as you call him, this most closely bound to you, nothing of yours so long, hand over nothing of yours so long as you think you will live, but only when you see you are about to die? And why do I say when you see you are about to die? Rather you most providently guard against his having anything of yours while you are still breathing or dying, but only when you are wholly departed, already dead. And it is a wonder that you allow even this, that he have your goods when you are already laid out, and not only when you have been carried out and buried. Though even in this, in saying “when I have departed from human affairs,” you seem to have guarded against that very thing. For to depart wholly from human affairs is for the whole man, with his body, to have ceased to be present among human things.

Tell me, then, why do you stipulate these things so providently in the will, why do you insert them so carefully and prudently? Without doubt because you judge your property necessary to you while you live, because you do not want to cut yourself off from your means, and you think it most unjust that while you are alive and well another should be made rich with what is yours and you be consumed by beggary. That is true, and I do not reject the care as unreasonable, and I approve whatever you say in this way. But on one point I want you to satisfy me.

Why is it that you, who think the use of your goods so necessary for yourself, do not think the fruits and revenues of your means necessary after death? You say, without doubt: “Because a dead man needs nothing, and nothing need be kept for me for that time, since, dead and without feeling, I can neither be delighted by the possession of my goods nor tormented by their loss.”

The reason is plain. So you assign your substance to another when dying because you yourself cannot take fruit from it after death. But what of the fact that the most chosen vessel of God, the apostle Paul, testifies and cries out that whatever a man sows in this life, this he reaps after death; and he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows in blessing will also reap from blessing? By this he wanted it clearly understood that those who sow in stinginess cannot reap blessing. For in saying “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows in blessing will also reap from blessing,” since he plainly placed blessing in generosity alone, he showed that stingy sowers will reap beggary and generous ones blessing.

But perhaps these things seem to you, unbeliever, whoever you are, too weak or too obscure. What of the fact that the Lord himself in the gospel most plainly teaches that no Christian loses anything of his good works, saying: “Whoever gives one of these least a cup of cold water to drink, only in the name of a disciple, amen I say to you, he will not lose his reward.” What could be said more plainly? He said that even a thing which has no price in the present would have a reward in the future: he gave such honor to his service that something would be of worth there through faith which here was nothing at all through its cheapness.

Yet lest some perhaps flatter themselves in this, that having much they could buy great things with little, he subtly set it down that even for a cup of cold water the reward will not perish, showing plainly not that something great is to be repaid for something small, but that no work of faith, of whatever kind, will perish.

So you have an undoubted security of future repayment; you have a fully adequate guarantor that good works will be returned: one of such faithfulness, and also of such mercy and kindness, that he not only pays what he has promised as a debt but also shows something by which he makes himself a debtor. For he who said he would give a reward for a cup of cold water not only wishes to repay what he has received but also points out things he will repay. Kind, indeed, and full of mercy, and wishing to provide not only for the generosity of the rich but also for the small service of the poor, he showed how even one who had nothing at all to lend could make God in some way indebted to him.

But perhaps to you, whoever of you is rich, this work of the poor may seem unworthy of your means, and you may want to hear some pledge of the sacred promise belonging specially to you. You have first what God says to that rich man in the gospel: “Go, sell all your goods, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Then what he commands generally by a prohibition: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up

for yourselves treasures in heaven.” Finally those words by which he invites all possessors of worldly things to the work of flowing generosity with the hope of infinite reward, saying that everyone who for his honor and love has spent a house or a field or any other means on the uses of mercy will receive a hundredfold in the future; “and besides,” he says, “he will possess eternal life.” What greater pledge could he give those who believe him than to promise his great lenders that he would repay a hundredfold?

And not only this, but “he will possess,” he says, “eternal life.” This is much more than the repayment of the hundredfold itself, because what anyone has received a hundredfold he will possess forever. Then the possession will not be frail and fleeting, nor perishing like earthly riches, after the manner of a passing shadow or a vanishing dream. Whatever is given by God will be immortal; whatever is received will last without end. And so, as I said, he who receives thus receives more than a hundredfold, because the hundredfold being everlasting surpasses the value of the hundredfold.

Since this is so, and since he who believes God will without doubt receive such great things, how do you think you will not have the use after death of those things you have given to God, of which the Lord promises you not only the use but also increase and a surpassing heap? Or perhaps you do not want to receive such great things? But reason does not allow you not to want them.

For there is no one among men who, when he could be blessed, would rather be wretched; no one who, when he could have the delights of the highest good, would wish to suffer the punishment of the highest evil; no one, surely, no one; and therefore not you either; unless perhaps there is in you some monstrous nature at odds with the human race, so that you alone do not want it to go well with you at all, you alone flee blessedness, you alone delight in punishments.

If this is certainly not so, what reason is there, then, that you do not, even when dying and placed at the end, at least do this by the service of a last offering and with all the effort of your goods: that, if you can merit it from God, you may be rich and blessed; or, if you cannot, at least that you may not be wretched, at least not be burned, at least not be tortured, at least not be done to death in the outer darkness and not be baked in flames burning without end?

What reason is there, then, as I said, that you do not do these things? What reason that you do not buy eternal goods? What reason that you do not fear eternal evils? What, surely, but what I said before: that either you do not think you will be judged by God or you do not believe you will rise at all? For if you believed, how would you not flee the incalculable evil of the future judgment and avoid the torments of immortal punishments?

But you certainly do not believe, you do not believe; and though you assert otherwise in speech and profession, you do not believe. For your speech and profession boast of faith, but your life and death publish unbelief. Otherwise, overcome me: I want to be overcome. I do not ask you to prove your belief to me by the acts of your earlier life; I am content with one testimony, that of your last moments.

Behold, now, behold, you are dying, about to leave the house of your body, not knowing where you will go, where you will be led away, to what penal and hideous places you will be snatched; to you only one refuge remains at the end, one watchtower for escaping eternal fire is given: that you offer for yourself at least what you have in substance, since you no longer have anything else to offer God. And you, forgetful of yourself, unmindful of your salvation, think of new legatees, sigh over enriching your heir.

And doing this you say you believe in the judgment of God, you who, though you are to be judged, do not provide for yourself even at the end? And you say you believe something about the salvation of your soul, you to whom nothing is cheaper than your soul, with whom it hardly matters whom you benefit, as long as you harm yourself? And you say you believe in the coming Judge, with whom none is lesser and more despised than the Judge himself? For you so scorn him, so despise him, that you do not even provide for yourself, as long as you condemn his commands.

Refute me and convict me, if I lie. Behold, as you die, your judge himself, who will judge you, cries out to you that in disposing of your goods and means you should love no man at all more than yourself, that when dying you should provide for no one from your substance more than for yourself, that you should judge none nearer, none dearer to you than your soul. “For what will it profit a man,” says the Savior, “if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

That is to say: what will it profit you, O most unhappy man, if you either have the whole world yourself or leave it to your nearest, if you suffer the loss of salvation and soul? For the losses of the soul carry off everything with them, and a man can have nothing at all who loses himself by the loss of a perishing soul. “Or what,” he says, “will a man give in exchange for his soul?” That is to say: do not regard money, O man, nor possession, and do not hesitate at least when dying to offer for your hope as much of your property and means as you can. For whatever you give for yourself is cheap, whatever you offer for yourself is of small price, because your soul is more precious in comparison with all things. And so do not hesitate to give anything for yourself, because if you lose yourself, you lose everything in yourself; but if you gain yourself, you will possess everything with yourself and in yourself.

Since, then, your Lord cries this to you as you die, O man, whoever you are, you stop your mind, you block your ear, and, asserting faith in bare words, you think words are enough for you instead of deeds, and you think you have a firm enough support of belief if you seem to honor with lying words the God whom you despise by your deeds and works. “Son,” says holy Scripture, “if you have, do good to yourself and offer God good offerings.”

And elsewhere: “Have mercy,” it says, “on your soul.” See how merciful the Lord our God is, who asks us ourselves for mercy on our own behalf: “Have mercy,” he says, “on your soul.” That is to say: you too have mercy on him for whom you see me broken with compassion; have mercy at last on him on whom I always have mercy; have mercy at least on your own soul, when you see me have mercy on another’s. And after this, O most wretched man, when God deals thus with you, do you not consent? He asks you to have mercy on yourself, and you will not? He pleads your cause with you, and cannot obtain it from you?

And how, most wretched man, whoever you are, how will he afterwards hear you begging in his judgment, when you would not hear him here asking on your behalf? But no doubt there is a great reason why you cannot listen to God. For your relatives on both sides stand round you in your sickness; rich matrons stand round; noble men stand round; a crowd swathed in silken and gilded garments besieges your sickbed. O how great a fruit of eternity it is to give away one’s own goods to such beggars! A worthy and quite just cause, no doubt, for you to take from your soul what you may leave to such needy folk!

But no doubt you are broken by compassion and overcome by the affection of your lamenting relatives. There is a clear reason. For you see men of most opulent and splendid dress weeping, showing you faces composed to sorrow with a sad look in festive clothing, buying your inheritance by their imaginary anxiety. Whom would such affection not move? Whom would such grief not move? Or how, seeing such things, could you not forget yourself? For you see forced tears, feigned sighs, pretended anxiety, not wishing you to recover but waiting for you to die; you see all their faces fixed on you as if accusing the slowness of your death.

O unhappy and most wretched you, whose final departure so great a number of relatives desires! Except that I know and am quite sure that the prayers of such people avail nothing at all with God. For I might perhaps wonder that you live, when so many want you to die. And for these, whoever you are, for such as these you abandon your soul, and say you believe in the judgment of God, when you despise his commands so far as to leave your patrimony to such people?

“He has scattered,” says the prophet of the one who believes God, “he has scattered, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” And the Savior himself to all the rich: “Sell what you possess and give alms.” And elsewhere: “Sell what you have and give to the poor.” Does he say, “Give to relatives,” does he say, “to in-laws”? Certainly not, but to the poor, to the needy. Does he say, to a rich relative, to any very powerful man at all? Certainly not, but to the destitute, to the needy.

For when you have given your substance to your rich relatives, does your righteousness endure forever? Or when you have increased their riches with yours, will you have treasure in heaven? “Woe,” says the prophet, “to those who call sweet bitter and bitter sweet.” God forbids you even to praise such people, and you do not fear to enrich them? He does not want flattering words given them, and you even lavish talents on them? He forbids their life to be honored with feigned speeches, and their treasures and riches are heaped up by you?

But no doubt you fear the faces of the relatives sitting round you and are afraid to offend those present and besieging your bed. “Do not fear them,” says the Lord through the prophet, “nor be dismayed at their faces, for it is a provoking house.” So you too be fearless and steadfast: do not dread their faces nor be broken by their pressure.

Despise those who covet your inheritance and are already dividing your substance among themselves, who love not you but your patrimony; rather, who curse you from greed for your goods. For while they thirst impatiently for what is yours, they hate you, and judging your presence a rival and adversary to them, they think the fact that you live a barrier and obstacle to their greed.

Despise such people, then, and make nothing of them. Let their blandishments not move you: they are poisons to you. Do not regard their flatteries: they are swords cutting your throat, and indeed more hideous than the iron swords of enemies. For all men see those, but the unwary do not see these; those, because they rage openly, are avoided; these, because they lie in ambush secretly, kill, and they are the more dangerous and worse by a new kind of harming, in that no one at all wants to be wounded by those iron swords, but many even want to be killed by these. A new and incalculable allurement of deadly evil! Whoever is struck by those swords is tortured by fear and pain alike; whoever is killed by these is delighted.

Flee this evil, then; flee the flatteries that lie in wait for you; flee the services harmful to you; flee the solicitations that deceive you. These are the attentions that cut your throat; these are what drag you into death. Flee the blandishments of such people, flee their assiduity: these are your executioners and torturers, who court you indeed in the present but kill you in the future, and, as it were with joined hands and a sworn faction, try to drive and hurl you into the everlasting fires of hell. So do not fear them, do not be terrified: raise your spirit and take up the force of holy authority. For if they strive so hard that you may perish, why should you not strive with greater spirit that you may live? Take courage, then, and provide for yourself with a steadfast mind. He is unbelieving enough and foolish enough who prefers to ensure for others that he himself be wretched rather than for himself that he be blessed, and, to make others abound in temporary delights, hands himself over to be burned in everlasting fires.

I am well aware, O my lady church, nurse of blessed hope, that what we said in the preceding books displeases some of your children who love Christ too little. But we do not set great store by their wishes, since it is no wonder that words speaking of God do not please those whom perhaps God himself does not please, nor is it to be expected that those who do not love salvation itself and their own souls should love speech that commends salvation and souls. So, as in other things, here too the mind and judgments of the holy are enough for us; since they think as we do, we are surely certain that God himself thinks with us, because, since the Spirit of God abides in his saints, God is without doubt there where that part is from which the Spirit of God does not depart.

So the opinions of depraved men, that is, of pagans or worldly people, are to be little valued or counted as nothing at all: “for if I wished to please men,” says the apostle, “I would not be a servant of Christ.” What is harder and more troublesome is that some of your children, I think, dissent from religion under the title of religion and have left the world more in dress than in mind: whose opinion, if I am not mistaken, holds and asserts that every Christian at all must consider kinship rather than Christ at his departure.

And since the opinion was wholly profane and execrable in itself, they try, I think, to veil this most faithless teaching with a sort of shadowy addition, saying that all who believe in God should be dutiful to Christ only while healthy and well, but that those already leaving the world should remember fleshly kinship rather than the divine service. As though Christians should be one thing when well and another when departing this world, and all should present themselves to Christ one way in health and another in death, one way in their earlier life and another in their later.

If this is so, then one will have one Christ as a young man and another as an old man, and men must change their faith as often as they change in age. For if one is to be one thing toward the worship of God when vigorous and another when weak, one when healthy and another when sick, then as the state of the human body varies, so God himself will be changeable to man, and as often as there is a change of health in a man, so often will his religion be different: as though those who must be Christ’s when well need not be Christ’s when dying.

And where is that word, “He who perseveres to the end will be saved,” or that oracle of the divine word in the sacred Proverbs: “Wisdom is sung in the departure”? By this it is shown that, although wisdom is wholesome at every age, all ought especially to be wise at their departure, because the prudence of the past age will in no way deserve praise unless it is closed by a good end; for wisdom is sung in the departure.

Why did it not say that wisdom is sung in boyhood, not in youth, not in a state of safety, not in prosperity? Because in all these whatever is praised is uncertain. For as long as anyone is subject to change, he cannot be praised with security; and so, as it says, wisdom is sung in the departure. For one departing from the uncertainties of dangers will earn certain approval, having escaped the variety of all things, because praise is stable and firm when the merit of the one praised can no longer perish. “Wisdom,” it says, “is sung in the departure.”

What, I ask, is a Christian’s wisdom? What but the fear and love of Christ? “For the beginning of wisdom,” it says, “is the fear of the Lord”; and elsewhere: “Perfect love,” it says, “casts out fear.” So, as we see, the beginning of wisdom lies in the fear of Christ, its perfection in love. So if a Christian’s wisdom is the fear and love of the Lord, we are truly wise only if we love God always and above all, and this at all times but especially at our departure, because wisdom is sung in the departure.

If, then, wisdom is sung at the departure chiefly because God is loved above all, what madness is it for someone to say that Christ ought to be preferred to fleshly kinship by the healthy but need not be by the dying? Why should the healthy prefer him, if the dying need not? Or if anyone can religiously put his relatives and in-laws before Christ in death, why should he not religiously put them before him earlier too? Or if there is any hour in the last part of life in which one ought to love others more than oneself or God, why not love them more in the earlier part of life also?

And so everything is dissolved, vanishes, and perishes, and a man holds no one cheaper than himself and no one lower than God. For if there is any time at which God can rightly be placed after in-laws or relatives, there is no time at which he can rightly be placed before them; but if, as is true, there is no time at all at which he must not be placed first, there is no time at all at which he can rightly be placed after. None at all, and therefore not even at the end, since the prophet says that even a righteous man will perish in the day in which he goes astray.

So if every error of one who errs is punished by perdition, and men’s life is endangered even by those errors by which human innocence is usually and commonly defiled, what do we think will happen where sin is committed against God himself by detestable unbelief? “For if,” says the apostle, “every disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” And no one neglects true salvation more than one who puts anything before God. For since our salvation is the gift and mercy of God, what way of obtaining salvation has he who despises God himself, in whose mercy our salvation consists?

Or since God is judge of the living and the dead, what hope can there be in God’s judgment for one who, even when dying, has despised him by his own judgment, by whom he is at once to be judged when dead? And so, as divine Scripture says, by the judgment with which he judges he will be judged; that is, by the judgment with which he judges concerning God he will himself be judged by God. Nor can he think it unjust if in the future the Lord sets him after all, who in the present himself sets God after all, nor complain if God judges him more damnable than all, when he himself judges God cheaper than all.

But someone says that he does not do these things with the intention of despising God or thinking him cheap, but to love or honor those he appoints heirs. Let us grant that it is so: this excuse is available to almost all other most shameful and criminal offenders too. Fornicators may say that they do not commit fornication with the intention of scorning God, but because they are overcome by the heat and weakness of the body. Murderers may affirm that they do not shed human blood out of contempt for God, but commit their crimes only from hatred or greed.

But what good is this excuse to the wicked, since it makes no difference for what reason anyone says he sins, since every sin is an injury to the Godhead? Yet let us grant, as I said above, that it is so, and that no one hands over his goods to another rather than to God out of contempt for God, but is drawn to it by honor for his heir or at least compelled by love. But what are we to do, since by this very thing neglect and contempt of God are proved the more?

For if, whoever you are, by leaving your goods to your heirs or to anyone else you show that you honor and love them, you surely show that you neither honor nor love God, to whom you do not leave them. And so whatever you say for yourself is against you, and your love and honor of others amount to contempt and insult toward God.

For since you leave to others because you honor them, you surely do not honor God, to whom you do not leave; since you leave much to others because you love them, you surely do not leave to God because you do not love him. For behold, man and God alike stand by you as you die and make your will. The matter is plain and not doubtful: the one you have chosen, you have preferred. If honor is in one alone, contempt must be found in the other. If the man who is preferred rejoices that he is loved by you, God, who is passed over, must grieve that he is not loved.

But you think, no doubt, that God does not need man’s munificence, and so you say: “What need is there for anything to be given by man to him who himself gave all things to all?” Whether the Lord needs our munificence or not, or how he needs or does not need it, we shall soon see. Meanwhile, since even you have not dared to deny that all things are granted to all by him, he is without doubt the more worthy of our generosity because he was generous to us first. We try the more justly to answer him with services, the more unequal we are to his benefits.

For human nature itself and common custom bind all by a sort of general law, that we owe more gratitude to those from whom we receive some liberality; for generosity received binds us to repay what is given. Before the use and munificence of another’s liberality a man is free, not burdened by the interest of benefits; but all are compelled by their own conscience to make a return once they have begun to be debtors.

So we owe God the more because we have received everything from him, and we can answer his benefits the less because, even if we wish to return what we owe, we return it from what is his. And so no one should be pleased with himself for his generosity. Just as all that he receives from his Lord is not his own, so all that he returns is not his own. And therefore the punishment of faithlessness is owed to him who has denied God what was lent him by God, but he who has returned what he received cannot claim credit for generosity.

“But God,” you say, “does not need repayment.” Nothing is less true than that he does not need it. He does not need it according to his power, but he needs it according to his precept; he does not need it according to his majesty, but he needs it according to his law; in himself he does not need it, but in many he needs it; he does not seek munificence for himself, but he seeks it in his own; and so he does not need it according to his omnipotence, but he needs it according to his mercy; he does not need it by his Godhead for himself, but he needs it by his kindness for us. For what does God say to pious and generous stewards? “Come, you blessed, possess the kingdom of my Father which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink,” and other things in this manner. And lest this perhaps seem too little for the case of which we are now speaking, he added the contrary, saying to the greedy and faithless: “Go, you cursed, into the eternal fire which my Father prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you did not give me to eat, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink.”

Where are those who say that the Lord Jesus Christ does not need the service of our gifts? Behold, he records that he is hungry and thirsty and cold. Let any of them answer: does he not need, who complains that he is hungry? Does he not need, who testifies that he is thirsty? I add something more: that Christ not only is in need with the rest, but is in need much more than the rest;

for among the whole number of the poor, the poverty of all is not one. There are some who, though they lack clothing, do not lack food; many lack shelter but not clothes; many lack a house but not substance; there are, finally, those who, though they lack much, do not lack everything. Christ alone is the one to whom nothing is lacking that is lacking in the whole human race. None of his servants is an exile, none is tormented by cold and nakedness, with whom he does not shiver: he alone hungers with the hungry, he alone thirsts with the thirsty. And so, as far as his kindness goes, he is in need more than the rest; for every

needy man is in need for himself only and in himself; Christ alone is the one who begs in the whole body of all the poor.

And since this is so, what do you say, O man, who call yourself a Christian? When you see Christ in need, do you leave your means to people who are not in want? Christ is poor, and you heap up the wealth of the rich? Christ hungers, and you prepare delicacies for those who abound? Christ complains that he lacks even water, and you fill the cellars of drunkards with wine? Christ is worn out by want of everything, and you gather abundance for the luxurious? Christ promises you everlasting rewards for the gifts you give, and you lavish everything on those who will give nothing in return? Christ sets before you immortal goods for good deeds and eternal evils for evil ones, and you are neither swayed by heavenly goods nor moved by everlasting evils? And you say you believe your Lord, whose reward you do not desire and whose wrath you do not dread?

You do not believe, then, as we said in the previous book, you do not believe; and though you feign religion in your clothes, though you assert faith with your girdle, though you counterfeit holiness with your cloak, you do not believe at all, you do not believe. And I say this to men of this kind as to women: they do not believe. Let any woman put on the habit of a holy name and inscribe on herself the title of sacred religion; if she provides with her substance for others rather than herself, she surely does not believe.

For no one who believes prefers his means to benefit others rather than himself; no one is content to buy blessedness for others with his own misery; no one, to prepare temporary delights for others, desires to undergo everlasting want. So whoever provides with his patrimony for others rather than himself does not believe at all that what he has given to God will benefit him. For let any of them tell me why he leaves his means to others. Is it not because he has no doubt they will benefit the one to whom he leaves them? Without doubt that is why.

So, whoever you are, if you leave to another what you leave because you are sure it will benefit the one to whom you leave it, then surely, if you believed that whatever you had spent on religious gifts would benefit you, you would without doubt assign it specially to yourself; because, as much as you love yourself more than those to whom you leave it, so much more would you leave it to yourself, if you judged, even by a slight little opinion, that it would benefit you.

For you do not hate yourself so as not to want to benefit yourself; but you do not believe that what you leave to the poor will benefit you. That is why you provide for others rather than yourself: because you do not believe that a religious work will benefit you. As you believe, then, so you will receive. You value the Savior very little, and the Savior will value you not at all; you put Christ after others, and Christ will put you after all; to you the Lord is cheap even in comparison with lost men, and you will be counted among the last of those who perish.

But perhaps you flatter yourself, as I said before, with some regard for your religious profession. You are more a debtor, because by your purpose of holiness you promise greater things; and so you will bear more punishment, because you have paid less of your pledge. You promise great things in appearance and render nothing in fact; you are guilty of the crime of forgery; you lie to God in everything. Not without reason does the sacred word testify that judgment must begin from the temple of God; for “judgment,” it says, “from the house of the Lord.”

Elsewhere too: “And begin from my holy ones,” it says. But let us return to what we were saying. “Go,” God says to the greedy and unbelieving, “go into the eternal fire which my Father prepared for the devil and his angels.” But you perhaps think you will be freed from this evil by certain bodily goods: you boast that you have loved chastity. But remember that the Savior did not charge with unchastity those whom he handed over to immortal punishments in the gospel. You recall that sobriety has pleased you? Neither are those of whom Scripture speaks punished for the crime of drunkenness. You say you have fasted? Neither did meals make them guilty.

But no doubt there is great reason for you to be pleased with your abstinence and fasting: you fasted and lived sparingly and meagerly not so that after your death you might feed the needy with your means, but so that you might enlarge the fortune of some heir with riches. Great fruits of abstinence you reap, no doubt; for you ate less bread so that another might have more gold. Your belly shrank by frugality so that the treasure of some perhaps vicious man might grow.

So when you come to the judgment of God, you will rightly be able to claim credit for your fasting, saying: “I fasted, Lord, and abstained, and long kept myself from the enjoyment of all delights. And the fact proves it: for behold, now my heirs abound in what was mine, they overflow with the abundance of immense riches.”

And, to take something also from the reading of the gospel, what the Savior said of that rich man you too can say of your heirs: “They are clothed in purple and fine linen and feast splendidly; they brood over the talents I buried, they press down the heaped piles of silver and gold; I prepared for them the material of every pleasure as well; they are distended with the delights I left.”

“I abstained long so that they might now be drunk. My frugality is their debauch. The floors of their overflowing dining-rooms swim with wine, they make mud with noble Falernian, their tables and embossed cups are always soaked with neat wine, always wet. They revel on the coverlets I made, they commit sexual immorality in the silks I left.” And when you have said all this for yourself, how could you not merit eternal reward from Christ, you who prepared such an abundance of delights for such saints?

O how much better, whoever you are, how much better and more wholesome it would have been for you to be poor and needy than rich; for poverty could have commended you to God, but riches made you guilty. It would have been more right, then, for you to be saved through want than to weigh down both yourself and others with your wealth: yourself, by leaving it badly to others; others, because they too badly possess what you left by a most inhuman use, and badly leave it to others after them.

If, then, whoever you are, you wish to be provided for, if you wish to have eternal life and desire to see good days, leave your substance to needy saints, leave it to the lame, leave it to the blind, leave it to the sick: let your means be the food of the wretched, let your wealth be the life of the poor, so that their refreshment may be your reward, their restoring may restore you. For if they eat of yours, you will be filled; if they drink of yours, you will quench the heat and burning of your thirst; their clothing will clothe you, their warmth in the sun will delight you.

Do not think it cheap and despicable, then, if you leave your substance to the wretched and needy: you will make Christ your heir in them. And what shall I say of the name of Christ? You make Christ heir indeed, but you will receive the profits of the inheritance. For whatever you leave to Christ you will possess entirely through Christ.

But you, I think, judge these things trifles and despise them as dreams and ravings; for you do not believe that Christ spoke the truth. And the fact proves that you in no way believe him; for you who do not carry out his commands even at the last either think them nothing at all or condemn them as false. In this it is fitting for all the saints to mourn and weep, that you and others like you believe no one less than Christ.

If some tavern-keeper promised you something, you would not refuse him credit; if a huckster or a pickle-seller asked you for a loan, you would not distrust that he would return what you gave; in short, things are sometimes entrusted even to liars and perjurers when a bond has been made and a surety given.

Christ has given you both a most faithful bond and the best sureties: the bond, that is, in the gospel; the sureties, his apostles; and if that is too little, his patriarchs, prophets, martyrs, and finally the whole series of the divine writings. And you do not believe him or lend him credit? Whom, I ask, could you find among men so prodigal and so wretched that you would deny him credit with so many sureties? So you give your goods to the rich and deny them to the needy; you give to the luxurious and deny to the saints; you give to some perhaps lost man and deny to Christ. As you have judged, then, so you will be judged; as you have chosen, so you will receive: you will have no part with Christ, whom you despised; you will have it with those whom you preferred.

But perhaps someone of the number of the unbelievers says that this is not a cause worthy to move God or to drag men into eternal danger. I know indeed that all the guilty always think their guilt pardonable: to thieves thefts are light faults, to drunkards drunkenness seems harmless, and among the unchaste fornication is no crime, because no crime at all is so great that it is not lightened in the judgment of the one by whose deed it is committed.

But if any sinner wishes to know how gravely great crimes are to be assessed by God, let him learn how the saints punish even light sins in themselves: aware, indeed, from the words of God himself of the coming examination, and searching out even his judgments through the words of their Lord, and therefore always in God’s work, always in compunction, always set on the cross. Blessed are they who, while they have mercy on all, never forgive themselves at all, sparing themselves in nothing but spending themselves wholly on God, and therefore worthy of reward at the future judgment, because here they are constantly accused before themselves.

And what shall I say of their mercy and generosity, a virtue which among them is, as it were, the initiator of all virtues? For most of them have this as the beginnings and, as it were, the cradle of their conversion, that before they cross the threshold of holy profession they leave themselves nothing of their own means, according to that saying of our Lord in which he says: “Sell all your goods and give to the poor, and come, follow me.”

So they, about to follow God as he calls, sell everything before they follow. For counting riches as burdens and hindrances, they do not think themselves free to follow unless they first throw off all the hindrances of fleshly baggage; and like people moving house, they send their goods ahead to the dwelling appointed before themselves, so that when they have transferred all that belongs to them, they themselves may then move into a house full and stocked with immortal goods, their means having been sent ahead; secure, no doubt, that nothing will afterward be lacking to them, who, about to leave a cheap and contemptible dwelling that is on the point of collapse, have left nothing of their own there to perish. This, then, is the hope of the saints, this their confidence:

thus they provide for themselves by a rich transfer of goods, so as to enjoy the eternal abundance of immortal means. But you, whoever you are, man or woman, who, forgetting your soul and salvation, strip yourself of your little goods: how will you find in the future, stored up and ready, what you assign here to those who are not in need or even to those who abound? How do you believe that God will return to you what you yourself do not entrust to God? Finally, how do you want repaid what you do not want lent? For no one wants to be repaid what he does not lend, nor is anyone so foolish as to think that what he has not lent must be returned.

And so you will in no way be able to hope from God for repayment of what you yourself, not entrusting it to God, did not want God to repay you. Hence let the divine saying be fulfilled in you: “Because you have left your riches to others or to strangers, your tomb will be your house forever.” And what the Savior says to one like you: “Because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will begin to vomit you out of my mouth.” And: “You say, I am rich and have riches and need nothing, and you do not know that you are wretched and poor and blind and naked?”

So let no one who prefers a man to God in his will flatter himself at all on the privilege of his life and profession. Security is penal and ruinous to man; presumed hopes are burdens of guilt; a usurped acquittal prepares condemnation. Whoever excuses himself to himself accuses himself to God, according to the saying: “For if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” So let no one think his own case easy: no one escapes with more difficulty than one who presumes he will escape.

These things may perhaps seem harsh and severe. Why not? For every discipline, as the divine word says, is not of joy but of sorrow. These things are harsh and severe. But what are we to do? It is not permitted to change the natures of things, and truth cannot be stated otherwise than the force of truth itself demands. Some think these things harsh: I know, and am quite sure of it. But what are we to do? There is no going to the kingdom except by hard things. “For narrow,” says the Lord, “and strait is the way that leads to life.” And the apostle: “I consider,” he says, “that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory that will be revealed in us.” He says that every human work is unworthy in comparison with future glory.

And so nothing ought to seem harsh or severe to Christians, because however much they offer Christ for everlasting blessedness, what is given is cheap where what is received is so great. Nothing paid by man to God on earth is great, where what is greatest in heaven is purchased. It is hard for the greedy to give away their own. What wonder? Everything that is commanded to the unwilling is hard.

Almost every divine word has its opponents. As many kinds of precepts as there are, so many kinds of adversaries. If the Lord commands generosity among men, the greedy man is angry; if he demands thrift, the prodigal curses. The wicked count the sacred words their enemies. Robbers shudder at whatever is written about justice; the proud shudder at whatever is commanded about humility; drunkards oppose where sobriety is enjoined; the unchaste detest where chastity is commanded. So either nothing is to be said, or whatever is said will displease one or another of the men just mentioned. Any wicked man would rather curse the law than amend his mind, would rather hate the precepts than his vices.

Amid this, what are they to do to whom the duty of speaking is entrusted by Christ? They displease God if they are silent, men if they speak. But, as the apostles answered the Jews, it is better to obey God than men. Yet I give advice to all to whom the law of God is heavy and burdensome, if they do not refuse to accept it, on how what God commands can please them. For all who hate the sacred command have the cause of their hatred in themselves. All the distaste lies not in the precepts of the law but in their own ways; for the law is good, but their ways are bad. And so let men change their purpose and disposition. If they make their ways commendable, nothing that the good law commands will displease them. For when anyone has begun to be good, he cannot but love the law of God, because the holy law of God has within itself what holy men have in their ways. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.