Commentaria in Isaiam
“… is great gain, godliness with sufficiency. For we brought nothing into this world, and certainly we can carry nothing out. But having food, and wherewith to be covered, with these we are content. For they that will become rich fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil,” and so on. “For the desire of money is the root of all evils”; and verse 17: “Charge the rich of this world not to be high-minded, nor to trust in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God,” and so on.
Fifth, St. James, chapter 1, verse 9: “Let riches in masters be dangerous and deadly; while he says: Let the humble brother glory in his exaltation: and the rich in his being low, because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away,” and so on; and chapter 5, verse 1: “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl in your miseries, which shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. You have laid up to yourselves wrath against the last days,” and so on.
Sixth, St. Cyprian, On the Discipline and Dress of Virgins: “Let them know,” he says, “first that she is rich who is rich towards God. Earthly things, received in the world, and here destined to remain with the world, ought to be as much despised as the world itself is despised, whose pomps and delights we renounced when by a better passage we came to God.” And below: “Let the poor feel that thou art rich; lend thy patrimony to God, feed Christ, procure for thyself heavenly possessions. A great patrimony is a temptation, unless it is spent for good uses: for the richer each one is, the more he ought to redeem his sins rather than increase them.” The same elsewhere: “Why do we think of tomorrow,” he says, “and seek to live long in the world, we who pray that the kingdom of God may come speedily?”
Seventh, St. Basil, in his sermon On Riches: “The nature of riches is fleeting,” he says, “swifter than a torrent it passes by those who possess it; and it is wont to glide from one to another: thou art only the steward of them.”
Eighth, St. Nazianzen, oration 10, calls riches a pledge of calamity, of vices, teachers, idols, instruments of perdition; the desire of them he calls a most foul and deadly thing. The same: “Would that the rich perish, unless they succour the poor! For what need is there to lay up much for robbers and thieves, and for changes of times, which transfer it to others?”
Ninth, St. Chrysostom in Antonius’s Melissa, sermon 131, On the Rich: “The poor man,” he says, “does not so much desire necessaries as the rich man superfluities; nor again has the poor man so great power or means for practising wickedness as the rich;
“Riches are not a sin, but it is a sin not to distribute them to the poor, or to use them ill. They are heavy chains to those who have them; fierce beasts, helpers of corruption, enemies of continence, foes of temperance, secret betrayers of virtues, like wild beasts and runaway slaves; they have made good men wicked; they roar more fiercely than lions, and disturb all things; they make men mad, cast them into temptations, and breed insults of words; they are the parents of every absurdity; they are our wild beasts: if kept in, they flee; scatter them, then, that they may remain; do not hide and bury them, lest they flee. Only then are they ours when they are given to the poor. They are good to him to whom sin is not joined. Those who spend riches ill are worse than the avaricious. The greatest of riches is not to need riches. The desire of riches is the citadel and metropolis of all vices; it does not suffer good works to be done; it is a tyrant spread through the whole world; it is the offspring of Satan; he who gathers them with sin places his hope on earth; they puff up, and furnish the power of harming. Riches receive the torments of hell; they are not to be left to children, that the children may leave virtue; the dead rich are to be wept for, because they have procured for themselves no consolation from riches.”
“What kind of riches,” he says, “are they on account of which you fear your servant lest he kill you, rob you and flee? If they were true riches they would give you security; those are truly riches which, when we have them, we cannot lose.” And sermon 33: “The love of temporal things,” he says, “is the birdlime of spiritual punishments.” The same, City of God, book 1, chap. 10:
“Paulinus,” he says, “Bishop of Nola, from a most opulent rich man by choice become poor, when he was held by the Barbarians, prayed: Lord, let me not be tormented for gold and silver; for where all my things are thou knowest.”
Eleventh, St. Ambrose, book 8 on Luke: “Riches,” he says, “as they are hindrances to the wicked, so to the good are helps to virtues.” The same, in the treatise On Nabuchodonosor: “Nature knows not the rich, for nature begets all poor, and pours them naked into the light, and receives them naked in the tomb.” The same in the Hexameron:
“There is no distinction,” he says, “between the corpses of the dead, except that the bodies of the rich, swollen with luxury, stink more heavily.”
Twelfth, St. Jerome, letter 69: “Every rich man,” he says, “is either unjust or the heir of an unjust man.” The same on Matthew 6: “He who is the slave of riches guards them as a slave.” Crates the Theban, he says, a man of great wealth, cast off the world, Those alone, he says, are true riches which make us rich in virtues. If then, brothers, you desire to be rich, love true riches: if you seek the summit of true honour, strive toward the heavenly kingdom: if you love the glory of dignities, hasten to be enrolled in that high court of Angels.” The same, Morals, book 18, chap. 9: “The rich man,” he says, “when he sleeps, shall take nothing with him; but he carries his possessions with him when he dies who has bestowed them on one asking; for all earthly things, which by keeping we lose, by giving we keep; and our patrimony, kept, is lost, spent, remains; for we cannot long endure with our goods: because either we leave them or they, as it were, leave us living, by perishing. We must act, therefore, that things destined to perish we turn to pass into an unperishing reward.” See what follows, where he compares riches to sleep, after which the proud rich are driven by the devil into the fires of torments.
Fourteenth, St. Bernard, On Conversion, to Clerics, chap. 13: “The insatiable love of riches torments the mind with an ever longer desire more than it refreshes by its use, since their acquisition is found to be of labour, their possession of fear, their loss full of grief.” Why then do you desire those things which loved defile, possessed burden, lost torture? And chap. 14: “Fool, this night they shall require thy soul of thee; and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” The same, sermon 4 on Advent: “Son of Adam, avaricious race, what have you to do with earthly riches, which are neither truly riches nor yours? Gold and silver is truly red and white earth, which only the error of men makes, or reckons, more precious. Finally, if they are yours, take them with you.” And in the book On Consideration: “Gold, silver, and so on, are neither good nor evil: their use is good, their abuse evil, anxiety about them worse, the gain baser.”
Finally the wisest of mortal kings, Solomon, makes this vow to God: “Give me neither beggary nor riches: give me only the necessaries of life.” And he adds the cause: “Lest perhaps being filled, I should be tempted to deny, and say: Who is the Lord? or being compelled by poverty, I should steal, and forswear the name of my God,” Proverbs 30:8.
Forty thousand gold pieces had been brought to the Emperor Sigismund from Hungary, which, as night came on, while he anxiously considered to what uses to turn them, through his chamberlains he quickly calls to him all his counsellors and the captains of his soldiers: “Behold,” he says, “these most cruel enemies and executioners (showing the coins) have stolen my sleep; take them and divide them among you, that I may sleep quietly.” The money being distributed among them, when they went away from the council, he said: “The scourge that scourged me now leaves me; I shall rest more securely now.”
The poet Anacreon, … hung in doubt, and fearing lest thieves should carry it off: wherefore, when morning came, he returned to the king and gave back the gold, saying that he preferred to be poor with quiet, than wealthy with disquiet.
11. Woe to you that rise up early in the morning to follow drunkenness.—This is the second wild grape of the vineyard, that is of the Jews, namely drunkenness, and that untimely, as in the morning. For, as the Apostle says, 1 Thessalonians 5: “They that are drunk are drunk in the night.”
To be inflamed with wine.—The Septuagint translate, for wine will kindle or burn them, namely with the flames and fire both of spirits and vapours and of the affections. For, as St. Basil explains this place in his homily On Drunkenness: “The heat of wine poured into the body becomes a fire for the kindling of the bonds of enmity; for it depresses reason and mind, and stirs up pleasures and the other evil affections of the soul, like a swarm of bees. What chariot of untamed horses is so headlong borne, throwing off its master?