De arte praedicatoria

If the preacher wishes to turn the minds of his hearers toward fleeing avarice and covetousness, let him take the beginning of his sermon from that authority which says "avarice is the servitude of idols,"¹ or from that which says "there are three things that are insatiable, and a fourth that never says: It is enough,"² because:

The more they drink, the more they thirst for water.

O plague, than which nothing is more skilled at inciting to crime, once the thirst for having has grown hot! Because:

To what do you not drive mortal hearts, o accursed hunger for gold?³

While all other things are enclosed within fixed limits, avarice is bounded by no limit. The earth is bounded by its own borders, water is limited by its own boundaries, the air is enclosed by its own limit; heaven is confined by its own bounds; avarice alone is not restrained by any measure. O man! on account of avarice many things are armed against you, many things complain about you: fortune, nature, your own flesh, charity, your neighbor, the world, and God. Hear what fortune says against you: O man, why do you seek my familiarity? why do you long for my goodwill? if I give you riches, I give them so as to take them away; I am generous so as to snatch them back; I flatter so as to torment more heavily; I grow calm so as to strike more terribly with lightning. You who are in safety, why do you seek turmoil with me? You who are on level ground, why do you aspire to my precipice? You who are in harbor, why do you long for my shipwreck?

Hear what nature says against you! O man, I bore you without honors, return without honors; I gave birth to you without riches, come to me without riches; you entered without worldly glory, leave without it. O man, do you seek to make your own what belongs to another? surely those things that were not born with you are foreign to you; they cannot be truly yours, they cannot be with you for long or forever. Consider that saying of the philosopher: "An honorable thing is a cheerful poverty." But it is not poverty if it is cheerful. Whoever is well content with poverty is rich; it is not the one who has little, but the one who desires more, who is poor. If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to opinion, you will never be rich. Nature desires little, opinion desires an immense amount. Natural desires are finite; those born of false opinion have no place where they stop.

For there is no limit to false opinion. Draw yourself back, then, from vain things, and when you wish to know whether your desires are natural or blind, consider whether they can rest anywhere; if, however far you have gone, there is always something further remaining, it is unnatural. O how much an honorable poverty is to be sought! For many, riches have stood in the way of acting well! Poverty is unencumbered, it is secure. If you wish to serve God, you must either be poor, or be like the poor. Hear, man, what your own flesh says against you! O man, why do you complain against me, why do you lodge a complaint against me? Do you call me the tinder of sin, a tyrant raging in your members, a weakness of nature, a goad of Satan? Why do you blame me because you are afflicted by avarice, made slack by covetousness? I could bring many complaints against you, offer many reasons, since without tinder I lie inert, without incitement I am languid; you provoke to covetousness, you stir up to avarice, you give me the weapons with which I fight against you, you give me the tools with which I contend; you incite me to strike, you invite me to rage.

Hear what charity says against you! O man, why do you enrich yourself with those things which your neighbor needs? Why do you take for yourself what should be shared with the poor? Why do you feed moths and worms with what the poor should be fed? Do you wish to be the best merchant, an excellent moneylender, a wise businessman? Give what you cannot keep, so that you may gain what you cannot lose; give a little, so that you may gain a hundredfold; give what is another's possession, so that you may gain an eternal inheritance.

Hear what your neighbor says against you: O man, why do you wrong me, why do you contrive death for me for the sake of my goods? why do you impose false charges, and invent crimes, so as to empty my purse, so as to squeeze out my money? If you wrong me, vengeance will be taken from you at once; if you plunder me of money, you will first have plundered yourself in soul; if you wound me in body, you will first have wounded yourself in mind.

Hear what the elements say against you, and especially the earth, your mother: Why do you wrong your mother, why do you inflict violence on me, who brought you forth from my own bowels? Why do you harass me with the plow, so that I return a hundredfold profit; why do you harass your mother so that I vomit forth gold? are not the things I grant you of my own free will enough, unless you extort them by violence? the time will come when you will return to your own origin, when I will receive you back and close you within my bowels; when I will expose you to worms, you who exposed me to whippings.

Hear what the sea says against you: O man, why do you furrow me with ships, strike me with oars, search my depths with nets? It is no wonder if I sink you, if I bring shipwreck upon you, if I attack you with storms and various blows.

Hear what God says against you? What is it, o man, that you set your Creator below the creature? that you prefer money to Him, a creature to God, earth to heaven, a passing thing to the heavenly, a transitory thing to the eternal? consider that I brought you forth from mud, and formed you to my image; consider that my hands made you, shaped you entirely on every side. Would you be grateful to a man for money, and ungrateful to me for life? If you are not grateful for what has been given, at least be grateful for what is to be given, so that, if what I have given does not move you, at least what I promise may move you; and if the hope of eternal life does not move you, may the fear of hell move you.

Warned by these things, let man avoid avarice, and not set his mind on riches, because the authority says: As difficult as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, so difficult is it for those who trust in money to enter the kingdom of God.⁴ Paul also says: The root of all evils is covetousness, which some, in their eagerness, have wandered from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.⁵ Covetousness profits nothing to the one in whom it dwells. Worse than every sin is avarice, and the love of money. Hence the Lord in the Gospel: Beware of all avarice.⁶ And Paul: No fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, has any inheritance in the kingdom of God.⁷ Likewise Solomon: The covetous man is not satisfied with money.⁸ And: He who loves riches will not gather fruit from them.⁹ Likewise Cyprian says: "A covetous man is like hell." Someone also said: "The covetous man lacks as much what he has as what he does not have." You give up much, brothers, if you renounce your desires, for God asks for the heart, and does not weigh purses.