(Admonition 21.) Those are to be admonished in one way who already mercifully bestow their own goods, and in another those who still strive even to seize the goods of others. For those who already mercifully bestow their own goods are to be admonished not to exalt themselves with swelling thought over those on whom they lavish earthly things; not to esteem themselves better on this account, because they see others sustained by them. For the master of an earthly house, distributing the ranks and offices of servants, appointed some to rule, and others to be ruled by others. He commands the former to supply necessaries to the rest, the latter to take what they receive from others. And yet very often those who rule give offence, and those who are ruled remain in the favour of the head of the household.
Those who are dispensers deserve wrath, those who subsist by another's dispensing endure without offence. Those, therefore, who already mercifully bestow what they possess are to be admonished to recognize themselves appointed by the heavenly Lord as dispensers of temporal aids; and to bestow them the more humbly, the more they understand that what they dispense is another's. And when they consider themselves set in the ministry of those to whom they lavish what they have received, let no swelling lift up their minds, but let fear press them down. Hence it is also necessary that they weigh carefully, lest they distribute unworthily the things committed to them; lest they give certain things to those to whom nothing is due, nothing to those to whom certain things are due; lest they give much to those to whom little is due, little to those to whom they ought to have bestowed much;
lest by hastiness they uselessly scatter what they bestow; lest by tardiness they harmfully torment those who ask; lest an intention of receiving grace here creep in; lest the appetite for transitory praise extinguish the light of the gift; lest joined sorrow beset the offered gift; lest in a well-offered gift the mind be glad more than is fitting; lest they attribute anything to themselves when they have rightly fulfilled the whole, and so lose all at once after they have accomplished it. For lest they impute to themselves the virtue of their own liberality, let them hear what is written: 'If anyone ministers, let it be as of the power which God administers' (1 Pet. 4:11). Lest they rejoice too immoderately in good deeds, let them hear what is written: 'When you have done all that is commanded you, say:
We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which we ought to do' (Luke 17:10). Lest sorrow corrupt liberality, let them hear what is written: 'God loves a cheerful giver' (2 Cor. 9:7). Lest from the gift bestowed they seek transitory praise, let them hear what is written: 'Let not your left hand know what your right hand does' (Matt. 6:3); that is, let no glory of the present life mingle itself with pious dispensing, but let the work of uprightness be ignorant of the appetite for favour. Lest they require a return for the grace bestowed, let them hear what is written: 'When you make a dinner or a supper, do not call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbours, lest perhaps they also invite you in return, and a recompense be made you:
but when you make a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and you shall be blessed, because they have nothing wherewith to recompense you' (Luke 14:12ff.). Lest the things which ought to be bestowed sooner be bestowed late, let them hear what is written: 'Do not say to your friend: Go and return, and tomorrow I will give you, when you can give at once' (Prov. 3:28). Lest under the pretext of liberality they uselessly scatter what they possess, let them hear what is written: 'Let your alms sweat in your hand.' Lest, when many things are needful, they bestow few, let them hear what is written: 'He who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly' (2 Cor. 9:6). Lest, when few things are fitting, they bestow very many, and themselves afterwards, unable to endure want, break forth into impatience, let them hear what is written:
'Not that others should be eased, and you burdened, but from equality, let your abundance supply their want, and let their abundance be a supplement to your want' (2 Cor. 8:13-14). For when the mind of a giver knows not how to bear want, if it withdraws much from itself, it seeks against itself an occasion of impatience. For first the mind must be prepared with patience, and then either much or all is to be bestowed, lest, while want rushing in is borne with less equanimity, both the reward of the liberality already shown perish, and moreover a murmuring following after ruin the mind still more grievously. Lest they bestow nothing at all on those to whom they ought to confer something small, let them hear what is written: 'Give to everyone who asks you' (Luke 6:30).
Lest they bestow even something on those to whom they ought to confer nothing at all, let them hear what is written: 'Give to the good, and receive not a sinner; do good to the lowly, and give not to the ungodly' (Sir. 12:4). And again: 'Set your bread and your wine upon the burial of the just, and do not eat and drink of it with sinners' (Tob. 4:17). For he sets his bread and his wine before sinners, who bestows aids on the wicked for the very reason that they are wicked. Hence some rich men of this world, while Christ's poor are tormented with hunger, nourish stage-players with lavish bounties. But he who bestows his bread even on a needy sinner, not because he is a sinner but because he is a man,
surely nourishes not a sinner but a just poor man, because in him he loves not the fault but the nature. Those also who already mercifully lavish their own goods are to be admonished to strive to guard carefully, lest, while they redeem committed sins by alms, they commit still further sins to be redeemed; lest they esteem God's justice venal, so that, when they take care to give money for their sins, they think they can sin with impunity. For the soul is more than food, and the body more than raiment (Matt. 6:25; Luke 12:23). He, therefore, who bestows food or raiment on the poor, but is nonetheless polluted with iniquity of soul or body, has offered the lesser thing to justice, and the greater thing to guilt; for he has given his goods to God, and himself to the devil.
But on the contrary those are to be admonished who still strive even to seize the goods of others, to hear anxiously what the Lord, coming into judgment, will say. For he says: 'I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me not in; naked, and you clothed me not; sick and in prison, and you visited me not' (Matt. 25:35-36). To whom he also premises, saying: 'Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels' (Matt. 25:41). Behold, they by no means hear that they have committed robberies or any other violent deeds, and yet they are consigned to the eternal fires of Gehenna.
From this, therefore, it is to be gathered with how great a condemnation those are to be punished who seize the goods of others, if those are smitten with so great a chastisement who indiscreetly kept their own. Let them weigh with what guilt the plundered property binds them, if unshared property subjects to such punishment. Let them weigh what injustice inflicted deserves, if piety not bestowed is worthy of so great a stroke. When they intend to seize the goods of others, let them hear what is written: 'Woe to him who multiplies what is not his own; how long does he heap up against himself thick mire?' (Hab. 2:6). For the covetous man to heap up thick mire against himself is to accumulate earthly gains together with the weight of sin. When they desire to multiply the spaces of a large dwelling, let them hear what is written:
'Woe to you who join house to house, and couple field to field, even to the boundary of the place. Will you alone dwell in the midst of the earth?' (Isa. 5:8). As if he plainly said: How far do you extend yourselves, who can by no means have partners in a common world? You press upon those joined to you, but you always find those against whom you may extend yourselves. When they gape after increasing riches, let them hear what is written: 'The covetous man is not filled with money; and he who loves riches shall reap no fruit from them' (Eccl. 5:9). For he would reap fruit from them, if he had been willing, by not loving them, to scatter them well. But he who retains them by loving them shall assuredly leave them behind without fruit. When they burn to be filled with all riches together, let them hear what is written:
'He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent' (Prov. 28:20); for indeed whoever aspires to increase his wealth neglects to shun sin, and, caught after the manner of the birds, when in his greed he spies the bait of earthly things, he does not perceive the noose of sin by which he is being strangled. When they desire whatever gains this present world affords, and are ignorant of the losses they will suffer in the world to come, let them hear what is written: 'The inheritance to which men hasten in the beginning shall in the end be without a blessing' (Prov. 20:21). For we take the beginning of this life so that in the end we may come to the lot of the blessing; and thus they who in the beginning hasten to inherit lose for themselves in the end the lot of the blessing;
for while through the wickedness of avarice they seek to multiply their goods here, there they are made disinherited of the eternal patrimony. When they aspire to very many things, or are able to obtain all that they have aspired to, let them hear what is written: 'What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his own soul?' (Matt. 16:26). As if Truth openly said: What does it profit a man if he gather together all that is outside himself, if he condemns this very self which he alone is? Yet very often the avarice of plunderers is more quickly corrected if, in the words of him who admonishes, it is shown how fleeting the present life is:
if there be brought before them the memory of those who both long strove to grow rich in this world, and yet could not long remain in the riches they had gained, from whom a swift death suddenly and all at once took away whatever their wickedness had gathered neither all at once nor suddenly; who not only left here the things they had plundered, but carried with them to the judgment the causes of their plunder. Let them therefore hear the examples of such men, whom without doubt they themselves also condemn in their own words; so that when after those words they return to their heart, they may blush at least to imitate those whom they judge.