For where there is a rider who cannot govern his own horse, the horse too is borne headlong and, with untamed fury, is dragged into precipices and dangers. Why then do you trust in horses, O rich? A horse is a vain thing for safety. Why do you applaud in chariots? These trust in chariots and these in horses, but we shall be magnified in the name of the Lord. They are bound and have fallen, but we have risen and are set upright. Do not love things that neigh; do not, O rich, be roused by the snorting of lust. Terrible is the Lord, whom no one—however mighty and rich—can resist; He hurls down heavenly judgment. It is good that you now be quiet and, ceasing from outrages, revere the power of the Lord. Therefore it was said to the parricide Cain, 'You have sinned;
be still,' that he might set a limit to his sin. Let your thoughts confess to the Lord. Do not say, 'We have not sinned.' Paul said, 'Although I am conscious of nothing in myself,' yet he added, 'but I am not justified by this.' And you too, even if you are conscious of nothing, yet confess to the Lord, lest there be anything that escapes you. For he who confesses to the Lord and applies even the remnants of his thought to confession shall celebrate a festal day of the mind in secret, and shall feast—not in the leaven of malice and wickedness, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And so, in conclusion, the prophet, turning to you, says: 'Pray and render to the Lord your God'—that is:
Do not dissemble, O rich men — the day is at hand — pray for your sins, and render up as gifts a return for the benefits you possess. From God himself you have received what you offer; what you pay back to him is his own. 'My gifts,' he says, 'and my offerings' — that is, the gifts you offer to me are gifts that are mine; I gave them to you and bestowed them. And so the prophet says: 'You have no need of my goods; therefore I offer you what is your own, since I have nothing that you have not given.' It is faith that wins favor for our gifts; it is humility that commends what is offered. By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice; the offering of Abel pleased God above the gifts of his brother Cain — because he prevailed by faith. For why is the poor man's sacrifice more pleasing than the rich man's? Because the poor man is richer in faith, more abundantly endowed by his sobriety.
And though he is poor, he is among those of whom it is said: 'To you shall kings bring gifts.' For the Lord Jesus is not delighted by those clad in purple who make offerings, but by those who govern their own impulses — who by the rule of the mind hold dominion over the wantonness of the body. Pray therefore, O rich men! You have nothing in your works that can please. Pray for your sins and your shameful deeds, and render gifts to the Lord your God. Render them in the poor, pay them out in the needy. Lend at interest through that destitute one, whom you cannot otherwise appease for your shameful deeds. Make him your debtor whom you fear as your avenger. 'I will not take calves out of your house,' he says, 'nor he-goats out of your flocks, for all the beasts of the forests are mine.' 'Whatever you offer,' he says, 'is my own. For the whole world is mine.'
'I do not demand what is mine; there is something of your own that you can offer — the zeal of devotion and faith. I am not delighted by the ostentation of sacrifices; only this, O man: offer to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High.' Or surely, if it please, let us take it thus. Since he said that the rich had fallen asleep in their sleep, he sent ahead rebukes of the Lord against them. He wove in terror, he proclaimed a power which not even the rich can withstand. Turning to all he says: 'Let the rich slumber, let the rich be rebuked; but you, pray and render to the Lord your God, all you who present gifts round about him' — that is, give thanks, O poor men, for God is no respecter of persons. Let those others heap up riches, lay up money, pile high treasures of gold and silver;
but you, pray, who have nothing else; you, pray, who possess this one thing alone, which is more precious than gold and silver. Render your gifts, you who do not depart from the Lord, you who are round about him, since you who were made afar off have been brought near. But those who seem to themselves to be near through riches and power have been set far off by reason of avarice. For no one is on the outside save him whom his own guilt has shut out — as it cast Adam out of paradise and shut out Eve — and no one is afar off save him whom his own shameful deeds have banished.
Therefore you who are set near, pray and render gifts to him who is terrible, who takes away the spirit of princes, terrible to the kings of the earth — for the reason that he is not bought off by any reward of the rich, nor swayed by any haughtiness of the powerful; who weighs out the penalties of guilt; who, the more he has bestowed on anyone, the more he exacts from him. To Saul, while yet a private man, he gave a kingdom; but because Saul did not keep the commandment, he lost both kingdom and spirit. Many kings of the nations, on account of their treachery, he made captives from the people of the fathers; and — to speak now of the history we have set before us — it was he who commanded that Ahab, a king ungrateful for heavenly benefits, be so slain that dogs licked his wounds.
For indeed, because he had coveted the poor man's vineyard, he was by no means satisfied even with the wealth he held, but was reduced by the Lord below all want of empire. There was found no one to wash his wounds, no one to cover his body. The kindness of men failed around him; the savagery of dogs succeeded. The greedy man fittingly found dogs to be the ministers of his own funeral. At this point a certain question arises: how do we read that the Lord said to Elijah, 'You have seen how Ahab was moved before my face? I will not bring evils in his days, but in the days of his son I will bring evils' — or how do we say that repentance avails before the Lord?
Behold, the king was moved before the face of the Lord and went about weeping, and rent his garments and covered himself with sackcloth, and was clothed in haircloth from the day on which he slew Naboth the Israelite — so much so that he moved God to mercy and changed his sentence. Therefore either repentance did not avail nor bend the merciful Lord, or else the oracle is false; for Ahab was conquered and slain. But consider that he had Jezebel for a wife, by whose will he was inflamed, who turned his heart and made him execrable by his exceeding sacrileges. This affection of repentance, then, the Lord recalled in him; yet the Lord cannot be reckoned changeable, if, not unmindful of the confession, he did not think that what he had promised to one confessing should be withheld. Receive another, truer explanation.
Even toward an unworthy man the Lord kept the tenor of his own sentence, but the man himself did not hold fast the divine benefits around him. The king of Syria had brought war; he was conquered and preserved for pardon, and though a captive was granted his liberty and sent back to his kingdom. What was the divine sentence — not only did Ahab escape it, but he even triumphed, in that by his own cowardice he armed against himself the enemy by whom he was to be overcome. And surely he had been warned by the prophet who said, 'Know and see what you do' — warned, I say, for the reason that to the servants of the king of Syria heavenly grace's help was owing, because he had said, 'The God of the mountains is the God of Israel and not the God of Baal. On account of this,' he says, 'they prevailed against us.'
'And therefore,' he says, 'if we shall not fully overcome them, set governors in the place of the king of Syria,' that he might take away from them the valor and power of the king. And so in the first encounter he conquered, so as to rout the enemy; in the second he conquered, when he restored the captive to his own dominion. By which cause the oracle of his conquest plainly resounded, when one of the sons of the prophets said to his neighbor, 'Slay me.' And the man would not slay him. And he said, 'Because you have not obeyed the word of the Lord, behold, you depart from me, and a lion shall kill you.' And he departed from him, and a lion found him and killed him. And after this another prophet stood before the king of Israel and said to him: 'Thus says the Lord:'
'Because you have let go out of your hand a man appointed to destruction, behold, your life shall be for his life, and your people for his people.' From these oracles, then, it is clear that the Lord keeps his promises even toward the unworthy, but that the impious are either crushed by their own folly or condemned by some other transgression, even if they have escaped the snares of the first transgression. But it behooves us so to act that, being worthy by good works, we may deserve to receive the promises of Almighty God.