It is simply not to be credited that holy Scripture is concerned to advise us on these riches which the proud get such swollen heads about. I mean these visible, earthly riches, of course, as though we should either think they are very important or fear not to have them. After all, someone will say, what good does a man get from pretending to be rich when in fact he has nothing? Scripture has taken note of such a person and found fault with him. . . .

It is not improper, nor is it unseemly or useless that the holy Scriptures should wish to commend rich people to us for being humble. The thing really to be afraid of with riches, you see, is pride. In fact, the apostle Paul has advice on this point for Timothy: Command the rich of this world, he says, not to have proud thoughts.^[1] It wasn’t riches he went in dread of but the disease of riches. The disease of riches is great pride. A grand spirit it is indeed, that in the midst of riches is not prone to this disease, a spirit greater than its riches, surpassing them not by desiring but by despising them.

Great then indeed is the rich person who doesn’t think he is great just because he is rich. But if that is why he does think he is great, then he is proud and destitute. He’s a big noise in the flesh. In his heart of hearts he’s a beggar. He has been inflated, not filled. If you see two wineskins, one filled, the other inflated, they each have the same bulk and extent, but they don’t each have the same content. Just look at them, and you can’t tell the difference; but weigh them, and you will find out. The one that has been filled is hard to move; the one that has been inflated is easily removed. . . .

I am not telling you to do away with your wealth but to transfer it, because there are many people who have refused to do this and have been very sorry indeed that they did not obey, when they not only lost their wealth but on account of it have lost themselves too. So, command the rich of this world not to have proud thoughts, and there will happen in them what we have heard in Solomon’s proverb: There are those who humble themselves though they are rich. It can happen even with these temporal riches. Let him be humble. Let him be more glad that he’s a Christian than that he’s rich. Don’t let him be puffed up or become high and mighty. Let him take notice of the poor man his brother, and not refuse to be called the poor man’s brother. After all, however rich he may be, Christ is richer, and he wanted all for whom he shed his blood to be his brethren.

For indeed a person who loses by daily distractions of mind and lack of self control what he appears to gain by the conversion of others puts his profits into a bag with holes. And so it is that while they fancy that they can make larger profits by the instruction of others, they are actually deprived of their own improvement. For there are who make themselves out as rich though possessing nothing, and there are who humble themselves amid great riches.

And what use is it to recount how many, because of their failure to manage properly their material riches, have received the same punishment as the rich man in the Gospel?^[1] Or how many, because they bore poverty ignobly with behavior more lowly and base than was proper among saints, have fallen away from their heavenly hope? Even those who are midway between these extremes of riches and poverty are not by their moderate estate able to escape sinning.

Just as the foot is the measure of the sandal, so the physical needs of each person are the measure of what he should possess. Whatever is excessive—the things they call adornments, the trappings of the rich—are not adornments but a burden for the body. If one is to use violence to ascend to heaven,^[1] it is necessary to carry the good staff of holy deeds and first to share our goods with the oppressed before laying hold of the true rest. Scripture declares that really his own wealth is the redemption of the soul of man, that is, if a person is rich, he will obtain salvation by sharing his wealth.

Against those who have given money that they might be entirely undisturbed by evil, an accusation cannot be brought. For they have sustained the loss and sacrifice of their goods that they might not hurt or destroy their soul, which others for the sake of filthy lucre have not done. And yet the Lord says, What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?^[1] And again, You cannot serve God and mammon.^[2] In these things, then, they have shown themselves the servants of God, inasmuch as they have hated, trodden under foot and despised money, and have thus fulfilled what is written: The ransom of a man’s life are his riches.

The riches of a person ought to work to the redemption of his soul, not to its destruction. Wealth is redemption if one uses it well. It is a snare if one does not know how to use it. For what is a person’s money if not provision for the journey? A great amount is a burden; a little is useful. We are wayfarers in this life; many are walking along, but a person needs to make a good passage. The Lord Jesus is with him who makes a good passage.

The redemption of the soul of a man is his own wealth. What are you saying? What do you mean by exalting so much wealth? First of all he [Solomon] did not speak about just any wealth but that which is produced through honest activities. Poverty is not, therefore, an evil thing. Rather, he says that no one who wants to may threaten someone who is poor; indeed how can some one terrify one who possesses nothing? For this reason this kind of life is devoid of afflictions. Or, maybe he [Solomon] calls his own wealth righteousness which snatches him away from death. So the one who is poor in virtue does not have a mind at peace when he suffers threats or the declaration of a punishment.

Suppose you are an ignoble and undistinguished person, poor and of lowly origin, without home or city, sick, in need of daily sustenance, in dread of the powerful, cowering before everyone because of your abject condition. But he that is poor, says the Scripture, bears not reprehension. Yet, do not despair or cast aside every good hope because your present state is quite unenviable. Rather, turn your thoughts to the blessings already granted you by God and to those reserved by promise for the future.

The Lord yearns for believers’ souls more than for their riches. We read in the Proverbs, The ransom of a man’s soul are his own riches. We may, indeed, take a person’s own riches to be those which do not come from someone else or from plunder; according to the precept, honor God with your just labors.^[1] But the sense is better if we understand a person’s own riches to be those hidden treasures which no thief can steal and no robber wrest from him.^[2]

As Solomon says, A man’s own wealth is the redemption of his soul. This might be temporal wealth which one distributes and gives to the poor so that one’s righteousness may endure forever, or it might be spiritual wealth in the form of the righteousness that one has attained by taking pity on the poor or by doing other good things.

A good man will inherit children’s children. The verb he will inherit does not mean that he will take the inheritance from his sons; in fact, this would be the greatest curse. Rather, it means the opposite, that is, that he will transmit his riches to his posterity and will leave behind descendants. But the property of the ungodly is not transmitted to their sons but to those who can use them properly. Another interpretation may be: the mind, almost like a parent, generates good thoughts; and these become parents of similar actions.

You fathers, educate your children in the Lord, bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and teach them such trades as are agreeable and suitable to the Lord, lest they by such opportunity become extravagant and continue without punishment from their parents, and so become slack before their time and go astray from that which is good. Therefore do not be afraid to reprove them and to teach them wisdom with severity. For your corrections will not kill them but rather preserve them. . . . [Thus Solomon says,] He that spares his rod hates his son, and afterwards, Beat his sides while he is an infant, lest he be hardened and disobey you.^[1] He, therefore, who neglects to admonish and instruct his own son, hates his own child. Teach, therefore, your children the word of the Lord. Bring them under with cutting stripes, and make them subject from infancy, teaching them the holy Scriptures, which are Christian and divine, and delivering to them every sacred writing, not giving them such liberty that they get the mastery^[2] and act against your opinion. Do not permit them to club together with peer groups. For so they will be turned to disorderly ways and will fall into fornication. And if this happens by the carelessness of their parents, those who gave them birth will be guilty of their souls. For if the offending children get into the company of debauched persons by the negligence of those who gave them life, they will not be punished alone by themselves, but their parents also will be condemned on their account. For this cause, endeavor at the time when they are of an age fit for marriage, to join them in wedlock and settle them together, lest in the heat and fervor of their age their course of life become dissolute and you be required to give an account by the Lord God in the day of judgment.

God, out of goodness, has mingled fear with goodness. For what is beneficial for each one, that he also supplies, as a physician to a sick man, as a father to his insubordinate child: For he that spares his rod hates his son. And the Lord and his apostles walked in the midst of fear and labors. When, then, the affliction is sent in the person of a right-eous man, it is either from the Lord rebuking him for a sin committed before, or guarding him on account of the future, or not preventing by the exercise of his power an assault from without—for some good end to him and to those near, for the sake of example.

The correction of the father who does not spare the rod is useful, that he may render his son’s soul obedient to the precepts of salvation. He punishes with a rod, as we read, I shall punish their offenses with a rod.^[1]

He that spares the rod hates his son. For, give us a person who with right faith and true understanding can say with all the energy of his heart, My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?^[1] For such a person there is no need of the terror of hell, to say nothing of temporal punishments or imperial laws, seeing that with him it is so indispensable a blessing to cleave to the Lord that he not only dreads being parted from that happiness as a heavy punishment but can scarcely even bear delay in its attainment. But yet, before the good sons can say they have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ,^[2] many must first be recalled to their Lord by the stripes of temporal scourging, like evil servants, and in some degree like good-for-nothing fugitives.

We have been created, not to eat and drink but to come to the knowledge of God. The just man, Scripture says, eats and fills his soul; but the belly of the wicked is ever in want, ever hungry with a greed that cannot be quenched.

We must consider the food promised in the law as the food of the soul, which is to satisfy not both parts of a person’s nature but the soul only. And the words of the gospel, although probably containing a deeper meaning, may yet be taken in their more simple and obvious sense, as teaching us not to be disturbed with anxieties about our food and clothing, but, while living in plainness, and desiring only what is needful, to put our trust in the providence of God.

If you take [this verse] according to the literal sense that when the just person eats he will fill his soul but the souls of the impious will be in poverty, it will appear false. For the souls of the impious take food with eagerness and strive after satiety, but the just meanwhile are hungry. Finally, Paul was just, and he said, Up to this hour we are hungry, and thirsty, and naked, and we are beaten with fists.^[1] And again he says, In hunger and thirst, in many fastings.^[2] And how does Solomon say, when the just eats he will satisfy his soul? But if you consider how the just person always and without interruption eats from the living bread and fills his soul and satisfies it with heavenly food which is the Word of God and his wisdom, you will find how the just person eats his bread in abundance from the blessing of God.