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| That the Saints Lose Nothing in Losing Temporal Goods.
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Chapter 10.—That the Saints Lose
Nothing in Losing Temporal Goods.
These are the considerations which
one must keep in view, that he may answer the question whether any
evil happens to the faithful and godly which cannot be turned to
profit. Or shall we say that the question is needless, and that
the apostle is vaporing when he says, “We know that all things
work together for good to them that love God?”53
They lost all they had. Their
faith? Their godliness? The possessions of the hidden man of
the heart, which in the sight of God are of great price?54
Did they lose these? For these
are the wealth of Christians, to whom the wealthy apostle said,
“Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought
nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing
out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content.
But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and
into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction
and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil;
which, while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith,
and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”55
They, then, who lost their worldly
all in the sack of Rome, if they owned their possessions as they
had been taught by the apostle, who himself was poor without, but
rich within,—that is to say, if they used the world as not using
it,—could say in the words of Job, heavily tried, but not
overcome: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked
shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away; as it pleased the Lord, so has it come to pass: blessed be
the name of the Lord.”56
Like a good servant, Job counted
the will of his Lord his great possession, by obedience to which
his soul was enriched; nor did it grieve him to lose, while yet
living, those goods which he must shortly leave at his death. But
as to those feebler spirits who, though they cannot be said to
prefer earthly possessions to Christ, do yet cleave to them with a
somewhat immoderate attachment, they have discovered by the pain of
losing these things how much they were sinning in loving them.
For their grief is of their own making; in the words of the apostle
quoted above, “they have pierced themselves through with many
sorrows.” For it was well that they who had so long despised
these verbal admonitions should receive the teaching of
experience. For when the apostle says, “They that will be rich
fall into temptation,” and so on, what he blames in riches is not
the possession of them, but the desire of them. For elsewhere he
says, “Charge them that
are rich in this world, that they
be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the
living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do
good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing
to communicate; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation
against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal
life.”57
They who
were making such a use of their property have been consoled for
light losses by great gains, and have had more pleasure in those
possessions which they have securely laid past, by freely giving
them away, than grief in those which they entirely lost by an
anxious and selfish hoarding of them. For nothing could perish on
earth save what they would be ashamed to carry away from earth.
Our Lord’s injunction runs, “Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.”58
And they who have listened to this
injunction have proved in the time of tribulation how well they
were advised in not despising this most trustworthy teacher, and
most faithful and mighty guardian of their treasure. For if many
were glad that their treasure was stored in places which the enemy
chanced not to light upon, how much better founded was the joy of
those who, by the counsel of their God, had fled with their
treasure to a citadel which no enemy can possibly reach! Thus our
Paulinus, bishop of Nola,59
| 59
Paulinus was a native of Bordeaux, and both by
inheritance and marriage acquired great wealth, which, after his
conversion in his thirty-sixth year, he distributed to the poor.
He became bishop of Nola in A.D. 409,
being then in his fifty-sixth year. Nola was taken by Alaric
shortly after the sack of Rome. |
who voluntarily abandoned vast wealth and became quite poor, though
abundantly rich in holiness, when the barbarians sacked Nola, and
took him prisoner, used silently to pray, as he afterwards told me,
“O Lord, let me not be troubled for gold and silver, for where
all my treasure is Thou knowest.” For all his treasure was
where he had been taught to hide and store it by Him who had also
foretold that these calamities would happen in the world.
Consequently those persons who obeyed their Lord when He warned
them where and how to lay up treasure, did not lose even their
earthly possessions in the invasion of the barbarians; while those
who are now repenting that they did not obey Him have learnt the
right use of earthly goods, if not by the wisdom which would have
prevented their loss, at least by the experience which follows
it.
But some good and Christian men
have been put to the torture, that they might be forced to deliver
up their goods to the enemy. They could indeed neither deliver
nor lose that good which made themselves good. If, however, they
preferred torture to the surrender of the mammon of iniquity, then
I say they were not good men. Rather they should have been
reminded that, if they suffered so severely for the sake of money,
they should endure all torment, if need be, for Christ’s sake;
that they might be taught to love Him rather who enriches with
eternal felicity all who suffer for Him, and not silver and gold,
for which it was pitiable to suffer, whether they preserved it by
telling a lie or lost it by telling the truth. For under these
tortures no one lost Christ by confessing Him, no one preserved
wealth save by denying its existence. So that possibly the
torture which taught them that they should set their affections on
a possession they could not lose, was more useful than those
possessions which, without any useful fruit at all, disquieted and
tormented their anxious owners. But then we are reminded that
some were tortured who had no wealth to surrender, but who were not
believed when they said so. These too, however, had perhaps some
craving for wealth, and were not willingly poor with a holy
resignation; and to such it had to be made plain, that not the
actual possession alone, but also the desire of wealth, deserved
such excruciating pains. And even if they were destitute of any
hidden stores of gold and silver, because they were living in hopes
of a better life,—I know not indeed if any such person was
tortured on the supposition that he had wealth; but if so, then
certainly in confessing, when put to the question, a holy poverty,
he confessed Christ. And though it was scarcely to be expected
that the barbarians should believe him, yet no confessor of a holy
poverty could be tortured without receiving a heavenly
reward.
Again, they say that the long
famine laid many a Christian low. But this, too, the faithful
turned to good uses by a pious endurance of it. For those whom
famine killed outright it rescued from the ills of this life, as a
kindly disease would have done; and those who were only
hunger-bitten were taught to live more sparingly, and inured to
longer fasts. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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