Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

³ I see it, I am grieved for you; you are disquieted, and as He who cannot deceive, assures us, “You are disquieted in vain.” For you are heaping up treasures: supposing that all your undertakings succeed, to say nothing of losses, of so great perils and deaths in the prosecution of every several kind of gain (I speak not of deaths of the body, but of evil thoughts, for that gold may come in, uprightness goes out; that you may be clothed outwardly, you are made naked within), but to pass over these, and other such things in silence, to pass by all the things that are against you, let us think only of the favourable circumstances.

See, you are laying up treasures, gains flow into you from every quarter, and your money runs like fountains; everywhere where want presses, there does abundance flow. Have you not heard, “If riches increase, set not your heart upon them?” Lo, you are getting, you are disquieted, not fruitlessly indeed, still in vain. “How,” you will ask “am I disquieted in vain? I am filling my coffers, my walls will scarce hold what I get, how then am I disquieted in vain?” “You are heaping up treasure, and dost not know for whom you gather it.”

Or if you know, I pray you tell me. I will listen to you. For whom is it? If you are not disquieted in vain, tell me for whom you are heaping up your treasure? “For myself,” you say, Do you dare say so, who must so soon die? “For my children.” Do you dare say this of them who must so soon die? It is a great duty of natural affection (it will be said) for a father to lay up for his sons; rather it is a great vanity, one who must soon die is laying up for those who must soon die also.

If it is for yourself, why do you gather, seeing you leave all when you diest. This is the case also with your children; they will succeed you, but not to abide long. I say nothing about what sort of children they may be, whether haply debauchery may not waste what covetousness has amassed. So another by dissoluteness squanders what you by much toil hast gathered together. But I pass over this. It may be they will be good children, they will not be dissolute, they will keep what you have left, will increase what you have kept, and will not dissipate what you have heaped together.

Then will your children be equally vain with yourself, if they do so, if in this they imitate you their father. I would say to them what I said just now to you. I would say to your son, to him for whom you are saving I would say, “You are heaping up treasure, and know not for whom you gather it.” For as you knew not, so neither does he know. If the vanity has continued in him, has the truth lost its power with respect to him?