Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

⁶ I have admonished the rich; now hear, you poor. You rich, lay out your money; ye poor, refrain from plundering. You rich, distribute your means; ye poor, bridle your desires. Hear, you poor, this same Apostle; “Godliness with sufficiency is a great getting.” Getting is the acquiring of gain. The world is yours in common with the rich; you have not a house in common with the rich, but you have the heaven in common, the light in common. Seek only for a sufficiency, seek for what is enough, and do not wish for more.

All the rest is a weight, rather than a help; a burden, rather than an honour. “Godliness with sufficiency is great gain.” First is Godliness. Godliness is the worship of God. “Godliness with sufficiency. For we brought nothing into this world.” Did you bring anything hither? Nay, not even did ye rich bring anything. You found all here, you were born naked as the poor. In both alike is the same bodily infirmity; the same infant crying, the witness of our misery. “For we brought nothing into this world” (he is speaking to the poor), “neither can we carry anything out.

And having food and covering, let us be therewith content.” “For they who wish to be rich.” “Who wish to be,” not who are. For they who are so, well and good. They have heard their lesson, that they be “rich in good works, that they distribute easily, that they communicate.” They have heard already. Do ye now hear who are not yet rich. “They who wish to be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into many hurtful and foolish lusts.” Do ye not fear? Hear what follows; “which drown men in destruction and perdition.” Do you not now fear?

“for avarice is the root of all evil”? Avarice is the wishing to be rich, not the being rich already. This is avarice. Do you not fear to be “drowned in destruction and perdition”? Do you not fear “avarice the root of all evil”? Thou pluckest up out of your field the root of thorns, and will you not pluck up out of your heart the root of evil desires? Thou cleansest your field from which your body gets its fruit, and will you not cleanse your heart where your God indwells? “For avarice is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and entangled themselves in many sorrows.”