DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.3689#0057
a Devout and Holy Life. 55
Because it is as much your duty to do good with all that you
have, and to live in the continual exercise of good works, as it
is your duty to be temperate in all that you eat and drink.
Hence also appears the necessity of renouncing all those foolish
and unreasonable expenses, which the pride and folly of mankind
have made so common and fashionable in the world. For if it
is necessary to do good works, as far as you are able, it must be
as necessary to renounce those needless ways of spending money,
which render you unable to do works of charity.
You must therefore no more conform to these ways of the
world, than you must conform to the vices of the world ; you
must no more spend with those that idly waste their money as
their own humour leads them, than you must drink with the
drunken, or indulge yourself with the epicure; because a course
of such expenses is no more consistent with a life of charity,
than excess in drinking is consistent with a life of sobriety.
When therefore any one tells you of the lawfulness of expensive
apparel, or the innocency of pleasing yourself with costly satis-
factions, only imagine that the same person was to tell you, that
you need not do works of charity; that Christ does not require you
to do good unto your poor brethren, as unto him ; and then you
will see the wickedness of such advice: For to tell you, that you
may live in such expenses, as make it impossible for you to live in
the exercise of good works, is the same thing as telling you, that
you need not have any care about such good works themselves.
Chapter VII.
How the imprudent use of an estate cor-
rupts all the tempers of the mind^ and fills
the heart with poor and ridiculous passions^
through the whole course of life ; represented
in the character o/"Flavia.
IT has already been observed, that a prudent and religious
care is to be used, in the manner of spending our money
or estate, because the manner of spending our estates
makes so great a part of our common life, and is so much
the business of every day, that according as we are wise,
or imprudent, in this respect, the whole course of our lives, will
be rendered either very wise, or very full of folly.
Because it is as much your duty to do good with all that you
have, and to live in the continual exercise of good works, as it
is your duty to be temperate in all that you eat and drink.
Hence also appears the necessity of renouncing all those foolish
and unreasonable expenses, which the pride and folly of mankind
have made so common and fashionable in the world. For if it
is necessary to do good works, as far as you are able, it must be
as necessary to renounce those needless ways of spending money,
which render you unable to do works of charity.
You must therefore no more conform to these ways of the
world, than you must conform to the vices of the world ; you
must no more spend with those that idly waste their money as
their own humour leads them, than you must drink with the
drunken, or indulge yourself with the epicure; because a course
of such expenses is no more consistent with a life of charity,
than excess in drinking is consistent with a life of sobriety.
When therefore any one tells you of the lawfulness of expensive
apparel, or the innocency of pleasing yourself with costly satis-
factions, only imagine that the same person was to tell you, that
you need not do works of charity; that Christ does not require you
to do good unto your poor brethren, as unto him ; and then you
will see the wickedness of such advice: For to tell you, that you
may live in such expenses, as make it impossible for you to live in
the exercise of good works, is the same thing as telling you, that
you need not have any care about such good works themselves.
Chapter VII.
How the imprudent use of an estate cor-
rupts all the tempers of the mind^ and fills
the heart with poor and ridiculous passions^
through the whole course of life ; represented
in the character o/"Flavia.
IT has already been observed, that a prudent and religious
care is to be used, in the manner of spending our money
or estate, because the manner of spending our estates
makes so great a part of our common life, and is so much
the business of every day, that according as we are wise,
or imprudent, in this respect, the whole course of our lives, will
be rendered either very wise, or very full of folly.