And then will we go to dinner.
First, cousin, he who is a rich man and keepeth all his goods, he
hath, I think, very good cause to be very afraid indeed. And yet I
fear me that such folk fear the least. For they are very far from
the state of good men, since, if they keep all, they are then very
far from charity, and do, as you know well, either little alms or
none at all.
But now our question, cousin, is not in what case that rich man
standeth who keepeth all, but whether we should suffer men to
stand in a perilous dread and fear for the keeping of any great
part. For if, by the keeping of so much as maketh a rich man
still, they stand in the state of damnation, then are the curates
bound to tell them so plainly, according to the commandment of God
given unto them all in the person of Ezechiel: "If, when I say to
the wicked man, 'Thou shalt die,' thou do not show it unto him,
nor speak unto him that he may be turned from his wicked way and
live, he shall soothly die in his wickedness and his blood shall I
require of thine hand."
But, cousin, though God invited men unto the following of himself
in wilful poverty, by the leaving of everything at once for his
sake--as the thing by which, being out of solicitude of worldly
business and far from the desire of earthly commodities, they may
the more speedily get and attain the state of spiritual
perfection, and the hungry desire and longing for celestial
things--yet doth he not command every man to do so upon the peril
of damnation.
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