Yet
need we little doubt but that for those who desire them only for
their worldly pleasure and for no further godly purpose the devil
shall soon turn them from things indifferent and make them things
very evil. For though they be indifferent of their nature, yet
cannot the use of them lightly stand indifferent, but must be
determinately either good or bad. And therefore he who desireth
them only for worldly pleasure, desireth them not for any good. And
for better purpose than he desireth them, to better use is he not
likely to put them. And therefore will he use them not unto good
but consequently to evil.
And for example, first consider it in riches, and in him who
longeth for them as for things of temporal commodity and not for
any godly purpose. What good they shall do him, St. Paul declareth,
when he writeth unto Timothy, "They that long to be rich fall into
temptation and into the snare of the devil, and into many desires
unprofitable and noxious, which drown men into death and into
perdition." And the holy scripture saith also in the twenty-fourth
chapter of the Proverbs, "He that gathereth treasures shall be
shoved into the snares of death." So that whereas God saith by the
mouth of St. Paul that they shall fall into the devil's snare, he
saith in the other place that they shall be pushed and shoved in by
violence.
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