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"Riches, then, which benefit also our neighbours,
are not to be thrown away. For they are possessions, inasmuch as
they are possessed, and good, inasmuch as they are useful and
provided by God for the use of men, and they lie to our hand, and
are put under our power, as material and instruments which are for
good use to those who know the instrument. ...
"For he who holds possessions, and gold, and
silver, and houses, as the gifts of God; and ministers from them to
the God who gives them for the salvation of men; and knows that he
possesses them more for the sake of the brethren than his own; and
is superior to the possession of them, not the slave of the things
he possesses; ...
"But he who carries his riches in his soul,
and instead of God's Spirit bears in his heart gold or land, and is
always acquiring possessions without end, and is perpetually on the
outlook for more, bending downwards and fettered in the toils of the
world, being earth and destined to depart to earth, - whence can he
be able to desire and to mind the kingdom of heaven, - a man who
carries not a heart, but land or metal, who must per-force be found
in the midst of the objects he has chosen? For where the mind of man
is, there is also his treasure. The Lord acknowledges a twofold
treasure - the good: 'For the good man, out of the good treasure of
his heart, bringeth forth good;' and the evil: for 'evil man, out of
the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil: for out of abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh. (chapters 14, 16-17)
Clement of Alexander: Who is the
Rich Man in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol2 Scribner's
Sons, 1926, pp. 591-96.
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