When the enemy comes to make a seizure, they are sure to suffer most
whose circumstances are the richest and fattest. In any case of
persecution, money hangs like a dead weight about a man; and we never
feel gold so heavy as when we are endeavouring to make off with it.
Great wealth has many cares annexed to it, with which the poor and
needy are not afflicted. A competency to supply the necessities of
nature, and the wants of old age, is indeed to be desired; but we
should rather endeavour to contract our wants, than to multiply them,
and not too eagerly grasp at the augmentation of our possessions,
which will increase our cares by adding to our danger. Persons of
small fortune have as much reason to be contented as the rich: their
situation is full as happy, considered altogether, for if they are
deprived of some of the gratifications which the rich enjoy, they are
also exempted from many troubles and uneasinesses necessarily cleaving
to riches.
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