Is like the sea, that is said to be richer than the land, but is not
able to make any use of it at all, and only keeps it from those that
know how to enjoy it if they had it. The devil understood his business
very well when he made choice of Judas's avarice to betray Christ, for
no other vice would have undertaken it; and it is to be feared that his
Vicars now on earth, by the tenderness they have to the bag, do not use
Him much better than His steward did then. He gathers wealth to no
purpose but to satisfy his avarice, that has no end, and afflicts
himself to possess that which he is, of all men, the most incapable of
ever obtaining. His treasure is in his hands in the same condition as if
it were buried uncier ground and watched by an evil spirit. His desires
are like the bottomless pit which he is destined to, for the one is as
soon filled as the other. He shuts up his money in close custody, and
that which has power to open all locks is not able to set itself at
liberty. If he ever lets it out it is upon good bail and mainprize, to
render itself prisoner again whensoever it shall be summoned. He loves
wealth as an eunuch does women, whom he has no possibility of enjoying,
or one that is bewitched with an impotency or taken with the falling
sickness. His greedy appetite to riches is but a kind of dog-hunger,
that never digests what it devours, but still the greedier and more
eager it crams itself becomes more meagre. He finds that ink and
parchment preserves money better than an iron chest and parsimony, like
the memories of men that lie dead and buried when they are committed to
brass and marble, but revive and flourish when they are trusted to
authentic writings and increase by being used. If he had lived among the
Jews in the wilderness he would have been one of their chief reformers,
and have worshipped anything that is cast in gold, though a sillier
creature than a calf. St. John in the Revelations describes the New
Jerusalem to be built all of gold and silver and precious stones, for
the saints commonly take so much delight in those creatures that nothing
else could prevail with them ever to come thither; and as those times
are called the Golden Age in which there was no gold at all in use, so
men are reputed godly and rich that make no use at all of their religion
or wealth. All that he has gotten together with perpetual pains and
industry is not wealth, but a collection, which he intends to keep by
him more for his own diversion than any other use, and he that made
ducks and drakes with his money enjoyed it every way as much. He makes
no conscience of anything but parting with his money, which is no better
than a separation of soul and body to him, and he believes it to be as
bad as self-murder if he should do it wilfully; for the price of the
weapon with which a man is killed is always esteemed a very considerable
circumstance, and next to not having the fear of God before his eyes. He
loves the bowels of the earth broiled on the coals above any other
cookery in the world. He is a slave condemned to the mines. He laughs at
the golden mean as ridiculous, and believes there is no such thing in
the world; for how can there be a mean of that of which no man ever had
enough? He loves the world so well that he would willingly lose himself
to save anything by it. His riches are like a dunghill, that renders the
ground unprofitable that it lies upon, and is good for nothing until it
be spread and scattered abroad.