Complete Works of Saint Cyprian

riches, and—oh, detestable blindness of minds and deep darkness of insane greed!—when he could lighten and relieve himself of burdens, he proceeds to brood over growing fortunes, he proceeds to cling persistently to penal piles. There is no generosity to clients from it, no sharing with the needy, and they call that money their own which they guard closed up at home like something foreign, from which they impart nothing to friends, nothing to children, nothing, in the end, to themselves. They possess it for this purpose alone, that it may not be permitted for another to possess it, and—oh, what a great diversity of names!—they call them "goods," from which no use has come to them except for evil things.

13 Or do you think even those are safe, those at least who are secure with stable firmness amidst the fillets ornamental headbands of honor of honors and large riches, whom the protection of standing guards surrounds, shining in the splendor of a royal court? They have greater fear than the rest. That man is compelled to fear just as much as he is feared. Sublimity extracts penalties equally from the more powerful, even if he is hedged about by a band of satellites and protects his closed and defended side with a numerous bodyguard. As much as he does not allow those under him to be secure, so much is it necessary that he himself not be secure. Their own power terrifies those whom it makes terrible: it smiles in order to rage, it flatters in order to deceive, it elevates in order to cast down. By a certain interest of wrongdoing, as much as the sum of dignity and honors is greater, so much greater is the usury of punishments extracted.

14 Therefore, there is only one peaceful and faithful tranquility, one solid and firm security, if one, having been drawn out from these whirlpools of a disturbing world, is established in the station of a saving harbor. He lifts his eyes from the earth to heaven and, having been admitted to the gift of the Lord and now in mind close to his God, he glories that everything which seems sublime and great among others in human affairs lies within his own conscience.