On the Twelve Abuses of the World, with extracts from On the Soul and its Origin and On the Divination of Demons against the Pagans

while he had not yet reached the legitimate age of a teacher, offered obedience and ministry to his parents. Therefore, just as the perfection of character and sobriety is required in the old, so too is deference, subjection, and obedience rightfully owed in the adolescent. For this reason, in the mandates of the Law, the honor of father and mother is commanded in those things that pertain to man. Because, although a carnal father may not survive, or might be unworthy, the honor of a father is shown to be owed by children to any worthy and living father until a worthy age. For in four ways are fathers invoked through the Sacred Scriptures: that is, father by nature, by race, by admonition, and by age. Concerning the father by nature, Jacob speaks to Laban: Unless the fear of my father Isaac had been present, you would have taken all that is mine. By race, the father is spoken of when the Lord spoke to Moses from the bush: I am, he says, the God of your father. By age and admonition, the father is likewise shown to you, as it is said in Deuteronomy: Ask your father, and he will tell you. If, therefore, a natural father is not surviving, obedience is still to be offered by the adolescent to an admonishing elder. How, then, will he appear to be honored in old age, when he has not endured the labor of discipline in adolescence? For whatever a man labors at, that he will also reap. For all discipline in the present does not seem to be of joy, but of sorrow; but afterward, it will yield the most peaceful fruit of justice to those trained by it. For just as fruit is not found on a tree on which blossoms or flowers have not first appeared, so too one cannot attain legitimate honor in old age who has not labored in the exercises of some discipline in adolescence. Therefore, how can discipline exist without obedience? An adolescent without discipline is an adolescent without obedience. For even obedience itself, which is the mother of all discipline, requires a great inheritance, which it received as a norm of study from Christ the Lord, who, being obedient to the Father even unto the death of the cross, willingly endured ignominy.

A decorative initial 'V' begins the final paragraph.
The fourth degree of abuse: A rich man without alms.
The fourth degree of abuse is a rich man without alms, who does not distribute to the needy and those having nothing the superfluous things of his own sustenance, which he stores up to be guarded for the future. By which he causes it that, while he guards with diligent care things sought in the earth, he loses the treasure of the heavenly fatherland, toward which treasure the Lord Jesus directed the young man who asked him about perfection, answering him thus: If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have in heaven a treasure that no man can have, except he who provides comfort to the poor or who is poor by his own will. Therefore, do not sleep in your treasures, which the poor do not allow you to sleep in. For the rich man, even if he has gathered much, cannot enjoy it alone, because the man’s shadow does not run with many things. What, then, is more foolish than to lose the entire joy of the heavenly kingdom and to undergo eternal tortures of hell without the delay of comfort, for the sake of a man’s shadow, food, and clothing? What, therefore, must be let go for the necessity of someone else, is to be distributed voluntarily for eternal reward. For all things that are seen are temporary, but those that are not seen are eternal. For as long as we are temporal men, temporal things serve temporal things, and when we have drawn them to ourselves, they will provide eternal comforts. Therefore, we ought not to love those things which we will not always have, especially when the rich man’s greed for his own treasures, fields, and all things he has is displayed, because he loves those things with the whole yearning of his heart which will never love him back. For if he has loved gold, silver, fields, clothing, food, metals, and brute animals, the things themselves answer that they cannot repay the love in turn. What, then, is further from reason than to love that which cannot love you back, and to neglect Him who provides all things to your dominion with love? Therefore, the world is not to be loved; rather, one is commanded by God to love the neighbor, who can repay this love in turn, which the world cannot doubt it can in no way do. For the Lord commands an enemy to be loved, so that by that love, he may be made a friend from an enemy. Therefore, whoever is a greedy rich man who wants to have eternal riches, let him provide things that will not last by distributing them to the needy. For if he has not sold what he loves, no one can buy what he desires. For the greedy are called cursed in the judgment by the most righteous Judge, because when they were able, they did not say: The blessing of the Lord be upon you, we have blessed you in the name of the Lord. Unhappy, therefore, are the rich men of gold, who exchange things that are transitory for eternal damnation and exclusion. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Therefore, happy is the merciful man, while in this reality God rules not by substance, but by affection.