Avarice

334. Although temporal goods are not, in themselves necessarily, occasions of sin, yet ordinarily, by reason oj our frailty, the heart of man sets its affections upon them and falls away from God, which is sin : for this reasor the Wise Man saith : the rich shall not be free from sin.*

335. The things of this world neither occupy no:

injure the soul ; it is not they that enter into it, but rather the will, and the desire of them, which dwell within it.

336. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the gospel, calls riches thorns, giving us to understand that he who sets his will upon them shall be wounded by sin.

337. It is vanity to desire to have children, as some do, who weary the world with their fretting for them : they know not if their children will be good, and servants of God : neither do they know whether the pleasure they expect from them may not be turned into disquietude, pain, and trouble.

338. The covetous man runs to and fro within the limits of the chain by which his heart is bound, and with all his efforts can scarcely set himself free, even for a moment, from the bondage of his thoughts on which his heart is set.