17. But if ambitious dignity deter you, and the amount of your money heaped up in your stores influence you—a cause which ever distracts the intentions of a virtuous heart, and assails the soul devoted to its Lord with a fearful trembling—I beg that you would again refer to the heavenly words.  For it is the very voice of Christ who speaks, and says, “Whosoever shall lose his life for my name’s sake, shall receive in this world a hundred fold, and in the world to come shall possess eternal life.”19    Matt. x. 39. And we ought assuredly to reckon nothing greater, nothing more advantageous, than this. For although in the nature of your costly garments the purple dye flows into figures, and in the slackening threads the gold strays into a pattern, and the weighty metals to which you devote yourselves are not wanting in your excavated treasures; still, unless I am mistaken, those things will be esteemed vain and purposeless, if, while all things else are added to you, salvation alone is found to be wanting; even as the Holy Spirit declares that we can give nothing in exchange for our soul. For He says, “If you should gain the whole world, and lose your own soul, what shall it profit you, or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?”20    Matt. xv. 26. For all those things which we behold are worthless, and such as resting on weak foundations, are unable to sustain the weight of their own mass. For whatever is received from the world is made of no account by the antiquity of time. Whence, that nothing should be sweet or dear that might be preferred to the desires of eternal life, things which are of personal right and individual law are cut off by the Lord’s precepts; so that in the undergoing of tortures, for instance, the son should not soften the suffering father, and private affection should not change the heart that was previously pledged to enduring strength, into another disposition. Christ of His own right ordained that truth and salvation alone must be embraced in the midst of great sufferings, under which wife, and children, and grandchildren, under which all the offspring of one’s bowels, must be forsaken, and the victory be claimed.

XVII. Quod si te dignitas ambitiosa deterret, et congesta in thesauris pecuniae magnitudo admonet, quae semper propositum bonae mentis avertit, et devotam Domino suo animam furiali agit horrore, quaeso, repetas verba coelestia. Nam et ipsa vox dicentis est Christi: Qui perdiderit animam suam pro nomine meo, recipiet in hoc saeculo centuplum, et in futuro vitam aeternam possidebit (Matth. X, 39), qua utique nihil majus, nihil utilius computare debemus. Nam, licet pretiosarum vestium more purpura in imagines currat, et lentescentibus filis aurum erret ad speciem, nec de effossis gravia quibus incumbis desint metalla thesauris, vacua tamen, nisi 0796C fallor, ista atque inania computabuntur, si adjacentibus tibi cunctis, sola salus deesse videatur, sicut Spiritus sanctus loquitur nihil nos in vicem animae nostrae posse dare. Ait enim: Si totum orbem lucrifeceris, et animam tuam perdideris, quid proderit tibi. aut quam homo commutationem dabit pro anima sua? (Matth. XVI, 26). Vacua sunt enim universa quae cernimus, et quae infirmis radicibus posita soliditatis suae vim nequeant sustinere. Nam quod de saeculo capitur, vetustate temporis frustratur. Unde, ne quid esset dulce vel charum quod salutis aeternae praeferri cupiditatibus possit, Dominicis amputata praeceptis, jure proprio ac lege privata sunt, ne in tormentis scilicet patrem positum filius frangeret, neve obstrictum durati roboris pectus in aliam voluntatem 0796D affectus mutaret. Solam veritatem salutemque solam inter magnos complectendam esse cruciatus suo Christus jure constituit, in quo conjux et liberi et 0797A nepotes, in quo omnis viscerum soboles felici usurpanda victoria est.