some of it, especially on the poor saints, this is to make friends with the mammon of iniquity.
This understanding of it must be corrected, yea, must be utterly effaced from the tablets of
your heart. I would not that ye should so understand it. Give alms of your righteous labours:
give out of that which ye possess rightfully. For ye cannot corrupt Christ your Judge, that
He should not hear you together with the poor, from whom ye take away. For if thou wert
to despoil any one who was weak, thyself being stronger and of greater power, and he were
to come with thee to the judge, any man you please on this earth, who had any power of
judging, and he were to wish to plead his cause with thee; if thou wert to give anything of
the spoil and plunder of that poor man to the judge, that he might pronounce judgment in
thy favour; would that judge please even thee? True, he has pronounced judgment in thy
favour, and yet so great is the force of justice, that he would displease even thee. Do not then
represent God to thyself as such an one as this. Do not set up such an idol in the temple of
thine heart. Thy God is not such as thou oughtest not to be thyself. If thou wouldest not
judge so, but wouldest judge justly; even so thy God is better than thou: He is not inferior
to thee: He is more just, He is the fountain of justice. Whatsoever good thou hast done, thou
hast gotten from Him; and whatsoever good thou hast given vent to,3502 thou hast drunk
in from Him. Dost thou praise the vessel, because it hath something from Him, and blame
the fountain? Do not give alms out of usury and increase. I am speaking to the faithful, am
speaking to those to whom we distribute the body of Christ. Be in fear and amend yourselves:
that I may not have hereafter to say, Thou doest so, and thou too doest so. Yet I trow, that
if I should do so, ye ought not to be angry with me, but with yourselves, that ye may amend
yourselves. For this is the meaning of the expression in the Psalm, “Be ye angry, and sin
not.”3503 I would have you be angry, but only that ye may not sin. Now in order that ye may
not sin, with whom ought ye to be angry but with yourselves? For what is a penitent man,
but a man who is angry with himself? That he may obtain pardon, he exacts punishment
from himself; and so with good right says to God, “Turn Thine eyes from my sins, for I ac-
knowledge my sin.”3504 If thou acknowledgest it, then He will pardon it. Ye then who have
done so wrongly, do so no more: it is not lawful.
3. But if ye have done so already, and have such money in your possession, and have
filled your coffers thereby, and were heaping up treasure by these means: what ye have comes
of evil, now then add not evil to it, and make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity.
Had Zacchaeus what he had from good sources?3505 Read and see. He was the chief of the
publicans, that is, he was one to whom the public taxes were paid in: by this he had his
3502 Eructuasti.
3503 Ps. iv. 4, Sept.
3504 Ps. li. 9.
3505 Luke xix. 2, etc.
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On the words of the Gospel, Luke xvi. 9, ‘Make to yourselves friends by…