Chapter XX.—Godliness,
Not Gain, the True Riches.
But let it not even trouble your mind, that we see the
unrighteous possessed of riches and the servants of God
straitened. Let us, therefore, brothers and sisters, believe; in
a trial of the living God we strive and are exercised in the present
life, that we may obtain the crown in that which is to come. No
one of the righteous received fruit speedily, but waiteth for it.
For if God tendered the reward of the righteous in a trice, straightway
were it commerce that we practised, and not godliness. For it
were as if we were righteous by following after not godliness but gain;
and for this reason the divine judgment baffled
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the spirit that is unrighteous and heavily weighed the fetter.
To the only God, invisible, Father of truth, who sent
forth to us the Saviour and Author of immortality, through whom He also
manifested to us the truth and the heavenly life, to Him be glory for
ever and ever. Amen.
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Some take the aorist
here used to be the iterative aorist of proverbs and, therefore,
translated by the present tense.