the dead sacrifices him who is yet living. For when he utters blasphemies, when he reviles, when he is irritated, are not these so many incurable wounds of the soul? Thou hast seen that the expression is no hyperbole. Wouldest thou hear again another argument, to teach you how covetousness is idolatry, and more shocking than idolatry? Id- olaters worship the creatures of God (“for they worshiped,” it is said, “and served the creature rather than the Creator”) (Rom. i. 25.); but thou art worshiping a creature of thine own. For God made not covetousness but thine own insatiable appetite invented it.386 And look at the madness and folly. They that worship idols, honor also the idols they worship; and if any one speak of them with disrespect or ridicule, they stand up in their defense; whereas thou, as if in a sort of intoxication, art worshiping an object, which is so far from being free from accusation, that it is even full of impiety. So that thou, even more than they, excellest in wickedness. Thou canst never have it to say as an excuse, that it is no evil. If even they are in the highest degree without excuse, yet art thou in a far higher, who art forever censuring covetousness, and reviling those who devote themselves to it, and who yet doth serve and obey it. We will examine, if you please, whence idolatry took its rise. A certain wise man (Wisd. xiv. 16.) tells us, that a certain rich man afflicted with untimely mourning for his son, and having no consolation for his sorrow, consoled his passion in this way: having made a lifeless image of the dead, and constantly gazing at it, he seemed through the image to have his de- parted one still; whilst certain flatterers, “whose God was their belly” (Philip. iii. 19.), treating the image with reverence in order to do him honor, carried on the custom into idolatry.387 So then it took its rise from weakness of soul, from a senseless custom, from extravagance. But not so covetousness: from weakness of soul indeed it is, only that it is from a worse weakness. It is not that any one has lost a son, nor that he is seeking for consolation in sorrow, nor that he is drawn on by flatterers. But how is it? I will tell you. Cain in covetousness overreached388 God; what ought to have been given to Him, he kept to himself; what he should have kept himself, this he offered to Him; and thus the evil began even from God. For if we are God’s, much more are the first-fruits of our possessions. Again, men’s violent passion for women arose from covetousness.389 “They saw the daughters of men” (Gen. vi. 386 [This seems strained; for it is not true that they worshiped covetousness, a creature of their own, as Chrysostom calls it, but they worshiped gold and silver, which are creatures of God.—G.A.] 387 [This is a rather doubtful and inadequate account of the beginning of idolatry.—G.A.] 388 ὁΚά& 187·ν τὸν θεὸν ἐπλεονέκτησεν (Comp. πλεονεξία). 389 [This is what the text seems to mean (πάλιν εἰς γυναῖκας ἀπὸ πλεονεξίας ἡ ὁρμὴ γέγονεν), and he is proposing to explain the origin of covetousness (which, by the way, most men need go no further than their own heart to find), and not of lust. Moreover, the following context makes lust a source of covetousness, which is true, and not covetousness the source of lust, which is not true.—G.A.] 250 Ephesians 5:5,6