mayest possess for ever, both thou and thy children. Avarice can say nothing against it. Ye
have cried out in acclamation at these words. Turn your words rather against her; let her
not overcome you; let her not have greater power in your hearts, than your Redeemer. Let
her not have greater power in your hearts, than He who exhorteth us to “lift up our hearts.”
And so now let us dismiss her.
15. What says luxuriousness? What? “Do well to thine own soul.” See also the Lord says
the same, “Do well to thine own soul.” What luxuriousness was saying to thee, the same
saith Righteousness to thee. But consider here again in what sense the words are used. If
thou wouldest do well to thine own soul, consider that rich man who wished to do well to
his soul, after the counsel of luxuriousness and avarice. His “ground brought forth plentifully,
and he had no room where to bestow his fruits; and he said, What shall I do?” I have no
room where to bestow my fruits; I have found out what to do; “I will pull down my” old
“barns, and build new,” and will fill them, “and say to my soul, Thou hast much goods; take
thy pleasure.” Hear the counsel against luxuriousness; “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall
be required of thee; and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?”2838 And
whither must that soul which shall be required of him go? This night it shall be required,
and shall go he knows not whither.
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16. Consider that other luxurious, proud, rich man. He “feasted sumptuously every day,
and was clothed in purple and fine linen;” and “the poor man laid at his gate full of sores,
and desired” in vain “the crumbs from the rich man’s table;”2839 he fed the dogs with his
sores, but he was not fed by the rich man. They both died; one of them was buried; of the
other what is said? “He was carried by the Angels into Abraham’s bosom.” The rich man
sees the poor man; yea rather it is now the poor man sees the rich; he longs for a drop of
water on his tongue from his finger, from him who once longed for a crumb from his table.
Indeed their lot was changed. The dead rich man asks for this in vain: O let not us who are
alive hear it in vain. For he wished to return again to the world,2840 and was not permitted;
he wished one of the dead to be sent to his brethren, neither was this granted him. But what
was said to him? “They have Moses and the Prophets;” and he said, “They will not hear except
one go from the dead.” Abraham said to him, “If they hear not Moses and the Prophets,
neither will they believe though one go from the dead.”
17. What luxuriousness then said in a perverted sense concerning the giving of alms,
and procuring rest for our souls against the time to come, that so we may “do well to our
souls,” Moses also and the Prophets have spoken. Let us give ear while we are alive. Because
there he will desire in vain to hear, who has despised these words when he heard them here.
2838 Luke xii. 16, etc.
2839 Luke xvi. 19, etc.
2840 Superos.
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On the words of the Gospel, Matt. xix. 21,’Go, sell that thou hast, and…