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And so this disease and unhealthy state is threefold, and is condemned
with equal abhorrence by all the fathers. One feature is this, of which we
described the taint above, which by deceiving wretched folk persuades them
to hoard though they never had anything of their own when they lived in the
world. Another, which forces men afterwards to resume and once more desire
those things which in the early days of their renunciation of the world
they gave up. A third, which springing from a faulty and hurtful beginning
and making a bad start, does not suffer those whom it has once infected
with this lukewarmness of mind to strip themselves of all their worldly
goods, through fear of poverty and want of faith; and those who keep back
money and property which they certainly ought to have renounced and
forsaken, it never allows to arrive at the perfection of the gospel. And we
find in Holy Scripture instances of these three catastrophes which were
visited with no light punishment. For when Gehazi wished to acquire what he
had never had before, not only did he fail to obtain the gift of prophecy
which it would have been his to receive from his master by hereditary
succession, but on the contrary he was covered by the curse of the holy
Elisha with a perpetual leprosy: while Judas, wanting to resume the
possession of the wealth which he had formerly cast away when he followed
Christ, not only fell into betraying the Lord, and lost his apostolic rank,
but also was not allowed to close his life with the common lot of all but
ended it by a violent death. But Ananias and Sapphira, keeping back a part
of that which was formerly their own, were at the Apostle's word punished
with death.
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