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THOSE then who are possessed by such distrust of mind, and who through
the devil's own want of faith fall away from that spark of faith, by which
they seemed in the early days of their conversion to be enkindled, begin
more anxiously to watch over the money which before they had begun to give
away, and treasure it up with greater avarice, as men who cannot recover
again what they have once wasted: or--what is still worse--take back what
they had formerly cast away: or else (which is a third and most disgusting
kind of sin), collect what they never before possessed, and thus are
convicted of having gone no further in forsaking the world than merely to
take the name and style of monk. With this beginning therefore, and on this
bad and rotten foundation, it is a matter of course that the whole
superstructure of faults must rise, nor can anything be built on such
villanous foundations, except what will bring the wretched soul to the
ground with a hopeless collapse.
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