BOOK VII. OF THE SPIRIT OF COVETOUSNESS.



Index

CHAPTER I: How our warfare with covetousness is a foreign one, and how this fault is not a natural one in man, as the other faults are.

CHAPTER II.: How dangerous is the disease of covetousness.

CHAPTER III: What is the usefulness of those vices which are natural to the flesh.

CHAPTER IV: That we can say that there exist in us some natural faults, without wronging the Creator.

CHAPTER V: Of the faults which are contracted through our own fault, without natural impulses.

CHAPTER VI: How difficult the evil of covetousness is to drive away when once it has been admitted.

CHAPTER VII: Of the source from which covetousness springs, and of the evils of which it is itself the mother.

CHAPTER VIII: How covetousness is a hindrance to all virtues.

CHAPTER IX: How a monk who has money cannot stay in the monastery.

CHAPTER X: Of the toils which a deserter from a monastery must undergo through covetousness, though he used formerly to murmur at the very slightest tasks.

CHAPTER XI: That under pretence of keeping the purse women have to be sought to dwell with them.

CHAPTER XII: An instance of a lukewarm monk caught in the snares of covetousness.

CHAPTER XIII: What the elders relate to the juniors in the matter of stripping off sins.

CHAPTER XIV: Instances to show that the disease of covetousness is threefold.

CHAPTER XV: Of the difference between one who renounces the world badly and one who does not renounce it at all

CHAPTER XVI: Of the authority under which those shelter themselves who object to stripping themselves of their goods.

CHAPTER XVII: Of the renunciation of the apostles and the primitive church.

CHAPTER XVIII: That if we want to imitate the apostles we ought not to live according to our own prescriptions, but to follow their example.

CHAPTER XIX: A saying of S. Basil, the Bishop, directed against Syncletius.

CHAPTER XX: How contemptible it is to be overcome by covetousness.

CHAPTER XXI: How covetousness can be conquered.

CHAPTER XXII: That one who actually has no money may still be deemed covetous.

CHAPTER XXIII: An example drawn from the case of Judas.

CHAPTER XXIV: That covetousness cannot be overcome except by stripping one's self of everything.

CHAPTER XXV: Of the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, and Judas, which they underwent through the impulse of covetousness.

CHAPTER XXVI: That covetousness brings upon the soul a spiritual leprosy.

CHAPTER XXVII: Scripture proofs by which one who is aiming at perfection is taught not to take back again what he has given up and renounced.

CHAPTER XXVIII: That the victory over covetousness can only be gained by stripping one's self bare of everything.

CHAPTER XXIX: How a monk can retain his poverty.

CHAPTER XXX: The remedies against the disease of covetousness.

CHAPTER XXXI: That no one can get the better of covetousness unless he stays in the Coenobium: and how one can remain there.