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.