Homily XXI.
Matt. VI. 24.
“No man can serve two masters, for either he will
hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to one and
despise the other.”
thou how by degrees He
withdraws us from the things that now are, and at greater length
introduces what He hath to say, touching voluntary poverty, and casts
down the dominion of covetousness?
For He was not contented with His former sayings, many
and great as they were, but He adds others also, more and more
alarming.
For what can be more alarming than what He now saith, if
indeed we are for our riches to fall from the service of Christ? or
what more to be desired, if indeed, by despising wealth, we shall have
our affection towards Him and our charity perfect? For what I am continually repeating, the same do I now say likewise, namely, that by both kinds He presses the hearer to obey His sayings; both by the profitable, and by the hurtful; much like an excellent physician, pointing out both the disease which is the consequence of neglect, and the good health which results from obedience.
See, for instance, what kind of gain He signifies this
to be, and how He establishes the advantage of it by their deliverance
from the contrary things. Thus, “wealth,” saith He, “hurts you not in this only, that it arms robbers against you, nor in that it darkens your mind in the most intense degree, but also in that it casts you out of God’s service, making you captive of lifeless riches, and in both ways doing you harm, on the one hand, by causing you to be slaves of what you ought to command; on the other, by casting you out of God’s service, whom, above all things, it is indispensable for you to serve.” For just as in the other place, He signified the mischief to be twofold, in both laying up here, “where moth corrupteth,” and in not laying up there, where the watch kept is impregnable; so in this place, too, He shows the loss to be twofold, in that it both draws off from God, and makes us subject to mammon.
But He sets it not down directly, rather He establishes
it first upon general considerations, saying thus; “No man can
serve two masters:” meaning here two that are enjoining opposite
things; since, unless this were the case, they would not even be two. For so, “the multitude of them that believed
were of one heart and of one soul,”and yet were they divided into many bodies; their unanimity however made the many one.
Then, as adding to the force of it, He saith, “so
far from serving, he will even hate and abhor:” “For either
he will hate the one,” saith He, “and love the other, or
else he will hold to the one and despise the other.” And it seems
indeed as if the same thing were said twice over; He did not however
choose this form without purpose, but in order to show that the change
for the better is easy. I mean, lest thou shouldest say, “I am
once for all made a slave; I am brought under the tyranny of
wealth,” He signifies that it is possible to transfer one’s
self, and that as from the first to the second, so also from the second
one may pass over to the first.
2. Having thus, you see, spoken generally, that He might
persuade the hearer to be an uncorrupt judge of His words, and to
sentence according to the very nature of the things; when he hath made
sure of his assent, then, and not till then, He discovers Himself. Thus
He presently adds, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Let us
shudder to think what we have brought Christ to say; with the name of
God, to put that of gold. But if this be shocking, its taking place in
our deeds, our preferring the tyranny of gold to the fear of God, is
much more shocking.