Is like the sea, that is said to be richer than the land, but is not able to make any use of it at all, and only keeps it from those that know how to enjoy it if they had it.  The devil understood his business very well when he made choice of Judas’s avarice to betray Christ, for no other vice would have undertaken it; and it is to be feared that his Vicars now on earth, by the tenderness they have to the bag, do not use Him much better than His steward did then.  He gathers wealth to no purpose but to satisfy his avarice, that has no end, and afflicts himself to possess that which he is, of all men, the most incapable of ever obtaining.  His treasure is in his hands in the same condition as if it were buried uncier ground and watched by an evil spirit.  His desires are like the bottomless pit which he is destined to, for the one is as soon filled as the other.  He shuts up his money in close custody, and that which has power to open all locks is not able to set itself at liberty.  If he ever lets it out it is upon good bail and mainprize, to render itself prisoner again whensoever it shall be summoned.  He loves wealth as an eunuch does women, whom he has no possibility of enjoying, or one that is bewitched with an impotency or taken with the falling sickness.  His greedy appetite to riches is but a kind of dog-hunger, that never digests what it devours, but still the greedier and more eager it crams itself becomes more meagre.  He finds that ink and parchment preserves money better than an iron chest and parsimony, like the memories of men that lie dead and buried when they are committed to brass and marble, but revive and flourish when they are trusted to authentic writings and increase by being used.  If he had lived among the Jews in the wilderness he would have been one of their chief reformers, and have worshipped anything that is cast in gold, though a sillier creature than a calf.  St. John in the Revelations describes the New Jerusalem to be built all of gold and silver and precious stones, for the saints commonly take so much delight in those creatures that nothing else could prevail with them ever to come thither; and as those times are called the Golden Age in which there was no gold at all in use, so men are reputed godly and rich that make no use at all of their religion or wealth.  All that he has gotten together with perpetual pains and industry is not wealth, but a collection, which he intends to keep by him more for his own diversion than any other use, and he that made ducks and drakes with his money enjoyed it every way as much.  He makes no conscience of anything but parting with his money, which is no better than a separation of soul and body to him, and he believes it to be as bad as self-murder if he should do it wilfully; for the price of the weapon with which a man is killed is always esteemed a very considerable circumstance, and next to not having the fear of God before his eyes.  He loves the bowels of the earth broiled on the coals above any