not.  For it is easy for the person who is in tribulation to be well willing to do the selfsame thing if he could.  And then shall his good will, where the power lacketh, go very near to the merit of the deed.  But the wealthy man, now, is not in a like position with regard to the will of patience and conformity and thanks given to God for tribulation.  For the wealthy man is not so ready to be content to be in tribulation, which is the occasion of the sufferer’s deserving, as the troubled person is to be content to be in prosperity, to do the good deeds that the wealthy man doth.  Besides this, all that the wealthy man doth, though he could not do them without those things that are counted for wealth and called by that name—­as, not do great alms without great riches, nor do these many men right by his labour without great authority—­yet may he do these things being not in wealth indeed.  As where he taketh his wealth for no wealth and his riches for no riches, and in heart setteth by neither one, but secretly liveth in a contrite heart and a penitential life, as many times did the prophet David, being a great king, so that worldly wealth was no wealth to him.  And therefore worldly wealth is not of necessity the cause of these good deeds, since he may do them (and he doth them best, indeed) to whom the thing that worldly folk call wealth is yet, for his godly-set mind, withdrawn from the delight thereof, no pleasure nor wealth at all.

Finally, whenever the wealthy man doth those good virtuous deeds, if we rightly consider the nature of them, we shall perceive that in the doing of them he doth ever, for the ratio and proportion of those deeds, diminish the matter of his worldly wealth.  In giving great alms, he parteth with a certain amount of his worldly goods, which are in that amount the matter of his wealth.  In labouring about the doing of many good deeds, his labour diminisheth his quiet and his rest, and to that extent it diminisheth his wealth, if pain and wealth be each contrary to the other, as I think you will agree that they are.  Now, whosoever then will well consider the thing, he shall, I doubt not, perceive and see that in these good deeds that the wealthy man doth, though it be his wealth that maketh him able to do them, yet in so far as he doth them he departeth in that proportion from the nature of wealth toward the nature of some tribulation.  And therefore even in those good deeds themselves that prosperity doth, the prerogative in goodness of tribulation above wealth doth appear.

Now if it happen that some man cannot perceive this point because the wealthy man, for all his alms, abideth rich still, and for all his good labour abideth still in his authority, let him consider that I speak only according to proportion.  And because the proportion of all that he giveth of his goods is very little in respect of what he leaveth, therefore is the reason haply with some folk little perceived.  But if it were so that he went on giving until he had given out all, and left himself nothing, then would even a blind man see it.  For as he would be come from riches to poverty, so would he be willingly fallen from wealth into tribulation.  And in respect of labour and rest, the same would be true.  Whosoever can consider this, shall see that, in every good deed done by the wealthy man, the matter is proportionately the same.