Of the covetous man saith St. Paul, “They that long to be rich do fall into temptation and into the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable and harmful desires, which drown men into death and destruction.”  Lo, here in the middle place of this busy maze, the snare of the devil, the place of perdition and destruction, in which they fall and are caught and drowned ere they are aware!

The covetous rich man also that our Saviour speaketh of in the gospel, who had so great plenty of corn that his barns would not receive it, but intended to make his barns larger, and said unto himself that he would make merry many days—­he thought, you know, that he had a great way yet to walk.  But God said unto him, “Fool, this night shall they take thy soul from thee, and then all these goods that thou hast gathered, whose shall they be?” Here, you see, he fell suddenly into the deep centre of this busy maze, so that he was fallen full into it ere ever he had thought he should have come near to it.

Now this I know very well:  Those who are walking about in this busy maze take not their business for any tribulation.  And yet are there many of them as sore wearied in it, and sore panged and pained, their pleasures being so short, so little, and so few, and their displeasures and their griefs so great, so continual, and so many.  It maketh me think on a good worshipful man who, when he divers times beheld what pain his wife took in tightly binding up her hair to make her a fair large forehead, and with tightly bracing in her body to make her middle small (both twain to her great pain) for the pride of a little foolish praise, he said unto her, “Forsooth, madam, if God give you not hell, he shall do you a great wrong.  For it must needs be your own very right, for you buy it very dear and take very great pain therefore!”

Those who now lie in hell for their wretched living here do now perceive their folly in the more pain that they took here for the less pleasure.  There confess they now their folly, and cry out, “We have been wearied in the way of wickedness.”  And yet, while they were walking in that way, they would not rest themselves, but ran on still in their weariness, and put themselves still unto more pain and more, for a little childish pleasure, short and soon gone.  For that they took all that labour and pain, beside the everlasting pain that followed it for their further advantage afterward.  So help me God, but I verily think many a man buyeth hell here with so much pain that he might have bought heaven with less than half!

But yet, as I say, while these fleshly and worldly busy folk are walking about in this round busy maze of the devil called Business who walketh about in these two times of darkness, their wits are so bewitched by the secret enchantment of the devil that they mark not the great long miserable weariness and pain that the devil maketh them take and endure about naught.  And therefore they take it for no tribulation, so