Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

inasmuch as they do not render their possessors good, are not in the category of things
naturally good, but, in so far as in any way they make life’s current flow more easily, in each
case the former is to be preferred to its contrary, and has a certain kind of value. To some
men these things are given by God for stewardship’s sake, 3001 as for instance to Abraham,
to Job and such like. To inferior characters they are a challenge to improvement. For the
man who persists in unrighteousness, after so goodly a token of love from God, subjects
himself to condemnation without defence. The good man, however, neither turns his heart
to wealth when he has it, nor seeks after it if he has it not. He treats what is given him as
given him not for his selfish enjoyment, but for wise administration. No one in his senses
runs after the trouble of distributing other people’s property, unless he is trying to get the
praise of the world, which admires and envies anybody in authority.
Good men take sickness as athletes take their contest, waiting for the crowns that are
to reward their endurance. To ascribe the dispensation of these things to any one else is as
inconsistent with true religion as it is with common sense.
3001 ἐξ οἰκονομίας. In Ep. xxxi. Basil begins a letter to Eusebius of Samosata: “The dearth has not yet left
us, we are therefore compelled still to remain in the town, either for stewardship’s sake or for sympathy with
the afflicted.” Here the Benedictines’ note is Sæpe apud Basilium οικονομία dicitur id quod pauperibus distribuit-
ur. Vituperat in Comment. in Isa. præsules qui male partam pecuniam accipiunt vel ad suos usus, ἢ ἐπὶ λόγῳ
τῆς τῶν πτωχευόντων ἐν τῇ ᾽Εκκλησί& 139· οἰκονομίας, vel per causam distribuendi pauperibus Ecclesiæ. In
Epistola 92 Orientales inter mala Ecclesiæ illud etiam deplorant quod ambitiosi præsules οἰκονομ as πτωχῶν,
pecunias pauperibus destinatas in suos usus convertant.
To the same Amphilochius.
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