Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
Ver. 19. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth] This is the fourth common place handled here by our Saviour, of casting away the inordinate care of earthly things, which he presseth upon all, by nine various arguments, to the end of the chapter. By treasures here are meant worldly wealth in abundance, precious things stored up, as silver, gold, pearls, &c. All these are but earth, and it is but upon earth that they are laid up. What is silver and gold but white and yellow earth? And what are pearls and precious stones but the guts and garbage of the earth? חספא בספא Daniel 2:45. The stone brake in piece's the iron, the brass, the clay, and silver, &c. The prophet breaks the native order of speech, for clay, iron, brass, silver, &c., to intimate (as some conceive) that silver is clay by an elegant allusion in the Chaldee, Should we load ourselves with thick clay? surcharge our hearts with cares of this life? Luke 21:34. It is said, "Abraham was very rich in cattle, in siiver, and in gold," Genesis 13:2. There is a Latin translation that hath it, "Abraham was very heavy," בבז. And the original indifferently beareth both; to show, saith one, that riches are a heavy burden, and a hindrance many times to heaven and happiness. They that have this burden upon their backs can as hardly get in at the strait gate as a camel or cable into a needle, Matthew 19:24, and that because they trust in their riches (as our Saviour there expounds himself), and here plainly intimates when he speaketh of laying up treasures, providing thereby for hereafter, for tomorrow a (so the word signifieth), and thinking themselves simply the safer and the happier for their outward abundance, as the rich fool did. The rich man's wealth is his strong city, saith Solomon, Proverbs 10:15; his wedge, his confidence; his gold, his god; therefore St Paul calleth him an idolater, Ephesians 5:5; St James, an adulterer, James 4:4; because he robs God of his flower, his trust, and goeth a whoring after lying vanities: he soweth the wind and reapeth the whirlwind, he treasureth up wealth but also wrath, James 5:3; and by counting all fish that cometh to net, he catcheth at length the devil and all. Hence it is that St James bids such (and not without cause) "weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon them." He looks upon them as deplored persons, and such as the philosopher could call and count incurable and desperate. b For the heart that is first turned into earth and mud will afterwards freeze and congeal into steel and adamant. "The Pharisees that were covetous derided Christ," Luke 16:14, and perished irrecoverably. And reprobates are said by St Peter to have their hearts "exercised with covetous practices," 2 Peter 2:14, which they constantly follow, as the artificer his trade, being bound apprentices to the devil, 2 Corinthians 2:11; "Lest Satan should get an advantage against us, or overreach us," as covetous wretches do silly novices. c These as they have served an ill master, so they shall receive the "reward of unrighteousness and perish in their corruptions," 2 Peter 2:12,13. Their happiness hath been laid up in the earth, nearer hell than heaven, nearer the devil than God, whom they have forsaken, therefore shall they "be written in the earth," Jeremiah 17:13; that is, in hell, as it stands opposed to having their names written in heaven. Those that are earthly minded have damnation for their end, Philippians 3:19. God, to testify his displeasure, knocks his fists at them, Ezekiel 22:13; as Balak did at Balaam. And lest they should reply, Tush, these are but big words, devised on purpose to frighten silly people; we shall do well enough with the Lord; he addeth, Matthew 6:14; "Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it." Oh that our greedy muck moles (that lie rooting and poring in the earth, as if they meant to dig themselves through it a nearer way to hell) would consider this before the cold grave holds their bodies and hot Tophet burns their souls! the one is as sure as the other, if timely course be not taken. O saeculum nequam, saith St Bernard; O most wretched and miserable world, how little are thy friends beholden to thee; seeing thy love and friendship exposeth them to the wrath and vengeance of God, which burneth as low as the nethermost hell! d How fitly may it be said of thee, as Solinus of the river Hipanis: they that know it at first commend it; they that have experience of it at last, do not without cause condemn it! e Those that will be rich are resolved to get rem, rem, quocunque modo rem, as he saith, these fall necessarily into many noisome lusts that drown men in destruction: f desperately drown them in remediless misery (as the word signifieth). "Christ must be prayed to be gone," saith that martyr, "lest all their pigs be drowned. The devil shall have his dwelling again in themselves rather than in their pigs. Therefore to the devil shall they go, and dwell with him," &c. They feed upon carrion, as Noah's raven; upon dust, as the serpent; upon the world's murdering morsels, as those in Job: Job 20:15 "They swallow down riches," and are as insatiated, as the Pharisees, Luke 11:41. But they shall vomit them up again, God shall cast them out of their bellies. g Their mouths that cry, Give, give, with the horse leech, shall be filled ere long with a shovelful of mould, and a cup of fire and brimstone poured down their wide gullets. It shall be worse with them than it was once with the covetous Caliph of Babylon, who being taken, together with his city, by Haalon, brother to Mango the great Cham of Tartary, was set by him in the midst of the infinite treasure which he and his predecessors had most covetously heaped up together, and bidden of that gold, silver, and precious stones take what it pleased him to eat, saying by way of derision, that so rich a guest should be fed with the best, whereof he willed him to make no spare. The covetous wretch, kept for certain days, miserably died for hunger in the midst of those things whereof he thought he should never have had enough, whereby he hoped to secure himself against whatsoever dearth or danger. God loveth to confute carnal men in their confidences. They shall pass on "hardly bestead and hungry; and it shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward. And they shall look unto the earth" (where they have laid up their happiness, but now lost their hopes), "and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven into darkness," Isaiah 8:21,22, utter darkness, where their never enough shall be quitted with fire enough, but a black fire without the least glimpse of light or comfort.
Where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves, &c.] A powerful dissuasive from earthlymindedness, by the uncertainty of riches, ever subject to a double danger or waste; 1. Of vanity in themselves; 2. Of violence from others: rust or robbery may undo us. As the fairest flowers or fruit trees breed a worm oftentimes that eats out the heart of them; as the ivy killeth the oak that beareth it; so of the matter of an earthly treasure grows moth or rust that rots it. All outward things are of a perishing nature, they perish in the use, they melt away between our fingers. St Gregory upon those words in Job 38:22, Qui ingreditur in thesauros nivis? "Who hath entered into the treasures of the snow?"-showeth that earthly treasures are treasures of snow. We see little children what pains they take to rake and scrape snow together to make a snowball, which after a while dissolves and comes to nothing. Right so the treasures of this world, the hoards that wicked men have heaped, when God entereth into them, come to nothing. "He that trusteth to his riches shall fall," Proverbs 11:28, as he shall that standeth on a hillock of ice or heap of snow. David, when gotten upon his mountain, thought himself cocksure, and began to crow that he should never be moved. But God (to confute him) had no sooner hidden his face but he was troubled, Psalms 30:6,7. What is the air without light? The Egyptians had no joy of it: no more than a Christian have of wealth without God's favour. Besides, what hold is there of these earthly things, more than there is of a flock of birds? I cannot say they are mine because they sit in my yard, "Riches have wings," saith Solomon, Proverbs 23:5; "great eagles' wings to fly from us," saith a father; but to follow after us, Ne passerinas quidem, not so much as small sparrows' wings. Whereupon Solomon rightly argues, "Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not?" that hath no real subsistence, that is nothing, and of no more price than mere opinion sets upon it? The world calls wealth substance, but God gives that name to wisdom only. Heaven is said to have a foundation, earth to he hanged upon nothing, Job 16:7. So things are said to be in heaven, as in a mansion; but on earth, on the surface only, as ready to be shaken off. h Hence the world is called a sea of glass, frail and fickle, mingled with fire of temptations and tribulations, Revelation 15:2. The very firmament (that hath its name from its firmness) shall melt with fervent heat, and the whole visible fabric be dissolved by the fire of the last day, 2 Peter 3:10. Solomon sets forth the world by a word that betokeneth change, for its mutability. i And St Paul, when he telleth as "that the fashion of the world passeth away," useth a word of art that signifieth a bare external mathematical figure, " Cui veri aut solidi nihil subest, " saith an interpreter, that hath no truth or solidity in it at all. Gelimer, king of the Vandals, being conquered, and carried in triumph by Belisarius the Roman general, when he stood in the open field before the Emperor Justinian, and beheld him sitting in his throne of state, remembering withal what a high pitch himself was fallen from, he broke out into this speech, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." That was Solomon's verdict, long since delivered up, upon well grounded experience. But men love to try conclusions; and when they have done, "What profit," saith he, "hath a man of all his pains?" what residue and remaining fruit (as the word signifieth) to abide with him? Ecclesiastes 1:3. When all the account is subducted (his happiness resolved into its final issue and conclusion) there resteth nothing but ciphers. A spider eviscerateth himself and wasteth his own bowels to make a web to catch a fly; so doth the worldling for that which profiteth not, but perisheth in the use: or say that it abide, yet himself perisheth, when to possess the things he hath gotten might seem a happiness; as the rich fool, Alexander, Tamerlane, and others. Most of the Caesars got nothing by their adoption or designation, but ut citius interficerentur, that they might be the sooner slain. All, or most of them, till Constantine, died unnatural deaths and in the best of their time. "He that getteth riches and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool," Jeremiah 17:11. God will make a poor fool of him. As he came forth from his mother's womb, naked shall he return, to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand, Ecclesiastes 5:15. Say his treasure escape both rust and robber, death as a thief will break in, and leave him not worth a groat. Who would not then set light by this pelf, and put on that Persian resolution, Isaiah 13:17; "Not to regard silver, nor be desirous of gold?" (Animo magno nihil magnum, With a great spirit nothing is great. Senec.) Who would not tread in the steps of faithful Abraham, and answer the devil with his golden offers, as he did the king of Sodom, "God forbid that I should take of thee so much as a shoe latchet?" When great gifts were sent to Luther, he refused them with this brave speech, " Valde protestatus sum me nolle sic satiari a Deo, " I deeply protested that God should not put me off with such poor things as these. The heathenish Romans had, for a difference in their nobility, a little ornament in the form of a moon (to show that all worldly honours were mutable), and they did wear it upon their shoes, to show that they did tread it under their feet, as base and bootless. j This is check to many Christians, that have their hands elbow deep in the world, and dote as much upon these earthly vanities as Xerxes once did upon his plane tree, or Jonah upon his gourd. There is a sort of men that say of the world as Solomon's dealer, "It is naught, it is naught:" but when they are gone apart they boast and close with the world. St Paul was none of these; for "neither at any time," saith he, "used we flattering words, as ye know; nor a cloak of covetousness, God is my witness." No, he looked upon the world as a great dunghill, and cared to "glory in nothing, save in the cross of Jesus Christ," whereby the world was crucified to him and he to the world, Galatians 6:14. So David, "My soul," saith he, "is even as a weaned child," that cares not to suck though never so fair and full a breast. So Luther confesseth of himself, "that though he were a frail man, and subject to imperfections, yet the infection of covetousness never laid hold of him;" now I would we were all Lutherans in this, saith one.
a Θησαυρος παρα του εις αυριον θειναι .
b Aristotdes hoc iudicat αναιτους. Ethic. iv. 1.
c ινα μη πλεονεκτηθωμεν. Metaph. ab avaris illis sanguisugis viduarum domos devorantibus.
d Quod solos tuos sic solet beare amicos, ut Dei facias inimicos. Bern.
e Qui in principiis eum norunt praedicant: qui in fine experti sunt, non iniuria execrantur. Sol. c. 24.
f Βυθιζουσι. In profundum exitium demergunt, ita ut in aquae summitate rursus non ebulliant.
g τα ενοντα. Quia divitae insident avari animo. Beza.
h Εν ουρανοις, επι της γης .
i חלוף Proverbs 31:8; hoc est, עולם mundi, sic dicti quod transeat, nec quicquam in eo stabile sit. Kimchi.
j Baytacen habitantes odio auri coemunt hoc genus metalli, et abieciunt in terrarum profundo, ne polluti usu eius, avaritia corrumpant aequitatem. Sol. cap. 68.