Commodian — Instructiones 61

While you desire, from that you perish; while you burn with a neighbor’s envy, you put yourself out when you set yourself on fire, driven. You envy another, envious one, gaining from evil, and you long to become equal to so much money. The law does not look so; while you seek to lean on it, you live suspended in the heat of gains; and while you are guilty to yourself, condemning yourself as judge, the greedy eye’s gaze is never filled. Now therefore if you believe and think: it is vain desire to heap too much under a fragile life that lingers. Whence God cries: “Fool, this night you are called!” Afterward ruin rushes: whose will those talents be? When the Lord supplies each one daily victuals. Let another heap: you seek to live by the good, and God, weighing the heart, you act victor over all things; nor do I say you should cast yourself into fear when you watch for your day living without fraud. A bird perishes in food or sticks unseeing to birdlime. Judge for yourself that you must simply beware hard. Let others go beyond; you always look to the end.