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godly-set mind, withdrawn from the delight thereof, no pleasure nor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 do