But possibly you flatter yourself that since the bishop who has made you a deacon is a holy man, his merits will atone for your transgressions. I have already told you that the father is not punished for the son or the son for the father. "The soul that sins shall itself die." Samuel too had sons who forsook the fear of the Lord and "turned aside after lucre" and iniquity.
Indeed, most people profess that they walk difficult paths while they seek after sacred orders; but when they arrive at what they sought, they neglect to maintain the steadfastness of their promise. Hence the sons of Samuel are fittingly reported not to have walked in his ways, but to have accepted bribes and perverted judgment. For the ways of Samuel are so called because they are set forth by the office of a preacher. His sons, therefore, do not walk in the ways of their father when those who ambitiously attain to sacred orders abandon the arduous paths of religious life shown to them by their elders, and by their perverse intention are plunged ever deeper into the desire for earthly things. Hence they are openly declared, after avarice, to have turned aside, accepted bribes, and perverted judgment. For those who neglect to labor for heavenly things must necessarily be bound more tightly in the desire for earthly ones. To turn aside after avarice is to be wholly carried away in intention by ambition for earthly things. For there are some who seek earthly gains through avarice, yet do not turn aside after avarice, because although they desire temporal things, they avoid incurring guilt in their pursuit of them. Those, therefore, turn aside after avarice who, for the sake of the earthly things they ardently seek, have no fear whatsoever of incurring guilt. They consider their own soul to be of less worth than anything they can covet. Hence comes violent plunder, hence secret thefts arise: because those over whom the avaricious have power they oppress by violence, and upon those whose goods they cannot assault by force, they contrive to inflict theft. Often, too, those whom they cannot overpower by theft of hands, they ensnare by the falsehood of words. Hence the sons of Samuel, in an orderly progression, are marked out in the disordered confusion of avarice, when it is said: "They turned aside after avarice, accepted bribes, and perverted judgment." For those who perverted judgment in order to receive gifts did not seek the darkness of night to commit the theft of a coveted thing, but the darkness of reason. And it should be noted that the burning of avarice is the cause of accepting gifts, and the acceptance of gifts is the cause of perverting judgment: so that by the prophet's narration the depravity of this vice may be shown, not only how it advances in…
