[60] Again, for drinking what more was needed than Nature’s cup, art’s very masterpiece? Of that cup our hands are the material. Let a man hold them close together and hollow them; then let him carefully lift them to his mouth while someone else pours the water into them. He obtains not only the quenching of his thirst, but pleasure untold.
[61] But if a different one must needs have been found, was not the rustic mazer sufficient? Was it necessary to go in search of works of art by other famous artists? Why was it necessary that a lavish quantity of gold and silver goblets should be manufactured save for the sake of vanity, so loud in its insolence, and vainglory swinging so dizzily to and fro?
[62] When, again, we see people wanting to be crowned not with a garland of laurel or ivy, not with a sweet-smelling wreath of violets or lilies or roses or olive or any flower at all, but passing by God’s gifts, which He distributes as the seasons of the year run their course; when they poise over their head golden wreaths, a grievous weight, without any shame in mid-market at the hour when it is full, what else can we think of them than that they are slaves of vainglory, though they assert that they are not only free, but actually lords and rulers of many others?
[63] The day will pass before I have given the sum of the corruptions of human life, and indeed why need we dwell at length upon them? For who has not heard, who has not seen them? Indeed who is not conversant and familiar with them? And therefore the Holy Word did well in giving the name of Addition to one who was the enemy of simplicity and the friend of vanity.
[64] For just as we find on trees, to the great damage of the genuine growth, superfluities which the husbandmen purge and cut away to provide for their necessities, so the true and simple life has for its parasite the life of falsity and vanity, for which no husbandman has hitherto been found to excise the mischievous overgrowth, root and all.
[65] And so the practisers of sound sense, perceiving that Joseph first with his senses, and afterwards with his understanding, pursues this way of artificiality, cry outright, “An evil beast has seized and devoured him” (Gen. 37:33).
[66] And indeed this life of confused mankind, so full of complications, of vain inventions, which has covetousness and knavery for its cunning architects, what is it but a ferocious beast which feasts on all who come near to it? And therefore such as these will be the subject of mourning, as though they were dead, even while they still live, since the life that they obtain is meet to be lamented and bewailed; for Jacob, we are told, mourned for Joseph while still alive.
[67] On the other hand Moses will not suffer Nadab and his brother, those holy principles, to be mourned (Lev. 10:6). They were not seized by a savage, evil beast, but were taken up by a rush of fire unquenchable, by an undying splendour, since in sincerity they cast aside sloth and delay, and consecrated their zeal, hot and fiery, flesh-consuming and swiftly moving, to piety, a zeal which was alien to creation, but akin to God. They did not mount by steps to the altar, which the law had forbidden (Ex. 20:26), but wafted by a favouring breeze and carried even to the revolving heavens were there like the complete and perfect burnt offering resolved into ethereal rays of light.