Greed, a Fault from Outside Our Nature

Our third conflict is against greed, which we may describe as the love of money. It is a foreign warfare, one outside our nature. In a monk it springs only from a corrupt and sluggish state of mind, and often from a renunciation that was poorly begun and a love for God that was lukewarm from its foundation. For the other incitements to sin that are planted in human nature seem to begin, as it were, at birth with us. Somehow deeply rooted in our flesh, and almost as old as our birth, they come before our power to tell good from evil. And although they attack a man in his very early days, they are overcome by a long struggle. [a]