5. Now let us hear how what virtue has, sloth has not: for they say, _For all the riches which God hath taken from our father, that is ours, and our children’s_. Rightly do they say that they were taken away by God’s appointment, for it is He Who created the good, for whose sake the slothful are despoiled; for weak and evil men cannot apprehend the beauty of the Divine inheritance; and thus the resolute, and he who hath in him the spirit of a brave man, succeeds to it. But who is strong but God alone Who regulates and governs all things? Sidenote: Isa. liv. 17. Sidenote: Ps. cxix. 57. Sidenote: Ib. 111. 6. To these therefore the heritage of God is justly due. Wherefore Isaiah also says, _There is an heritage for them that believe in the Lord_. Well saith he, _There is an heritage_, for this is the sole heritage, there is no other. For neither is blind treasure an heritage, nor have any transitory things the advantage of an heritage; that alone is an heritage wherein God is the portion. Wherefore the Saint of the Lord saith, _Thou art my portion, O Lord_, and again, _Thy testimonies have I claimed as mine heritage for ever_. You see what are the possessions of the just, the commandments of God, His oracles, His precepts, hereby he is enriched, hereby he is fed, hereby he is delighted as by all manner of riches. 7. Now Leah and Rachel, possessing these, required not their father’s riches, for therein there was base coin, a senseless outward show, destitute of spiritual vigour. Again, being rich and liberal themselves they accounted their father rather indigent than rich. For no one who participates in good and liberal discipline deems any foolish man to be rich, but poor and needy, and even abject; and this although he overflow with royal riches, and in the pride of his gold boasts of his own power. Sidenote: Ps. xviii. 26. 8. The society of such we must shun then, even though they be united to us by the ties of kindred: the conversation of the foolish is to be avoided, for it infects and discolors the mind, for as _with the clean thou shalt be clean_, so _with the froward thou shalt be froward_. For it frequently happens that one who listens to an intemperate man against his own resolution, much as he himself desires to maintain the rule of continence, is yet stained by the hue of folly, and thus discipline and insolence truly prove themselves contrary and repugnant to each other. Sidenote: Gen. xxxi. 14.