“[Those] who add forests, and who, excluding the poor from their neighborhood, stretch out their fields far and wide into space without limits…Such a one enjoys no security either in his food or in his sleep. In the midst of the banquet he sighs, although he drinks from a jeweled goblet; and when his luxurious bed has enfolded his body, languid with feasting, he lies wakeful in the midst of the down; nor does he perceive, poor wretch, that these things are merely gilded torments, that he is held in bondage by his gold, and that his is the slave of his luxury and wealth rather than their master.”
St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (c. 218-249), in Epistle 1.12, as recounted in Brian Rosner, Beyond Greed (Kingsford, Australia: Matthias Media, 2004) 78.