Annotatio CCIII
”My portion, O Lord — I have said [it is] to keep thy law.” — Psalm 118:57
Hilary, expounding these things in the commentaries, brings forward some [statements] from which Erasmus, in the annotations he published on Hilary, gathers that it is not lawful for priests to retain the possession of secular things.1 The words of Hilary are these: “One must renounce the world, and all its things, that God may be our portion; but if ambition detains us, if the care of money occupies [us], if the businesses of family affairs delay [us], the Lord will not be our portion — we [being] held by the possession of secular cares and vices. To Moses, when it had been commanded that he distribute the portions of the [land of] sojourn to the twelve tribes of Israel, [God] thus commanded concerning the Levitical tribe:” concerning the Levitical tribe it is commanded: “To the sons of Levi there shall be no portion, nor lot in the midst of their brethren, because the Lord God is their part.” To those, therefore, serving God, the law willed [there to be] no earthly portion, because God is their part. The preacher of the Gospel, Peter, also remembers that there was to him no portion of human possession, when to [the beggar] praying for sustenance he answered, “Gold and silver I have not; but what I have, this I give thee.”2 What is that? What is that, Peter, which thou possessest? Thou hadst renounced all things to thy God, saying, “Behold, we have left all things,” etc.3 See below, Annotation 121 of the following book.