Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
For possessions are so called because they are possessable, and riches are so called because they are useful, prepared by God for the use of men — they lie ready and are laid at hand like a kind of material and instruments for good use by those who know how to use them. An instrument, if you use it skillfully, is skillful; if you fall short of the skill, it partakes of your unskillfulness, though it is itself blameless. Wealth is just such an instrument. You can use it justly; then it serves justice. Someone uses it unjustly; then again it is found the servant of injustice. For it is by nature suited to serve, not to rule. It is not right, then, to blame that which of itself has neither the good nor the evil, being blameless in itself; rather blame that which has the power to use these things both well and badly, according to whichever it chooses — for it is in this very respect that it is culpable. And this is the mind of man, which has within itself a free tribunal and the self-determination to manage the things given to it. So let no one destroy his possessions rather than the passions of the soul, which do not allow the better use of what one has — so that, having become noble and good, he may also be able to use these possessions well. The command, then, to renounce all one's possessions and sell all that one has must be understood in this way, as spoken with reference to the soul's passions.
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