Money Wisdom #130

"Christ had warned against offering Him the coins of secular political rulers. To many pseudosecularized men, however, money appeared as abstract and limitless as the holy grail and as infinitely desirable as the grace of God. (Aristotle comments that sometimes money and grace may be infinitely desired in similar ways). Perhaps the supposedly merciful merchants of Venice did not so much wish to give ducats to God as they wished Him to give (ducats of) grace to them."

Marc Shell The Economy of Literature (1978) p 70