Just a look at how the clever and fraudulent man looks at the benefits of applying himself or herself to religious dogma.
R. As sin consists in man’s cleaving to changeable goods, to the contempt of God; so the merit of a virtuous act consists in man’s cleaving to God, as to his last end, to the contempt of created goods. But the end has the preference over the means to the end. If then created goods are contemned in order that the soul may cleave to God, it is greater praise of a virtue to say that it cleaves to God than to say that it contemns earthly goods. And therefore those virtues which of themselves make the soul cleave to God, namely, the theological virtues, have the preference over the moral virtues, by which some earthly object is contemned in order that the soul may cleave to God. But among moral virtues a virtue has the preference, the greater the object that it contemns in order to cleave to God. Now there are three kinds of human goods which a man may contemn for God’s sake. The lowest of the three are external goods; intermediate are goods of the body; and highest of all are goods of the soul. Of these last chiefest in one way is the will, inasmuch as by the will it is that a man uses all other goods. And therefore, ordinarily speaking, the virtue of obedience, which contemns the man’s own will for God’s sake, is more praiseworthy than the other moral virtues, which contemn for God’s sake sundry other goods. Hence also all other works of virtue are meritorious with God as being done in obedience to the divine will. For if one even were to endure martyrdom, or had distributed all his goods to the poor, unless he referred it to the fulfilment of the divine will, which reference belongs directly to obedience, there could be no merit in such acts, no more than if they were done without charity; and indeed charity cannot be without obedience, for it is said: “He that keepeth his word, in him in very deed the charity of God is perfected;”1 and that because friendship makes identity in willing and willing not.
By this I gather to know, how many out there willing to sacrifice the ego side of oneself in order to come to terms with reality.
