Question XXXI. Why were inanimate things, and brute cattle, burned?

Junius, with his [collaborator] Tremellius, answers [that] God condemned, in Achan’s goods and things, “the instruments of contagion.” But surely the [things] which Achan stole were rather the matter of the contagion and sin than [its] instruments. But oxen, asses, and sheep [were] not even the matter. This whole [thing] was therefore done for the utmost detestation of this crime, and for the calling-away of all [men] from it, and for a warning that God’s precepts are to be most accurately kept. For so we read that Dathan and Abiram, with [their] tents, [their] cattle (as it is in the Greek), and all [their] household stuff and substance, utterly perished (Num. 16:31, 32); so [in] Deut. 13:12 and following, where the Israelite cities, if perchance some stain of idolatry had defiled them, are commanded to be utterly burned up, with [their] citizens, cattle, and all household stuff. Whence also they are called by the Jews “niddachoth” [banished] cities, that is, exterminated and proscribed. So (above, ch. 6, q. 38) all the Jericho-things [were] destroyed. But [as to] why not the cloak alone, but the silver too and the gold, were burned up — not without cause might someone be in doubt. For in the previous chapter it was said that these were to be brought into the Lord’s treasuries, and [so] it is said by Abulensis (q. 40). It can be answered, first: that they were indeed unclean before, by the contagion of the Canaanites, but were made much more unclean by the new sacrilege of this Jew: and therefore [were] deemed unworthy to be stored in the sacred treasury of the Lord — just as the impious and sacrilegious Jews afterward judged that the money of Judas was not to be sent into the corban [treasury] (Matt. 27:6). Then: [it was] signified that it not rarely happens that [things] which were gold and silver, and which were about to come, as most noble gifts, into the Lord’s treasuries, [are] burned by everlasting fires through the crime of some one [man]. There is, for example, some youth of good talent, of illustrious character, born for letters, made for all piety and religion. Some depraved [man] lies in wait for him, and depraves him, and makes [it so] that he who was to be most useful and most illustrious in the Church of God becomes a heretic, a worthless [man], and lost. Another had resolved to enter the state of holy religion. But this holy purpose is snatched from him by someone’s wickedness. And what but the Lord’s treasure is [thus] snatched away? Another had now taken up religion, and begun to strive toward all the best [things] with a great zeal of perfection and a keen care. Someone dissuades [him], and so praises to him sloth and idleness that from that most holy endeavor of his he slackens greatly, and passes an idle and little-religious life. Is not he [thereby] turned away from the Lord’s treasury, and made fuel for the eternal fire?