<P> For we are so inclined by nature that no one desires to see another have as much as himself, and each one acquires as much as he can; the other may fare as best he can . And yet we pretend to be godly, know how to adorn ourselves most finely and conceal our rascality, resort to and invent adroit devices and deceitful artifices (such as now are daily most ingeniously contrived) as though they were derived from the law codes; yea, we even dare impertinently to refer to it, and boast of it, and will not have it called rascality, but shrewdness and caution . In this lawyers and jurists assist, who twist and stretch the law to suit it to their cause, stress words and use them for a subterfuge, irrespective of equity or their neighbor's necessity . And, in short, whoever is the most expert and cunning in these affairs finds most help in law, as they themselves say: Vigilantibus iura subveniunt (that is, The laws favor the watchful). </P> <P> Luther further explains that the tenth commandment is not intended for the rogues of the world, but for the pious, who wish to be praised and considered as honest and upright people, because they have not broken any of the outward commandments . Luther sees covetousness in the quarreling and wrangling in court over inheritances and real estate . He sees covetousness in financiering practiced in a manner to obtain houses, castles, and land through foreclosure . Likewise, Luther sees the tenth commandment as forbidding contrivances to take another man's wife as one's own and uses the example of King Herod taking his brother's wife while his brother was still living . </P> <P> In whatever way such things happen, we must know that God does not wish that you deprive your neighbor of anything that belongs to him so that he suffer the loss and you gratify your avarice with it, even if you could keep it honorably before the world; for it is a secret and insidious imposition practised under the hat, as we say, that it may not be observed . For although you go your way as if you had done no one any wrong, you have nevertheless injured your neighbor; and if it is not called stealing and cheating, yet it is called coveting your neighbor's property, that is, aiming at possession of it, enticing it away from him without his will, and being unwilling to see him enjoy what God has granted him . </P> <P> John Calvin views the tenth commandment as a demand for purity of the heart, above and beyond the outward actions . Calvin distinguishes between making an explicit design to obtain what belongs to our neighbor and a covetous desire in the heart . For Calvin, design is a deliberate consent of the will, after passion has taken possession of the mind . Covetousness may exist without such a deliberate design, when the mind is stimulated and tickled by objects on which we set our affection . </P>

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house