There is no doubt that avarice is seen as a black sin. A number of early quotations, like this one from Gilbert Hay’s 1456 Buke of the Law of Armys, associate it with the very mouth of hell: For he fell of the hevin, that is the haly kirk, in the mouth of the pitt of hell, that is avarice.
John Knox did not approve of Avarice (he did not approve of anything much) and railed against sin: Especiallie avarice . . . excesse, ryotouse chear, banketting [banquetting], immoderat dansing, and hurdome [whoredom].
A bizarre reference to avarice comes from Samuel Colvil, who claims that it makes people do rather odd things: Avarice makes them . . . Keep rinded [clarified] butter in charter chests (The Whigs Supplication, or, The Scots Hudibras 1681)
Another curious reference to Avarice comes in a document dated 1616 produced in evidence against a certain Thomas Ross. This Thomas Ross recommended that all scottismen aucht to be throwin furthe and expellit out of the court of England. Why? He claimed that Saint Jerome, Augustine and Strabo wrote that the Scots were cannibals and says as yit the flesche whilk the ancient Scottis swallowed stikis in the jawis and teith of the courtioures quhairby thay ar provoikit to suche ane insatiable avarice and intollerable pryde. It seems that the Scottish courtiers who accompanied the king to London were pretty unpopular! His Scottish judges recommended that he be hanged at the market cross of Edinburgh and his head be fixed to one of the gates