time, when a little bishop of Hippo durst advance such doctrines as I have quoted to such a man as Macedonius. He might be encouraged to make the claim by the practice of the first Christians : for among them, all things were in common; the rich sold their possessions, and laid the whole price at the feet of the apostles. I say the whole price, and I add, that it was strictly exacted, as we may assure ourselves from the example of Ananias and his wife Sapphira*. They might have kept their estate, or the whole price they had sold it for. But when they brought it, in imitation of the zeal of other Christians, to the apostolical chamber or treasury, it became a fraud to keep back any part of it. Less than the whole would not satisfy the church: and St Peter accuses them accordingly of fraud, and of lying to the Holy Ghost; because they had given no more than they could spare, and had owned no more than they had given. The punishment followed instantly: they were both struck dead. It appears, that great collections were made, and every church had a common purse. By these means they supported their poor: and every man who embraced christianity being sure not to want bread, the Gospel was more effectually propagated, and great numbers of the lowest rank of people were brought into the pale. Another pious use of ecclesiastical wealth was to maintain the fathers and ministers of the word. We see, by St. Paul's Epistles, that they were so maintained in their several missions; and this apostle, in writing to the Corinthians, when he distinguishes himself from others, and values himself above them on many accounts, insists particularly on this, that he had preached gratis, and taken nothing from them. He had a trade, and he maintained himself by it; for which reason Erasmus calls him, as I remember, "coriarius pontifex," the leather dressing pontiff. It was not zeal alone that brought an immense wealth to the church, even in the first centuries. An opinion, that the end of the world was near, made the rich indifferent to riches, that they were not to enjoy long, or that were not to remain long in their families. This opinion the clergy promoted and the laity was so silly as not to see, that if it was not worth their while to keep their estates, it was not worth the while of churchmen to be so solicitous to acquire them. The end of the world seemed to be fixed at the distance of about two hundred years, in the beginning of the fourth century, according to Lactantius*, who wrote at that time and yet this motive had such effect, in conjunction with a multitude of other artifices employed by the religious society to the same purpose, that in this very century a law to restrain ecclesiasticks from obtaining donations and wills in their favour was become necessary. Not only * Omnis expectatio non amplius ducentorum videtur annoInstit. 1. 7, c. 25. rum. Valentinian and Gratian, but even Theodosius, made edicts for this purpose: and the practice of inveigling weak people, devout women particularly, to defraud their right heirs, and to give their estates to the church, was so publick, so frequent, and so infamous, that the church, who had permission to hold these estates, thought it prudent to submit to some appearance of restraint in acquiring them. I say appearance of restraint, because we may conclude, that means were found of evading this very restraint, from the experience of our own age; and because it is fair to conclude, that none were neglected of heaping up wealth in those ages, when bishops themselves were the greatest usurers. This wealth was such, that it proved a principal cause of the persecutions of the church, as father Paul observes*, from the reign of Commodus: and we know that Decius, who was a great and a good prince, as princes went in those days, and as they go in ours, attempted nothing more at first, than many christian princes have executed. He attempted to seize the treasure of the church at Rome, Lawrence, a deacon of that church, broke his measures. He put Lawrence to death, and the se venth persecution began on that occasion; for which his memory has been persecuted by christian writers; as that of Charles Martel has been by the monks, who sent him to Hell for taking some of the wealth of the church, to defend both the church and the state against the Sa racens. Abundance of matter offers itself to us on this head. But the immense wealth of the clergy, their insatiable thirst after it, the usurpations and other scandalous methods by which they acquired it, and the no less scandalous use they made of it, are now so well known, that it would be loss of time to enter into any great detail on the subject. A general observation or two will be sufficient for our purpose. Bishops found pretences and means of taking to their own use the revenues that had been appropriated to the poor, the churches, and the inferior clergy, as well as to them; and left the charge of maintaining all these on the laity, who had provided for them once already. The laity were so simple as to take the charge upon them, instead of obliging these lords of the religious society to keep to the original appropriation. Hence arose the divine right of tithes, and a multitude of other exactions. But if the laity thought that their pockets were to be picked no more, they were soon undeceived. The secular clergy, living no longer in communities, gave more publick scandal, and became less fit to excite the charity of the faithful. A new clergy, therefore, arose; and monks and monasteries began about the year five hundred. The former were not all priests, indeed, at first. But the latter were retreats of men who obliged themselves to live in these convents, that I may speak with exact propriety, a cenobitic life, un der der the conduct of the priests, and in all the supposed regularity and austerity of the first Christians. These professions and engagements struck the imaginations, and roused the zeal of the faithful; and convents were endowed with as much profusion as if nothing had been yet done for the church. These orders degenerated apace; and as fast as they did so, new orders were founded, and endowed, under the same pretence. Nothing was taken from those who had forfeited the conditions of the grants made to them, and much was given to those who took new engagements, and kept them as ill. Thus ecclesiastical policy contrived to enrich the church, even by the corruption of the clergy, and to carry these abuses forward, in a uniform gradation, and with an equal pace. The claim St. Austin made to the riches of the whole world, as belonging of right to the elect, had not been made, I suppose, before his time; though Irenæus had justified the robbery of the Egyptians by the Israelites, on principles much the same. This claim too was neither publickly asserted by himself, nor by his contemporaries, nor by his successors, nor at any time by the church in form; the reason of which was, no doubt, that they saw how needless and imprudent it would be to give such an alarm to all mankind, when they might go on to plunder particular countries and families without resistance, though sometimes against law, and always with very great effect. This the religious society did, B 4 before |