and is commonly called Charity. The first or eldest is seated in the affection, and is that which all the others must attend. For mercy without alms is acceptable, when the person is disabled to express outwardly what he heartily desires. But alms without mercy are like prayers without devotion, or religion without humility. 2. Beneficence, or well-doing, is a promptness and nobleness of mind, making us to do offices of courtesy and humanity to all sorts of persons in their need, or out of their need. 3. Liberality is a disposition of mind opposite to covetousness, and consists in the despite and neglect of money upon just occasions, and relates to our friends, children, kindred, servants, and other relatives. 4. But alms is a relieving of the poor and needy. The first and the last only are duties of christianity. The second and third are circumstances and adjuncts of these duties for liberality increases the degree of alms, making our gift greater; and beneficence extends it to more persons and orders of men, spreading it wider. The former makes us sometimes to give more than we are able; and the latter gives to more than need by the necessity of beggars, and serves the needs and conveniences of persons, and supplies circumstances; whereas properly, alms are doles and largesses to the necessitous and calamitous people, supplying the necessities of nature, and giving remedies to their miseries.

Mercy and alms are the body and soul of that charity which we must pay to our neighbour's need; and it is a precept which God therefore enjoined to

the world, that the great inequality which he was pleased to suffer in the possessions and accidents of men, might be reduced to some temper and evenness; and the most miserable person might be reconciled to some sense and participation of felicity.

Works of mercy, or the several kinds of Corporal Alms.

The works of mercy are so many as the affections of mercy have objects, or as the world hath kinds of misery. Men want meat or drink, or clothes, or a house, or liberty, or attendance, or a grave. In proportion to these, seven works are usually assigned to mercy, and there are seven kinds of corporal alms reckoned. 1. To feed the hungry. 2. To give drink to the thirsty. 3. Or clothes to the naked. 4. To redeem captives. 5. To visit the sick. 6. To entertain strangers. 7. To bury the dead. (Matt. xxv. 35. and xxvi. 12. 11 Sam. ii. 5.) But many more may be added. Such as are, 8. To give physic to sick persons. 9. To bring cold and starved people to warmth and to the fire; for sometimes clothing will not do it; or this may be done when we cannot do the other. 10. To lead the blind in right ways. lend money. 12. To forgive debts. 13. To remit forfeitures. 14. To mend high-ways and bridges. 15. To reduce or guide wandering travellers. 16. To ease their labours by accommodating their work with apt instruments, or their journey with beasts of carriage. 17. To deliver the poor from their oppressors. 18. To die*

* Nobilis hæc esset pietatis rixa duobus,

Quòd pro fratre mori vellet uterque prior. Mart.

11. To

for my brother. 19. To pay maidens' dowries, and to procure for them honest and chaste marriages.

Works of Spiritual Alms and Mercy are,

1. To teach the ignorant. 2. To counsel doubting 3. To admonish sinners diligently, prupersons. dently, seasonably and charitably to which also may be reduced, provoking and encouraging to good works. (Heb. x. 24. 1 Thes. v. 14.) 4. To comfort the afflicted. 5. To pardon offenders. 6. To succour and support the weak. 7. To pray for all estates of men, and for relief to all their necessities. To which may be added. 8. To punish or correct refractoriness. 9. To be gentle and charitable in censuring the actions of others. 10. To establish the scrupulous, wavering and inconstant spirits. 11. To confirm the strong. 12. Not to give scandal. 13. To quit a man of his fear. 14. To redeem maidens from prostitution and publication of their bodies*.

To both these kinds a third also may be added of a mixt nature; partly corporeal, and partly spiritual. Such are, 1. Reconciling enemies; 2. Erecting public schools of learning; 3. Maintaining lectures of divinity; 4. Erecting colleges of religion, and retirement from the noises and more frequent temptations of the world; 5. Finding employment for unbusied persons, and putting children to honest trades. For the particulars of mercy or alms cannot be narrower then men's needs are; and the old method of alms is

* Puella prosternit se ad pedes : Miserere virginitatis meæ nè prostituas hoc corpus sub tam turpi titulo. Hist. Apol. Tyan.

too narrow to comprise them all; and yet the kinds are too many to be discoursed of particularly: only our blessed Saviour in the precept of alms, uses the instances of relieving the poor, and forgiveness of injuries; and by proportion to these, the rest, whose duty is plain, simple, easy, and necessary, may be determined. But alms in general are to be disposed of according to the following rules.

Rules for giving Alms.

1. Let no man do alms of that which is none of his own: for of that he is to make restitution * ; that is due to the owners, not to the poor: for every man hath need of his own, and that is first to be provided for; and then you must think of the needs of the poor. He that gives the poor what is not his own, makes himself a thief, and the poor to be the receivers. This is not to be understood as if it were unlawful for a man that is not able to pay his debts, to give smaller alms to the poor. He may not give such portions as can in any sense more disable him to do justice; but such which if they were saved could not advance the other duty, may retire to this, and do here what they may, since in the other duty they cannot do what they should. But generally cheaters and robbers cannot give alms of what they have cheated and robbed, unless they cannot tell the persons whom they have injured; or the proportions; and in such cases they are to give those unknown portions to the

*S. Greg. 71. Epist. 110.

+ Præbeat misericordia ut conservetur justitia. S. Aug. Prov. iii. 9.

poor by way of restitution, for it is no alms: only God is the supreme lord to whom those escheats devolve, and the poor are his receivers.

2. Of money unjustly taken, and yet voluntarily parted with, we may and are bound to give alms: such as is money given and taken for false witness, bribes, simoniacal contracts: because the receiver hath no right to keep it, nor the giver any right to recal it, it is unjust money, and yet payable to noņe but the supreme lord (who is the person injured) and to his delegates, that is, the poor. To which I insert these cautions. 1. If the person injured by the unjust sentence of a bribed judge, or by false witness, be poor, he is the proper object and bosom to whom the restitution is to be made. 2. In case of simony *, the church, to whom the simony was injurious, is the lap into which the restitution is to be poured; and if it be poor and out of repair, the alms or restitution (shall I call it?) are to be paid to it.

3. There is some sort of gain that hath in it no injustice properly so called; but it is unlawful and filthy lucre: such as is money taken for work done unlawfully upon the Lord's-day, hire taken for disfiguring one's self, and for being professed jesters, the wages of such as make unjust bargains, and of harlots of this money there is some preparation to be made before it be given in alms. The money is infected with the plague, and must pass through the fire or the water before it be fit for alms: the person must repent and leave the crime, and then minister to the poor.

* Decret. Ep. tit. de Simonia.