[229] Cicero, De officiis, i. 14 sq.
In a very different light was charity viewed by the Christians. Unlimited open-handedness became a cardinal virtue. An ideal Christian was he who did what Jesus commanded the young man to do: who went and sold what he had and gave it to the poor.[230] Promiscuous almsgiving was enjoined as a duty:—“Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”[231] The discharge of this duty was even more profitable to the giver than to the receiver. There is perhaps no precept in the Gospel to which a promise of recompense is so frequently annexed as to that concerning charity. Eternal life is promised to those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, take in the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick.[232] Charity was regarded as an atonement. “God,” says St. Augustine, “is to be propitiated through alms for sins past”;[233] and countless times is the thought expressed, that almsgiving is a safe investment of money at good interest with God in heaven.[234] Cyprian, who is the father of the Romish doctrine of good works, establishes an arithmetical relation between the number of alms-offerings and the blotting out of sins.[235] “The food of the needy,” says Leo the Great, “is the purchase-money of the kingdom of heaven.”[236] “As long as the market lasts,” says St. Chrysostom, “let us buy alms, or rather let us purchase salvation through alms.”[237] The rich man is only a debtor; all that he possesses beyond what is necessary, belongs to the poor, and ought to be given away.[238] The poor, no longer looked down upon, became instruments of salvation. To them was given the first place in the Church and in the Christian community. St. Chrysostom says of them, “As fountains flow near the place of prayer that the hands that are about to be raised to heaven may be washed, so were the poor placed by our fathers near to the door of the Church, that our hands might be consecrated by benevolence before they are raised to God.”[239] Gregory the Great announces, and the Middle Ages re-echo, “The poor are not to be lightly esteemed and despised, but to be honoured as patrons.”[240] Thus it happened that even in the darkest periods, when all other Christian virtues were nearly extinct, charity survived unimpaired.[241] Later on Protestantism, by denying the atoning effect of good deeds, deprived charity of a great deal of its religious attraction. And in modern times the enlightened opinion on the subject, recognising the demoralising influence of indiscriminate almsgiving, rather agrees with the principles laid down by Cicero and Seneca, than with the literal interpretation of the injunctions of Christ.
[230] Cf. Acts, ii. 45.
[231] St. Matthew, v. 42. Cf. St. Luke, vi. 30.
[232] St. Matthew, xxv. 34 sqq.
[233] St. Augustine, Enchiridion, 70 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, xl. 265).
[234] See Uhlhorn, Die christliche Liebesthätigkeit, i. 270.
[235] Cyprian, De opere et eleemosynis, 24 (Migne, op. cit. iv. 620). Cf. Harnack, History of Dogma, ii. 134, n. 2.
[236] Leo Magnus, Sermo X., de Collectis, 5 (Migne, op. cit. liv. 165 sq.).
[237] St. Chrysostom, Homilia VII., de Pœnitentia (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Graeca, xlix. sq. 333).