[322] Churchwardens’ Accounts (Somerset Record Soc.), ed. Bishop Hobhouse, p. 200, seqq.
[323] Ibid., p. xxi.
[324] Ibid., p. xii.
[325] Archæologia, vol. xli., p. 333 seqq.
[326] Somerset Record Soc., preface, p. xi.
[327] J. W. Cowper, Accounts of the Churchwardens of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury (Archæologia Cantiana, 1885).
[328] Siméon Luce, Histoire de Bertrand du Guesclin, p. 19.
[329] The words of Pope Leo XIII. as to the Catholic teaching most accurately describe the practical doctrine of the English pre-Reformation Church on this matter: “The chiefest and most excellent rule for the right use of money,” he says, “rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money and another to have the right to use money as one pleases.… If the question be asked, How must one’s possessions be used? the Church replies, without hesitation, in the words of the same holy doctor (St. Thomas), Man should not consider his outward possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without difficulty when others are in need. When necessity has been supplied and one’s position fairly considered, it is a duty to give to the indigent out of that which is over. It is a duty, not of justice (except in extreme cases) but of Christian charity … (and) to sum up what has been said, Whoever has received from the Divine bounty a large share of blessings … has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the minister of God’s Providence, for the benefit of others.”
[330] The Economic Interpretation of History, p. 63.
[331] Churchwardens’ Accounts (Somerset Record Soc.), p. xxiv.