delle Materie Beneficiarie; two writers
of a very different character.]

[Footnote 133: The same opinion which prevailed about the year one
thousand, was productive of the same effects. Most of the Donations
express their motive, "appropinquante mundi fine." See Mosheim's General
History of the Church, vol. i. p. 457.]

[Footnote 134: Tum summa cura est fratribus (Ut sermo testatur loquax.)
Offerre, fundis venditis Sestertiorum millia. Addicta avorum praedia
Foedis sub auctionibus, Successor exheres gemit Sanctis egens
Parentibus. Haec occuluntur abditis Ecclesiarum in angulis. Et summa
pietas creditur Nudare dulces liberos.----Prudent. Hymn 2.
The subsequent conduct of the deacon Laurence only proves how proper a
use was made of the wealth of the Roman church; it was undoubtedly
very considerable; but Fra Paolo (c. 3) appears to exaggerate, when he
supposes that the successors of Commodus were urged to persecute the
Christians by their own avarice, or that of their Praetorian praefects.]

[Footnote 135: Cyprian, Epistol. 62.]

[Footnote 136: Tertullian de Praescriptione, c. 30.]

[Footnote 137: Diocletian gave a rescript, which is only a declaration
of the old law; "Collegium, si nullo speciali privilegio subnixum sit,
haereditatem capere non posse, dubium non est." Fra Paolo (c. 4) thinks
that these regulations had been much neglected since the reign of
Valerian.]

[Footnote 138: Hist. August. p. 131. The ground had been public; and was
row disputed between the society of Christians and that of butchers.
Note *: Carponarii, rather victuallers.--M.]

The bishop was the natural steward of the church; the public stock was
intrusted to his care without account or control; the presbyters were
confined to their spiritual functions, and the more dependent order of
the deacons was solely employed in the management and distribution of
the ecclesiastical revenue. [139] If we may give credit to the vehement
declamations of Cyprian, there were too many among his African brethren,
who, in the execution of their charge, violated every precept, not only
of evangelical perfection, but even of moral virtue. By some of these
unfaithful stewards the riches of the church were lavished in sensual
pleasures; by others they were perverted to the purposes of private
gain, of fraudulent purchases, and of rapacious usury. [140] But as
long as the contributions of the Christian people were free and
unconstrained, the abuse of their con