Nor do those who, possessing their own goods, wish something to be given to them, receive without great sin to themselves that whereby the poor man was to live. Concerning the clergy indeed the Holy Spirit says: «They eat the sins of my people» (Hos. 4:8). But just as those who have nothing of their own receive not the sins, but the food which they are seen to need; so possessors receive not the food in which they abound, but other men's sins. The poor themselves too, if they can support themselves by their own crafts or labors, let them not presume to take what the weak or infirm ought to receive; lest perchance the Church, which can supply the necessities to those destitute of all comfort, being burdened—if even those who lack nothing also receive—be unable to assist those whom it owes a duty.
But those who serve the Church, and believing that things ought to be repaid to them as a debt for their labor, either gladly receive or even exact what they have no need of, savor things far too carnally, if they think that those who faithfully serve the Church receive earthly wages rather than eternal rewards. For secular warfare, because it has no heavenly rewards, bestows earthly ones on those who serve vigorously. Hence it is unworthy enough, if the faithful and laborious devotion of the clergy should despise everlasting rewards for the sake of a temporal stipend. But if any minister of the Church has not the means to live, let no reward be repaid him here; rather let the Church supply his necessities:
so that in the future he may receive the reward of his labor, which already in this life he, being assured, awaits from the Lord's promise. As for those also who, as though they were self-sufficient, do not indeed ask anything to be given to them as a debt, yet nevertheless live at the Church's expense, it is not for me to say with what sin they take up the food of the poor by presuming upon it—they who burden the Church with their expenses besides, the very Church which they ought to have helped from their own resources; doing this perhaps so that, living in the community, they may neither feed any poor, nor receive newcomers, nor diminish their wealth by daily expenditures. But if they have contributed something from their own produce to the Church, as it were for their own expense;
let them not, in empty boasting, prefer themselves to those whom, having nothing, the Church feeds and clothes: because more perfect is he who strips himself of the world's goods, or who, when he has had nothing, neither desires to have, than he who, out of the many things he possesses, gives something to the Church, and perhaps boasts about what he has given. Hard are the things I say, and I do not deny it. They are hard—but to those unwilling to observe them. As for the rest, if these things are done, what is difficult to those not doing them at once becomes easy to those who do them. It is therefore not impossibility but novelty that makes hard for us the things we are unwilling to observe. Let them come into use, and once made habitual they trouble no one. For I ask, what is there of the things I have said that is difficult?
Is it hard that a man should not receive from the Church what he has no need of, or that he should despise without cause what he has? If for this reason he is unwilling to relinquish his own—that he may have whereby to live—why does he receive that for which he must render an account? Why does he multiply his own out of other men's sins?