Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 39 113
our behef on holy words, we raise our hope, we strengthen our
confidence, we clinch the teaching none the less by driving
home precepts. There too are pronounced exhortations, corrections
and godly judgments. For our judgment too is dehvered
-with great weight, as among those who are sure that they are
acting imder the eye of God, and there is the greatest anticipation
of the future judgment, if any one has so sinned, as to be
banished from the communion of prayer and assembly and all
holy fellowship. We are governed by the most approved elders,
who have obtained this office not by purchase, but on testimony;
for indeed nothing of God is obtainable by money. Even if
we have a kind of treasury, this is not filled up from a sense of
obhgation, as of a hired rehgion. Each member adds a small
sum once a month, or when he pleases, and only if he is wilhng
and able; for no one is forced, but each contributes of his o-wn
free -wiU. These are the deposits as it were made by devotion.
For that sum is disbursed not on banquets nor drinking bouts
nor unwiUingly on eating-houses, but on the supporting and
burying of the poor, and on boys and girls deprived of property
and parents, and on aged servants of the house, also on shipwrecked
persons, and any, who are in the mines or on islands
or in prisons, pro-vided it be for the cause of God's religion,
who thus become pensioners of their confession. But the
working of that kind of love most of all brands us with a mark
of blame in the eyes of some. 'See,' they say, 'how they love
one another'; for they themselves hate one another; 'and how
they are ready to die for one another'; for they will be more
ready to kiU one another. But also they rage at us for calling
one another brethren, for no other reason, I suppose, than
because among themselves every name indicating blood relationship
is assu.med from affection. But we are also your brothers,
by right of nature, the one mother, although you are little
deserving of the name men, because you are evil brothers. But
how much more worthily are those both called and considered
brethren who have recognised one Father, namely God, who.have
imbibed one spirit of hohness, who from one womb of the same
ignorance have quaked before one hght of truth! But we are
perhaps regarded as less legitimate for the reason that no
tragedy proclaims aloud our brotherhness, or because we are
brothers as the result of household possessions, which among
you generaUy break up the relationship of brothers. And so
we, who are united in heart and soul, have no hesitation about
sharing a thing. Among us all things are common except wives.
In this matter alone we dissolve partnership, in which alone
all other men practise partnership, who not only use the wives
M. T. 8