surplus you may have, belongs not to you; that it is the portion of the poor; and that you are entitled to consider as your own, only that proportion of your revenues which is necessary to support that station in which Providence hath placed you. I ask, then, is it the gospel or covetousness, which must regulate that sufficiency? Would you dare to pretend, that all those vanities of which custom has now made a law, are to be held, in the sight of God, as expenses inseparable from your condition? That every thing which flatters, and is agreeable to you, which nourishes your pride, gratifies your caprices, and corrupts your heart, is for that reason necessary to you? That all which you sacrifice to the fortune of a child, in order to raise him above his ancestors; all which you risk in gaming; that luxury, which either suits not your birth, or is an abuse of it: would you dare to pretend, that all these have incontestable claims on your revenues which are to be preferred to those of charity? Lastly, would you dare to pretend, that, because your father, perhaps obscure, and of the lowest rank, may have left to you all his wealth, and perhaps his crimes, you are entitled to forget your family and the house of your father, in order to mingle with the highest ranks, and to support the same eclat, because you are enabled to support the same expense?
If this be the case, my brethren, if you consider as a surplus only, that which may escape from your pleasures, from your extravagancies, and from your caprices, you have only to be voluptuous, capricious, dissolute, and prodigal, in order to be wholly dispensed from the duty of charity. The more passions you shall have to satisfy, the more will your obligation to charity diminish! and your excesses, which the Lord hath commanded you to expiate by acts of compassion, will themselves become a privilege to dispense yourselves from them. There must necessarily, therefore, be some rule here to observe, and some limits to appoint ourselves, different from those of avarice; and behold it, my brethren, — the rule of faith. Whatever tends to nourish only the life of the senses, to flatter the passions, to countenance the vain pomp and abuses of the world, is superfluous to a Christian: these are what you ought to retrench, and to set apart; these are the funds and the heritage of the poor; you are only their depositaries, and you cannot encroach upon them without usurpation and injustice. The gospel reduces to very little the sufficiency of a Christian however exalted in the world; religion retrenches much from the expenses; and, did we live all according to the rules of faith, our wants, which would no longer be multiplied by our passions, would still be fewer; the greatest part of our wealth would be found entirely useless; and, as in the first age of faith, indigence would no longer grieve the church, nor be seen among believers. Our expenses continually increase, because our passions are everyday multiplied; the opulence of our fathers is no longer to us but an uncomfortable poverty; and our great riches can no longer suffice, because nothing can satisfy those who refuse themselves nothing.
And, in order to give this truth all the extent which the subject
