512 Address and Petition to the 



threatens everlasting damnation to him who sends 

 them away without relief. 



The holy fathers teach that, when there are no other 

 means left for the relief and support of the poor, the 

 superfluous ornaments of the churches may be disposed 

 of, and even the sacred vessels melted down and sold 

 for that purpose. 



But what shall we think when we see those very per- 

 sons who profess to live after the rules and precepts laid 

 down in the word of God act diametrically contrary to 

 them. 



Such, doubtless, is the fatal conduct of those who 

 are induced by a mistaken compassion to lavish their 

 alms upon beggars, and obstruct the relief of the really 

 indigent. Alms that frustrate a good and useful insti- 

 tution cannot be meritorious or acceptable to God ; and 

 no maxim is less founded in truth than that the merit 

 of the giver is undiminished by the unworthiness of 

 the object. The truly distressed are too bashful to mix 

 with the herd of common beggars. Necessity, it is true, 

 will sometimes conquer their timidity, and compel them 

 publicly to solicit charity ; but their modest appeal is 

 unheard or unnoticed. Whilst a dissolute vagabond, 

 who exhibits an hypocritical picture of distress; a 

 drunken wretch, who pretends to have a numerous 

 family and to be persecuted by misfortune ; or an im- 

 pudent, unfeeling woman, who excites pity by the tears 

 and cries of a poor child, whom she has hired perhaps 

 for the purpose, and tortured into suffering, steps 

 daringly forward to intercept the alms of the charitable ; 

 and the well-intentioned gift which should relieve the 

 indigent is the prize of impudence and imposition, and 

 the support of vice and idleness. What, then, is left for 



