"You thought it was only monks to whom property was forbidden and poverty enjoined? You were wrong; both commands apply to all Christians. The law punishes you if you take what belongs to another; it does not punish you if you take what is yours away from your brother when he needs it; but Christ will punish both. If you are a magistrate the office should not make you more fierce, but the responsibility should make you more cautious. 'But,' you say, 'I do not hold a church office; I am not a priest or a bishop.' Quite so, but you are a Christian, are you not? See to it whose man you be, if you are not a man of the Church. Christ is come into such contempt in the world, that they think it a fine thing and a royal to have no dealings with him and despise a person the more, the more closely he is bound to him. Do you not hear every day some angry layman throwing in our faces as a violent reproach the words 'Clerk!' 'Priest!' 'Monk!' and that with the same temper and the same voice as if he were charging us with incest or sacrilege? Of a truth I wonder why they don't attack Baptism, or like the Saracens assault the name of Christ as something infamous. If they would say '_bad_ Clerk!' '_unworthy_ Priest!' '_impious_ Monk!' we could bear it as coming from those who were rebuking the character of the man and not the profession of virtue. But those who call the rape of virgins, the plunder of war, the gain and loss of money at dice deeds of glory, these people have no word to throw at another more full of contempt and shame than 'Monk!' or 'Priest!'--though it is clear enough what these people, Christians in nothing but the name, think of Christ.