Infidel_: tho’ the apostle speaks no more here against such a person, than he speaks in the praise of _Ananias_ and _Sapphira_. ♦ “Trap” replaced with “Trapp” The person here condemned, is not he who thro’ a continual charity, is hindered from laying up in store; not he, who, thro’ a Christian love of relieving the distressed members of Christ, is content with helping his own family to food and raiment; but it is that Christian, who being able, is yet unwilling to support his near relations, that are fallen into poverty, and leaves them to be maintained by the church: this is the only Christian the apostle here condemns, as having put off the piety of the gospel, and wanting even the virtue of good-natured Infidels. I said further, Had the apostle known a parent in his days, who, thro’ his great charity for others, had reduced his own family to want of relief, he would have been so far from rebuking him as an half-thinking fool, or exposing him to others, as guilty of madness, that he would have told them, such a one had consecrated himself and family to the church, as the proper objects of their care. To which the Doctor gives this answer, “This he affirms, and this I deny; and as he produces no other proof, so I give no other answer,” p. 69. What I said, has its proof from the common voice of Christianity in the apostles days; as may sufficiently appear from the following passage of St. _Clement_, fellow-labourer of the apostle, and bishop of no less a church than that of _Rome_. “We have known many amongst us, who have delivered themselves into bonds and slavery, that they might restore others to their liberty; many who have hired out themselves servants unto others, that by their wages they might feed and sustain them that wanted.”¹ ¹ 1 Epistle to the Corinthians Will the Doctor now say, that this is no proof of that which I affirmed of the apostle, that he would have had a love for those who were become sufferers by their own charity to others? Does not this apostolical bishop make it his boast, and the glory of Christianity; not that they had some, but many such among them? It was not only in the first church at _Jerusalem_, that the Christians had all things common. For St. _Barnabas_ writing to some converted _Jews_, teaches them to call nothing their own in this world, because they were called to the common enjoyment of the things of eternity. _Communicabis in omnibus rebus proximo tuo; nihil dices quicquam tibi proprium; si enim communicatis invicem, in bonis, incorruptibilibus, quanto magis in corruptibilibus._¹ ¹ Epistle to Barnabas. No. 10.