Cui bono

“ The solemn ritual of choice was performed no more, but, though the formality was given up, the subsequent successors to the bargain mostly acted up to the spirit of it, and their lives, if not their lips, acknowledged it. For, in general, their wickednesses have been as notable as their prosperity; pity, and its greater kinsman, love, can find no seed-cranny in their hearts where they can take root, but both alike wither in that iron soil. ”

“ Boniface, gives title to a cardinal, and is in the hands of the Hieronymites.
The extraordinary paths in which the Holy Ghost is pleased sometimes to conduct certain privileged souls are rather to be admired than imitated. If it cost them so much to seek humiliations, how diligently ought we to make a good use of those at least which providence sends us! It is only by humbling ourselves on all occasions that we can walk in the path of true humility, and root out of our hearts all secret pride. ”

“ There is not one of them that has not a great Benefactor, to whose free bounty they owe a million times more than Grace and her family owed to the lord of the manor. Have they received all His benefits without a word of thanks, without a thought of grateful devotion? Have they offered nothing to their Heavenly Lord, who has freely forgiven them all their great debt, and loaded them with blessings day after day? ”

“ Boniface, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Philip, King of the French; fear God and observe his commandments. We want you to know that you are subject to us temporarily as well as spiritually; that the collation of the benefices and the prebends—revenues attached to the canonical positions—do not belong to you in any way; that if you have care of the vacant benefices, it is to reserve their revenue for their successors; that if you have misapplied any of these benefices, we declare that collation invalid and revoke it, declaring as heretics all those who think otherwise. ”

“ Ought not a common bond and a common condition to produce in them mutual kindness and sympathy? But how great the disparity of their debts! ten thousand talents, and a hundred pence—the latter less than a millionth part of the former—if the gold talent is intended, less than a hundred millionth. Surely if the king could forgive the greater, it were a small matter with his servant to forgive the less. In comparison of our sins against God, what are our brother's sins against us? "As the small dust of the balance, lighter than vanity itself." ”

“ Our sins, Lord, are innumerable, the debt that we owe thee is infinite; and we are poor and miserable, unable of ourselves to discharge the least part of this debt, or to make satisfaction for the least of these sins. But, prostrate in spirit before thee, we humbly implore thy mercy. We desire to offer thee the sacrifice of a contrite and humble heart. ”

“ So my miser had not only lost the New Country because of his avarice, but nearly his own as well; while the other king speedily became one of the richest and most powerful monarchs in the world.
And the first thing he did was to send for the priest and offer to return him his treasure; but they found him with a new image working miracles, and already as rich as he had been before, so they gave him no money, but a silver bird, which shone like a lit lamp, and had tail-feathers of crimson. ”

“ Doth the clay owe so much to the potter, who doth not make it, but fashion it only? And what owe we to him that made us of nothing, and fashioned us while we were yet without form! Truly, all relations, all obligations evanish when this cometh forth, because all that a man hath is less than himself, than his immortal spirit, and that he oweth alone to God. And besides, whatsoever debt there is to other fellow creatures in any thing, God is the principal creditor in that bond. ”

“ And as to myself, I pray you have me in perpetual recollection with yourselves in your holy prayers. For the time is at hand which no man can escape. Let each one prepare himself, that he may appear in the presence of his God not naked but clothed with good practices.
“I have sent a pall for the body of the holy Boniface our father, on whose holy intercession for my sins I place great reliance; that I, a sinner, may even merit pardon in that day, when your holiness shall receive the crown of eternal blessedness. ”

“ Now I once thought that to become famous for goodness must surely imply that the person so celebrated had a very hypocritical nature,—the worst of natures indeed;—that of pretending to be what he was not,—but I was mistaken. Cardinal Bonpre IS good. ”

“ People got so used to his giving, that his bounty became as common and as necessary as that of a higher Benefactor, "who maketh his sun to rise upon the evil and the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust;" ”

“ A high-bred gentleman, thought I, whom the fickle goddess has cruelly maltreated.
If I had seen these men with the eyes of my old age, would my opinion have been the same? Perhaps the grotesque marker would have excited more pity than aversion. The jovial Boniface might have been metamorphosed into a vulgar, over-dressed, and not over-scrupulous moneylender ”

“ The more is the pity, (said Roseline;) therefore, my good mother, it would be unnecessary for me to consider any thing about the Baron's importance, since he thinks so much and so highly of it himself: but I do not see, for my part, why rank and fortune should tempt their possessors to assume so much on merely accidental advantages; or why people, distinguished as their favourites, should have a greater right to think and act as they please than those less fortunate. ”

“ Suspicion might save us from imposition on some occasions, and on others seal up our sympathies from the deserving. God sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust. If we too rigidly adjust our scales, may we not withhold from those poor who are his family? Does he require us to proportion our bounties accurately to the merits of the receiver? Methinks I had rather give to ten unworthy persons than neglect one lowly servant of my Lord."
"Your arguments honor your benevolence, my sister. ”

“ In good faith, cousin, even the bare remembrance of the poverty that our Saviour willingly suffered for us. For I verily suppose that if there were a great king who had so tender love for a servant of his that he had, to help him out of danger, forsaken and lost all his worldly wealth and royalty and become poor and needy for his sake, that servant could scantly be found who would be of such a base unnatural heart that if he himself came afterward to some substance he would not with better will lose it all again than shamefully to forsake such a master. ”

“ Thanks, above, to the boundless blessings showered upon you by your lord, and, below, to the favour of your father and mother, you're like a noble scion and a gentleman, able to read and to write; and you have been carried about by maids, old matrons, and nurses, just as if you had been a very phoenix! But now that you've grown up and reached this age, do you have the faintest notion of what the two words 'bond-servant' imply? All you think of is to enjoy your benefits. ”

“ Perhaps one, and certainly not the least, of the ill effects which spring from some of the conditions of our present civilization, is seen in the general dread and disdain of poverty, in the eager passion to become rich. The practical gospel of the age, testified [664] everywhere by faith and works, is that of money-getting; men are estimated mainly by the amount of their wealth, take social rank accordingly, and consequently bend all their energies to acquire that which gains them esteem and influence. ”

“ What is it then to advance? (Since I say 'tis plain, glory is never this way to be achiev'd.) Is it to add more thousands to those fortune has already so lavishly bestow'd on you? Oh my Philander, that's to double the vast crime, which reaches already to damnation: would your honour, your conscience, your Christianity, or common humanity, suffer you to enlarge your fortunes at the price of another's ruin; and make the spoils of some honest, noble, unfortunate family, the rewards of your treachery? Would you build your fame on such a foundation? ”

“ He left no heir but Giulio, and that youth now found himself, from a position of humiliating poverty, the most wealthy person in the land—which is to say, the most envied, the most admired, the most courted. ”

“ The consciences of men in every age would have echoed the assertion of Cicero that to sacrifice pleasure with a view of obtaining any form or modification of pleasure in return, no more answers to our idea of virtue, than to lend money at interest to our idea of charity. ”

“ What more base than to claim for yourself the reward with others, but to put off upon a certain few the toil for which the reward is offered? What more wanton than to wish to reign with our Head, when you are not willing to suffer with him? Therefore, my brother, do not look about to see what others do and flatter yourself with their example;—a difficult thing indeed and known to very few, even to monks, is this dying to sin, to carnal desire and to the world. ”

“ Why therefore do you bestow your bounty on suitable persons, unless it be that you may afterwards receive a reward? With you, therefore, as the author and teacher of justice, whosoever shall not be a suitable person will be worn out with nakedness, thirst, and hunger; nor will men who are rich and abundantly supplied, even to luxuriousness, assist his last extremity. ”

“ But there is another debt, which I may call a debt of duty and obedience, which, as it was antecedent to sin, even binding innocent Adam, so the obligation of the debt of sin hath been so far from taking it away that it is rather increased exceedingly, and this debt is unpardonable and indispensable. The more of the debt of sin be pardoned, and the more the curse be dispensed with, the more the sinner owes of love and obedience to God. ”

“ There is no one, O my Lord, who can deal bountifully with me to whom I can turn my face, and none who can have compassion on me that I may crave his mercy. Cast me not out, I implore Thee, of the presence of Thy grace, neither do Thou withhold from me the outpourings of Thy generosity and bounty. ”

“ When the spirit of the Reformation penetrated some of the provinces, Jacques Bonhomme began to lend an ear to a new theory. "Poor, ignorant people, poor duped and defrauded people," said the pastors of the new church; "offerings to saints, masses, and purgatory are idolatries, tricks, frauds, sacrilegious inventions with the aid of which the priests and monks appropriate to themselves the silver laid by fools upon the altars and at the feet of wooden and stone images. Good men! ”

“ In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read a mind clear of the vice of Demas:—lucre had no undue power over you. In the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares, keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others to the claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in the flame and excitement of sacrifice. ”

“ We are ready to perish with want, when they are surfeited with their abundance. Is the blessing of them that a ready to perish like to come upon them? Will not thou judge them, O Lord! Certainly these bitter and lamentable complaints cry loud in the ears of the Almighty, against such inhuman and unchristian miseries. Beware of the cry of the poor against you: If thou wilt not hear their cries unto thee, God will hear their cries against thee. ”

“ But however it may be, philanthropy among the orthodox is an acknowledged soul-saving arrangement. Listen to the very beggar in the street. “Gift me and buy merit,” is his prayer. He is not ashamed to beg; you are climbing to heaven on his shoulders. In a way it is you who are in his debt. ”

“ True, (replied the venerable father Anselm, who till now had observed a placid silence as he listened to the above conversation,) we should all agree to make the same allowance for the failings and frailties of others as we are inclined to do when we sit in judgement upon our own, and rather strive to find excuses than causes to condemn; like the blessed master we all unite to serve, whose precepts and practice were calculated for the good and happiness of all mankind. ”

“ But as for the debt of love and benevolence, you must so owe that to all men, as never to be discharged of it, never to be freed from it. When you have done all this hath no limitation of time or action, even so it is here. Other debts when paid, men cease to be debtors, then they are free, but here the more he pays the more he is bound to pay,—he oweth, and he oweth eternally. His bond is never cancelled as long as he continues a creature subsisting in God, and abides a redeemed one in Christ. For these continuing, his obligation is eternally recent and fresh as the first day. ”

“ So I rede ye well, pay me what ye owe me, or I will be in your steads and barnekyns a very burning torch, and upon your nags and geldings a death rider such as ye never saw."
The bondsman fell upon his knees before his lord's horse.
"Ah gentle lording," he cried out, "God forbid that we should not pay ye all that we owe. Then indeed were we all undone, for no men ever had lord so gentle and so kind."
"Foul knave," his lord said, "I know that if by my murder ye might well profit, murder me ye would, you and your fellows; but ye dare not for fear of the Scots." ”

“ Trust in God and rely on His great bounty, because His bounty is overflowing like the seas, brilliant like unto the lights, flowing like currents of water and raining like the clouds. It is incumbent upon thee to be humble, lowly and submissive at the appearance of the lights of the gifts of thy Lord, in every instant. ”