This comes from ignorance
of Christian faith and liberty.
This ignorance and this crushing of liberty are diligently promoted by
the teaching of very many blind pastors, who stir up and urge the people
to a zeal for these things, praising them and puffing them up with their
indulgences, but never teaching faith. Now I would advise you, if you
have any wish to pray, to fast, or to make foundations in churches, as
they call it, to take care not to do so with the object of gaining any
advantage, either temporal or eternal. You will thus wrong your faith,
which alone bestows all things on you, and the increase of which, either
by working or by suffering, is alone to be cared for. What you give,
give freely and without price, that others may prosper and have increase
from you and your goodness. Thus you will be a truly good man and a
Christian. For what to you are your goods and your works, which are done
over and above for the subjection of the body, since you have abundance
for yourself through your faith, in which God has given you all things?
We give this rule: the good things which we have from God ought to flow
from one to another and become common to all, so that every one of us
may, as it were, put on his neighbour, and so behave towards him as if
he were himself in his place. They flowed and do flow from Christ to us;
He put us on, and acted for us as if He Himself were what we are.
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