Chapter VI — How hostilely life-rents fight with the vow of monastic poverty. The excuses and sophisms with which the corruption of private purses is wont to be encrusted

I. Riches and evangelical poverty are no less opposed than chastity and luxury. Wherefore Christ said: If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor. To sell and to retain — do they not mutually fight in hostile fashion? Do not these two — to sell all things, as all the Fathers interpret, which the Gospel itself has clearly and perspicuously published, and to retain some things — constitute a monstrous chimera? And yet this chimera is familiar. Before young men make profession, they reserve to themselves life-rents, richer or smaller, as the domestic patrimony permits.

II. They reply that they reserve these revenues not for themselves but for the Religion. For the Religion has the absolute dominion of these revenues, but the Religious the pure and mere use, by the licence and faculty of Superiors. But dominion, and not the mere use of fact, fights with the vow of poverty. Rightly and prettily. What fills and saturates our appetitions — dominion or use? Dominion absolutely is sterile, and is uniquely sought on account of use. If you separate dominion from use, it becomes futile and vain. I would most easily concede to you a most perfect dominion, provided the Religion always had the use of the moneys. What would that dominion in such a case profit you? If a husband had the dominion and another the use of his wife, would he keep chastity? The husband with his dominion would be continent and chaste; the other with his sole use would fulfil venery.

III. They insist that the Superior can at his nod revoke this use. Excellently. But he never revokes it, as experience establishes. If Superiors could revoke at their nod the use of a private purse, why do they not revoke it? Why do they not bring in community at nightfall? Why do they not obey the decrees of so many Councils and Supreme Pontiffs? I have already exhibited a perspicuous answer.