position, than it filled in the dogmatic teaching of mediæval and yet later times.
The immeasurable work effected by the blessed Redeemer is never minimized by the earliest and most weighty of the Christian teachers, as we have seen in our little chain of quoted passages; but it is indisputable that they considered that something might be done by men themselves. Alms, according to these early instructors, held a very high position in the new beautiful life they taught men who loved the Lord to strive after.
We will quote a few prominent examples of this very early teaching which, of course, was pressed home to the Brotherhood who gathered together in these primitive assemblies; and to a large extent we see that this somewhat peculiar dogmatic teaching concerning the value of almsgiving had a marked and striking effect upon the listeners.
For instance, in the Didaché (Teaching of the Apostles), written in the last years of the first century, we read:
"If thou possessest (anything) by thy hands, thou shalt give a ransom for thy sins."—Didaché, iv.
This was no new idea in Hebrew theology; see Dan. iv. 27: "Break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shoving mercy to the poor." See Prov. xvi. 6, and also Tob. xii. 8, 9.
So in the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs, put out in the first quarter of the second century:
"For in proportion as a man is pitiful to the poor, will the Lord be pitiful towards him" (Zabulon 7).
"Almsgiving therefore is a good thing, even as repentance from sin. Fasting is better than prayer, but almsgiving than both; and 'love covereth a multitude of sins,'[1] but prayer out of a good conscience delivereth from death. Blessed is every man that is found full of these. For almsgiving lifteth off the burden of sin."—2nd Epistle of Clement (part of an ancient homily put out circa A.D. 130 to 150).[2]
