man." Truly there is nothing new under the sun.
Or if we regard the matter from another point of view we find that one side of human nature has changed but little. "Socrates the historian mentions a Jew who, pretending to embrace Christianity, went in succession to the various communities both heretical and orthodox to ask to be baptised, and received from all valuable presents until Paul, Bishop of the Novatians, discovered the fraud, it is said, by a miracle" (Soc. Hist. Eccl., Bk. vii. c. 17). We hear, too, in the Early Church of "spiteful and slanderous widows who instead of calling down the blessing of God on their Bishop made it their business to find out what others had received and then complained of the injustice of the distribution of alms" (Apost. Const, iii. 12-14). We even find that an organisation of charity was initiated by the Church, doubtless as the result of those and similar abuses. Each Bishop was directed to attach to himself a steward for the administration of the funds of his diocese. The deacons and subdeacons who were called "the hand, the mouth, and the soul of the Bishops" were his agents for the distribution of alms. They kept a register of the families that they had to relieve regularly. The deacons' duties were "to write down the names on a special register, to which the name of 'case paper'[1] was given later, and to enter the name, the sex, the profession, and position of each applicant and to obtain the most circumstantial and exact information" (Chastel, p. 99; Cyprian, Ep. 2,7 and Ep. 38; Acts vi. 3-1 1).
Looking then at the "large map" we find that we have advanced surprisingly little in regard to these matters since the beginning of the Christian
- ↑ A free translation of matricula. Chastel, p. 99; Epitom de Eccl. Petr., c. 151.
