Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/158

 Tertullian, writing in the last years of the same century on what took place at these meetings of the brethren, relates how "each of us puts in a small amount one day in the month, or whenever he pleases, but only if he pleases, and if he is able; for there is no compulsion in the matter, every one contributing of his own free will. The amounts so collected are expended on poor orphans, in support of old folk, on those who are in the mines, or exiled, or in prison, so long as their distress is for the sake of God's fellowship."

We notice how often it is repeated that all these offerings are purely voluntary—the idea of communism was absolutely unknown in the Church of the first days. The fact that there were rich and poor is ever acknowledged. This is especially marked in the tombs of the catacombs, where the rich were laid to sleep in costly and even in splendidly adorned chambers, leading out of the corridors where the bodies of the poorer ones were tenderly and reverently buried, but in far humbler and unadorned resting-places.

In less that fifty years after Tertullian's time, Cornelius, bishop of Rome, in a letter written circa 250 (quoted by Eusebius, H. E. vi. 43), gives us a fairly exhaustive catalogue of the officials and the persons in distress supported by the voluntary contributions of the Roman Brotherhood. He enumerates forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two exorcists, readers, and doorkeepers, together with fifteen hundred widows and persons in poverty maintained constantly by the alms of the faithful.

It is evident from the references in writings of the second century that almsgiving in the Church of the first days occupied in the hearts of believers a higher place, a far more important