The plea of the poor. Or A treatise of beneficence and alms-deeds teaching how…The plea of the poore. Or A treatise of benificence and almes-deeds teaching how…

Sect. 3. That common vagrants and idle persons are not those poor who should be relieved.

Sect. 3. That common vagrants and idle persons are not those poore who should be relieued.

So that it is not enough to be bountiful, unless we choose the poor as the object of our beneficence; and not all that are poor, neither is every lewd losel of the canting commonwealth, a fit altar whereon we may offer the sacrifice of our almsdeeds, but such as are so through necessity and not of choice. For there are many sturdy beggars, and vagrant rogues, the blemish of our government, and a burden to the common wealth, who have nothing in propriety, but their licentious life and lawless condition; no known father or mother, wife or children, but a promiscuous generation, who are all of kin, and yet know no kindred, no house or home, no law but their sensual lust, or some wicked orders of their own making, fit to maintain them in their in ordinate courses; men without religion, Church, baptism, faith or God in the world, who like idle drones, feed upon the common spoil, and live by the sweat of other mens brows: which kind of poor are not to be maintained in their wicked courses, for according to the Apostles rule, they that will not labour, ⟨p. 39⟩¹must not eat; but rather the law is duly and with severity to be executed, which though it seem sharp, yet for the present it is full of mercy to the honest poor, who might be more liberally relieved, if these idle devourers did not eat up their portion; and would above all be merciful to those miscreants, if by wholesome severity they might be reclaimed from their wicked lives, seeing hereby they should be pulled out of the jaws of the devil, and preserved from falling into fearful condemnation. To which purpose Augustine saith; It is better to love with severity, then to