up comfortless, while they are not able to labour and help themselves.  For this would be a thing against all humanity.  And surely, if a man were but a wayfarer whom I received into my house as a guest, if he fell sick there and his money be gone, I reckon myself bound to keep him still, and rather to beg about for his relief than to cast him out in that condition to the peril of his life, whatsoever loss I should happen to sustain in the keeping of him.  For when God hath by such chance sent him to me and there once matched me with him, I reckon myself surely charged with him until I may, without peril of his life, be well and conveniently discharged of him.

By God’s commandment our parents are in our charge, for by nature we are in theirs.  Since, as St. Paul saith, it is not the children’s part to provide for the parents but the parents’ to provide for the children.  Provide, I mean, conveniently—­good learning or good occupations to get their living by, with truth and the favour of God—­but not to make provision for them of such manner of living as they should live the worse toward God for.  But rather, if they see by their manner that too much would make them wicked, the father should then give them a great deal less.  But although nature put not the parents in the children’s charge, yet not only God commandeth but the order of nature compelleth, that the children should both in reverent behaviour honour their father and mother, and also in all their necessity maintain them.  And yet, as much as God and nature both bind us to the sustenance of our father, his need may be so little (though it be somewhat) and another man’s so great, that both nature and God also would that I should, in such unequal need, relieve that urgent necessity of a stranger—­yea, my foe, and God’s enemy too, the very Turk or Saracen—­before a little need, and unlikely to do great harm, in my father and my mother too.  For so ought they both twain themselves to be well content that I should.

But now, cousin, outside of such extreme need well perceived and known unto myself, I am not bound to give to every beggar who will ask; nor to believe every imposter that I meet in the street who will say himself that he is very sick; nor to reckon all the poor folk committed by God only so to my charge alone, that no other man should give them anything of his until I have first given out all mine.  Nor am I bound either to have so evil opinion of all other folk save myself as to think that, unless I help, the poor folk shall all fail at once, for God hath left in all this quarter no more good folk now but me!  I may think better of my neighbours and worse of myself than that, and yet come to heaven, by God’s grace, well enough.

VINCENT:  Marry, uncle, but some man will peradventure be right content, in such cases, to think his neighbours very charitable, to the intent that he may think himself at liberty to give nothing at all.