Lactantius, Divine Institutes 6.12

This perfect justice safeguards the human society the philosophers discuss; it is the greatest and truest fruit of wealth. Wealth must not be spent on one’s own pleasure but on the salvation of many, not on present personal gain but on justice, which alone does not perish. Therefore we must hold firmly that the duty of mercy excludes every hope of reward from people; its wage is to be expected from God alone. If you look for repayment from human beings, the act ceases to be humanity and becomes benefit-usury, and no one can be said to have deserved well who acts for himself rather than for another. Yet the matter circles back to the same point: whoever provides for another while hoping for nothing in return truly provides for himself, because he will receive the reward from God. Likewise God commands that when we prepare a dinner we invite those who cannot reciprocate or repay, so that no act of our life may lack the gift of mercy. No one should think, however, that he is forbidden either communion with friends or charity with neighbors; God has made known to us what the true and just work is, so that we ought to live with our neighbors while knowing that the one pertains to man, the other to God.

Hospitality is the chief virtue, as the philosophers also say, but they twist it away from true justice toward utility. Cicero rightly reports Theophrastus’ praise of hospitality, calling it very becoming to open the houses of illustrious men to illustrious guests. He erred in the same way, though, when he said generosity should be directed to the worthy. The house of a just and wise man ought not to be open to the illustrious but to the humble and cast out; the illustrious and powerful lack nothing, since their own wealth and honor defend and honor them. A just man must do nothing except what is beneficial, yet a benefit that is returned perishes and ends, for we cannot keep something whole whose price has been paid to us. The logic of justice therefore turns on those benefits that remain safe and uncorrupted, and they remain only when given to people who can in no way be of use. Cicero, when receiving illustrious guests, looked to nothing but utility and did not hide the advantage he hoped to gain; he says the man who does this will become powerful among foreigners through the favor of princes whom he has bound to himself by the rights of hospitality and friendship. Oh, how many arguments could convict Cicero’s inconsistency if I pursued them — and not so much with my words as with his own! He declares that whoever refers everything to his own utility is in no way a good man, and he also denies that it belongs to a simple and open person to scheme, feign, pretend, seem to do one thing while doing another, or offer himself to another while actually serving himself; such conduct belongs rather to the malicious, cunning, deceitful, and sly. How then could he defend that ambitious hospitality against the charge of malice? You circle every gate, inviting the leaders of peoples and cities into your house so that through them you may gain power among their citizens, yet you wish to appear just, humane, and hospitable while you strive for your own advantage. He did this not so much from inadvertence — what fits Cicero less? — but, ignorant of the true law, he knowingly and wisely fell into these snares. So that he might be forgiven, he testified that he gave precepts not for true justice, which he does not hold, but for the shadow and image of justice. Therefore the shadowy, imaginary teacher deserves pardon, and truth must not be demanded of one who confesses he does not know it.

The redemption of captives is a great and noble work of justice, which Cicero himself approved. He says this kindness is also useful to the republic: captives are redeemed from servitude, the poor are enriched. I prefer this practice of kindness to the giving of gifts; it is the work of serious and great men. It is therefore the proper work of just men to feed the poor and redeem captives, since among the unjust, if anyone does these things, they are called serious and great; those who were not expected to do good earn the highest praise for doing it. Whoever does good for a relative, neighbor, or friend deserves either no praise or certainly not great praise, because he ought to do it, and it is impious and detestable not to do what nature and kinship demand; if he does it, he acts not so much for glory as to avoid reproach. But the one who does good for a stranger and an unknown person is truly worthy of praise, because he is moved by humanity alone. Justice exists where no bond of necessity compels the doing of good. This duty of kindness should not be ranked even below the giving of gifts, which is the act of one who compares and chooses the better of two goods. That lavish giving by men who throw away their patrimony in gifts is empty, slight, and furthest from all justice; such things should not even be called gifts, since no one receives them except those who do not deserve to receive. Protecting and defending destitute orphans and widows who need aid is no less a work of justice; divine law prescribes it to all, because all good judges consider it their duty to favor those who lack natural protection and to strive to benefit them. These works, however, are properly ours, who have received the law and the very words of God commanding. The philosophers feel by nature that it is just to protect those who lack protection, but they do not perceive why. God, whose clemency is perpetual, commands that widows and orphans be defended and nurtured so that no one may be held back by respect and pity for his own children from undergoing death for justice and faith, but may face it without hesitation and with courage, knowing he leaves his dear ones to God and that they will never lack protection. It is also a work of the highest humanity and great importance to take in and care for the sick who have no one to attend them; whoever does this acquires a living sacrifice for God, and what he gives to another for a time he will receive from God for eternity. The last and greatest duty of piety is the burial of strangers and the poor, which those teachers of virtue and justice did not even touch. They could not see it because they measured all duties by utility. In the other matters mentioned above, although they did not hold the true limit, they perceived some utility and were held by a kind of scent of truth, erring less; but this duty, because they could see no utility in it, they abandoned. Indeed there were not lacking those who called burial superfluous and said there is no evil in lying unburied and cast out.