Utopia

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Whether you look at the customs of those currently in power, or at the affections of citizens among themselves and among the common people, it is all the same. Unless, of course, they argue that this law has flowed from genuine and worldly-equal justice (which they call natural law), so that the more power anyone has, the more they possess. And the more they possess, the more they must stand out among the citizens. From this it happens that we now see it accepted by the law of nations that those who can assist their citizens and neighbors with neither memorable art nor industry—provided they hold those contractual links and negotiable knots by which the estates of men are bound, and which the ignorant crowd (and men dedicated to more refined literature who stay far from the forum, acting for the sake of their own minds or the pursuit of truth) consider partly as Gordian knots and partly as charlatanry, not worth much wonder—those men possess the wealth of a thousand citizens, and often of single cities, or even more. And finally, these men are called wealthy, thrifty, and magnificent collectors.

Indeed, in these centuries, in these institutions, and in these customs—among those nations that have established this as law—everyone holds status by faith and authority in proportion to the magnitude of the wealth with which they have built their homes, both for themselves and their heirs. This is all the more true the further their estates, gained by ancestors and accumulated by brilliant additions in competition, have been extended to grandchildren and great-grandchildren; that is, the further and wider they have pushed away their neighbors, kin, relatives, and blood relations. But CHRIST, the possessor...