Utopia

...founder and moderator of possessions, sanctioned the Pythagorean communion and charity left among his followers with a bright example, having condemned Acts 5:1-11 Ananias to death for violating the law of communion. By this institution, CHRIST surely seems to me to have abrogated all the argumentative volumes of that civil and pontifical law, which is more recent, at least among his own. We see this very law hold the fortress of prudence today, and rule our fates.

Utopia, however, the island which I hear is also called Udepotia from Greek ou-depote, "nowhere" or "never", is said to have imbibed Christian rites and genuine wisdom itself—if we believe it—both publicly and privately, and to have preserved it untainted to this very day. For it retains three divine institutions: the equality of goods and evils among citizens, or a civility absolute in all its parts, and a constant and persistent love of peace and tranquility, and the contempt of gold and silver with joined hands, as they say. These are, so to speak, three destroyers of all fraud, imposture, circumvention, craftiness, and the wickedness of tricksters. If the gods above would act in their own name so that these three heads of Utopian law were fixed with iron nails of firm and established persuasion in the minds of all mortals, you would immediately see pride, greed, insane contention, and almost all other wounding weapons of the Stygian adversary collapse and languish. And you would see that immense force of legal volumes, which holds so many excellent and solid talents captive until death, allowed to be surrendered to woodworms or dedicated to the wrappings of workshops.