Chapter CXXXVI. Against those leading an evil life in hermitages: and how he would that all things should be in common

179. Though the preceding story makes us know the Saint's charity which bade him rejoice over the progress of his loved ones, yet we believe that those who lived otherwise in hermitages met with no gentle rebuke: for many turn the abode of contemplation into a place of idleness, and change the hermit-rule, which was devised for perfecting the soul, into a sink of pleasure. The system of the anchorites of these times is that each should live as he pleases. This does not apply to all; for we know that saints living in the flesh are leading exemplary lives as hermits; we know also that the fathers who went before bloomed in solitude. O that the ^hermits of our time may not degenerate from that primitive beauty the praise of whose righteousness remains for ever!

180. S. Francis, in exhorting all his followers to charity, encouraged them to show to one another the kindness and friendliness of members of a family. "I will," said he, "that my brethren show themselves sons of the same mother, and that if one asks another for a tunic, or cord, or anything else, that other should give it liberally. Let them share their books and all their pleasant things; nay, rather, let one compel another to take them." And lest in this matter he should be speaking of anything which Christ was not working in himself, he was the first to do all these things.