Note 4 — THE PREFACE
Reading edition
That the Franciscan Friers had no property, in common or in private; a question, if any ever was, de lana caprina. What was it to mankind? what to the Christian Religion, whether a few Friers had, or had not any property? No man was the better for believing they had, no man the worse for believing they had not. And yet to read the bulls of the Popes one would think, that the whole of Christianity had been at stake.