Half Past Noon

In his sermon “Christian Charity,” Jonathan Edwards argues that Christian virtue should animate both private (voluntary) giving as well as legally-imposed public welfare. The two sources of poor relief need not be set at odds with each other (as some of his contemporaries were apparently suggesting). Further, the historical circumstances do not fundamentally alter this relationship; both 1st century Christians under unregenerate rule and 18th century New England Puritans have incentive to support both private and public poor relief. While the two sources may have different aims and modes of relief, they are not inherently rivals, even as private charity is preferred:

Nor do I suppose it was ever the design of the law, requiring the various towns to support their own poor, to cut off all occasion for Christian charity: nor is it fit there should be such a law. It is fit that the law should make provision for those that have no estates of their own; it is not fit that persons who are reduced to that extremity should be left to so precarious a source of supply as a voluntary charity. They are in extreme necessity of relief, and therefore it is fit that there should be something sure for them to depend on. But a voluntary charity in this corrupt world is an uncertain thing. Therefore the wisdom of the legislature did not think fit to leave those who are so reduced, upon such a precarious foundation for subsistence.