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Mic_3:10 They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.
Ver. 10. They build up Zion with blood] Heb. bloods, that is, with goods gotten by rapine and robbery, to the utter undoing of many poor oppressed, whose livelihood is their life, Mar_12:44 Luk_8:43. How much better Selimus, the Great Turk, who, being upon his death bed moved by Pyrrhus, the basha, to bestow the great wealth taken by him from the Persian merchants upon some notable hospital for relief of the poor, took order that those evil gotten goods should be forthwith restored again to the right owners, to the shame of many Christians who will not be drawn to do so. Our Henry VII, indeed, in his last will and testament, devised and willed restitution should be made of all such moneys as had unjustly been levied by his officers. But how few such princes are to be found! It is held a goodly thing to build Zion, though it be with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. But God, as he will not have ex rapina holocaustum, so he infinitely abhorreth all those who, under pretext of religion in building some poor hospital with the fragments of their accursed wealth, seek to make him a party, a partaker of their cruelty, as those did, Isa_66:8; Isa_66:4 Mar_7:11 Mat_23:14. Our Henry III, when he had, after his many great exactions, sent the friar minors a load of frieze {a} to clothe them, had the same sent back again with this message, That he ought not to give alms of what he had rent from the poor, neither would they accept of that abominable gift. Zion is not to be builded or beautified with bloods.
{a} A kind of coarse woollen cloth, with a nap, usually on one side only ŒD