Canon 4 A bishop may not extort money from his clergy

The herald of the truth, Paul the divine Apostle, as if laying down a canon for the presbyters of the Ephesians, or rather also for the whole priestly company, spoke thus boldly, saying: I have coveted no one's silver, or gold, or apparel; in all things I have shown you that, labouring thus, you must help the weak, reckoning it blessed to give rather than to receive. Therefore we too, having been taught by him, decree that a bishop by no means contrive, for base gain, making excuses in sins, to demand gold, or silver, or anything else in kind from the bishops, or clerics, or monks who serve under him. For the Apostle says: The unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God; and: The children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. If anyone, then, should be found, for the demanding of gold or of anything else in kind, or on account of some passion of his own, barring from the liturgy and excommunicating any of the clerics under him, or shutting a venerable church so that the liturgies of God are not celebrated in it, and directing his own madness against a thing without sense, he is truly without sense himself, and he shall be subject to the same suffering, and his labour shall return upon his own head, as a transgressor of the commandment of God and of the apostolic ordinances. For Peter too, the chief summit of the Apostles, commands: Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not by constraint but willingly, according to God; not for base gain, but eagerly; not as lording it over the charges allotted to you, but being examples to the flock; and when the Chief Shepherd is manifested, you shall receive the unfading crown of glory.