Like Campanella, he distinguished between Christ, who sealed the gospel of charity with his blood, and those Christians, who would be the first to crucify their Lord if he returned to earth.
That Shelley lived up to his religious creed is amply proved.

To help the needy and to relieve the sick, seemed to him a simple duty, which he cheerfully discharged.

"His charity, though liberal, was not weak.

He inquired personally into the circumstances of his petitioners, visited the sick in their beds,....and kept a regular list of industrious poor, whom he assisted with small sums to make up their accounts." At Marlow, the miserable condition of the lace-makers called forth all his energies; and Mrs.Shelley tells us that an acute ophthalmia, from which he twice suffered, was contracted in a visit to their cottages.

A story told by Leigh Hunt about his finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, and carrying her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man as charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ's parable about the Good Samaritan.