PROCTOR: Mr. Parris, you are the first minister ever did demand the deed to this house.
PARRIS: Man! Don’t a minister deserve a house to live in?
PROCTOR: To live in, yes. But to ask ownership is like you shall own the meeting house itself; the last meeting I were at you spoke so long on deeds and mortgages I thought it were an auction.
– Arthur Miller
The Crucible, Act 1. For a man of the cloth Reverend Parris is unusually greedy. He demands that the deed of the home provided for him by the parish should belong to him and not the church. Proctor argues that Parris is more concerned with ownership of his house than his ministerial duties.