Can financial incentives be used to make converts?

St. Francis De Sales offered a 4,000 crown pension to Theodore Beza. Jules Michelet, *Priests, Women and Families* p. 6 : >This man, of so sweet a temper, did not always confine his exertions to words of peace and persuasion. His zeal for converting led him to make use of less honorable means, such as interest, money, place, authority, fear; he made the Duke of Savoy go from village to village and expel the remaining few who refused to abjure their faith.* Money, all-powerful in this poor country, seemed to him so irresistible as an argument, that he went to Geneva to try and buy over old Theodore Beza, by offering him a pension of four thousand crowns from the Pope. Can financial incentives be used to make converts?