sion: 'In
spite of the words of the Fathers, in spite of the advice given by
Christ to the rich man to sell all his goods and give to the poor, in
spite of the communism of the Apostles, can one say that Christianity
condemned property? Certainly not. Christianity considered it a
counsel of perfection for a man to deprive himself of his goods; it
did not abrogate the right of anybody.'[2] The same conclusion is
reached by the Abbe Calippe in an excellent article published in _La
Semaine Sociale de France_, 1909. 'The right of property and of the
property owner are assumed.'[3] 'It is only prejudiced or superficial
minds which could make the writers of the fourth century the
precursors of modern communists or collectivists.'[4]

[Footnote 1: _L'Economia Sociale Christiana avanti Costantino_ (Genoa,
1897).]

[Footnote 2: _Histoire de la Science politique_, vol. i. p. 319.]

[Footnote 3: P. 114.]

[Footnote 4: P. 121.]

When we turn to St. Thomas Aquinas, we find that his teaching on the
subject of property is not at all out of harmony with that of the
earlier Fathers of the Church, but, on the contrary, summarises and
consolidates it. 'It remained to elaborate, to constitute a definite
theory of the right of property. It sufficed to harmonise, to
collaborate, and to relate one to the other these elements furnished
by the Christian doctors of the first four or five centuries; and this
was precisely the work of the great theologians of the Middle Ages,
especially of St. Thomas Aquinas.... In establishing his thesis St.
Thomas did not borrow from the Roman jurisconsults through the medium
of St. Isidore more than their vocabulary, their formulas, their
juridical distinctions; he also borrowed from Aristotle the arguments
upon which the philosopher based his right of property. But the ground
of his doctrine is undoubtedly of Christian origin. There is, between
the Fathers and him, a perfect continuity.'[1] 'Community of goods,'
he writes, 'is ascribed to the natural law, not that the natural
law dictates that all things should be possessed in common, and that
nothing should be possessed as one's own; but because the division of
possession is not according to the natural law, but rather arose from
human agreement, which belongs to positive law. Hence the ownership
of possessions is not contrary to the natural law, but an addition
thereto devised by human reason.' This is simply another way of
stating St. Augustine's dis