rce the line of policy which
Rome approved. Then there was the great judicial system of canon
law, a common code with similar tribunals for the whole of Western
Christendom, dealing not merely with strictly ecclesiastical affairs,
but with many matters that we should regard as economic, such as
questions of commercial morality, and also with social welfare as
affected by the law of marriage and the disposition of property by
will....'[3] 'To the influence of Christianity as a moral doctrine,'
says Dr. Ingram, 'was added that of the Church as an organisation,
charged with the application of the doctrine to men's daily
transactions. Besides the teaching of the sacred books there was a
mass of ecclesiastical legislation providing specific prescriptions
for the conduct of the faithful. And this legislation dealt with the
economic as well as with other provinces of social activity.'[4]

[Footnote 1: _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, vol. i. p.
465.]

[Footnote 2: Cunningham, _Western Civilisation_, vol. ii. pp. 2-3.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, p. 67.]

[Footnote 4: _Op. cit._, p. 27.]

The teaching of the mediaeval Church, therefore, on economic affairs
was but the application to particular facts and cases of its general
moral teaching. The suggestion, so often put forward by so-called
Christian socialists, that Christianity was the exponent of a special
social theory of its own, is unfounded. The direct opposite would be
nearer the truth. Far from concerning itself with the outward forms
of the political or economic structure, Christianity concentrated its
attention on the conduct of the individual. If Christianity can be
said to have possessed any distinctive social theory, it was intense
individualism. 'Christianity brought, from the point of view of
morals, an altogether new force by the distinctly individual and
personal character of its precepts. Duty, vice or virtue, eternal
punishment--all are marked with the most individualist imprint that
can be imagined. No social or political theory appeared, because it
was through the individual that society was to be regenerated....
We can say with truth that there is not any Christian political
economy--in the sense in which there is a Christian morality or
a Christian dogma--any more than there is a Christian physic or a
Christian medicine.'[1] In seeking to learn Christian teaching of
the Middle Ages on economic matters, we must therefore not look
for special eco