n Paul's epistles there is no direction to the
congregations addressed that they should abandon their private
property; on the contrary, the continued existence of such rights is
expressly recognised and approved in his appeals for funds for the
Church at Jerusalem.[1] Can it be that, as Roscher says,[2] the
experiment in communism had produced a chronic state of poverty in the
Church at Jerusalem? Certain it is the experiment was never repeated
in any of the other apostolic congregations. The communism at
Jerusalem, if it ever existed at all, not only failed to spread to
other Churches, but failed to continue at Jerusalem itself. It is
universally admitted by competent students of the question that the
phenomenon was but temporary and transitory.[3]

[Footnote 1: _e.g._ Rom. xv. 26, 1 Cor. xvi. 1.]

[Footnote 2: _Political Economy_, vol. i. p. 246.]

[Footnote 3: Sudre, _op. cit._; Salvador, _Jesus-Christ et sa
Doctrine_, vol. ii. p. 221. See More's _Utopia_.]

The utterances of the Fathers of the Church on property are scattered
and disconnected. Nevertheless, there is sufficient cohesion in them
to enable us to form an opinion of their teaching on the subject. It
has, as we have said, frequently been asserted that they favoured
a system of communism, and disapproved of private ownership. The
supporters of this view base their arguments on a number of isolated
texts, taken out of their context, and not interpreted with any regard
to the circumstances in which they were written. 'The mistake,' as
Devas says,[1] 'of representing the early Christian Fathers of the
Church as rank socialists is frequently made by those who are friendly
to modern socialism; the reason for it is that either they have taken
passages of orthodox writers apart from their context, and without
due regard to the circumstances in which they were written, and the
meaning they would have conveyed to their hearers; or else, by a
grosser blunder, the perversions of heretics are set forth as the
doctrine of the Church, and a sad case arises of mistaken identity.' A
careful study of the patristic texts bearing on the subject leads one
to the conclusion that Mr. Devas's view is without doubt the correct
one.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Dublin Review_, Jan. 1898.]

[Footnote 2: Dr. Hogan, in an article entitled 'The Fathers of the
Church and Socialism,' in the _Irish Ecclesiastical Record_, vol.
xxv. p. 226, has examined all the texts relative to property in