few. For that they might subdue
others by slavery, they began to withdraw and collect together the
necessaries of life, and to keep them firmly shut up, that they might
make the bounties of heaven their own; not on account of kindness
(_humanitas_), a feeling which had no existence for them, but that
they might sweep together all the instruments of lust and avarice.'[4]

[Footnote 1: 'The Biblical and Early Christian Idea of Property,' by
Dr. V. Bartlett, in _Property, its Duties and Rights_ (London, 1913).]

[Footnote 2: _Georg._, i. 126.]

[Footnote 3: Ovid, _Met._, I. iii.]

[Footnote 4: Lactantius, _Div. Inst._, v. 5-6.]

It appears from the above passage that Lactantius regarded the era in
which a system of communism existed as long since vanished, if indeed
it ever had existed. The same idea emerges from the writings of St.
Augustine, who drew a distinction between divine and human right. 'By
what right does every man possess what he possesses?' he asks.[1] 'Is
it not by human right? For by divine right "the earth is the Lord's,
and the fullness thereof." The poor and the rich God made of one clay;
the same earth supports alike the poor and the rich. By human right,
however, one says, This estate is mine, this servant is mine, this
house is mine. By human right, therefore, is by right of the Emperor.
Why so? Because God has distributed to mankind these very human rights
through the emperors and kings of the world.'

[Footnote 1: _Tract in Joh. Ev._, vi. 25.]

The socialist commentators of St. Augustine have strained this, and
similar passages, to mean that because property rests on human, and
not on divine, right, therefore it should not exist at all. It is, of
course true that what human right has created human right can repeal;
and it is therefore quite fair to argue that all the citizens of a
community might agree to live a life of communism. That is simply an
argument to prove that there is nothing immoral in communism, and does
not prove in the very slightest degree that there is anything immoral
in property. On the contrary, so long as 'the emperors and kings of
the world' ordain that private property shall continue, it would be,
according to St. Augustine, immoral for any individual to maintain
that such ordinances were wrongful.

The correct meaning of the patristic distinction between natural and
positive law with regard to property is excellently summarised in Dr.
Carlyle's essay on _Property i