to our religion.  “It was not even allowed to mark out or to divide the plain with a boundary:  men sought all things in common,"[2] since God had given the earth in common to all, that they might pass their life in common, not that mad and raging avarice might claim all things for itself, and that riches produced for all might not be wanting to any.  And this saying of the poet ought so to be taken, not as suggesting the idea that individuals at that time had no private property, but it must be regarded as a poetical figure, that we may understand that men were so liberal, that they did not shut up the fruits of the earth produced for them, nor did they in solitude brood over the things stored up, but admitted the poor to share the fruits of their labour: 

  “Now streams of milk, now streams of nectar flowed."[3]

And no wonder, since the storehouses of the good literally lay open to all.  Nor did avarice intercept the divine bounty, and thus cause hunger and thirst in common; but all alike had abundance, since they who had possessions gave liberally and bountifully to those who had not.  But after Saturnus had been banished from heaven, and had arrived in Latium ... not only did the people who had a superfluity fail to bestow a share upon others, but they even seized the property of others, drawing everything to their private gain; and the things which formerly even individuals laboured to obtain for the common use of all were now conveyed to the powers of a 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.’