Janet takes the same view of the patristic utterances on this subject:[4] ’What do the Fathers say?  It is that in Jesus Christ there is no mine and thine.  Nothing is more true, without doubt; in the divine order, in the order of absolute charity, where men are wholly wrapt up in God, distinction and inequality of goods would be impossible.  But the Fathers saw clearly that such a state of things was not realisable here below.  What did they do?  They established property on human law, positive law, imperial law.  Communism is either a Utopia or a barbarism; a Utopia if one imagine it founded on universal devotion; a barbarism if one imposes it by force.’[5]

[Footnote 1:  Property, Its Duties and Rights (London, 1913).]

[Footnote 2:  De Off., i. 7.]

[Footnote 3:  Seneca, Ep., xiv. 2.]

[Footnote 4:  Histoire de la Science politique, vol. i. p. 330.]

[Footnote 5:  See also Jarrett, Mediaeval Socialism.]

It must not be concluded that the evidence of the approbation by the Fathers of private property is purely negative or solely derived from the interpretation of possibly ambiguous texts.  On the contrary, the lawfulness of property is emphatically asserted on more than one occasion.  ‘To possess riches,’ says Hilary of Poictiers,[1] ’is not wrongful, but rather the manner in which possession is used....  It is a crime to possess wrongfully rather than simply to possess.’  ’Who does not understand,’ asks St. Augustine,[2] ’that it is not sinful to possess riches, but to love and place hope in them, and to prefer them to truth or justice?’ Again, ’Why do you reproach us by saying that men renewed in baptism ought no longer to beget children or to possess fields and houses and money?  Paul allows it.’[3] According to Ambrose,[4] ’Riches themselves are not wrongful.  Indeed, “redemptio animae* viri divitiae* ejus,” because he who gives to the poor saves his soul.  There is therefore a place for goodness in these material riches.  You are as steersmen in a great sea.  He who steers his ship well, quickly crosses the waves, and comes to port; but he who does not know how to control his ship is sunk by his own weight.  Wherefore it is written, “Possessio divitum civitas firmissima."’ A Council in A.D. 415 condemned the proposition held by Pelagius that ’the rich cannot be saved unless they renounced their goods.’[5]

[Footnote 1:  Comm. on Matt. xix. 9.]

[Footnote 2:  Contra Ad., xx. 2.]

[Footnote 3:  De Mor.  Eccl.  Cath., i. 35.]

[Footnote 4:  Epist., lxiii. 92.]

[Footnote 5:  Revue Archeologique, 1880, p. 321.]