ISBN: 9781230741246

Paperback, [PU: Theclassics.Us], This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from… More...

Paperback, [PU: Theclassics.Us], This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ...use. It is true that the appearance of vice, and especially of avarice, made it necessary to establish the system of private property; but behind the right of private property there still remains the more general right of all men to what they need. The institution of private property may be necessary under the actual circumstances of human life, but it is really intended to set some restraint upon that instinct, and must not be taken as equivalent to a right to stand between a man and his needs. We shall in a later volume discuss the theory of property in St Thomas Aquinas; we may at once observe that he was not afraid to carry out these principles to the conclusion that the charitable man who sees his fellowman in want, and has not wherewith to help him, may without moral fault take the rich man's property and give it to the needy.1 The canonists, as far as we have seen, down to the time of the Decretals, did not draw this conclusion. On the contrary, Gratian cites a sentence from a sermon of St Augustine which strongly condemns the latter doctrine, and treats it as a suggestion of the devil.2 At the same time, it is perhaps worth while to notice that Regino and Burchard cite a canon which suggests that the Church recognised that the moral offence of the man who was in want and stole another man's property was small, --the penance imposed in such cases is very slight.3 1 St Thomas Aquinas, ' Summa Theologica, ' 2. 2. q. 66. 7. 0. Cf. Notes in 'Econ. Review, ' Jan. 1894, by R. W. Carlyle, "Some Economic Doctrines of St Thomas Aquinas." s Gratian, ' Decretum, ' C. xiv. q. 5. c. 3: "Forte aliquis cogitat et dicit. Multi sunt Christiani divites, avari, cupidi; non habeo peccatum, si illis abstulero, et pauperibus dedero. Unde enim...<

ISBN: 9781230741246

Paperback, [PU: Theclassics.Us]