Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/420



(Greek Church; 347-407)

Tell me, whence are you rich? From whom have you received? From your grandfather, you say; from your father. Are you able to show, ascending in the order of generation, that that possession is just throughout the whole series of preceding generations? Its beginning and root grew necessarily out of injustice. Why? Because God did not make this man rich and that man poor from the beginning. Nor, when He created the world, did He allot much treasure to one man, and forbid another to seek any. He gave the same earth to be cultivated by all. Since, therefore, His bounty is common, how comes it that you have so many fields, and your neighbor not even a clod of earth? The idea we should have of the rich and covetous—they are truly as robbers, who, standing in the public highway, despoil the passers.

(Latin; 354-430)

The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor. They who possess superfluities, possess the goods of others.

(Latin; 540-604)

They must be admonished who do not seek another's goods, yet do not give of their own, that they may know that the earth from which they have received is common to all men, and therefore its products are given in common to all. They, therefore, wrongly think they are innocent who