An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching by George O'Brien
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page 14 of 251 (05%)
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transactions. Besides the teaching of the sacred books there was a
mass of ecclesiastical legislation providing specific prescriptions for the conduct of the faithful. And this legislation dealt with the economic as well as with other provinces of social activity.'[4] [Footnote 1: _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, vol. i. p. 465.] [Footnote 2: Cunningham, _Western Civilisation_, vol. ii. pp. 2-3.] [Footnote 3: _Ibid._, p. 67.] [Footnote 4: _Op. cit._, p. 27.] The teaching of the mediƦval Church, therefore, on economic affairs was but the application to particular facts and cases of its general moral teaching. The suggestion, so often put forward by so-called Christian socialists, that Christianity was the exponent of a special social theory of its own, is unfounded. The direct opposite would be nearer the truth. Far from concerning itself with the outward forms of the political or economic structure, Christianity concentrated its attention on the conduct of the individual. If Christianity can be said to have possessed any distinctive social theory, it was intense individualism. 'Christianity brought, from the point of view of morals, an altogether new force by the distinctly individual and personal character of its precepts. Duty, vice or virtue, eternal punishment--all are marked with the most individualist imprint that can be imagined. No social or political theory appeared, because it was through the individual that society was to be regenerated.... We can say with truth that there is not any Christian political |
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