expresses the same opinion:  ’Christian teachers, following the example of St. Paul, implicitly accept slavery as not in itself incompatible with the Christian law.  The Apostle counsels slaves to obey their masters, and to bear with their condition patiently.  This estimate of slavery continued to prevail until it became fixed in the systematised ethical teaching of the schools; and so it remained without any conspicuous modification until the end of the eighteenth century.’  The same interpretation of early Christian teaching is accepted by the Protestant scholar, Dr. Bartlett:  ’The practical attitude of Seneca and the early Christians to slavery was much the same.  They bade the individual rise to a sense of spiritual freedom in spite of outward bondage, rather than denounce the institution as an altogether illegitimate form of property.’[5]

[Footnote 1:  See Roscher, Political Economy, s. 73.]

[Footnote 2:  Eph., vi. 5, 6, 9.]

[Footnote 3:  Ep. ad Luc., 73.]

[Footnote 4:  Janet, op. cit., p. 317.]

[Footnote 5:  ‘Biblical and Early Christian Idea of Property,’ Property, Its Duties and Rights (London, 1915), p. 110; Franck, Reformateurs et Publicistes de l’Europe:  Moyen age—­Renaissance, p. 87.  On the whole question by far the best authority is volume iii. of Wallon’s Histoire de l’Esclavage dans l’Antiquite.]

Several texts might be collected from the writings of the Fathers which would seem to show that according to patristic teaching the institution of slavery was unjustifiable.  We do not propose to cite or to explain these texts one by one, in view of the quite clear and unambiguous exposition of the subject given by St. Thomas Aquinas, whose teaching is the more immediate subject of this essay; we shall content ourselves by reminding the reader of the precisely similar texts relating to the institution of property which we have examined above, and by stating that the corresponding texts on the subject of slavery are capable of an exactly similar interpretation.  ’The teaching of the Apostle,’ says Janet, ’and of the Fathers on slavery is the same as their teaching on property.’[1] The author from whom we are quoting, and on whose judgment too much reliance cannot be placed, then proceeds to cite many of the patristic texts on property, which we quoted in the section dealing with that subject, and asks:  ’What conclusion should one draw from these different passages?  It is that in Christ there are no rich and no poor, no mine and no thine; that in Christian perfection all things are common to all men, but that nevertheless property is legitimate and derived from human law.  Is it not in the same sense that the Fathers condemned slavery as contrary to divine law, while respecting it as comformable to human law?  The Fathers abound in texts contrary to slavery, but have we not seen a great number of texts contrary to property?’[2] The closeness