No Excuse for Keeping What Was Taken

“But it may be that those who have become masters of such property, if it is right or possible to give them that title, will assure us, by way of excuse for their conduct, that they could not keep from taking it at a time when misery in all its forms met the eye everywhere: when people were cruelly driven from their homes, slaughtered without mercy, thrust out without remorse; when the confiscation of innocent people’s property was a common thing, and persecutions and seizures of property never stopped. If any defend their conduct with reasons like these and still persist in their greed, they will be made to feel that such a course will bring punishment on themselves, all the more because this correction of evil is the very mark of our service to the Supreme God. So from now on it will be dangerous to keep what dire necessity may have driven people to take in the past, especially since it is in any case our duty to discourage greedy desires, both by persuasion and by warning examples.