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Finally, the conception of the natural community of all possessions which originated with the Stoics was firmly fixed in a tradition by More's time, although it was not accepted by all the theologian-philosophers of the Middle Ages.

In that tradition communism lay a safe distance back in the age of innocence before the Fall of Man.

It did not serve to contrast the existing order of society with a possible alternative order, because the age of innocence was not a possible alternative once man had sinned.

The actual function of patristic communism was adequately set forth by St. Gregory almost a millenium before More wrote Utopia.