II. RETREAT OF THE CHURCH, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC.
But about the middle of the seventeenth century Sir Robert Filmer gave this doctrine the heaviest blow it ever received in England. Taking up Dr. Fenton's treatise, he answered it, and all works like it, in a way which, however unsuitable to this century, was admirably adapted to that. He cites Scripture and chops logic after a masterly manner. Characteristic is this declaration: "St. Paul doth, with one breath, reckon up seventeen sins, and yet usury is none of them; but many preachers can not reckon up seven deadly sins, except they make usury one of them." Filmer followed Fenton not only through his theology, but through his political economy, with such relentless keenness that the old doctrine seems to have been then and there practically worried out of existence, so far as England was concerned.
Departures from the strict scriptural doctrines regarding interest soon became frequent in Protestant countries, and they were followed up with especial vigour in Holland. Various theologians in the Dutch Church attempted to assert the scriptural view by excluding bankers from the holy communion; but the commercial vigour of the republic was too strong: Salmasius led on the forces of right reason brilliantly, and by the middle of the seventeenth century the question was settled rightly in that country. This work was aided, indeed, by a far greater man, Hugo Grotius; but here was shown the power of an established dogma. Great as Grotius was—and it may well be held that his book on War and Peace has wrought more benefit to humanity than any other attributed to human authorship—he was, in the matter of interest for money, too much entangled in theological reasoning to do justice to his cause or to himself. He declared the prohibition of it to be scriptural, but resisted the doctrine of Aristotle, and allowed interest on certain natural and practical grounds.
In Germany the struggle lasted longer. Of some little significance, perhaps, is the demand of Adam Contzen, in 1629, that lenders at interest should be punished as thieves; but by the end of the seventeenth century Puffendorf and Leibnitz had gained the victory.
Protestantism, open as it was to the currents of modern thought, could not long continue under the dominion of ideas unfavourable to economic development, and perhaps the most remarkable proof of this was presented early in the eighteenth century in America, by no less strict a theologian than Cotton Mather. In his Magnalia he argues against the whole theological view with a boldness, acuteness, and good sense which cause us to wonder that this can be the same man who was so infatuated regarding witchcraft. After an argument so conclusive as his, there could have been little left of the old anti-economic doctrine in New England.(454)
(454) For Calvin's views, see his letter published in the appendix to
Pearson's Theories on Usury. His position is well-stated in Bohm-Bawerk,
pp. 28 et seq., where citations are given. See also Economic Tracts,
No. IV, New York, 1881, pp. 34, 35; and for some serviceable Protestant
fictions, see Cunningham, Christian Opinion on Usury, pp. 60, 61. For
Dumoulin (Molinaeus), see Bohm-Bawerk, as above, pp. 29 et seq. For
debates on usury in the British Parliament in Elizabeth's time, see
Cobbett, Parliamentary History, vol. i, pp 756 et seq. A striking
passage in Shakespeare is found in the Merchant of Venice, Act I, scene
iii: "If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not as to thy friend; for
when did friendship take a breed for barren metal of his friend?" For
the right direction taken by Lord Bacon, see Neumann, Geschichte des
Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1864, pp. 497, 498. For Salmasius, see
his De Usuris, Leyden, 1638, and for others mentioned, see Bohm-Bawerk,
pp. 34 et seq.; also Lecky, vol. ii. p. 256. For the saving clause
inderted by the bishops in the statute of James I, see the Corpus Juris
Eccles. Anglic., p. 1071; also Murray, History of Usury, Philadelphia,
1866, p. 49.
For Blaxton, see his English Usurer, or Usury Condemned, by John Blaxton, Preacher of God's Word, London, 1634. Blaxton gives some of Calvin's earlier utterances against interest. For Bishop Sands;s sermon, see p. 11. For Filmer, see his Quaestio Quodlibetica, London, 1652, reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, vol x, pp. 105 et seq. For Grotius, see the De Jure Belli ac Pacis, lib. ii, cap. xii. For Cotton Mather's argument, see the Magnalia, London, 1702, pp. 5, 52.
But while the retreat of the Protestant Church from the old doctrine regarding the taking of interest was henceforth easy, in the Catholic Church it was far more difficult. Infallible popes and councils, with saints, fathers, and doctors, had so constantly declared the taking of any interest at all to be contrary to Scripture, that the more exact though less fortunate interpretation of the sacred text relating to interest continued in Catholic countries. When it was attempted in France in the seventeenth century to argue that usury "means oppressive interest," the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne declared that usury is the taking of any interest at all, no matter how little; and the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel was cited to clinch this argument.
Another attempt to ease the burden of industry and commerce was made by declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as a matter of favour but as a matter of right." This, too, was solemnly condemned by Pope innocent XI.