The Warfare of Science

by Andrew Dickson White

But this mistaken policy was not confined to the older Church. The Reformed Church was led by Luther and several of his associates into the same line of thought and practice. Said Luther: "To exchange anything with any one and gain by the exchange, is not to do a charity, but to steal. Every usurer is a thief worthy of the gibbet. I call those usurers who lend money at five or six per cent." [142]

The English Reformers showed the same tendency. Under Henry VIII., the law of Henry VII. against taking interest had been modified; but the revival of religious feeling under Edward VI. caused, in 1552, the passage of the "Bill of Usury." In this it is said: "Forasmuch as usury is by the Word of God utterly prohibited, as a vice most odious and detestable, as in divers places of the Holy Scriptures it is evident to be seen, which thing by no godly teachings and persuasions can sink into the hearts of divers greedy, uncharitable, and covetous persons of this realm, nor yet by any terrible threatenings of God's wrath and vengeance," etc., etc., it is enacted that whosoever shall thereafter lend money "for any manner of usury, increase, lucre, gain, or interest, to be had, received, or hoped for," shall forfeit principal and interest, and suffer imprisonment and fine at the king's pleasure. [143]

But, most fortunately, it happened that Calvin turned in the right direction, and there was developed among Protestants the serviceable fiction that "usury" means illegal or oppressive interest. Under cover of this fiction commerce and trade revived rapidly in Protestant countries, though with occasional checks from exact interpreters of Scripture.

But, in the older Church, the more correct though less fortunate interpretation of the sacred texts relating to interest continued. 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 judgment.

Another attempt to ease the burden on industry and commerce was made by declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as matter of favor but as matter of right." This, too, was solemnly condemned by Pope Innocent XI.

Again the army of right reason pressed forward, declaring that "usury is interest greater than the law allows." This, too, was condemned, and the declaration that "usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time" was condemned by Pope Alexander VII.

Still the attacking forces pressed on, and among them, in the seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon: he attempts to gloss over the strict interpretation of Scripture in this matter by an elaborate treatise: he is immediately confronted by Bossuet.

It seems hardly possible that one of the greatest intellects of a period so near us could have been so doubly deceived. Yet Bossuet, the glory of the French Church, one of the keenest and strongest of thinkers, not only mingled Scripture with astronomy, and opposed the Copernican theory, but also mingled Scripture with political economy, and denounced the lending of money at interest. He declared that the Scriptures, the councils of the Church from the beginning, the popes, the fathers, all interpreted the prohibition of "usury" to be a prohibition of any lending at interest, and Bossuet demonstrated this interpretation as the true one. Simon was put to confusion, and his book condemned. [144]