NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 333 



ness, and good sense wliicb. cause us to wonder that tliis 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.* 



But while the retreat in the Protestant Church was hence- 

 forth easy, in the Catholic Church it was far more difficult. In- 

 fallible popes and councils, saints, fathers, and doctors, had so 

 constantly declared the taking of any interest at all to be con- 

 trary to Scripture, that the more exact though less fortunate in- 

 terpretation 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 in- 

 terest," 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 favor, but as a matter of right." This, too, was 

 solemnly condemned by Pope Innocent XI. 



Again, an attempt was made to find a way out of the difficulty 

 by declaring that " usury is interest greater than the law allows." 

 This, too, was condemned, and so also was the declaration that 

 " usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time." 



Still, the forces of right reason pressed on, and, among them, 

 in the seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon. He 

 attempted to gloss over the declarations of Scripture against 

 usance in an elaborate treatise, but was immediately confronted 

 by Bossuet, the greatest of French bishops, one of the keenest 

 and strongest of thinkers. Just as Bossuet had mingled Script- 



* 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 British Parliament in Elizabeth's time, see Cobbett, Parliamentary History, vol. 

 i, pp. 756 et seq. The passage in Shakespeare is 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 from his friend ? " For the right direction taken by Lord 

 Bacon, see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1865, pp. 497, 498. 

 For Grotius, see the De Jure Belli ac Pacis, lib. ii, cap. xii ; and for Salmasius and others 

 mentioned, see Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 34 et seq., also Lecky, vol. ii, p. 256. For the saving clause 

 inserted 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, Lon- 

 don, 1634. Blaxton gives some of Calvin's earlier utterances against interest. For Bishop 

 Sauds's sermon, see p. 11. For Cotton Mather's argument, see the Magnalia, London, 1702, 

 pp. 51, 52. 



