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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: ... claimed that he might receive in return, in addition to his money, an amount exactly equal to this diminution in his income. But such evasions were looked upon with little favour by the great body of theologians, and the name of St. Thomas Aquinas was triumphantly cited against them. Opposition on scriptural grounds to the taking of interest was not confined to the older Church. Protestantism 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. But it is only just to say that at a later period Luther took a much more moderate view. Melanchthon, defining usury as any interest whatever, condemned it again and again; and the Goldberg Catechism of 1558, for which he wrote a preface and recommendation, declares every person taking interest for money a thief. From generation to generation this doctrine was upheld by the more eminent divines of the Lutheran Church in all parts of Germany. The English reformers showed the same hostility to interest-bearing loans. Under Henry VIII the law of Henry VII against taking interest had been modified for the better; 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...

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