Chapter 11

CHURCH HISTORY.

The Church, from the time of the apostles, was emphatic in its denunciation of usury.

Schaff-Herzog says: "All the apostolic fathers condemned the taking of usury." The Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge declares the same.

Chrysostom said: "Nothing is baser in this world than usury, nothing more cruel."

Basil describes a scene so real that we can scarcely realize that he wrote over fifteen hundred years ago. After stating the usurer's protestations of having no money, to the victim, who seeks a loan without interest, he says: "Then the suppliant mentions interest and utters the word security. All is changed. The frown is relaxed; with a genial smile he recounts old family connections. Now it is 'My friend, I will see if I have any money by me. Yes, there is that very sum which a man, I know, has left in my hands in deposit for profit. He named a very heavy interest. However, I will certainly take something off and give it to you on better terms.' With pretenses like this he fawns on the wretched victim and induces him to swallow the barb."

Of the man who has borrowed on interest, he says: "At first he is bright and joyous and shines with another's splendor * * * now night brings no rest, no sun is bright. He hates the days that are hurrying on, for time as it runs adds the interest to its tale."

The fathers unanimously condemned the taking of interest, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome can be quoted against it. The popes followed the teachings of the fathers and forbade it under severe penalties. The priests guilty of this sin were degraded from their orders. The laymen found guilty were excommunicated. Interest paid could be reclaimed, not only from the usurer but from his heirs. A bargain, though confirmed by an oath never to claim back the interest paid, was declared not binding. This action of the popes was confirmed by councils.

Charlemagne, in France, forbid the taking of usury either by priests or laity.

A council at Westminster (1126) approved the degradation of all clergy, who were guilty of this practice.

Archbishop Sands said: "This canker (usury) hath corrupted all England."

A council in Vienna (1311) reaffirmed the denunciations of previous popes and councils, and then adds: "If any shall obstinately persist in the error of presuming to affirm that the taking of usury is not a sin, we decree that he shall be punished as a heretic."

There is no record of the repeal of any of these edicts.

The leaders of the Protestant reformation also denounced usury.

Luther was violent in his opposition, using the strongest language he could command. "Whoever eats up, robs and steals the nourishment of another, commits as great a murder, as he who carves a man or utterly undoes him. Such does a usurer, and he sits the while on his stool, when he ought rather to be hanging from the gallows."

Melancthon, Beza and others are accounted against usury.

The decisions of Ecclesiastical Councils were numerous and emphatic until the seventeenth century. Since that time interest taking has become common, all but universal, but there is no record found anywhere of its direct approval by any ecclesiastical body. The Church has come to tolerate it but has never given it official approval.

Usury has not been included in any creed or confession of faith, nor has it been directly approved by any council or general assembly.

The truth has not been left in any age without its witness. There have always been those more or less prominent in the Church who contended that it was unjust and oppressive. Some of them have been of world-wide distinction. The writer has a letter written him by John Clark Ridpath, the historian, expressing his agreement with the views presented in these pages. Another of these is brilliant John Ruskin, recently deceased. Quotations from him will close this review.

"I have not so perverted my soul nor palsied my brain as to expect to be advantaged by that adhesion (usury). I do not expect that because I have gathered much to find Nature or man gathering more for me; to find eighteen pence in my box in the morning instead of the shilling as a reward of my continence, or to make an income of my Koran by lending it to poor scholars. If I think he can read it and will carefully turn the leaves by the outside, he is welcome to read it for nothing."

"Thus in all other possible or conceivable cases, the moment our capital is increased by having lent it, be it but the estimation of a hair, that hair-breadth of increase is usury, just as much as stealing a farthing is theft no less than stealing a million."