Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/347

Rh, and good sense whicb. 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.

But while the retreat in the Protestant Church was henceforth easy, in the Catholic Church it was far more difficult. Infallible popes and councils, 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 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