# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S175
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Martin Chemnitz on Usury. 175

When Justinian therefore observed that, if usury were entirely abolished, the poor would be supported by no one through lending, and further, that debtors would seek to enrich themselves to the detriment of their creditors, he established the following limitation of usury: for nautical usury, or for those engaged in maritime trade, he fixed the centesima; for persons of rank, the trientes, 4 percent; for merchants, 8 percent; for the rest, 6 percent; and further, for usury that becomes due, without any agreement, on account of delay, he fixed 6 percent. And because that word of Luke 6:35, "Lend!" was again taken merely as counsel, men practiced freely, and without qualms of conscience, such usury as was restricted by the civil laws.*) But it was not only in civil ordinances that men proceeded thus; also among the people of God under the Old Covenant, the covetous sought a pretext in the Word of God itself, which they used for their usurious ungodliness, in order either to defend it or at least to excuse it. For because Scripture condemns usury in one place, and in another seems to permit it, as in Deuteronomy 23:19–20: "You shall not charge usury to your brother, but to the foreigner [you may]," it therefore seems that Scripture does not disapprove of moderate usury, but condemns only its excess. And under this pretext, usury also began to reign freely among the people of God, after they had spent some time among the heathen in the Babylonian exile. Nehemiah 5:7. Further, because Deuteronomy 15:6 and 28:12 list among the divine blessings, "You shall lend to many nations," etc., the Jews therefore now defend their Ribbis not only as a permissible thing, but even boast of it as of a special blessing of God — that in that sorrowful and long captivity they nevertheless practice usury upon the nations by whom they complain of being held captive; and that the nations borrow from the Jews at interest is, they say, a testimony that they [the nations] are under the curse.

We shall indeed deal hereafter with the arguments which the patrons of usury employ; but for now we shall only remove that pretext, as though Scripture approved of any usury at all. We speak first of the passage Deuteronomy 23:19–20. Some, however, give this explanation of it. Usury toward foreigners is, they say, neither commanded there nor permitted; but because Scripture wills that we acknowledge all men as our neighbors, the sense is rather this: whomever one practices usury upon, one treats not as brother and neighbor, but as an enemy, and it is exactly the same as if one had robbed him. And on this

*) From this one sees how the antichristian teaching — that the strictest requirements of the Word of God are not commandments but only counsels for those who wished to be especially holy and perfect and, as it were, to do something over and above — has also forcefully penetrated the Protestant Church, and how the Pharisaic dissolving of the commandments has repeated itself within it as well. But this is something more frightful than one suspects. Cf. Matthew 5:19. To this must be added that where the Law is dissolved, the Gospel too is damaged. D. R.