# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S181
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus, or the Apostolic Pastorale. 181

money. But money is not, in itself and by its nature, a fruit-bearing thing, as a field is, or as animals are, etc. Usury is therefore against nature. The philosophers have chiefly these arguments: 1. When men are enticed to make a profit by usury in an easier and more secure way, they neglect honest trades which are necessary for this life. Usury therefore redounds to the ruin of civil society, and it is in the interest of the state that it be forbidden. 2. In commutative justice, human society and the state are preserved through equality. But usury, by draining everyone else, brings everything to one person. This is therefore injustice, and harms both private persons and the republic itself. 3. Money was not invented to be a commodity, but rather the means of obtaining one, namely, the price. To sell money as though it were a commodity, as happens in usury, conflicts therefore with the nature for which money was invented.

Among these arguments some are ingenious, but others, as happens in argumentation, are weakened by other considerations; as, for example, when it is said that the use of money is itself its consumption; or further, that money is not a fruit-bearing thing. For experience shows that the use of money is not a consumption in the way that it is with wine; rather, that apart from the repayment of the capital, the use of money itself has a benefit, which the creditor forgoes and the debtor gains, as in the renting of a house. For the use of money does not properly consist in its being used up and consumed, but in the use of the things which are either purchased and acquired with it, or which are thereby preserved and would otherwise perish. It is said, therefore, that just as the use of a house, in renting, is separated from its substance, the same can also happen with money. Further, although money in itself bears no fruit, it evidently does bear fruit by means of a person's industry, and so on. I mention this in order to show that the surest ground is to judge concerning usury from the testimonies of Scripture. Nevertheless, the consideration of some of these arguments is not without use.

(To be continued.)

(Submitted by Dr. Sihler.)

The Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus, or the Apostolic Pastorale.

It is not the intention, in what follows, to treat these epistles in the manner of the newer scientific-theological and learned exegesis of Scripture. For this the present writer has neither the necessary aptitude nor skill. Rather, his aim is directed, with consideration of our local church circumstances and particular needs, toward [providing] glosses to