# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1864_S226
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

226 Martin Chemnitz on Usury.

are obedient in patience. 2. That we come to the aid, by alms, of those who
suffer want and ask us, by sharing with them freely. For a generous gift is
just such a freely granted sharing, by which the thing given becomes so fully
the property of the recipient that in no case can either the principal itself be
taken back by the giver, or anything more be demanded over and above it.
3. Scripture also approves the contract of lending and borrowing, in which the
debtor is bound to the restitution of the principal, as we have said above
concerning the loan contract. For according to 2 Kings 4:2, Elisha himself
comes to the aid of a poor widow with a miracle, so that the borrowed
principal might be restored. 4. It also approves the remaining lawful
contracts, in which it likewise permits honest gain, as we have shown above
in the chapter on contracts.*) In Scripture, however, these forms of exchange
(communicatio) are not approved so indiscriminately that a rich glutton
would be considered justified merely because he generously gave much to
his brothers, while offering Lazarus the purchase of goods or the hiring out
of services. Rather, Scripture divides the human race into several estates
and assigns to each certain fixed contracts or forms of exchange. For, 1.,
there are beggars, who have neither money, nor goods, nor the capacity for
services by whose exchange they could acquire anything, as Lazarus, Luke
16:20; Acts 3:2; Luke 18:35; John 9:8, etc. Now purchase is a contract
approved by God; if, therefore, a rich man wanted to offer a Lazarus the
exchange of his goods by purchase, or: if you give this or do this, then I
will give, according to the unnamed contracts; or if he wanted to offer him
the loan contract in this manner: if you enter into the agreement to restore
the principal again, then I will give to you — this would without doubt be
no lawful exchange at all, but a mockery. And such contracts God does not
approve, for there is a distinction among persons. For God did not institute
purchase so that it might be carried out with beggars, but he wills that the
want of such persons be relieved by the giving of alms. 2. There are also
those who have neither goods nor money, but can render services, labor,
and carry on a trade, as the text very beautifully says in Leviticus 25:35:
"When your brother becomes poor and his hand falters" (as the original text
puts it), etc. A hand, it says, he has;

*) There it says, among other things: "The jurists define the contract as being
the mutual obligation that arises out of an agreement of several parties. The
division of contracts, however, is this: some are named, such as purchase, sale,
rent, lease, mandate, deposit for safekeeping, partnership, pledge, lending,
borrowing, free gift, gratuitous acceptance. But because the variety of dealings
is nearly endless, some contracts are termed unnamed: I give, that you may
give; I give, that you may do something; I do something, that you may do
something; I do something, that you may give something. They are, however,
reckoned among the named kinds to which they most nearly correspond."
Fol. 155.