# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1864_S233
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Martin Chemnitz on Usury. 233

it certainly does not correspond to that love that others alone should
undertake the labors and bear the risks, while you, idle and unexposed to
danger, fatten yourself on the labors and risks of others. But if the
cause lies in health, or in age, or in one's estate (as with widows, or
with those who administer a public office at their own expense), or in
lack of skill, or if some other honorable cause lies at the root of it, then
there are still other contracts, approved by the laws, by which those who
have money and are not themselves able to carry on business can, by an
honest and lawful use of their money, earn their livelihood — namely, the
repurchase contract and the partnership contract.

The matter is worth considering, how this agrees with the equity of
natural law. For because, on account of the diversity and convenience of
commercial dealings, the use of borrowed money is necessary, it was, in
Justinian's time, a permitted transaction, within a true loan, to make the
agreement that usury should be paid, either as compensation for possible
loss, or for lost profit, or as a share in the gain. But so that creditors
might not raise usury beyond measure and drain their debtors, or so that
debtors themselves might not enrich themselves to the creditor's loss, he
brought usury within a fixed measure, indeed one favoring debtors more
than creditors. But because usury conflicts with the law of nature and is
harshly condemned by express testimonies of Scripture, civil law has now*)
been so corrected that in an actual loan contract no agreement for usury
is permitted**). But with the third estate of people, who have no need
of gratuitous lending and who wish to make use of borrowed money for
their own gain and advantage, the contract of repurchase is permitted —
namely, for those with whom we are dealing in this case. Much is
required in this contract, however, for it to take place lawfully. 1. Either
properties are purchased, or certain yields set upon properties. 2. To the
purchase is added the agreement or obligation of repurchase, that the
creditor should have the power of repurchase, so that, when the price is
paid, the buyer is obliged to restore either the property itself or the right
to draw its yields. 3. Until the seller restores the price, the buyer has
possession and use of the property so purchased; or he obtains the right
to draw certain yields from the property, which he makes use of until the
seller carries out the repurchase. 4. Equality of price must hold, because
it is evident that

*) Already for centuries. The Editors.

**) Following the precedent of individual German territories in the last third of
the 16th century, the taking of interest on borrowed money was legalized only in the
year 1654 by an Imperial Recess — which explains Luther's own appeal to the
decision of the jurists of his time as to what usury is. The Editors.