# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1864_S261
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Martin Chemnitz on Usury. 261

either out of pride, or out of luxury, or out of covetousness, in order
to make greater gain and to gather immoderate riches, lends at usury,
cannot without doubt be entirely absolved of sin. For out of
covetousness he makes use of a contract which he knows to be condemned
in Scripture. He also tempts God, because he willingly exposes himself
to those dangers which accompany usury, just as if someone were
willingly to hold a viper to his own body. And if, by pressing
insistence, he persuades someone who would otherwise not have given at
usury, he makes himself a partaker of another's sins.

V. Finally, the grounds are also to be considered by which usury is
customarily cloaked, excused, indeed altogether justified. I will,
however, note the chief ones in order.

1. Usury is condemned in Scripture because it is contrary to love and
is bound up with fraud and injustice; further, because it bites and
burdens one's neighbor. If, then, usury is demanded from the rich man,
it is no sin. The explanation of this argument has been given above in
the definition.

2. Equalizing justice consists in equality. But if someone draws great
fruit from another's money and restores to the creditor only the
capital, then a great inequality certainly results. For the debtor has
received an extraordinary gain, while the creditor suffers loss, since
he himself could have procured advantage for himself through the use of
his money. Therefore usury can be practiced with justice. Answer: God
wills that in civil society certain services be rendered free of
charge, for example lending, and such gratuitous services justice
certainly does not call for selling. But how equality can be maintained
with the third estate of men in the use of borrowed money — not through
usury, but by another lawful manner and way — has been said above; let
the further explanation be sought there.

3. To the tax collectors, who asked concerning their business, the
Baptist answered: Demand no more than is appointed. But that the tax
collectors practiced usury is attested by Cicero in his oration pro
lege Manilia, and by Plutarch in his Lucullus, etc. So the Baptist
permits moderate usury. Answer: It is certain that the Baptist did not
approve of something which Moses, the prophets, and Christ himself so
often and so decisively and harshly condemned. But because the Jews
condemned the tax collectors on account of their purchasing of the
taxes which were imposed on the Jews, as a free people, by the Romans,
the Baptist answers that question thus: whether it is a sin, at the
command of the highest authority, to demand taxes from the Jews.
Further: whether it is permitted to purchase those tax contracts.

4. Among the Corinthians, as being those who found themselves in a
great commercial city