nt that usury means ILLEGAL OR OPPRESSIVE INTEREST.
Under the action of this fiction, commerce and trade revived rapidly
in Protestant countries, though with occasional checks from exact
interpreters of Scripture. At the same period in France, the great
Protestant jurist Dumoulin brought all his legal learning and skill in
casuistry to bear on the same side. A certain ferretlike acuteness
and litheness seem to have enabled him to hunt down the opponents of
interest-taking through the most tortuous arguments of scholasticism.

In England the struggle went on with varying fortune; statesmen on one
side, and theologians on the other. We have seen how, under Henry
VIII, interest was allowed at a fixed rate, and how, the development of
English Protestantism having at first strengthened the old theological
view, there was, under Edward VI, a temporarily successful attempt to
forbid the taking of interest by law.

The Puritans, dwelling on Old Testament texts, continued for a
considerable time especially hostile to the taking of any interest.
Henry Smith, a noted preacher, thundered from the pulpit of St. Clement
Danes in London against "the evasions of Scripture" which permitted men
to lend money on interest at all. In answer to the contention that only
"biting" usury was oppressive, Wilson, a noted upholder of the strict
theological view in political economy, declared: "There is difference in
deed between the bite of a dogge and the bite of a flea, and yet, though
the flea doth lesse harm, yet the flea doth bite after hir kinde, yea,
and draweth blood, too. But what a world this is, that men will make sin
to be but a fleabite, when they see God's word directly against them!"

The same view found strong upholders among contemporary English
Catholics. One of the most eminent of these, Nicholas Sanders, revived
very vigorously the use of an old scholastic argument. He insisted
that "man can not sell time," that time is not a human possession, but
something which is given by God alone: he declared, "Time was not of
your gift to your neighbour, but of God's gift to you both."

In the Parliament of the period, we find strong assertions of the old
idea, with constant reference to Scripture and the fathers. In one
debate, Wilson cited from Ezekiel and other prophets and attributed to
St. Augustine the doctrine that "to take but a cup of wine is usury
and damnable." Fleetwood recalled the law of King Edward the Confessor,
which su