ut while the retreat of the Protestant Church from the old doctrine
regarding the taking of interest was henceforth easy, in the Catholic
Church it was far more difficult. Infallible popes and councils, with
saints, fathers, and doctors, had so constantly declared the taking of
any interest at all to be contrary to Scripture, that the more exact
though less fortunate interpretation of the sacred text relating to
interest continued in Catholic countries. When it was attempted in
France in the seventeenth century to argue that usury "means oppressive
interest," the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne declared that usury
is the taking of any interest at all, no matter how little; and the
eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel was cited to clinch this argument.

Another attempt to ease the burden of industry and commerce was made by
declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as a matter of favour
but as a matter of right." This, too, was solemnly condemned by Pope
innocent XI.

Again an attempt was made to find a way out of the difficulty by
declaring that "usury is interest greater than the law allows." This,
too, was condemned, and so also was the declaration that "usury is
interest on loans not for a fixed time."

Still the forces of right reason pressed on, and among them, in the
seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon. He attempted to gloss
over the declarations of Scripture against lending at interest, in an
elaborate treatise, but was immediately confronted by Bossuet. Just as
Bossuet had mingled Scripture with astronomy and opposed the Copernican
theory, so now he mingled Scripture with political economy and denounced
the lending of money at interest. He called attention to the fact that
the Scriptures, the councils of the Church from the beginning, the
popes, the fathers, had all interpreted the prohibition of "usury" to
be a prohibition of any lending at interest; and he demonstrated this
interpretation to be the true one. Simon was put to confusion and his
book condemned.

There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation. There stood
the fact that the prohibition of one of the most simple and beneficial
principles in political and economical science was affirmed, not only
by the fathers, but by twenty-eight councils of the Church, six of them
general councils, and by seventeen popes, to say nothing of innumerable
doctors in theology and canon law. And these prohibitions by the Church
had bee