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pp. 34 et seq.; also Lecky, vol. ii. p. 256. For the saving clause inderted by the bishops in the statute of James I, see the Corpus Juris Eccles. Anglic., p. 1071; also Murray, History of Usury, Philadelphia, 1866, p. 49. For Blaxton, see his English Usurer, or Usury Condemned, by John Blaxton, Preacher of God's Word, London, 1634. Blaxton gives some of Calvin's earlier utterances against interest. For Bishop Sands;s sermon, see p. 11. For Filmer, see his Quaestio Quodlibetica, London, 1652, reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, vol x, pp. 105 et seq. For Grotius, see the De Jure Belli ac Pacis, lib. ii, cap. xii. For Cotton Mather's argument, see the Magnalia, London, 1702, pp. 5, 52. But 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

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