A Sequel [to [1508]]

 

1. A few days ago we rebuked clerics who conduct business, and we reproved them by a basically just verdict. But if we look at the matter correctly, our office is truly a business, and the exercise of the priestly ministry is a kind of exercise of spiritual transaction. For we expend earthly things in order to gain heavenly things; we give out the money of this world in order to acquire eternal riches; we feed others by our hunger, not so that our own sustenance may perish but that it may increase. For what does our feeding the poor, our covering the naked, our visiting the imprisoned have as its aim if not that this business, so to speak, gain interest for the giver? For a poor and hungry person is, as it were, a rich person's treasure chest: he does not consume the alms given him but guards it. [...]

 

 

2. To be a Christian is a kind of business, then, and the priestly function is a very lucrative business. For we receive the money of the Lord - the words of the Saviour, which are to be distributed to the people. About these words the Lord says in Gospel to the greedy and unskilled businessman of the priesthood: "Wicked servant, you ought to have given my money to the bankers, and on returning I would have demanded it back with interest." He is reprimanded because by his silence he held back the divine commandments that had been entrusted to him, which by his preaching he should have multiplied. [...] Understand, then, that this business is transacted when interest is demanded as if for a loan - not that interest, however, by which the minds of the avaricious are fed by the lucrative receiving back of money and in which what is owed the creditor is constantly repaid and never cleared. The interest that is demanded is not a reckoning up of denarii but a conversion of manners; it is not a question of capital bearing interest but of the fundamental principle of salvation. For we are debtors, and we remain bound in debt not by a written record but by the record of our sins. [...] We are ordered, then, to pay the interest on this debt. The Lord refers to a debtor in the Gospel when He says that he is to be handed over to the tax gatherer, thrown into prison, and not released until he pays the last penny. We also owe the interest on those words, brethern. For "usury" comes from "use," and we have to account for how we use these words. For the Gospel does not preach in vain, the Apostle does not cry out for nothing, the priests do not speak without reason, and those whose ears hear the holy words sound will either be blessed because of their attentiveness or condemned by their own attestation.

 

(trans. B. Ramsey 1989: 65-67)