The Fathers of the Church adopted a sentiment which accorded so well with the communistic ideals of early Christianity, and St. Chrysostom anathematizes money-lenders as men who “traffic in other people’s misfortunes, seeking gain through their adversity: under the pretence of compassion they dig a pit for the oppressed.”[63] The Mediaeval Church, as was natural, inherited the venerable doctrine of the sinfulness of lending money at interest and of speculative trade, and prohibited such transactions in theory. But in practice the prohibition was found impossible; nay, in many cases, injurious. No capitalist would part with his money, or tradesman with his goods, without profit. In the absence of loans and middlemen commerce would come to a standstill, and large numbers of people would be doomed to choose between a sinful life and virtuous starvation. The dilemma was an awkward one, but not too awkward for scholastic subtlety, and the sophists of the Church devoted much time and ingenuity to hair-breadth distinctions, attempting to explain the inexplicable and to reconcile the irreconcilable, by arguing that rent for a house or a horse was lawful, but interest on money unlawful, and, like their brethren of the law, they tried to avoid practical mischief by the sacrifice of intellectual sincerity. The scholastic position, being absurd, met with general acceptance. However, in the earlier Middle Ages there was little temptation for transgression, little scope for commercial speculation, while, on the other hand, casuistry afforded abundant devices for evasion. The Church was, as a rule, content to enforce the law on clerics, but towards laymen she was more lenient. Nay, she encouraged traders to buy and sell goods unaltered, despite St. Chrysostom’s sentence that such traders are “ejected from the temple of God.” And yet she refused, as much as Mohammed did, to accept the commonsense view that “selling is but as usury,” and, while sanctioning the one, continued to condemn the other. But so long as the Papacy was too weak to persecute, the condemnation remained a dead letter, the Church being obliged to connive at a sin which she was powerless to conquer.