As to his grounds for condemning interest, he declares in the same conversation: “Money is an unfruitful commodity which I cannot sell in such a way as to entitle me to a profit.” He is but re-echoing the axiom “_Pecunia est sterilis_,” etc., maintained all too long in learned Catholic circles. Hence, as he says in 1540, “Lending neither can nor ought to be a true trade or means of livelihood; nor do I believe the Emperor thinks so either.” Besides, “it is not enough in the sight of heaven to obey the laws of the Emperor.”[268] According to him God had positively forbidden in the Old Testament the charging of any interest, as contrary to the natural law and as oppressive and unlawful usury (Ex. xxii. 25; Lev. xxv. 36; Deut. xxiii. 19, etc.). In the New Testament Christ, so Luther thinks, solemnly confirmed the prohibition when He said in St. Matthew’s gospel: “Give to him that asketh thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away” (v. 42), and in St. Luke (vi. 35) still more emphatically: “Lend, hoping for nothing.”[269] In the Old Law, however, the charging of interest was by no means absolutely forbidden to the Jews (Deut. xxiii. 19 f.), so that it could not be regarded as a thing repugnant to the natural law, though the Mosaic Code interdicted it among the Jews themselves. As for the New-Testament passages Luther had no right to infer any prohibition from them. Our Saviour, after speaking of offering the other cheek to the smiter, of giving also our cloak to him who would take away our coat, and of other instances of the exercise of extraordinary virtue, goes on to advise our lending without hope of return. But many understood this as a counsel, not as a command. Luther indeed says that thereby they were making nought of Christ’s doctrine. He insists that all these counsels were real commands, viz. commands to be ever ready to suffer injustice and to do good; the secular authorities were there to see that human society thereby suffered no harm. The Papists, however, and the scholastics looked upon these things in a different light. “The sophists had no reason for altering our Lord’s commands and for making out that they were ‘_consilia_’ as they term them.”[270] “They teach that Christ did not enjoin these things on all Christians, but only on the perfect, each one being free to keep them if he desires.” In this way the Papists do away with the doctrine of Christ; they thereby condemn, destroy and get rid of good works, whilst all the time accusing us of forbidding them; “hence it is that the world has got so full of monks, tonsures and Masses.”[271]—Yet, even if we take the words of Christ, as quoted, let us say, by St. Luke, and see in them a positive command, yet they would refer only to the social and economic conditions prevailing among the Jews at the time the words were spoken. According to certain commentators, moreover, the words have no reference to the question of interest,