In fact his first pronouncements against the investing of money are all largely dictated by his hostility to the existing ecclesiastical government; “that churches, monasteries, altars, this and that,” should be founded and kept going by means of interest, is what chiefly arouses his ire. In 1519 he busies himself with the demolition of the objection brought forward by Catholics, who argued: “The churches and the clergy do this and have the right to do it because such money is devoted to the service of God.” In his Larger Sermon on Usury he gives an instance where he is ready to allow transactions at interest, viz. “where both parties require their money and therefore cannot afford to lend it for nothing but are obliged to help themselves by means of bills of exchange. Provided the ghostly law be not infringed, then a percentage of four, five or six florins may be taken.”[290] Thus he here not only falls back on the “ghostly law,” but also deviates from the line he had formerly laid down. In fact we have throughout to deal more with stormy effusions than with a ripe, systematic discussion of the subject. Later on, his general condemnations of the buying of interest-rights become less frequent. He even wrote in 1524 to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony: Since the Jewish tithes cannot be re-introduced, “it would be well to regulate everywhere the purchase of interest-rights, but to do away with them altogether would not be right since they might be legalised.”[291] As a condition for justifying the transaction he requires above all that no interest should be charged without “a definitely named and stated pledge,” for to charge on a mere money pledge would be usury. “What is sterile cannot pay interest.”[292] Further the right of cancelling the contract was to remain in the hands of the receiver of the capital. The interest once agreed upon was to be paid willingly. He himself relied on the practice and once asked: “If the interest applied to churches and schools were cut off, how would the ministers and schools be maintained?”[293] With regard to the rate of interest allowable in his opinion, he says in his sermons on Matt. xviii. (about 1537): “We would readily agree to the paying of six or even of seven or eight on the hundred.”[294] As a reason he assigns the fact that “the properties have now risen so greatly in value,” a remark to which he again comes back in 1542 in his Table-Talk in order to justify his not finding even seven per cent excessive.[295] He thus arrives eventually at the conclusion of the canonists who, for certain good and just reasons, allowed a return of from seven to eight per cent. In his “An die Pfarherrn” he took no account of such purchases but merely declared that he would find some other occasion “of saying something about this kind of usury”; at the same time a “fair, honest purchase is no usury.”[296]