But, most fortunately, it happened that Calvin turned in the right direction, and there was developed among Protestants the serviceable fiction that "usury" means _illegal_ or _oppressive_ interest. Under cover of this fiction commerce and trade revived rapidly in Protestant countries, though with occasional checks from exact interpreters of Scripture. But, in the older Church, the more correct though less fortunate interpretation of the sacred texts relating to interest continued. 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 judgment. Another attempt to ease the burden on industry and commerce was made by declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as matter of favor but as matter of right." This, too, was solemnly condemned by Pope Innocent XI. Again the army of right reason pressed forward, declaring that "usury is interest greater than the law allows." This, too, was condemned, and the declaration that "usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time" was condemned by Pope Alexander VII. Still the attacking forces pressed on, and among them, in the seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon: he attempts to gloss over the strict interpretation of Scripture in this matter by an elaborate treatise: he is immediately confronted by Bossuet. It seems hardly possible that one of the greatest intellects of a period so near us could have been so doubly deceived. Yet Bossuet, the glory of the French Church, one of the keenest and strongest of thinkers, not only mingled Scripture with astronomy, and opposed the Copernican theory, but also mingled Scripture with political economy, and denounced the lending of money at interest. He declared that the Scriptures, the councils of the Church from the beginning, the popes, the fathers, all interpreted the prohibition of "usury" to be a prohibition of any lending at interest, and Bossuet demonstrated this interpretation as the true one. Simon was put to confusion, and his book condemned.[144] There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation. The prohibition of this, one of the most simple and beneficial principles in political and economical science, was affirmed not only by the fathers, but by twenty-eight councils of the Church (six of them general councils), and by seventeen popes, to say nothing of innumerable doctors in theology and canon law.[145]