Under the action of this fiction,
commerce and trade revived rapidly in Protestant countries, though
with occasional checks from exact interpreters of Scripture. At the
same period in France, the great Protestant jurist Dumoulin brought
all his legal learning and skill in casuistry to bear on the same
side. A certain ferretlike acuteness and litheness seem to have
enabled him to hunt down the opponents of interest-taking through
the most tortuous arguments of scholasticism.
In England the struggle went on with varying fortune; statesmen on
one side, and theologians on the other. We have seen how, under
Henry VIII, interest was allowed at a fixed rate, and how, the
development of English Protestantism having at first strengthened
the old theological view, there was, under Edward VI, a temporarily
successful attempt to forbid the taking of interest by law.
The Puritans, dwelling on Old Testament texts, continued for a
considerable time especially hostile to the taking of any interest.
Henry Smith, a noted preacher, thundered from the pulpit of St.
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