In Spain, the great Jesuit casuist Escobar led the way, and rarely
had been seen such exquisite hair-splitting. But his efforts were
not received with the gratitude they perhaps deserved. Pascal,
revolting at their moral effect, attacked them unsparingly in his
_Provincial Letters_, citing especially such passages as the
following: "It is usury to receive profit from those to whom one
lends, if it be exacted as justly due; but, if it be exacted as a
debt of gratitude, it is not usury." This and a multitude of
similar passages Pascal covered with the keen ridicule and
indignant denunciation of which he was so great a master.
But even the genius of Pascal could not stop such efforts. In the
eighteenth century they were renewed by a far greater theologian
than Escobar--by him who was afterward made a saint and proclaimed
a doctor of the Church--Alphonso Liguori.
Starting with bitter denunciations of usury, Liguori soon developed
a multitude of subtle devices for escaping the guilt of it.
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