It is a saying among the Messenians,
Pylos before Pylos, and Pylos still you'll find;
but it may much better be said against the usurers,
Use before use, and use still more you'll find.
So that they laugh at those natural philosophers who hold
[p. 417]
that nothing can be made of nothing and of that which
has no existence; but with them usury is made and engendered of that which neither is nor ever was. They
think the taking to farm the customs and other public
tributes, which the laws nevertheless permit, to be a
shame and reproach; and yet themselves on the contrary,
in opposition to all the laws in the world, make men pay
tribute for what they lend upon interest; or rather, if
truth may be spoken, do in the very letting out their
money to use, basely deceive their debtor. For the poor
debtor, who receives less than he acknowledges in his
obligation, is falsely and dishonestly cheated. And the
Persians indeed repute lying to be a sin only in a second
degree, but to be in debt they repute to be in the first;
forasmuch as lying frequently attends those that owe. Now
there are not in the whole world any people who are
oftener guilty of lying than usurers, nor that practise more
unfaithfulness in their day-books, in which they set down
that they have delivered such a sum of money to such a
person, to whom they have not given nigh so much. And
the moving cause of their lying is pure avarice, not want
or poverty, but an insatiable desire of always having more,
the end of which is neither pleasurable nor profitable to
themselves, but ruinous and destructive to those whom
they injure. For they neither cultivate the lands of which
they deprive their debtors, nor inhabit the houses out of
which they eject them, nor eat at the tables which they
take away from them, nor wear the clothes of which they
strip them. But first one is destroyed, and then a second
soon follows, being drawn on and allured by the former.
For the mischief spreads like wildfire, still consuming,
and yet still increasing by the destruction and ruin of those
that fall into it, whom it devours one after another. And
the usurer who maintains this fire, blowing and kindling it
to the undoing of so many people, reaps no other advantage
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from it but only that he now and then takes his book
of accounts, and reads in it how many poor debtors he has
caused to sell what they had, how many he has dispossessed of their lands and livings, whence his money came
which he is always turning, winding, and increasing.