Extract from the Farewell Sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, by the Rev. David Jones, when the present system was in its infancy.
“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.”—Luke xvi. 14.
“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.
* * *
“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn to Ezekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that taketh any increase above the principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,—he that taketh any increase, is a usurer, and such a one as shall surely [153]die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation.
“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.”
As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, in next ‘Fors.’ [155]
1 See my first notice of it in the beginning of the Fors of August 1871; and further account of it in appendix to my Lecture on Glaciers, given at the London Institution this year. ↑
2 Will the reader be kind enough, in the last two lines of page 128, to put, with his pen, a semicolon after “age”, a comma after “unclean,” and a semicolon after “use”? He will find the sentence thus take a different meaning. ↑
4 The whole woodcut is given in facsimile in the fifth part of ‘Ariadne Florentina.’ ↑
5 See ‘Munera Pulveris,’ pp. 99 to 103; and ‘Ariadne Florentina,’ Lecture VI. ↑
“Narr.
Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.
Meph.
Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?
Narr.
Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.
Meph.
Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.
Narr.
Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?
Meph.
Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.
Narr.
Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?
Meph.
Versteht sich! Biete nur, das fehlt dir nie!
Narr.
Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?
Meph.
Traun!
Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.
Narr.
Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz. (ab.)
Meph. (solus.)
Wer zweifelt noch an unsres Narren Witz!”
7 I have written it out from a perfect English psalter of early thirteenth century work, with St. Edward, St. Edmund, and St. Cuthbert in its calendar; it probably having belonged to the cathedral of York. The writing is very full, but quick; meant for service more than beauty; illuminated sparingly, but with extreme care. Its contractions are curiously varied and capricious: thus, here in the fifth verse, c in constituisti stands for ‘con’ merely by being turned the wrong way. I prefer its text, nevertheless, to that of more elaborate MSS., for when very great attention is paid to the writing, there are apt to be mistakes in the words. In the best thirteenth-century service-book I have, ‘tuos’ in the third verse is written ‘meos.’ ↑
8 Compare the ‘Crown of Wild Olive,’ p. 57; and put in the fifth line of that page, a comma after ‘heaven,’ and in the eighth line a semicolon after ‘blessing.’ ↑
9 I am sensitive for other writers in this point, my own readers being in the almost universal practice of choosing any bit they may happen to fancy in what I say, without ever considering what it was said for. ↑
10 Collated out of Sapientia xv. and xvi. ↑
11 Compare Jeremiah ix. 6; in the Septuagint, τόκος ἐπὶ τόκῳ, καὶ δόλος ἐπὶ δόλῳ: “usury on usury, and trick upon trick.” ↑
12 The instinct for the study of parasites, modes of disease, the lower forms of undeveloped creatures, and the instinctive processes of digestion and [139]generation, rather than the varied and noble habit of life,—which shows itself so grotesquely in modern science, is the precise counterpart of the forms of idolatry (as of beetle and serpent, rather than of clean or innocent creatures,) which were in great part the cause of final corruption in ancient mythology and morals. ↑
13 If my good correspondent will try practically the difference in the effect on the minds of the next two beggars he meets, between imputing a penny to the one, and imparting it to the other, he will receive a profitable lesson both in religion and English.
Of Felix Neff’s influence, past and present, I will take other occasion to speak. ↑
FORS CLAVIGERA.
