XIV. A taker of usury, if he consent to
spend his unjust gain on the poor, and to be rid for the future of the
plague of covetousness, may be received into the ministry.
cf. Can. Nic. xvii. Canon Bright (On the
Canons, etc., p. 56) remarks: “It must be remembered
that interest, called τόκος and fenus,
as the product of the principal, was associated in the early stages
of society,—in Greece and Rome as well as in
Palestine,—with the notion of undue profit extorted by a rich
lender from the needy borrower (see Grote, Hist. Gr. ii. 311
H.; Arnold, Hist. Rome i. 282; Mommsen, Hist. R. i.
291). Hence Tacitus says, ‘sane vetus urbi
fenebre malcum, et seditionum discordiarumque creberrima
causa’ (Ann. vi. 16), and Gibbon calls usury
‘the inveterate grievance of the city, abolished by the
clamours of the people, revived by their wants and
idleness.’” (v. 314.)