Picking up where we left off previously, only a decade and half younger than Hilary of Poitiers, Basil the Great (c. 330–379) emerged as one of the early church’s most zealous critics of usury. Like many before him, he appealed to Psalm 15 in particular as clear evidence of the binding moral prohibition against lending at interest, and he once preached a powerful homily against usury on the text of this psalm. I assure you, the entire sermon merits careful and repeated reading; here, however, I offer only a few representative excerpts:
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