Ed: The below account of the Regensburg Dispute made my blood run cold, and the attentive reader will have no great difficulty in seeing the same patterns at work in ecclesial controversies to this day. - SG
In the middle of the sixteenth century, two opposing views were held among Lutherans with respect to interest-taking. Martin Chemnitz adhered to the traditional view, shared by Luther, that all lending at interest for profit is contrary to Holy Scripture. Others, such as Johannes Aepinus, contended that the biblical prohibition against interest applies only to lending to the poor; therefore, they argued, a distinction must be drawn in lending practices, and interest may rightly be charged to the well-to-do, at least in Zinskauf contracts. For Chemnitz, this distinction was without biblical warrant, and those who introduced it had clearly fallen into error (Loci theologici II (1653), 162). Aepinus, conversely, held that those, including Luther, who failed to make this distinction in lending had themselves committed “a pernicious error” (In psalmum XV commentarius (1543), 29).
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