The sermons of Master Henry Smith gathered into one volume. Printed according to his…The sermons of Maister Henrie Smith gathered into one volume. Printed according to his…

Secondly, it is against the Law of Nations: for every Nation hath some law against usury, and some restraint against usurers, as you shall hear when we speak of the punishment.

Secondly, it is against the Law of Nations: for euerie Nation hath some lawe against vsurie, and some restraint against vsurers, as you shall heare when we speake of the punishment.

Thirdly, as it is against the law of Nations, ⟨p. 167⟩so it is against the law of Nature, that is, the natural compassion which should be among men.¹ You see a river when it goeth by an empty place, it will not pass until it hath filled that empty place, & then it goeth forward to another empty place and filleth it, and so to another empty place and filleth it, always filling the places which are empty: so should we, the rich should fill the poor, the full should fill the hungry, they which abound should fill them which want, for the rich are but Gods Amners, & their riches are committed to them of God to distribute and do goods as God doth himself. As the water is charitable after a sort, so is the air: for it goeth to empty places too, and filleth them as the water doth. Nature cannot abide that any place should be empty, and therefore the air though it be a light body, and so naturally ascendeth upward, yet rather then any place in the earth should be empty, the air will descend as it were from his throne, & go into caves, into dens, & into dungeons, to fill them. If the rich were so good to their empty brethren, as the air and water are to other empty things: as there is no empty place in the world, so there should be no empty person in the world: that is, the rich in Israel would fill the poor in Israel. But the rich make the ⟨p. 168⟩poor to fill them: for Usurers feed upon the poor, even as great fishes devour the small. Therefore he which said, Let there not be a beggar in Israel,