Answer to Spalatin's question about grain usury.
Letters from the year 1544. No. 3096. 3097. 3098.
Handwritten in Cod. Jen. a, fol. 231 and 360, and in Aurifaber, vol. III, p. 432. Printed in Buddeus, p. 284 and in De Wette, vol. V, p. 631. German in Walch, vol. XXI, 1331.
To the man highly esteemed in the Lord, M. Georg Spalatin, bishop and pastor of the churches of Altenburg and Meissen, his extremely dear brother.
Grace and peace in the Lord! I certainly believed, my dear Spalatin, that I would have answered your questions about usury. For I am aware that I had thought of it and had intended to answer you. But this is what happens to me every day in other matters as well, since I am busy with so many trades and miseries. To the point. Your questions about the usury of grain cannot be settled by any particular provision, given the great diversity of times, persons, places, events or incidents. Therefore, it must be left to the pleasure of each one to consider the natural law and thus think: Would you like that what you do to another be done to you? for "this is the law and the prophets," says Christ, Matth. 7, 12. At the same time, a good conscience will also pay attention to what is written in Proverbs 11:26: "People curse him who stores up grain, but blessings come to him who sells it," and what Amos 8:5 says of the miser: "That we increase the sekel and decrease the ephah." But this does not affect your question, because you are not writing of miserly people, but of pious ones. Therefore, they may give themselves the answer in such uncertain matters, which cannot be regulated by laws. Fare well in the Lord. Tuesday after Scholasticä [12 Feb.] 1544.
Your Martin Luther, D.
No. 3097. February 18, 1544.