Witnesses
Who has said this before.
Primary sources on the standing authority of the Mosaic judicial law: divines who argued the case, magistrates who wrote it into statute, and — often the more telling evidence — writers who simply assumed it while arguing about something else.
11 witnesses · 7 assumed rather than argued
Patristicto 600
- 305
Council of Elvira, Canon 20
The earliest conciliar canon binding laymen as well as clergy — and still not a civil penalty. It cites no scripture at all.
- 321
Constantine, Edict on the Day of the Sun
The first Christian Sunday law, and a negative witness. It contains no scriptural, Sabbath, or Decalogue reasoning of any kind, and it exempts precisely the work the fourth commandment goes out of its way to bind.
- 325
First Council of Nicaea, Canon 17
The point at which patristic teaching on usury first becomes enforceable law — and the point at which the Mosaic judicial statutes drop out of the citation. It binds clergy only, and cites a Psalm.
- 364
Council of Laodicea, Canon 29
The decisive patristic text against a Decalogue grounding for Sunday rest. It commands work on the Sabbath, makes Sunday rest conditional, and anathematizes those who rest on the seventh day.
- 370
Basil of Caesarea, Homily on Psalm 14
The strongest patristic witness for the content claim and the clearest against the address claim, in one homily. Basil reaches for the judicial statute in its statutory particularity — and then tells his hearers he is not laying down law.
- 379
Gregory of Nyssa, Against Those Who Practice Usury
Contains the closest thing in the patristic usury corpus to an address to lawgivers — and on inspection it is not one. Recorded because the near-miss is more useful to the argument than a silence would be.
- 380
Ambrose of Milan, De Tobia
The one father who addresses the foreigner exception head-on — and he holds it valid, assimilating “foreigner” to “enemy” and usury to a weapon of lawful war. This is the reverse of what a philonomic reading would predict, and it is recorded as found.
- 390
John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew
Coded against the thesis, and kept for that reason. The Antiochene who reasons most from history reaches here for prophetic denunciation rather than Mosaic statute, and stops short of prohibition even to a conscience.
- 528
Justinian, Codex 4.32, De usuris
The strongest single piece of counter-evidence in the collection. The most self-consciously Christian legislator of antiquity capped interest rates and never prohibited interest — two centuries after Nicaea forbade it to his clergy.
Post-Reformation Orthodoxy1600–1700
- 1769
John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity
The cornerstone witness. Gill makes both moves in one paragraph: he divides the judicial law by criterion, then goes past the standard Reformed line to claim a civil code could be digested out of Scripture sufficient for any nation. The second move is the rare one, and it is what Cotton had already attempted in practice.
Colonial America1600–1776
- 1636
John Cotton, An Abstract of the Laws of New England
What Gill proposed in theory, Cotton had already attempted in practice: a civil code drawn out of Scripture, provision by provision, each with its chapter and verse. Massachusetts declined to adopt it, and adopted Ward's Body of Liberties instead. The refusal is part of the evidence, not a footnote to it.