good shepherd's dog. Beware! it is against the custom
of Christ and His Apostles." It is again but the song of the wolves
when they claim to mix themselves with worldly affairs and maintain
the temporal supremacy. The greediness of the wolf is discernible in
the means adopted to get money for the building of St. Peter's. The
interlocutor is warned against giving to mendicant priests and monks.

We have given this as a specimen of the almost purely theological
pamphlet; although, as will have been evident, even this is directly
connected with the material abuses from which the people were
suffering. Another pamphlet of about the same date deals with usury,
the burden of which had been greatly increased by the growth of the
new commercial combinations already referred to in the Introduction,
which combinations Dr. Eck had been defending at Bologna on
theological grounds, in order to curry favour with the Augsburg
merchant-prince, Fuggerschwatz.[9] It is called "Concerning Dues.
Hither comes a poor peasant to a rich citizen. A priest comes also
thereby, and then a monk. Full pleasant to read." A peasant visits a
burgher when he is counting money, and asks him where he gets it all
from. "My dear peasant," says the townsman, "thou askest me who gave
me this money. I will tell thee. There cometh hither a peasant, and
beggeth me to lend him ten or twenty gulden. Thereupon I ask him an he
possesseth not a goodly meadow or corn-field. 'Yea! good sir!' saith
he, 'I have indeed a good meadow and a good corn-field. The twain are
worth a hundred gulden.' Then say I to him: 'Good, my friend, wilt
thou pledge me thy holding? and an thou givest me one gulden of thy
money every year I will lend thee twenty gulden now.' Then is the
peasant right glad, and saith he: 'Willingly will I pledge it thee.'
'I will warn thee,' say I, 'that an thou furnishest not the one gulden
of money each year, I will take thy holding for my own having.'
Therewith is the peasant well content, and writeth him down
accordingly. I lend him the money; he payeth me one year, or may be
twain, the due; thereafter can he no longer furnish it, and thereupon
I take the holding, and drive away the peasant therefrom. Thus I get
the holding and the money. The same things do I with handicraftsmen.
Hath he a good house? He pledgeth that house until I bring it behind
me. Therewith gain I much in goods and money, and thus do I pass my
days." "I thought," rejoined the peasant,