following passage from Dr. Cunningham’s Growth of English Industry and Commerce correctly represents the attitude of the Church towards commerce at the end of the Middle Ages:  ’The ecclesiastic who regarded the merchant as exposed to temptations in all his dealings would not condemn him as sinful unless it were clear that a transaction were entered on solely for greed, and hence it was the tendency for moralists to draw additional distinctions, and refuse to pronounce against business practices where common sense did not give the benefit of the doubt.’[2] We have seen that one motive which would justify the carrying on of trade was the desire to support one’s self and one’s family.  Of course this motive was capable of bearing a very extended and elastic interpretation, and would justify increased commercial profits according as the standard of life improved.  The other motive given by the theologians, namely, the benefit of the State, was also one which was capable of a very wide construction.  One must remember that even the manual labourer was bound not to labour solely for avaricious gain, but also for the benefit of his fellow-men.  ’It is not only to chastise our bodies,’ says Basil, ’it is also by the love of our neighbour that the labourer’s life is useful so that God may furnish through us our weaker brethren’;[3] and a fifteenth-century book on morality says:  ’Man should labour for the honour of God.  He should labour in order to gain for himself and his family the necessaries of life and what will contribute to Christian joy, and moreover to assist the poor and the sick by his labours.  He who acting otherwise seeks only the pecuniary recompense of his work does ill, and his labours are but usury.  In the words of St. Augustine, “thou shalt not commit usury with the work of thy hands, for thus wilt thou lose thy soul,"’[4] The necessity for altruism and regard for the needs of one’s neighbour as well as of one’s self were therefore motives necessary to justify labour as well as commerce; and it would be wrong to conclude that the teaching of the scholastics on the necessity for a good motive to justify trade operated to damp individual enterprise, or to discourage those who were inclined to launch commercial undertakings, any more than the insistence on the need for a similar motive in labourers was productive of idleness.  What the mediaeval teaching on commerce really amounted to was that, while commerce was as legitimate as any other occupation, owing to the numerous temptations to avarice and dishonesty which it involved, it must be carefully scrutinised and kept within due bounds.  It was more difficult to insure the observance of the just price in the case of a sale by a merchant than in one by an artificer; and the power which the merchant possessed of raising the price of the necessaries of life on the poor by engrossing and speculation rendered him a person whose operations should be carefully controlled.

[Footnote 1:  Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. i. p. 255.]