sical nature, had been introduced into power of dispensing. This doctrine the discipline of the church. At first was greatly improved and reduced they were voluntary, but afterwards into a system by Thomas Aquinas. they were imposed, and could not be And afterwards, to the merits of the dispensed with but by the leave of the saints and martyrs were added, those bishop, who often sold dispensations of Christ, as increasing the treasure of or indulgences, and thereby raised the church. great sums of money. In the twelfth century the popes, observing what a source of gain this was to the bishops, limited their power, and by degrees drew the whole business of indulgences to Rome. And after remitting the temporal pains and penalties to which sinners had been subjected, they went at length so far as to pretend to abolish the punishment due to wickedness in a future state.

To complete this business, a book of rates was published, in which the sums that were to be paid into the apostolical chamber for absolution for particular crimes were precisely stated. This practice entirely set aside the use of the books called Penitentials, in which the penances annexed to each crime were registered.

So long as nothing was pretended to be remitted but the temporal penances which it had been usual to enjoin for certain offences, no great alarm was given, and no particular reason was thought necessary for the change; the payment of a sum of money being a temporal evil, as well as bearing a number of lashes, or walking bare-foot, &c., and this commutation was admitted with more ease, as it was pretended, that all the treasure raised by this means was applied to sacred uses, and the benefit of the church. But when the popes pretended to remit the future punishment of sin, and to absolve from the guilt of it, some other foundation was necessary; and this they pretended to find in the vast stock of merit, which had accrued to the church from the good works of saints and martyrs, besides what were necessary to insure their own salvation. These pretended merits still belonged to the church, and formed a treasure, which the popes had the

Among other things advanced by Cardinal Cajetan in support of the doctrine of indulgences, in his controversy with Luther on the subject, he said, that "one drop of Christ's blood being sufficient to redeem the whole human race, the remaining quanity that was shed in the garden, and upon the cross, was left as a legacy to the church, to be a treasure from whence indulgences were to be drawn, and administered by the Roman pontiffs.'

Though in this something may be allowed to the heat of controversy, the doctrine itself had a sanction of a much higher authority. For Leo X., in 1518, decreed, that the popes had the power of remitting both the crime and the punishment of sin, the crime by the sacrament of penance, and the temporal punishment by indulgences, the benefit of which extended to the dead as well as to the living; and that these indulgences are drawn from the superabundance of the merits of Jesus Christ and the saints, of which treasure the Pope is the dispenser.2

This Leo X., whose extravagance and expenses had no bounds, had recourse to these indulgences, among other methods of recruiting his exhausted finances; and in the publication of them he promised the forgiveness of all sins, past, present, or to come; and however enormous their nature. These he sold by wholesale to those who endeavoured to make the most of them; so that passing, like other commodities, from one hand to another, they were even hawked about in the streets by the common pedlars, who used the same artifices to

was

1 Mosheim, III. p. 311. (P.) Cent. xvi. Sect. i Ch. ii. Sect. ix.

2 Histoire des Papes, IV. p. 407. (P.)

raise the price of these commodities, as of any other in which they dealt.

it appears, that, notwithstanding these restraints, the abuses were greater than ever, in the time of Leo X.

The Council of Trent allowed of indulgences in general terms, but forbade the selling of them, and referred the whole to the discretion of the Pope; so that, upon the whole, the abuse was established by this council.4 But though the Reformation may not have produced any formal decisions in the Church of Rome against the abuse of indulgences, so as to affect the doctrine of them, the practice has been much moderated; and at present it does not appear that much more stress is laid upon such things by Catholics in general, than by Protestants themselves.

One Tetzel, a Dominican friar, particularly distinguished himself in pushing the sale of these indulgences. Among other things, in the sermons and speeches which he made on this occasion, he used to say, that, if a man had even lain with the mother of God, he was able, with the Pope's power, to pardon the crime; and he boasted "that he had saved more souls from hell by these indulgences, than St. Peter had converted to Christianity by his preaching.' There would be no end of reciting the blasphemous pretensions of the venders of these indulgences, with respect to the enormity of crimes, the number of persons benefited by them, or the time to which Some remains of the doctrine of inthey extended. Bishop Burnet had dulgences are retained in the Church of seen an indulgence which extended England, in which the bishops have a "to ten hundred thousand years." power of dispensing with the marriage Sometimes indulgences were "affixed to of persons more near akin than the particular churches and altars, to law allows; which is, in fact, to excuse particular times or days, chiefly to the what they themselves call the crime year of jubilee. They are also affixed of incest. But there is something to such things as may be carried much more unjustifiable in the power of about,' with a person, to “ Agnus absolution, or an authoritative declaraDei's, to medals, to rosaries and scapu- tion of forgiveness of sin, which is also laries. They are also affixed to some retained from the Church of Rome. prayers, the devout saying of them being a means to procure great indulgences. The granting these is left to the Pope's discretion."2

For, after confession, the priest is directed to absolve a sick person in this form of words: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences; and by his authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sin, in the

Such scandalous excesses as these excited the indignation of Luther, who first preached against the abuse of indulgences only, then, in consequence of meeting with opposition, against indulgences themselves, and at length name of the Father, and of the Son, against the papal power which granted them.

Before this time the Council of Constance had, in some measure, restrained the abuse of indulgences, and particularly had made void all those that had been granted during the schism.3 But

1 Mosheim, III. p. 304. (P.) Cent. xvi. Sect. i. Ch. ii. Sect. iii. Note [o].

2 Burnet on the Articles, p. 282. (P.) Art. xxii. Ed. 4, p. 207.

3 L'Enfant, I. p. 438. (P.) L. vi. Sect. xxiii. Histoire, p. 566.

and of the Holy Ghost." This is exactly a popish absolution, and is therefore liable to all the objections to which popish absolutions and indulgences are liable. One that is not in priests' orders cannot pronounce this absolution.

Whatever was meant by the power of absolution communicated by Christ to

4 See Sess. XXV. "Decretum be Indulgentiis." S. Con. Trid. p. 218.

5 See Free and Cand. Disquis. pp. 124, 329, 330.

Besides admonition and reproof, as we have seen, for persons under private and public, the primitive Chris- sentence of excommunication to attend tians had no method of enforcing the at the doors of the church with all the observance of Christian duties. If marks of the deepest dejection and this failed, nothing remained but ex- contrition, entreating the ministers and communication, or cutting off the people, with tears in their eyes; and vicious or refractory member from any earnestly begging their prayers, and visible relation to them, or connexion restoration to the peace of the Church. with them. And, indeed, considering Persons the most distinguished for the valuable advantages resulting to their wealth and power were indiscrievery particular member from the rest minately subject to these church cenof the body, a formal exclusion, and, as sures, and had no other method of it necessarily must have been, an igno- being restored to communion but by minious exclusion, from a Christian the same humiliation and contrition society, could not but have been that was expected from the meanest regarded, even without any supersti- person in the society. When Philip, tion, as a very awful thing.

the governor of Egypt, would have It was generally concluded, that the entered a Christian church, after the censures of the church, passed in a commission of some crime, the bishop solemn and unanimous manner, would forbade him till he first made confession be ratified at the tribunal of Christ at of his sin, and passed through the order the last day; so that a person cut off of penitents, a sentence which, we are from the communion of the church told, he willingly submitted to. Even here, would be excluded from heaven the emperor Theodosius the Great was hereafter. And, indeed, if a man's excommunicated by Ambrose, the conduct were such as exposed him to bishop of Milan, for a barbarous this censure of his fellow-christians, slaughter of the Thessalonians; and of whose kindness and affection he had abundant experience, and when they were under no bias or prejudice in giving their judgment, it is probable that it would be just, and therefore be ratified in heaven; and we may presume that, in the primitive times, this was generally the case; though it must be acknowledged that even a whole church may judge uncharitably and rashly, and in this case their censures certainly will not be ratified at the righteous tribunal of God.

Excommunications became much more dreadful when, in the progress of superstition, the participation of religious rites (and especially that of the Lord's supper) came to be considered as a necessary qualification for the favour of God and the happiness of heaven, an opinion which prevailed in very early times.

Whatever was the cause, the effect of church censures in those times was very extraordinary. It was customary,

that great prince submitted to a penance of eight months, and was not received into the church till after the most humble confession of his offence, and giving the most undeniable proof of his sincerity.

I must add, that whenever a person was excommunicated in any particular church, it was generally deemed wrong to admit him to communion in any other. Sometimes, however, neighbouring churches, being well acquainted with the cause of excommunication, and not approving of it, received into their communion the persons so stigmatized. And when the regular subordination of one church to another was established, it was customary for the excommunicated person to appeal from the sentence of his particular church to a higher tribunal. Many of these appeals were made to the Church of Rome, from other churches not regularly subordinate to it, which laid the first foundation of the exorbitant power of that church.

emperors in their favour; till, in consequence of mere faction, and the authority of the emperors, the party of Athanasius prevailed at last.

The first instance that we meet with of the use of actual force, or rather of a desire to make use of it, by a Christian church, was in the proceedings against Paul, bishop of Samosata; when, at the request of a Christian synod, the heathen emperor Aurelian expelled him from the episcopal house.' Indeed, having been deposed from his office, if that had been done by competent authority, namely, that of his own diocese, he could not be said to have any right to the emoluments of it, and therefore his keeping possession of the episcopal house was an act of violence on his side.

When Christians began to debate about opinions, and to divide and subdivide themselves on that account, it is to be lamented, but not to be wondered at, that they laid an undue stress on what they deemed to be the right faith, and that they should apply church censures in order to prevent the spreading of heretical opinions; without waiting till they could judge by observation what effect such opinions had on the temper and general conduct of men, and indeed without considering that influence at all. The first remarkable abuse of the power of excommunication in this way is by no means such as recommends it, being such as would now be deemed the most frivolous and unjustifiable that can well be imagined. For, on the account of nothing more than a difference of opinion and practice with respect to the time of celebrating Easter, Victor, bishop of Rome, excommunicated at once all the Eastern churches. But this was reckoned a most daring piece excommunication, and the addition of of insolence and arrogance, for which he was severely reproved by other bishops; nor, indeed, was any regard paid to the censure. It must be observed that, in consequence of appeals being made from inferior churches to the patriarchal ones, these took upon them to extend their excommunications beyond the limits of their acknowledged jurisdiction, viz. to all who held any obnoxious opinion or practice. Persons thus censured often formed separate churches, and in return excommunicated those who had

excommunicated them.

In this state of mutual hostility things often continued a long time, till the influence of an emperor, or some other foreign circumstance, determined the dispute in favonr of one of them, which was thenceforth deemed the orthodox side of the question, whilst the other was condemned as heretical. It is well known that the Arians and Athanasians were in this manner reputed orthodox by turns, as both had the sanction of councils and

But as soon as the empire became what is called Christian, we have examples enough of the interference of civil power in matters of religion; and we soon find instances of the abuse of

civil incapacities annexed to that ecclesiastical censure. In a council held at Ptolemais, in Cyrene, Andronicus the prefect was excommunicated, and it was expressed in the sentence, that no temple of God should be open unto him, that no one should salute him during his life, and that he should not be buried after his death."

The emperor Constantine, besides banishing Arius himself, ordered his writings to be burnt, and forbidding any persons to conceal him, under pain of death, deprived many of those who were declared heretics of the privileges which he had granted to Christians in general, and besides imposing fines upon them, forbade their assemblies, and demolished their places of worship. On the other hand, the emperor Constantius banished the orthodox bishops because they would not condemn Athanasius. Nestorius was banished by Theodosius, in whose reign persecution for the sake of religion 1 Fleury's Seventh Discourse, p. 7. (P.) Sucur, A. D. 411. (P.)