תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

afflicted the more, in proportion to the increase and prevalence of gross superstition.

From the time that the magnificence of ceremonies was substituted for the purity and simplicity of the Christian faith, men, instead of being themselves thoroughly furnished unto all good works, as temples to the Holy Ghost, as the true church of Christ, deemed it to be the highest act of piety to erect splendid edifices, and adorn them with a prodigality of ornaments; as if the eye of God, which is over all his works and discerns the spirits of all flesh, were like unto the eye of man, which sees only the outward appearance. Religion became a thing to look at, or a form to pass through; and piety was reckoned at a price. Instead of imitating the virtues of saints and martyrs, men searched for their bones. And instead of copying the ornament of minds like theirs, they enclosed their relics, whether real or imaginary, in coffers of gold and of silver. Churches became the holds of the sacred depositories, and the consecrated stations for images. The presumed virtue of these rose with the riches of their adornments; and the fancied protection which they afforded to each votary was a ceaseless call for the accumulation of new gifts in honour of the saint and for the good of the church. The ancient gods of the hills and of the vallies virtually reappeared on earth; under new names, temples were dedicated to their honour; and, sacrifices being abolished, the intercessory divinities were there propitiated by offerings. The saints, as if they never had been crucified unto the world, or as if the love of money held possession of their disembodied spirits, were honoured with gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pleasant things. And the service of the sanctuary gradually degenerated into a show. But when the pope, still magnifying himself above all, assumed the exalted and marvellous privilege of in

stalling tutelary divinities into the rights of devotion; and when the honouring of them was thus authoritatively sanctioned and enjoined under the penalty of execration; that high office of the man of sin was not less lucrative than others. Each saint had his shrine. And every new comer into the court of canonization, no sooner had his name enrolled in the calendar, than he went forth into the world the protector of all who would propitiate his favour with substantial honours, such as were wont to be paid to kindred saints. Rites and ceremonies multiplied with the objects of devotion. Special days were consecrated to the honour of the saints, and held as holidays in the church of Rome; and their frequent return was a renewed call for new honours to their memory, and new offerings on their altar. When there was nothing to satisfy the soul, but where it was cheated, to the false peace of the heart and vain pleasing of the eye, the tameness of a customary service and of a familiar splendour, was relieved by some delusive novelty. Fasts and festivals succeeded in their turn. And so greatly were the saints honoured, and their glory increased in their strongholds, that in the year 1300, Boniface VIII. published a Jubilee, granting plenary indulgence to all who would visit the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome, and decreed that it should be renewed every 100 years.*

"The welcome sound," says Gibbon, "was propagated through Christendom; and at first from the nearest provinces of Italy, and at length from the remote kingdoms of Hungary and Britain, the highways were thronged with a swarm of pilgrims who sought to expiate their sins in a journey, however costly or laborious, which was exempt from the perils of military service. All exceptions of rank or sex, of age or infirmity, were forgotten in the common

* Du Pin, vol. xii. pp. 4, 30, 116.

transport; and in the streets and churches many persons were trampled to death by the eagerness of devotion. The calculation of their numbers could not be easy nor accurate : and they have probably been magnified by a dexterous clergy, well apprised of the contagion of example; yet we are assured by a judicious historian, who assisted at the ceremony, that Rome was never replenished with less than two hundred thousand strangers; and another spectator has fixed at two millions the total concourse of the year. A trifling oblation from each individual would accumulate a royal treasure; and two priests stood night and day with rakes in their hands, to collect, without counting, the HEAPS OF GOLD AND SILVER that were poured on the altar of St. Paul."*

The successors of Boniface were not satisfied with adding a multitude of new rites and inventions, by way of ornament, to this superstitious institution; but finding by experience that it added to the lustre, and augmented the revenues of the Roman church, they rendered its return more frequent, and fixed its celebration to every five and twentieth year. There was no crime which the honouring of the saints with silver and gold could not justify. The absolution was plenary. And to such enormous iniquity did the practice lead, that, under the pretence of repairing and adorning St. Peter's, Tetzel, in the sixteenth century, preached and proclaimed the famous indulgences of Leo X. to be purchased at a graduated scale according to the degree of the sin to be remitted, whether past, present, or future.

It is difficult to forbear from an expression of indignation at the thought of a king of Syria having bartered for money the office of the high-priest of Israel. But what marvellous words of blasphemy, without a name, were spoken against the Most High, in the sale of indulgences, or the sanction of sin, that a Christian temple might be adorned-the church, so to call it, of the pope?" St. Peter's pence" was

* Gibbon's Hist. vol. xii. pp. 311, 312. chap. 69.

the plea. That stronghold had to be increased with glory, at whatever sacrifice of all moral principle, and at whatever hazard to the souls of men. However the doctrine may now be disavowed, it stands as the characteristic of the church of Rome, that the saints were honoured with gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pleasant things; and the time was, when that object was held tantamount to the highest act of devotion, equivalent to the remission of sins, and the surest pledge of salvation.

When men renounced their judgment and the right of exercising it, they exerted their ingenuity in devising honours to their guardian intercessors; and even the enlightened nineteenth century is not without an example, that when the sceptre was laid down, the needle was taken up, and a king became an embroiderer in honour of a saint.

Never was any system of deception and extortion, concentrating in itself all " deceivableness of unrighteousness," so successfully practised, as that by which gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pleasant things, were drawn from the blinded votaries of Rome : and never did the imperial city lay such exactions on its conquered provinces as those which popery laid on Christendom for ages, without the appearance or consciousness of bondage. The revenues extorted by military authority, and drained out drop by drop, were trifling in comparison of the ever-teeming donations which freely flowed in honour of the saints. They were honoured as intercessors with God, and priests were the agents between them and the people. The merits of the saints were the storehouse of the church; and, in dispensing these, the church became the treasure-house of the world.-Who would grudge a little gold, to touch or even to see the relic of a martyred saint? And, if aught so precious could be purchased-as often and repeatedly it might, in

an age of darkness and in a church of constant miracles, what would not be exchanged for so invaluable a treasure? The hands of a priest, which dispensed such gifts, or under which the garments or bones of martyrs, first disclosed by vision, were miraculously multiplied,-were not themselves to be left empty; nor was the altar of a saint to be left bare, and thus to be dishonoured. What soul, however parsimonious, could grudge a little gold to adorn the image that had defended a city; and that, surely, was ever competent to protect the humblest suppliant that should rightly honour it? What on earth so precious as not to be gladly given in pawn for the prayers of saints, or as the earnest of the protection, and the fee-simple of the mediation of demi-gods? Who could go to do penance at a shrine, and depart acquitted, without leaving a token of respect and gratitude to the saints through whose prayers and merits he was forgiven? Or how could they be honoured but with the most valuable, precious and pleasant things? If the virtues of the saints were to be rather purchased than practised, who would not pay? And when divine protection, absolution, and indulgences were commodities for which a price could be paid, and heaven itself be entered into for money, what more profitable traffic could there be? Nay, such, in the catholic creed, is the potency, or rather the omnipotency, of gold, and the universality of its influence over spiritual as well as over terrestrial things, that it has been rendered available for a purpose, compared to which the fable of old Charon was folly, and a credulity was cherished, to which the belief of it was wisdom; and men-as in such a faith they could not fail to do-paid for themselves, while living, and for their friends when departed, not for passing, but, on the farther side of the dark unknown, for repassing Lethe,-for masses to be said for the

« הקודםהמשך »