wholly depending upon the plain promises of the Gospel; a service perfectly consisting in the works of a good conscience, a labour of love, a religion of justice and piety, and moral virtues: they do also expressly teach that pilgrimages to holy places and such like inventions, which are not required of us, and are not the way of salvation, as is to be seen in an oration made by St. Gregory Nyssen, wholly against pilgrimages to Jerusalem; in St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and St. Bernard. The sense of these fathers is this, in the words of St. Augustine : God said not, go to the East and seek righteousness; sail to the West that you may receive indulgences; but indulge thy brother, and it shall be indulged to thee; you have need to enquire for no other indulgence to thy sin; if thou wilt retire into the closet of thy heart, there thou shalt find it.” That is, all our hopes of indulgence is from God through Jesus Christ, and is wholly to be obtained by faith in Christ, and in perseverence in good works, and entire mortification of all our sins. To conclude this particular though the gains which the church of Rome makes of indulgences be a heap almost as great as the abuses themselves, yet the greatest patrons of this new doctrine could never give any certainty, or reasonable comfort to the conscience of any person that could enquire into it. They never durst determine whether they were absolutions or compensations,

whether they only take off the penances actually im

Neither can

posed by the confessor or potentially, and all that which might have been imposed; whether all may be paid into the court of men, or all that can or will be required by the laws and severity of God. they speak rationally to the great question, whether the treasure of the church consists in the satisfaction of Christ only, or of the saints? For if of saints, it will by all men be acknowledged to be a defeasible estate, and, being finite and limited, will be spent sooner than the needs of the church can be served; and if, therefore, it be necessary to add the merits and satisfactions of Christ, since they are an ocean of infinity, and can supply more than our needs, to what purpose is it to add the little minutes and droppings of the saints? They cannot tell whether they may be given, if the receiver do nothing, or give nothing for them : and though this last particular could better be resolved by the court of Rome, than by the Church of Rome, yet all the doctrines which built up the new fabric of indulgences were so dangerous to determine, so improbable, so unreasonable, or at best so uncer tain and invidious, that according to the advice of the Bishop of Modena, the council of Trent left all the doctrines, and all the cases of conscience quite alone, and slumbered the whole matter, both in the question of indulgences and purgatory, in general and recommendatory terms; affirming that the power of giving indulgence is in the church, and that the use

is wholesome; and that all hard and subtle questions viz., concerning purgatory, which although (if it be at all) it is a fire, yet is the fuel of indulgences, and maintains them wholly; all that is suspected to be false, and all that is uncertain; and whatsoever is curious and superstitious, scandalous, or for filthy lucre, be laid aside. And in the mean time, they tell us not what is, and what is not superstitions; nor what is scandalous, nor what they mean by the general term of indulgence' and they establish no doctrine, neither curious, nor incurious, nor durst they decree the very foundation of this whole matter, the church's treasure; neither durst they meddle with it, but left it as they found it, and continued in the abuses, and proceeded in the practice, and set their doctors, as well as they can, and defend all the new, and curious, and scandalous questions, and to uphold the gainful trade. But however it be with him, the doctrine itself is proved to be a direct innovation in the matter of christian religion, and that was it which we have undertaken to demonstrate.

OF THE NATURE AND PRACTICE OF PENANCE, SATISFACTION, AND INDULGENCES, AS IMPOSED BY THE CHURCH OF ROME ON HER DELUDED VOTARIES, TO RELEASE THEIR SOULS FROM PURGATORY.

But then for penance and satisfactions, of which they boast so much, as being so great restraints to sin these, as they are publicly handled, are nothing but words and ineffective sounds. For, first, if we consider what the penances themselves are which are enjoined; they are reduced from the ancient canonical penances to private and arbitrary, from years to hours, from great severity to gentleness and flattery, from fasting and public shame, to the saying over their beads, from cordial to ritual, from smart to money, from heartiness and earnest to pageantry and theatrical images of penance; and if some confessors happen to be severe, there are ways enough to be eased. For the penitent may have leave to go to a gentler, or he may get commutations, or he may get somebody else to do them for him, and if his penances be never so great, or never so little, yet it may all be supplied by indulgences; of which there are such store in the Lateran at Rome, that as Pope Boniface said, "no man is able to number them," yet he confirmed them all,

of

In the church of Santa Maria de Popolo," there are for every day in the year two thousand and eight hundred years of pardon, besides fourteen thousand and fourteen carantanes, which in one year amount to more than a million; all which are confirmed by the Pope Paschal the First, Boniface the Eighth, and Gregory the Ninth. In the church of St. Vitus and Modestus, there are for every day in the year, seven thousand years of pardon, and seven thousand carantanes pardon, and a pardon of a third part of all our sins besides; and the price of all this is but praying before an altar in that church. At the Sepulchre of Christ in Venice there is hung up a prayer of Saint Augus tine, with an indulgence of fourscore and two thousand years, granted by Boniface the Eighth, (who was of all the Popes the most bountiful of the church's treasure), and Benedict the Ninth, to him that shall say it, and that for every day "toties quoties." The Divine pardon of Sica gave a plenary indulgence to every one that, being confessed and communicated, should pray there in the Franciscan Church of "Santa Maria degli Angeli," and this pardon is "ab omni poena et culpa." The words of that we easily understand, but the meaning of it we do not, because they will not own that these indulgences do profit any one whose guilt is not taken away by the sacrament of penance. But this is not the only snare in which they have inextricably entangled themselves; but be