hands of God, it fell into the hands of the selves were sensible that if they did not devise Priests. The latter put themselves in the some remedy, their usurped power would be place of the Lord; and the souls of men at an end. Then it was that they invented the thirsting for pardon were no longer taught to system of barter known by the name of indullook to heaven, but to the Church, and espe- gences. It is under John, surnamed the Faster, cially to its pretended Head. The Roman archbishop of Constantinople, that we see its Pontiff was in the place of God to the blinded first commencement. The priests said, "O minds of men. Hence all the grandeur and penitents, you are unable to perform the penauthority of the Popes, and hence also unutances we have imposed upon you. Well then, terable abuses. we, the priests of God, and your pastors, will take upon ourselves this heavy burden. Who can better fast than we? Who better kneel and recite psalms than ourselves?" But the labourer is worthy of his hire. "For a seven weeks fast, (said Regino, abbot of Prum,) such as are rich shall pay twenty pence, those who are less wealthy ten pence, and the poor three pence, in the same proportion for other things."5 Some courageous voices were raised against this traffic, but in vain. Doubtless the doctrine of salvation by Faith was not entirely lost to the Church. We meet with it in some of the most celebrated Fathers, after the time of Constantine; and in the middle ages. The doctrine was not formally denied. Councils and Popes did not hurl their bulls and decrees against it; but they set up beside it a something which nullified it. Salvation by Faith was received by many learned men, by many a humble and simple mind, but the multitude had something very different. Men had invented a complete system of forgiveness. The multitude flocked to it and joined with it, rather than with the Grace of Christ; and thus the system of man's devising prevailed over that of God. Let us examine some of the phases of this deplorable change. In the time of Vespasian and his sons, he who had been the most intimate companion of the despised Galilean, one of the sons of Zebedee, had said: "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins." The Pope soon discovered what advantages he might derive from these indulgences. His want of money continued to increase. Here was an easy resource, which, under the appearance of a voluntary contribution, would replenish his coffers. It seemed desirable to establish so lucrative a discovery on a solid footing. The chief men of Rome exerted themselves for this purpose. The irrefragable doctor, Alexander de Hales, invented, in the 13th century, a doctrine well suited to secure this mighty resource to the Papacy. A bull of Clement VII. declared the new doctrine an article of the faith. The most sacred truths were made to subserve this persevering policy of Rome. Christ, it was affirmed, has done much more than was required for reconciling God and man. One single drop of his blood would have sufficed for that; but he shed his blood abundantly, that he might form for his church a treasury that eternity itself should never exhaust. The supererogatory merits of the saints, the reward of the works they have Works of penance, thus substituted for the done, beyond and additional to the obligations salvation of God, multiplied in the Church of duty, have still further enriched this treasufrom the time of Tertullian to the 13th cen- ry. Its guardianship and distribution are contury. Men were enjoined to fast, to go bare-fided to the Vicar of Christ upon earth. He headed, to wear no linen, &c. or required to leave home and country for distant lands, or else to renounce the world and embrace a monastic life. About 120 years later, under Commodus, and Septimius Severus, Tertullian, an illustrious pastor of Carthage, speaking of pardon, already held a very different language. "It is necessary (said he) to change our dress and food, we must put on sackcloth and ashes, we must renounce all comfort and adorning of the body, and falling down before the Priest, implore the intercession of the brethren."Behold man turned aside from God, and turned back upon himself. In the 11th century were added voluntary flagellations; a little after they became an absolute mania in Italy, which was then in a very disturbed state. Nobles and peasants, old and young, even children of five years old, went in pairs, through the villages, the towns, and the cities, by hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands, without any other covering than a cloth tied round the middle, and visiting the churches in procession in the very depth of winter. Armed with scourges, they lashed themselves without pity, and the streets resounded with cries and groans, which drew forth tears of compassion from all who heard them. applies to every sinner, for sins committed after baptism, these merits of Christ and of his saints, in the measure and degree that his sins have made necessary. Who would dare to attack a custom of so high and holy an origin. Rapidly was this almost inconceivable invention reduced to a system. The scale imposed ten, twenty years of penance, for such and such kinds of sin. "It is not merely for each kind of sin, but for each sinful action, that this penance of so many years is demanded," exclaimed the mercenary priests. Behold mankind, bowed down under the weight of a penance that seemed almost eternal. "But for what purpose this long penance, when life is so short-when can it take effect? How can man secure the time requisite for its performance? You are imposing on him cenAnd yet long before the evil had arrived at turies of severe discipline. When death comes this height, men sighed for deliverance from he will but laugh at you-for death will disthe tyranny of the priests. The priests them-charge him from his burden. Ah, welcome death!" But this objection was provided against. The philosophers of Alexandria had spoken of a fire in which men were to be purified. Some ancient doctors in the church had received the notion. Rome declared this philosophic tenet the doctrine of the church; and the Pope, by a bull, added purgatory to his domain. He declared that man would have to expiate in purgatory all he could not expiate on earth; but that indulgences would deliver men's souls from that intermediate state in which their sins would otherwise hold them. Thomas Aquinas set forth this new doctrine in his celebrated Summa. Nothing was left undone to fill the mind with terror. Man is by nature inclined to fear an unknown futurity and the dark abodes beyond the grave; but that fear was artfully excited and increased by horrible descriptions of the torments of this purifying fire. We see at this day in many Catholic countries paintings exposed in the temples, or in the crossways, wherein poor souls engulphed in flames invoke alleviation for their miseries. Who could refuse the money that, dropt into the treasury of Rome, redeemed the soul from such horrible torments? But a further means of increasing this traffic was now discovered. Hitherto it had been the sins of the living that had been turned to profit; they now began to avail themselves of the sins of the dead. In the 13th century it was declared that the living might, by making certain sacrifices, shorten or even terminate the torments their ancestors and friends were enduring in purgatory. Instantly the compassionate hearts of the faithful offered new treasures for the priests. To regulate this traffic, they invented shortly after, probably in the Pontificate of John XXII. the celebrated and scandalous tax of indulgences, of which more than forty editions are extant: a mind of the least delicacy would be shocked at the repetition of the horrors therein contained. Incest was to cost, if not detected, five groschen, if known, or flagrant, six. A certain price was affixed to the crime of murder, another to infanticide, adultery, perjury, burglary, &c. Oh, shame to Rome! exclaims Claudius of Espersa, a Roman divine; and we may add, Oh, shame to human nature! For no reproach can attach to Rome which does not recoil with equal force on mankind in general. Rome is human nature exalted, and displaying some of its worst propensities, We say this in truth as well as in justice. Boniface VIII., the boldest and most ambitious of the Popes, after Gregory VII., effected still more than his predecessors had done. He published a bull in 1300, by which he declared to the church that all who should at that time or thenceforth make the pilgrimage to Rome, which should take place every hundred years, should there receive a plenary indalgence. Upon this multitudes flocked from Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, France, Spain, Germany, Hungary, and other quarters. Old men, of sixty and seventy, set out on the pilgrimage; and it was computed that 200,000 visited Rome in one month. All these foreign ers brought with them rich offerings, and the Pope and the Romans saw their coffers replenished. The avarice of the Pontiffs soon fixed this jubilee at intervals of fifty years, afterwards at thirty-three years, and at last at twenty-five. Then, for the greater convenience of the pur chasers, and to increase the profits of the venders, they transferred both the jubilee and its indulgences from Rome to the marketplaces of all the nations of Christendom. It was no longer necessary to abandon one's home; what others had been obliged to seek beyond the Alps, each might now obtain at his own door. The evil was at its height, and then the Reformer arose. We have seen what had become of the principle which was designed to govern the history of Christianity; we have also seen what became of that which should have pervaded its doctrine. Both were now lost. To set up a single caste as mediators between God and man, and to barter in exchange for works and penances, and gold, the salvation freely given by God;-such was Popery. To open wide to all, through Jesus Christ, and without any earthly mediator, and without that power that called itself the Church, free access to the gift of God, eternal life;such was Christianity, and such was the Reformation. Popery may be compared to a high wall erected by the labour of ages, between man and God. Whoever will scale it must pay or suffer in the attempt; and even then he will fail to overleap it. The Reformation is the power which has thrown down this wall, has restored Christ to man, and has thus made plain the way of access to the Creator. Popery interposes the Church between God and man. Christianity and the Reformation bring God and man face to face. Popery separates man from God:-the Gospel re-unites them. After having thus traced the history of the decline and loss of the two grand principles which were to distinguish the religion of God from systems of man's devising, let us see what were the consequences of this immense change. But first let us do honour to the church of that middle period, which intervened between the age of the Apostles and the Reformers. The church was still the church, although fallen and more and more enslaved. In a word, she was at all times the most powerful friend of man. Her hands, though manacled, still dispensed blessings. Many eminent servants of Christ diffused during these ages a beneficent light; and in the humble convent-the sequestered parish-there were found poor monks and poor priests to alleviate bitter sufferings. The church Catholic was not the Papacy. This filled the place of the oppressor; that of the oppressed. The Reformation | Aquinas at their head, who maintained that which declared war against the one, came to the doctrine of revelation was in no respect at liberate the other. And it must be acknow-variance with an enlightened reason; and that ledged, that the Papacy itself was at times, in the hands of Him who brings good out of evil, a necessary counterpoise to the ambition and tyranny of princes. Let us now contemplate the condition of Christianity at that time. Theology and religion were then widely different. The doctrine of the learned, and the practice of priests, monks, and people, presented two very different aspects. They had, however, great influence upon each other, and the Reformation had to deal with both. Let us examine them, and take a survey first of the Schools, or Theology. Theology was still under the influence of the middle ages. The middle ages had awoke from their long trance, and had produced many learned men. But their learning had been directed neither to the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, nor to the examination of the history of the Church. Scriptural exposition, and the study of history, the two great sources of theological knowledge, still slumbered. A new science had usurped their place. It was the science of Dialectics. The art of reasoning became the fruitful mine of a new theology. The middle ages had discovered the long lost writings of Aristotle. Their knowledge of him was derived either from old Latin versions, or from translations from the Arabic. The resuscitated Aristotle appeared in the West as a giant, subjecting the minds, and even the consciences of men. His philosophic method added strength to the disposition for dialectics which marked the age. It was a method well suited to subtle researches and trivial distinctions. The very obscurity of the translations of the Greek philosopher favoured the dialectic subtlety which had captivated the West. The Church, alarmed at its progress, for a while opposed this new tendency. She feared that this taste for discussion might engender heresies. But the dialectic philosophy proved to be easily compounded with; monks employed it against heretics, and thenceforward its victory was secure. It was the characteristic of this method of teaching, to suggest numerous questions on every branch of theology, and then to decide them by a solution. Often these inquiries turned upon most useless matters. It was asked whether all animals had been enclosed in Noah's ark; and whether a dead man could say mass, &c. But we should be wrong to form our judgment of the scholastic divines from such examples only. On the contrary, we must often acknowledge the depth and extent of their inquiries. Some among them made a distinction between theological and philosophical truth, affirming that a proposition might be theologically true, and philosophically false. In this way it was hoped to reconcile incredulity with a cold and dead adherence to the forms of the Church. But there were others, and Thomas even as Christian charity does not annihilate the natural affections, but chastens, sanctifies, ennobles, and governs them, so Faith does not destroy Philosophy, but may make use of it by sanctifying and illuminating it with its own light. The doctrine of the Trinity, opened a wide field for the dialectic method of the theologians. By dint of distinctions and disputes, they fell into contrary errors. Some distinguished the three Persons so as to make of them three Gods. This was the error of Rocelin of Compeigne and his followers. Others confounded the Persons so as to leave only an ideal distinction. This was the case with Gilbert of Poictiers and his adherents. But the orthodox doctrine was ably maintained by others. The dialectic subtlety of the times was not less directed to the article of the Divine Will. How are we to reconcile the will of God with his almighty power and holiness? The scholastic divines found in this question numerous difficulties, and laboured to remove them by dialectic distinctions. "We cannot say that God wills the existence of evil," said Peter the Lombard, "but neither can we say that He wills that evil should not exist." The majority of these theologians sought to weaken by their dialectic labours the doctrine of Predestination which they found in the church. Alexander de Hales availed himself for this purpose of the following distinction of Aristotle; that every action supposes two parties, namely, an agent, and the thing subjected to the action. Divine Predestination, said he, acts doubtless for man's salvation; but it is requisite that it find in the soul of man a capacity for the reception of this grace. Without this second party the first cannot effect any thing; and Predestination consists in this, that God knowing by his prescience those in whom this second requisite will be found, has appointed to give them his grace. As to the original condition of man, these theologians distinguished natural gifts and free gifts. The first they held to consist in the primitive purity and strength of the human soul. The second were the gifts of God's grace that the soul might accomplish good works. But here again the learned were divided; some contended that man had originally possessed only natural gifts, and had by his use of them to merit those of grace. But Thomas Aquinas who was generally on the side of sound doctrine, affirmed that the gifts of grace had from the beginning been closely united with the gifts of nature, because the first man was perfect in his moral health. The Fall, said the former, who leaned towards Free-will, has deprived man of the gifts of grace, but it has not entirely stripped him of the primitive strength of his nature; for the least sanctification would have been impossible if there had been no longer with at him any moral strength. Whilst, on the other at side, the stricter theologians thought that the Fall had not only deprived man of grace, but corrupted his nature. All acknowledged the work of Reconciliation wrought out by Christ's sufferings and death. But some maintained that redemption 13 could have been effected in no other way than by the expiatory satisfaction of the death of Jesus Christ, whilst others laboured to prove that God had simply attached redemption and grace to this price. Others again, and among these last we may particularize Abelard, made the saving efficacy of redemption to consist merely in its fitness to awaken in man's heart a confidence and love toward God. The doctrines of Sanctification or of Grace discovers to us in fresh abundance the dialectic subtlety of these divines. All of them, accepting the distinction of Aristotle already mentioned, laid down the necessity of the existence in man of a materia disposita, a something disposed to the reception of grace. But Thomas Aquinas ascribes this disposition to grace itself. Grace, said they, was formative for man before the Fall; now, that there is in him something to extirpate, it is grace reformative. And a farther distinction was laid down between grace given gratuitously, gratia gratis data, and grace that makes acceptable, gratia gratum faciens; with many other similar distinctions. The doctrine of penance and indulgence, which we have already exhibited, crowned the whole of this system, and ruined whatever good it might contain. Peter the Lombard had been the first to distinguish three sorts of penitence; that of the heart or compunction; that of the lips, or confession; that of works, or satisfaction by outward action. He distinguished, indeed, absolution in the sight of God from absolution before the church. He even affirmed that inward repentance sufficed to obtain the pardon of sins. But he found a way back into the error of the church through another channel. He allowed that for sins committed after baptism, it was necessary either to endure the fires of purgatory, or to submit to the ecclesiastic penance; excepting only the sinner whose inward repentance and remorse should be so great as to obviate the necessity of further sufferings. He proceeds to propose questions which, with all his skill in dialectics, he is embarrassed to resolve. If two men, equal in their spiritual condition, but one poor and the other rich, die the same day, the one having no other succours than the ordinary prayers of the church, while for the other many masses can be said, and many works of charity can be done, what will be the event? The scholastic divine turns on all sides for an answer, and concludes by saying that they will have the like fate, but not by the like causes. The rich man's deliverance from purgatory will not be more perfect, but it will be earlier. still mere notions. The Christian doctrine had lost that odour of heaven, that force and practical vitality which came from God, and which had characterized it as it existed in the apostolic age: and these were destined again to come to it from above. Meanwhile the learning of the schools was pure when compared with the actual condition of the Church. The theology of the learned might be said to flourish, if contrasted with the religion, the morals, the instructions of the priests, monks, and people. If Science stood in need of a revival, the Church was in still greater need of a Reformation. The people of Christendom, and under that designation almost all the nations of Europe might be comprised, no longer looked to a living and holy God for the free gift of eternal life. They therefore naturally had recourse to all the devices of a superstitious, fearful, and alarmed imagination. Heaven was peopled with saints and mediators, whose office it was to solicit God's mercy. All lands were filled with the works of piety, of mortification, of penance and observances, by which it was to be procured. Take the description of the state of religion at this period given by one who was for a long while a monk, and in after life a fellow-labourer with Luther,-Myconius. "The sufferings and merits of Christ were looked upon (says he) as an empty tale, or as the fictions of Homer. There was no longer any thought of that faith by which we are made partakers of the Saviour's righteousness, and the inheritance of eternal life. Christ was regarded as a stern judge, prepared to condemn all who should not have recourse to the intercessions of saints or to the Pope's indulgences. Other intercessors were substituted in his stead; first the Virgin Mary, like the heathen Diana; and then the saints, whose numbers were continually augmented by the Popes. These intercessors refused their mediation unless the party was in good repute with the monastic orders which they had founded. To be so, it was necessary not only to do what God had commanded in his word, but also to perform a number of works invented by the monks and priests, and which brought them in large sums of money. Such were Ave Marias, the prayers of St. Ursula, and of St. Bridget. It was necessary to chaunt and cry day and night. There were as many different pilgrimages as there were mountains, forests, and valleys. But with money these penances might be compounded for. The people therefore brought to the convents and to the priests money, and every thing they possessed that was of any value, fowls, ducks, eggs, wax, straw, butter, and cheese. Then the chauntings resounded, the bells rang, the odour of incense filled the sanctuary, the sacrifices were offered up, the tables groaned, the glasses circulated, and these pious orgies were terminaWe have given a few sketches of the sort ted by masses. The bishops no longer ap of Theology which reigned in the schools at peared in the pulpits, but they consecrated the period of the Reformation. Distinctions, priests, monks, churches, chapels, images, ideas, sometimes just, sometimes false, but|books, and burial places, and all these brought a large revenue. Bones, arms, feet, were preserved in boxes of silver or gold; they gave them to the faithful to kiss during mass, and this increased their gains. "All maintained that the Pope being in the place of God (2 Thessal. ii. 4) could not err; and there were none to contradict them."17 At the church of All Saints, at Wittemberg, was shewn a fragment of Noah's ark; some soot from the furnace of the three children; a piece of wood from the crib of the infant Jesus; some hair of the beard of the great St. Christopher; and nineteen thousand other relics, more or less precious. At Schaffhausen was shown the breath of St. Joseph, that Nicodemus received on his glove. In Wurtemburg, might be seen a seller of indulgences disposing of his merchandise with his head adorned with a feather plucked from the wing of the Archangel Michael. But there was no need to seek so far for these precious treasures. Those who farmed the relics overran the country. They bore them about in the rural districts, (as has since been done with the Holy Scriptures;) and carried them into the houses of the faithful, to spare them the cost and trouble of the pilgrimage. They were exhibited with pomp in the churches. These wandering hawkers paid a certain sum to the proprietors of the relics, with a per centage on their profits. The kingdom of heaven had disappeared; and men had opened in its place on earth, a market of abominations. country, such a mass of corruption would doubtless be enough to shock every mind. But the evil, at the period we speak of, bore a character and universality that it has not borne at any subsequent date; and above all, the abomination stood in the holy places, which it has not been permitted to do since the Reformation. Moral conduct had declined with the life of faith. The tidings of the gift of eternal life is the power of God to regenerate men. Once take away the salvation which is God's gift, and you take away sanctification and good works:-and this was the result. The proclamation and sale of indulgences powerfully stimulated an ignorant people to immorality. It is true that, according to the Church, they could benefit those only who made and kept a promise of amendment. But what could be expected from a doctrine invented with a view to the profit to be gained from it? The venders of indulgences were naturally tempted to further the sale of their merchandise by presenting them to the people under the most attractive and seducing aspect; even the better instructed did not fully comprehend the doctrine in respect to them. All that the multitude saw in them was a permission to sin; and the sellers were in no haste to remove an impression so favourable to the sale. What disorders, what crimes, in these ages of darkness, in which impunity was acquired by money! What might not be feared when a small contribution to the building of a church was supposed to deliver from the pun revival when the communication between God and man was at an end; and man, afar off from God, who is spirit and life,―moved only in a circle of pitiful ceremonies and gross practices,-in an atmosphere of death. At the same time, a profane spirit had invaded religion, and the most solemn recollections of the church; the seasons which seemed most to summon the faithful to devout reflec-ishments of a future world! What hope of tion and love, were dishonoured by buffoonery and profanations altogether heathenish. The Humours of Easter held a large place in the annals of the Church. The festival of the Resurrection claiming to be joyfully commemorated, preachers went out of their way to put into their sermons whatever might excite the laughter of the people. One preacher imitated the cuckoo; another hissed like a goose; one dragged to the altar a layman dressed in a monk's cowl; a second related the grossest indecencies; a third recounted the tricks of the Apostle St. Peter, among others, how, at an inn, he cheated the host, by not paying his reckoning. The lower orders of the clergy followed the example, and turned their superiors into ridicule. The very temples were converted into a stage, and the priests into mountebanks. 19 If this was the state of religion, what must have been the morals of the age? Doubtless the corruption was not universal. -Justice requires that this should not be forgotten. The Reformation elicited many shining instances of piety, righteousness, and strength of mind. The spontaneous power of God was the cause; but how can we doubt that by the same power the germs of this new life had been deposited long before in the bosom of the church. If, in these our days, any one were to collect the immoralities and degrading vices that are committed in any single The priests were the first who felt the effects of this corrupting influence. Desiring to exalt themselves, they had sunk themselves lower. Infatuated men! They aimed to rob God of a ray of his glory, and to place it on their own brows; but their attempt had failed, and they had received only a leaven of corruption from the power of evil. The annals of the age swarm with scandals. In many places the people were well pleased that the priest should have a woman in keeping, that their wives might be safe from his seductions.20 What scenes of humiliation were witnessed in the house of the pastor! The wretched man supported the mother and her children, with the tithe and the offering;"1his conscience was troubled; he blushed in presence of his people, of his servants, and before God. The mother, fearing to come to want when the priest should die, provided against it beforehand, and robbed the house. Her character was gone: her children were a living accusation of her. Treated on all sides with contempt, they plunged into brawls and debaucheries. Such was the family of the priests. These horrid scenes were a kind of instruction that the people were ready enough to follow." |