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this terrible dose of doctrine, and withal to give Antichrist a firmer hold upon the people. It claimed to hold the keys of heaven and hell and to have power to remit the pains of purgatory: not only the Adamic penalty, and the weaknesses inherited thereby, but also the penalties of wilful, deliberate sins. What a leverage of power this gave, over an ignorant people, can be easily imagined--especially when the emperors and chief men of earth acknowledged and bowed before the deceiver.
Masses for the dead followed; and rich and poor alike felt it a duty to pay, and liberally, too, to have these. The efficacy of masses, for the relief of purgatorial sufferings, is claimed to be omnipotent--so that not even Jehovah or Christ could interfere with it. This became a source of great income to Antichrist; for the priests were not slow to remind the dying, if wealthy, of the propriety of leaving liberal bequests for masses for themselves--lest those who inherited their wealth should neglect the matter. And, indeed, within the present year warnings of a similar kind have appeared in Roman Catholic journals, urging that less money be spent upon funeral flowers, that the more might be spent for masses for the dead.
Indulgences came in, some time before the "Crusades": we know that indulgences were offered, as a bounty, to secure volunteers for these "Crusades" or "Holy Wars." By Papal edict, whoever would engage in these holy wars would not only have forgiveness for sins past, but also merit to offset sins future; and thus be guaranteed against certain purgatorial sufferings. These indulgences, Roman Catholics tell us, are not designed to be licenses to commit sins, but are rewards of merit which offset or cancel a certain number of days or years of purgatorial anguish: so that if a man's sins made him liable to one thousand years of suffering, and he, at one time, or at various times, secured indulgences to the
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amount of one thousand years, either for money, or for services rendered to Papacy, or by penances done, he would go free; if he had to his credit nine hundred years indulgence, he would have to endure one hundred years of suffering; and if indulgences were reckoned to much overbalance his penalties, he would probably be accounted a saint, of special influence in heaven, to be prayed to and adored. Of this order Louis, king of France, the Crusader, would be an example. He was canonized, and is now adored and prayed to as Saint Louis.
There is indeed a difference between this view of Indulgences and a license to commit sins; and yet it is very slight; for Papacy affixed to various common sins a certain amount of suffering, and not only could sins past be thus offset and canceled, but those who had reason to think that they might commit certain sins, in the future, could thus provide beforehand merit to cancel them. Besides this, some, called "plenary [complete, entire] indulgences," are certainly understood to cover all sins, past and future.
The practice even at the present day seems scarcely credible. Romanists have certain prayers, a repetition of which constitutes a ground for indulgence for a limited period; and many added together, they claim, will protect from wrath a long time. Thus, those who say the "Hail, Holy Queen" are granted forty days of indulgence, while for saying the "Litany of the Blessed Virgin" there is an indulgence of two hundred days; and for those who say the "Blessed be the Holy, Immaculate and Most Pure Conception of the Virgin Mary" one hundred years indulgence is granted, etc., etc. In the "darker ages," when indulgences were freely offered for money and for services in the persecution of infidels and heretics, it may readily be imagined to what corruption this blasphemous doctrine led.
To crimes generally committed by the rich, who could pay
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liberally, enormous penalties were affixed, while the basest violations of justice, more common among the poorer classes, were lightly excused. Thus, marriage with a first cousin cost $5,000, while wife-murder or parricide cost only $20. Spanheim says: "The institution of Indulgence was the mint which coined money for the Roman Church; the gold mines for the profligate nephews and natural children of the popes; the nerves of the Papal wars; the means of liquidating debt, and the inexhaustible fountain of luxury to the popes."
To regulate this traffic a graded scale of penalties was affixed to various sins--so many days or years in purgatory for each; and a scale of prices was also arranged to correspond, so that those obtaining indulgence for a murder or a theft, for infanticide, or adultery, or perjury, or other sins, could be charged at different rates. By this means penances were canceled and the torments of purgatory mitigated or ended, at the pleasure of Antichrist's agents. We cannot wonder that the people speedily got to understand that so much money paid for so much sin.
To such an extent was crime increased by these indulgences, that the indignation of the better classes of society was roused to rebellion against the church. Men's eyes began to be opened, and they saw the clergy, from the highest dignitaries of the church down to the lowest orders of officials, steeped in iniquity.
As the darkest hour precedes the storm, so just before the great Reformation movement was, morally, the darkest hour of Antichrist's dark reign. There the open and shameful traffic in indulgences produced nausea, and led Luther and other zealous papists to question and examine the entire system, both in its moral, and afterward in its doctrinal, aspects. Finally, Luther struck the true idea--that Papacy was indeed the Antichrist. And, having discovered this, he fearlessly pointed out some of the symbols of Revelation,
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and showed their applicability and partial fulfilment in the Papal Hierarchy.
On this subject we quote the following from the pen of the well known clergyman, Lyman Abbott. He says:
"Among other conditions, for which indulgences were formerly granted more than now, was the contribution of money to the church. This traffic reached its height in the beginning of the sixteenth century, under Leo X, who published indulgences to all who would contribute toward the erection of St. Peter's [Cathedral] at Rome. His chief agent for the sale of indulgences in Germany was one John Tetzel. The notorious vices of Tetzel did not prevent him from being selected as the bearer of these pardons to other purer souls, and no extravagance seemed to him too great, so that it brought money to his coffers. He declared that the red cross, which accompanied him wherever he went, had as great efficacy as the cross of Christ--that there was no sin so great that he could not remit it. 'Indulgences save not the living alone, they also save the dead. The very moment that the money chinks against the bottom of the chest, the soul escapes from Purgatory and flies free to heaven.' Such were some of his blasphemous declarations. A regular scale of prices was established. 'Polygamy cost six ducats; sacrilege and perjury, nine; murder, eight; witchcraft, two.' It was this open and shameless traffic which, more than anything else, led to the Reformation. Indulgences continued to be granted, not only for acts of worship, but also for contributions in money to the church; but the public and open sale of indulgences is now banished, for the most part, from the Church of Rome."
Another writer quoted Tetzel's language further, thus:
"Draw near and I will give you letters duly sealed, by which even the sins you shall hereafter desire to commit shall be all forgiven you. There is no sin so great that indulgence cannot remit. Pay, only pay largely and you shall be forgiven. Ye priests, ye nobles, ye tradesmen, ye wives, ye maidens, ye young men, hearken to your departed parents and friends, who call to you from the bottomless abyss, 'We
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are enduring horrible torment; a small alms would deliver us. You can give it, Will you not?' With ten groschen you can deliver your father from purgatory. Our Lord God no longer deals with us as God--He has given all power to the Pope."
The following is handed down as a copy of the blanks used by Tetzel--filled out with the name of the purchaser, his sins, etc.:
"Our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on thee,...and absolve thee by the merits of his most holy sufferings. I, in virtue of the Apostolic power committed to me, absolve thee from all....excesses, sins and crimes that thou mayest have committed, however great and enormous they may be, and of whatever kind,...I remit the pains thou wouldst have had to endure in purgatory,...I restore thee to the innocence and purity of thy baptism, so that, at the moment of death, the gates of the place of torment shall be shut against thee, and the gates of paradise open to thee. And if thou shouldst live long, this grace continueth unchangeable till the time of thy end. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. The brother, John Tetzel, commissary, hath signed this with his own hand.---."
As to the immediate present we cannot say, but we know that, only a few years since, printed indulgences with prices affixed were kept on sale, at tables, in some of the large Roman Catholic churches of Mexico and Cuba.
"It Was Given Him to Make War with the Saints
and to Overcome Them"--To "Wear Out
the Saints of the Most High"
Did the papal counterfeit kingdom hold and exercise power over the truly consecrated children of God, and overcome them--"wear them out" by a long period of oppression, or crushing, as the Hebrew text implies? We answer, Yes: every means that could be thought of was employed to crush out the very spirit of true Christianity (John 8:36;
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Gal. 5:1; 2 Cor. 3:17), and to substitute the spirit, doctrines and forms of Antichrist. It was at first less of an open attack on the faithful than of a slow, persistent, crushing oppression, dealing more particularly with opposing teachers; and wearing out the patience and also the faith of many. This persistent worrying, and wearing out, are well illustrated in the institution of the Confessional, in which Antichrist not only took cognizance of every criticism and every word of objection to that system, uttered in the hearing of the confessing one, but under threat of future penalties compelled him to confess and repent of any opposing thoughts or acts of his own. This, too, was soon so backed by the civil power that to utter any protest against the church could be construed as treason against the civil power, which was upheld by papal authority.
In the first flush of papal exaltation, the people as a whole were nominally members of the church or else pagans; and all who professed Christ were expected to conform to the usages and regulations of the gradually self-exalting hierarchy. Error, always more popular than truth, when exalted to influence and power, hunted down, proscribed and made disreputable the truth, and all who held it. This was the time when, as pictured in Revelation, the true Church (woman) fled into the wilderness--into solitude (Rev. 12:6)--an outcast because of her fidelity to the truth, and to the true Lord and Head of the Church. In this time, when apostates were being exalted as princes, the true, humble saints were experiencing what the Lord had warned them, and all who will live godly (in this present time), to expect, viz., persecution. The mother-in-law was against the daughter-in-law, father against son, and brother against brother; and a man's foes were often indeed they of his own household. Could anything be conceived of more likely to wear out or crush the saints of the Most High than such a course, persisted in for centuries?
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To gain an idea of the ferocity and relentlessness of this persecution, we must again turn to the pages of history.
The persecutions of the Christians under Pagan Rome were not worthy of comparison with those under Papal Rome, being less frequent, more limited in extent and much less severe. It is stated, on the authority of the early Christians, that the majority of the Roman magistrates who exercised in the provinces the authority of the emperor, or of the senate, and in whose hands was the power of life and death, behaved like men of polished manners and liberal education, who respected the rules of justice. They frequently declined the odious task of persecution, dismissed charges against the Christians with contempt (as Pilate and Herod attempted to do in the case of our Lord-- Luke 23:14-16,20,22; Matt. 27:24), or suggested to accused Christians some legal evasion. When possible, they used their power much oftener for the relief than for the oppression of Christians; and the Pagan tribunals were often their surest refuge against their Jewish accusers. The cruel persecution under the execrable tyrant Nero, who burned some of the Christians to divert public suspicion from himself, forms one of the darkest pages in the history of Pagan Rome; but his victims were comparatively few. The victims of Pagan persecution were not communities generally, but prominent individuals. These persecutions of leading representatives, even, were not so much a fixed, persistent determination of opposition on the part of the government as a result of uncontrollable popular clamor, awakened by superstition, which it seemed to the rulers necessary to satisfy in the interest of peace and order. Several instances illustrative of this are found in the career of the Apostle Paul, as well as of other apostles. See Acts 19:35-41; 25:24-27; 26:2,3,28.
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Even the more general persecutions, under the Roman emperors, lasted for but brief periods, except that under Diocletian, which continued with varying severity for ten years. Between these persecutions were often long periods of peace and quiet. Under the emperors, though greatly harassed, Christianity was not worn out, but, as we have seen, it greatly prospered.