Besides absolutions for crimes too shocking to be mentioned, from 9s. to £2 10s. The preceding statement requires no comment. To enlarge upon its tendency would be to blacken the chimney. Its design, on the part of the monkish brotherhood who invented and maintain it, is to make a penny, by means at which a modest devil would blush; and proves, by demonstration strong as holy writ, that the abettors of such crimes are the true descendants of that scoundrel hierarchy, at whose decline and fall the truly great and good will rejoice and be exceeding glad.
Before now, instances have been known in which the fraternity were foiled with their own weapons. A certain nobleman once told Tetzelius, a mighty preacher of indulgences, that he had a mind to commit a very heinous sin, and desired an indulgence or present pardon for it. This was granted for a considerable sum; and when the money was paid, the bull was given. Some time after, this nobleman took occasion to meet Tetzelius in a certain wood, and breaking open his chest, robbed him of his entire stock of indulgences. When Tetzelius threatened him with all manner of curses, the nobleman showed him the bull he had paid so dear for; and laughing at him, observed that this was the very sin he had a longing to commit, when he was so fully absolved.
Equally absurd, though not so malignant in its immediate result, is the doctrine of purgatory, of which the Scriptures know nothing. The hypothesis on which this notion is founded seems to be an opinion that some are not quite good enough to go to heaven, and yet too good to be sent to hell; an idea evidently borrowed from the fabled invisible domains of heathen writers. In errors of this sort, and indeed of any description, our resort must be ‘to the law and to the testimony;’ and if the truths therein contained are contradicted by an angel of light, we are not to believe him. The holy Scriptures leave no ground for the doctrine of purgatory. ‘There are twelve hours in the day, wherein men ought to work: work while ye have the day; for the night cometh, when no man can work,’ When death arrives, probation ceases; the die is cast, the destiny is fixed, and cannot be revoked or amended. St. Paul asserts that, ‘if the earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ He also affirms, that when ‘we are absent from the body, we are present with the Lord;’ which is impossible, unless we are to conclude that our Lord is in purgatory. We are told, moreover, in the Gospel, that ‘the beggar died, and was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom;’ not into purgatory, or the popish limbo, but into paradise, whither the thief upon the cross also went. We find also that Moses and Elias appeared on the mount, in glory, with our Lord and His apostles. So that they could not have been confined in purgatory, even before the death of Christ. The inference is, there is no such place. ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labours.’ But purgatory is not rest; it is a species of future ordeal; and God cannot deny Himself or contradict His promises.
Papists affect that Augustine taught the doctrine of purgatory; but this pretext will avail little; for if it could be proved, the weight is nothing against Scripture. There was, indeed, a time when he had some debate in his mind upon the subject, and observed, ‘that such a matter as a middle state for purgation might be inquired of;’ but after more diligent investigation and thought, he says: ‘We read of heaven and of hell, but the third place we are utterly ignorant of; yea, we find it is not in the Scriptures. Nor will any thing help thee but what is done while thou art here. As the last day of man’s life finds him, so the last day of the world shall hold him. Nor is there for any body any third place that he can possibly be in, but with the devil, who is not with Christ.’ The scheme of purgatory, like the other legends of papacy, was doubtless invented with a special view to the ‘main chance,’ that is, the cash. When a Roman Catholic talks of securing bliss, he means, making money; and it is clear that in this view the doctrine now exploded is intimately connected with indulgences, and that they stand or fall together. This invisible trial was never heard of till the year 600; and the first who directed prayers for the dead to be used in the Church of Rome was Odillo, abbot of Cluny, in the year 1000.
Transubstantiation is another of the absurdities of papacy, which no man of sane mind can comprehend, much less receive. ‘Since Christ, our Redeemer,’ observes the Council of Trent, ‘has said that it was truly His own body which He offered under the appearance of bread, it has always therefore been believed in the Church of God, and is now again declared by this holy Council,—That, by the consecration of the bread and wine, there is effected a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood; which conversion is fitly and properly termed by the holy Catholic Church, Transubstantiation.’ To this proposition is annexed, in the usual spirit of that persecuting Church, ‘If any one shall deny these statements, he is accursed.’ This is advancing upon us with a vengeance. I see only one alternative here for a reasonable being. We are compelled either to take leave of our senses, or expose ourselves to eternal ruin. We are to receive a positive, palpable contradiction as confirmed truth, that a consecrated wafer, made of flour and water, is the real body of Christ; that the wine, compressed from fruit, is His real blood; and what is more, though we are sure that the bread and wine have been thus prepared, we are nevertheless called upon to believe that they were not. We are to believe that He who fills heaven and earth, and is immutable, is as small as a crumb of bread or a drop of wine, and can be eaten and drunk. In fact, we are expected to give implicit credit to impossibilities; as if religion, instead of being a reasonable service, was a tissue of absurdities, and a cunningly devised fable. The conclusion is inevitable. Transubstantiation, like most other items of popish belief, is opposed to reason and Scripture. It can have no other than an ideal existence; and is compounded of such stuff as dreams are made of. Hence it has been asserted, that even a century ago, several discerning persons in the Church of Rome were grown so sensible of the weakness of the doctrine, that they would be glad quietly to dispose of it; but the Council of Trent, with the purblind zeal which has ever characterized this fallen Church, have riveted it so fast to their religion, and made it so necessary and essential a part of their belief, that they cannot now disengage it. It is a millstone hung about the neck of popery, that will some day sink it; and, in the opinion of many well-informed men, it is a weight that will make the pillars of Saint Peter’s crack, and requires more volumes to make it good than would fill the Vatican.
Nor is the matter mended if we contemplate the worship of the Host, and homage paid to images and pictures. Like many other of the antics of popery, these are novelties, and were not known till 1216. Pope Adrian the Sixth, it is said, had so much doubt of their value, that in his own practice he used the precautionary form, ‘I adore thee if thou art Christ;’ and judged the people should say the same. His suspicions were well founded. As no power whatever can work a self-contradiction, so no being can make that which is already made; but Christ was many years before the Eucharist; therefore no power could make the eucharistic bread to be the man Christ Jesus. Of course it ever remained a creature, and adoration offered to it is idolatry. So of images. Referring to these, an old writer remarks, ‘Now would anyone be pleased to consider the pains taken in the formation of images, he would be ashamed to stand in such fear of a thing that the hand of the artist had been so long playing upon, to make a god. For this wooden god, taken perhaps out of some old faggot or pile, or a piece of some forlorn stump, is hung up, hewn, planed, and chiselled into shape; or if it be a deity of brass or silver, it is ten to one but the pedigree is derived from a dirty kettle, or worse than that. But if it happen to be a god of stone, then the mallets are set to work upon him; but as he is not sensible of any hardships endured in the preparation, it is to him of inferior moment. Well, the image is cast, fashioned, and filed; but, pray, when does it become divine?’ It may be soldered, put together, and set upon its legs; but after all the article is of no value. Then comes the Catholic priest, with his consecrating potentialities; and now, behold your God! ye deluded worshippers. The truly enlightened Christian sees through the folly of such practices. He knows that all divine or religious worship is wholly due to Jehovah. If not wholly, not at all; for any reason that would take away a part, must take away the whole. If, therefore, wholly due to Him, then can no part thereof, however small, be given away from Him, without injustice and impiety.
And what a bungling attempt is the usage of penance to purchase heaven! Papists tell us, that confession to a priest is of infinite value, and amounts to an exchange, which God allows, of the temporal punishments we have deserved by sin, into these small penitential works. Yet, it is to be feared, say they, that the penance enjoined is seldom sufficient to take away all the punishment due to God’s justice on account of our sins. The balance of the account remains unpaid, and must be settled in purgatory. After confession, the penitent is ordered to say, ‘I beg pardon of God, and penance and absolution from you, my ghostly father.’ The priest then gives the absolution, and adds, ‘May the passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the saints, and whatsoever good thou shalt do, and whatsoever evil thou shalt suffer, be to thee unto the remission of thy sins, and the increase of grace.’ In conformity with this piece of priestly fraud, many poor creatures have submitted to miserable hardships; some have worn hair shirts, having given themselves a certain number of stripes; others have taken long and painful pilgrimages; and in Spain and Italy these woeful travellers are frequently observed, almost naked, loaded with chains, and groaning at every step.
But of all the proofs which may be adduced to discover the true character of this base and fallen Church, her persecuting spirit is the most conclusive. This has always been seen. The friends to the Reformation were anathematized and excommunicated; and the life of Luther was often in danger, though at last he died on the bed of peace. Innumerable schemes were resorted to for the purpose of overthrowing the Reformed Church, and wars were waged with that view. The invincible Spanish Armada, as it was vainly called, had this end in view. The Inquisition, which was established in the twelfth century, was a dreadful weapon. Terrible persecutions were carried on in various parts of Germany, and even in Bohemia, which continued thirty years; and the blood of the saints was said to flow like the waters of a river. Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary were similarly visited. In Holland and the Low Countries the most amazing cruelties were exercised under the merciless and unrelenting hands of the Spaniards, to whom the inhabitants of that part of the world were then in subjection. Father Paul states, that the Belgian martyrs amounted to fifty thousand; but Grotius observes, that at least twice that number suffered by the hand of the executioner.
THE MARTYRDOM OF RIDLEY.