riors; the clofeft ties of friendship and nature broken; and children exempted from the duty they owed to thofe who gave them birth *.

For like pernicious purpofes, and from the fame fource, or rather from the fund of the fuperabundant merits of the faints +, of which the High-prieft keeps the key, have indulgences been scattered abroad with a liberal hand; indulgences for this world or the next;

• Among other inftances of this, the inflitutions with respect to the mona. fic life are one. They ordain that vows and engagements, contracted at sixteen years of age, fhall be accounted valid, and ever after inviolable, and that the confent of parents and guardians is not neceflary to make them fo: and after they are entered into them, they can claim no power over them: every civil and natural relation is, on the matter, diffülved by them. If Phatifees were guiity of infringing the precept of honouring father and mother, and making provifion for their neceffities by their favourite doctrine of corban, or the devoted gift, Papifts are no lefs blameable. Hift. du Droit publ. Eccl. Fr. tome i. p. 391. †The doctrine of fupererogation, er the faints doing more than the divine law requires of them, whereby they are supposed to attain a higher degree of goodness and perfection than merely suffices for themselves, is a necessary foundation of the other of indulgences. That the furplus may not be loft it is carefully gathered into the common treafury of the church, and becomes like the mines of Peru, yielding gold and filver in plenty. Thefe exuberant merits are retailed out to finners who have none of their own, and fometimes dealt out in wholefale to all who will take them. Thus while the infinite merits of the Redeemer are difparaged as defective, men are alfo hereby fet free from the neceffity of perfonal holiness.

Indulgences are acts of grace whereby perfons obtain the relaxation or remiffion of the pains due to their fins, which they ought to fuffer in this world, or in purgatory. In the more early times they were only a mitigation or relaxation of the rigours of canonical penitence, but in process of time were extended to all perfons, and to all firs, fecret and public; and were confidered as an actual remiffion of the punishment of fins paft, prefent or to come, to the total overthrow of difcipline, and the moft fcandalous corruption of the morality of Chriftians. Though they had been authorifed before both by councils and Popes, particularly St. Gregory and Leo III, yet the abuse of them became much greater af er the Crcifades were fet on foot, in favour whereof the council of Clermont granted very ample indulgences in 1095;-many fubfequent councils did the like, as thofe of Lateran, Lions, Vienna, and Conftance. Clement VI. in his decretal, declared " that Jefus Chrift had left us an infinite treasure "of merits, and of the fuperabundant fatisfactions of his paflion, of thofe of

L 2

"the

next

; partial or plenary+; for a fhorter or a longer time;

"the holy virgin and of the faints, which the pafors of the church, and above "all the Popes, who are the fovereign difpenfers of that treafure, can apply to "the living by the power of the keys, and to the dead by way of fuffrages, to

deliver them from the punishment due to their fias, by drawing from that "treafuse, and offering to God, as much as is needful to fatisfy for that debt."Whenever the Popes had occasion for a new fum, to this expedient they had always recourfe. All are acquainted with the shameful merchandize of indulgences which prevailed fometime before the Reformation, and which was the immediate occafion of it. Since that period fome of the großer abufes have been corrected, yet the use of them was still continued, and established as a perpetual doctrine of the church of Rome: thus fpeaks the last general council," the power to confer indulgences having been granted by Jefus Chrift to

the church, the council ordains and appoints that the ufe of them be retain«ed and obferved in the church, as very falutary to the Christian people, and ap "proved by the authority of holy councils, and anathematizes all who fay they "are ufelefs, or who deny that the church hath power to bestow them." Accordingly this was infented as an article of the Catholic faith, in the creed of Pope Pius IV. Dufix, Moreri. Fra. Paolo, Hift. du Conc. de Trente, liv. 8, P. 955.

Indulgences are said to be as beneficial to the dead as to the living, (which may be read ly granted to be true); and by purchafing them perfons may not only free themselves, but also the fouls of their deceased friends, from the temporary, but excruciating torments of the purgatorial ftate, appointed for all whofe fins had not been perfectly remitted, or satisfied for in this life. The invention of purgatory was neceflary to make indulgences more current, and from the belief of this they derived their greatest fuccefs among the credulous multitude; without it they could hardly have fupported their credit, fince experience proved, that no temporal calamity in this world was warded off by the force of priefly pardons and indulgences, the experiment of their want of fuccefs in the other world could not be fo cafily made. They first created that fiery lake, into which fouls in imagination were plunged, that the priests might have the pleasure, or rather the profit of fishing th m out again. Some have been fo far indulged as not to be fuffered to go there at all; others are allowed the favour to come forth almoft as foon as they enter; while others are left to welter thousands of years in the flames without any pity from the merciles priests, for no other fin of them or of their furviving friends but the damnable one of poverty.-The white Friars boafted that they had a privilege to be no longer in purgatory than till the Saturday next enfuing after their deaths. P. du Moulin, Buckler of faith, p. 213.

In the treasure of indulgences, published by the Francifcans at Roan in 1614, were the following words; "For every day until the nativity of cur "Lady, there are 862c00 years and a 100 days of pardon and remiffion of the "third part of fins granted." A plenary remiffion contains a full pardon of all

time; whereby perfons of the most flagitious lives ftained with every crime, for wearing a crofs on their breast or right shoulder, and devoutly murdering in the name of the church, for vifiting the ruins of Jerufalem, and other places

fins without exception. Mre than this one would think fuperfluous; yet to fhew how liberal thefe pardon-mongers can be at times, of their inexhauftible funds, they have on cer ain occafons exceeded it, giving a full pardon of all fin, and a bid pair of fins befides. P. du Moul, &c. p. 238.

In fume of the catalogues of indulgences printed even pofterior to the council of Trent, they are not confined to days, months, or a few years, but extended to hundreds and thousands of years. "Such a day, fay thefe lifts, be "fies the deliverance of a foul from purgatory, one will gain 6733 years of "indulgence, and I know not how many quarantaines. Such another, the in"culgence is 100 coo or 200,000 years; if the day is more folemn, to the "plenary indulgence will be joined fome hundreds or thousands of years; an "indulgence of feven years or of 40 years is for the moft ordinary days, and to "that some quarantaines are always jo ned." Sometimes the Pope has given 18000 years of pardon, and as many times 40 days, and fome days more, only forgetting to fpecify the hours and the minutes. Hift. du Droit, &c. tom. ii. P 291. Moulin.

Befides the Croifades, publifhed against the infidels, there were many proclaimed against Chriftian prine s and ftates, who by any means, had incurred the displeasure of Rome; efpecially thofe accused of herefy, or disobedience to the Roman See. Indulgences were always the finews of these papal wars, and the alluring pay held out to the ecclefiaftical free-booters who affembled to his fandard; whereby armies of pilgrims compofed of many fools, and more vagabonds and miscreants, were let loofe to the holy work of plundering, ravaging, and perpetrating all kinds of barbarity and wickedness,the price of their plenary pardon, and their fureft title to Rome's paradife. Aventinus teftifics, that the Dominicans who went every where preaching the croifade against Raymond Earl of Tholouse, declared, that "whatever crime a man was chargeable with, though polluted with parricide, inceft, or facrilege, as foor, as he put "on the crofs upon his garment, he fhould be fice both from the crime and "the punishment; whereupon many took occafion, first to dispatch fuch as, they had malice against, and then entered their names in the lift of holy "warriors."-Brochard the monk, gives the following account of the Afiatic croisaders in his time; “To speak truly, to our confusion, there are none in all "the Land of Promife found worfe, or more corrupt in their manners than Chri"ftians, of which I think this to be the reafon: when any one in Spain, France, Germany, or other nations of Chriftendom is found a malefactor, a murderer, a thief, robber, adulterer, incefluous, or the like, and fears to meet with de"ferved punishment from the judge, he flies and fails over to the Holy Land, "thinking to abolish his contracted guilt by the Pope's indulgences, and when

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he

places in the land called holy, though in fact a land more immediately fubjected to a divine malediction than any other on the face of the earth; for taking a trip to the Jubileet; reforting to privileged churches and altars;

for

"he is come thither, he hath not charged his mind but the place of his refi-. "dence." When the French army of pilgrims entered Catalonia in 1245 to take poffeffion of the territories of the King of Arragon, given by the Pope to the King of France," they committed," fays a writer of that nation, "the most fearful diforders; they profaned the churches, violated even the "religious, carried off the facred veffels, croffes, images, books and ornamen's

of the church, and fold them to one another; thus they behaved through "the whole campaign, pretending always to gain the indulgence of the croisade, "for which they had fuch devotion that those who could not use the bow, or employ other arms, took stones, and faid, I caft this stone against Peter of "Arragon, to gain the indulgence." Aventin. Annal. 1. vii. p. 408. Bruchard, Defer. Ter. Sanet. p. 333. Fleuri, tome xviii. p. 374.

*These places became early the objects of the most superstitious veneration, and continue to be fo to this day. Large favours were heaped on all who would visit them, and repeat the proper prayer at each. We have in the Itinerary of F. Pantaliano Daveiro, who devoutly made the tour in the 15th century, a full lift of the feveral indulgences gained at each place, with the fo mula of prayers and other devotions to be there performed at the ftable in Bethlehem, three' plenary indulgences; more of the fame at Jordan, Tabor, the grave of Lazarus, the houfes of Caiaphas and Pilate, Gethsemane, Calvary, etc.; feven years, and feven quarantaines, or feven times forty days of indulgence at Cana-the pool of Bethesda, the places where Chrift was apprehended-where the difciples flept, where James hid himself till the refurrection,-where Ifaias was sawn afunder, the Valley of Jhofaphat,-the Plain of Damafcus where Adam was created, etc, etc. Itiniario de Ter, San&t. etc. Lifb, com licenca et privilegio; ann.

1583.

In the years of Jubilee the church's treafury is opened, and indulgences proclaimed to all Chriftians, who will take the trouble, or be at the expence of travelling to Rome, where, after all, they have often been obliged to pay well for their pardon. The Jubilee was first instituted, 1300, by Boniface, in imitation of that of the Jews, or rather of the Secular Games of the Romans, which were celebrated once in an age. Boniface appointed the observation of it every hundredth year. Clement VI. confidering the fhortness of human life, and being defirous to impart the bleflings of the facred year to a greater number, or rather to quicken the circulation of foreign money at the Exchange of Rome, reduced the period to fifty years. Urban VI. thinking it yet too long, shortened it to thirty-three; and Sixtus V. fixed it at twenty-five. The concourfe of people at these times has often been fo great, that Rome itself could fcarcely contain them. But fewer pilgrims from diftant nations have gone there fince permiffion was given to the Catholic countries to celebrate Jubilees at home.

Befides

for celebrating fome new-invented feftival*; for mumbling fome Pater-nofters, for fingering often the chaplet or rofary †; for any trifling act of freakish fupersti

tion;

B. fides the ftated times for publishing these folemn indulgences, they have alfo been granted for extraordinary occafions; and Popes have been accustomed to open a Jubilee upon their exaltation. Boniface confined these indulgences to thofe who visited the thresholds of St. Peter and St. Paul; two fucceeding Popes. added St. bn de Lateran and St. Mary Major. In the beginning of the holy year, a gate is opened in each of these, which are walled up at all other times. The Pope himself goes to that of St. Peter, and with a golden hammer ftrikes it thrice, faying, Open to me the gates of righteousness, &c. and instantly it is piled down the penitentiaries wash it with holy water, &c.-Next morning the Pontiff gives the benedi&tion to the people in forma Jubilei, The penitentiaries during the Jubilee give absolution to the crowd of pilgrims who apply, and by a touch of their magic rod metamorphose the greatest finners into faints, and difmifs them as pure as they came. Thus devout Catholics are not obliged to travel so far as Judea for indulgences, but may find a much nearer road to heaven. What was formerly gained at the holy fepulchre in the east, may be had more expeditiously at the tombs of the apostles at Rome: and to save the trouble of croffing the feas, or of a tedious journey, the angels were so obliging as to carry the virgin's house in their arms from Nazareth to Loretto, after baiting fome little time by the way; for the truth of which, befides the teffimony of the shepherds who faw it paffing through the air in the night, we have the bulls of three different Popes, and an anniversary feaft of the transportation religiously observed: 200,000 pilgrims have fometimes been seen there at a time, who, by creeping round the temple on their knees, can carry away as many indulgences as may deliver the fouls of all their ancestors out of purgato-> ry. This puts one in mind of the fanita fcala at Rome, the marble stair which Chrift afcended with Pilate, which none are permitted to go up but on their knees; but for recompence, at every step, three years and as many times forty days of pardons are gained, befides the privilege of entering the fan&ta fan&torum above it, where is kept the image of Jefus made, they fay, by angels. But what country is not full of privileged places, churches, and altars? Platina, Moreri. Lettres Juives, let. 63. Miffon, Voyage d'Ital. tome ii. p. 85.

*Innocent VI. appointed the feafts of the nails of the crofs, of the crown of thorns, of the fpear of St. Longinus, (the foldier who pierced Chrift's fide), and added large indulgences to the obfervation of them. The like have been annexed to the feasts of St. Mary, &c. Trithem. in Chron. Spanh. Bzcv. ann. 1354"There is not," fays a reverend capuchin, a city, province, or king"d.m where there is not fome fraternity or altar erected to that laudable de❝votion, and in honour of that great lady clothed above with the fun and his "ardent rays: and, fince that devotion hath been enriched by our fovereign "Pontiff's with fuch inestimable treafures, there is not a day in the year in

which