Chapter 25
Indulgences and Scripture
Brusher, in
his account of Luther’s protest of 1517 failed to set forth the vile
concept of indulgences Tetzel promoted in the cause of Rome. Had the
Bible been available to the credulous masses, they would not have been
deceived. Merle d’ Aubigné in his five-volume work, History of the
Reformation of the Sixteenth Century recorded that a messenger
preceded Tetzel’s entry into towns and villages announcing the
presumptuous words, "The grace of God and of the holy father is at your
gates" (Book III, Chapter I, p. 85).
D’Aubigné recorded extracts from Tetzel’s written
defense of his work, Positiones fratris J. Tetzelli quibus defendit
indulgentias contra Lutherum. In simple English terms this was
Tetzel’s defense of indulgences against Luther’s opposition. Tetzel made
the preposterous claim that,
There is no sin so great that an indulgence cannot
remit, and even if anyone (which doubtless is impossible) had offered
violence to the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of God, let him pay—only
let him pay well and all will be forgiven him. (D’Aubigné, Book III,
Chapter I, p. 86)
Speaking such absurdities, Tetzel declared,
I would not change my privileges for those of St.
Peter in heaven; for I have saved more souls by my indulgences than
the apostle by his sermons. (Ibid.)
Then defying the words of God, Tetzel dared to
promise that,
Indulgences avail not only for the living, but for
the dead. For that repentance is not even necessary. Priest! noble!
merchant! wife! youth! maiden! do you not hear your parents or your
other friends who are dead, and who cry from the bottom of the abyss:
We are suffering horrible torments! a trifling alms would deliver us;
you can give it, and you will not! (Ibid.)
Tetzel confidently promised that,
At the very minute that the money rattles at the
bottom of the chest, the soul escapes from purgatory, and flies
liberated to heaven. (Ibid., pp. 86, 87)
William Cathcart D.D., in his book, The Papal
System, reported an incident which underscored the potential to
incite men to criminal acts upon the receipt of indulgences for sins yet
to be committed. Writing concerning the pecuniary aspect of indulgences,
Dr. Cathcart recorded that—
Kings, queens, princes and bishops, had to pay
twenty-five ducats for an ordinary indulgence. Abbots paid ten. All
with an income of five hundred florins paid six. Those who had 200
florins a year, paid one; others only a half. A still smaller sum
might be taken from poorer persons.
There was a tax for particular sins. Polygamy paid
six ducats; theft in a church and perjury nine ducats; and magic two
ducats. For thirty crowns Tetzel sold a Saxon gentlemen an indulgence
giving him pardon for a nameless sin which he was about to commit. The
Saxon flogged and robbed him, and was discharged by Duke George
without penalty when he showed his indulgence. (Ferguson and Woodburn,
Philadelphia, 1872, p. 276, 277)
One wonders whether Tetzel learned any lessons from
this assault and robbery. Some may judge the crime of this unnamed Saxon
as a prime example of poetic justice.
A church which built its temple upon such patently
outrageous claims was destined to demise, for no blessing from God could
be present. That almost three centuries were to pass before it received
its deadly wound demonstrates the patience and long-suffering of our
loving God.
Even when Leo X met his untimely death, it would seem
that no lessons had been learned, for after the brief pontificate of
Adrian VI, Leo de’ Medici’s cousin, Giulio, was elected Pope Clement
VII. As Leo lost Germany to the Reformation, his cousin, Clement, lost
England.
Attempting to reverse the spread of Protestantism to
Switzerland and Scotland and even such staunchly Roman Catholic peoples
as the French, Spanish and Polish, the Council of Trent was called in
1545 by Pope Paul III. No less than four other Popes were to rule in
succession before the Council completed its deliberations—Julius III,
Marcellus II, Paul IV and Pius IV.
Pius IV resurrected the Council of Trent which had
been adjourned for the seven years prior to his election. Neither
Marcellus II nor Paul IV presided over a single session of the Council.
The Council resumed only on January 18, 1562 after a lapse of ten years.
This proved to be its final session and its most significant. In this
session a golden opportunity to return the church to a Scriptural
foundation was rejected.
The great issue confronting the Council of Trent was
the matter of the relative weight to be accorded to the Scriptures and
to tradition as the basis of Roman Catholic faith and practice. This was
a difficult debate. On the one hand the bishops well knew the weight
many of the faithful were now assigning the Bible as the teacher of
truth. With an explosion of translations into the various languages of
Europe, bishops felt themselves to be under siege. It was growing more
and more difficult to defend their teachings from the Word of God. With
the laity now in possession of the Bible in their own languages, truths
hidden from the laity during centuries of ignorance and darkness now
lighted the minds and hearts of men and women who loved God.
These Bibles had been translated from the Eastern
Manuscripts with which Western Europe was blessed after the calamity of
the capture of Constantinople by the aggressively evangelistic Ottoman
Empire in 1453. That which provided an Islamic foothold in Greece and
the Balkans, as the Moors had earlier achieved in Spain and Portugal,
was to strengthen Christianity despite the threat posed by Islam to the
very existence of European Christianity. When the incursion of Ottoman
Turks in the Southeast reached the gates of Vienna some believed that it
would eventually unite with Islam in the Iberian Peninsula in a pincer
movement which would strangle the very life of Christian Europe. It was
a blessing that the Moors in Spain and Portugal were in severe decline
at the time of the Ottoman zenith.
The benefit bestowed on Christianity by the fall of
the Byzantine Empire was that the fleeing Christians rescued the
invaluable Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament and transported them
to Western Europe, which had hitherto been confined to the Latin Vulgate
version of Scripture. This version had been translated by Jerome in the
fourth century from perverted Alexandrian manuscripts in which
insufficient care had been taken in transcribing the manuscripts—and
deliberate alterations were made. It is a tragedy that the great
proportion of modern translations have once more resorted to using the
Greek manuscripts of the Western tradition which are replete with such
errors.
Rome rejected this benefit. The Council of Trent was
equally divided between those prelates who felt it expedient, in the
light of Protestant success, to proclaim that the Word of God should
form the basis of Roman Catholic faith, and those who promoted tradition
as equal to the Bible in this respect. Bishops of this latter point of
view, in practice almost invariably placed tradition above Scripture in
settling such matters.
In 1534 Ignatius Loyola had founded the Jesuit Order.
Although the order was still in its infancy it had acquired a body of
outstanding priests. They were men of insight. Seeing the danger to the
church, should the vote result in declaring the Bible as the sole
arbiter of truth, they spent time, as we have recorded earlier (See
chapter entitled "The Sabbath and the Seal of God"), with Cardinal
Gaspari de Fosso, Archbishop of Reggio. These insightful Jesuit priests
pointed out to de Fosso that if the Bible was alone to be respected as
the arbiter of truth, then the church would be at a loss to support
Sunday sacredness, for that doctrine was based upon Roman Catholic
tradition alone. De Fosso in his subsequent speech to the assembled
bishops did err in assigning the same circumstances to the alteration of
circumcision to baptism; for as with Sabbath-keeping, Christ Himself set
an example in baptism, and the New Testament amply testified to the
cessation of circumcision as a Christian rite.
Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is
nothing, (1 Corinthians 7:19),
Paul wrote. (See also 1 Corinthians 7:18, Galatians
2:3, 5:2 and many other verses).
In his book Kanon und Tradition, Heinrich
Julius Holtzmann stated:
The Council [of Trent] agreed fully with Ambrosius
Pelargus, that under no condition should the Protestants be allowed to
triumph by saying that the council had condemned the doctrine of the
ancient church. But this practice caused untold difficulty without
being able to guarantee certainty. For this business, indeed,
"well-nigh divine prudence" was requisite—which the Spanish ambassador
acknowledged as belonging to the council on the sixteenth of March,
1562. Indeed, thus far they had not been able to orient themselves to
the interchanging, crisscrossing, labyrinthine, twisting passages of
an older and newer concept of tradition. But even in this they were to
succeed. Finally, at the last opening on the eighteenth of January,
1562, all hesitation was set aside: [Gaspari de Fosso] the Archbishop
of Reggio made a speech in which he openly declared that tradition
stood above Scripture. The authority of the church could therefore not
be bound to the authority of the Scriptures, because the church had
changed circumcision into baptism, Sabbath into Sunday, not by the
command of Christ, but by its own authority. With this, to be sure,
the last illusion was destroyed, and it was declared that tradition
does not signify antiquity, but continual inspiration. (Druck and
Verlag von Ferd, Ludwigsburg, 1859, p. 263)
Cardinal de Fosso’s speech swayed the Bishops. We
quote a portion of his speech delivered to the Council of Trent on
January 18, 1562. The address was pivotal, for, coached by the Jesuits,
it turned the assembly toward Roman Catholic tradition and, effectively,
once more along the road of departure from the Word of God. Roman
Catholicism had turned its back on the one source of truth and had
determined to remain the mighty opponent of the faith of God. In part de
Fosso stated,
Such is the condition of the heretics [Protestants]
of this age that on nothing do they rely more than that, under the
pretense of the word of God, they overthrow the authority of the
church; as though the church, His body, could be opposed to the word
of Christ, or the head to the body. On the contrary, the authority of
the church, then, is illustrated most clearly by the Scriptures; for
while on the one hand she recommends them, declares them to be divine,
offers them to us to be read, in doubtful matters explains them
faithfully, and condemns whatever is contrary to them; on the other
hand the legal precepts in the Scriptures taught by the Lord have
ceased by virtue of the same authority. The Sabbath, the most glorious
day in the law, has been changed into the Lord’s day. Circumcision,
enjoined upon Abraham and his seed under such threatening that he who
had not been circumcised would be destroyed from among his people, has
been so abrogated that the apostle asserts: "If ye be circumcised, ye
have fallen from grace, and Christ shall profit you nothing." These
and other similar matters have not ceased by virtue of Christ’s
teaching (for He says He had come to fulfill the law, not to destroy
it), but they have been changed by the authority of the church.
Indeed, if she should be removed (since there must be heresies), who
would set forth truth, and confound the obstinacy of heretics? All
things will be confused, and soon heresies condemned by her authority
will spring up again.
The human traditions so dear to Rome had once more
confirmed her faith in the words and dictates of fallible men,
culminating in 1870 when Pius IX declared himself, his predecessors and
his successors to be infallible when speaking ex cathedra, with
the full authority of their office.
The Council of Trent did temporarily inject some new
life into the city on the banks of the Tiber, but this petered out as
Rome’s destiny with prophetic fulfillment marched on apace.
The Papacy had once more, in its search for
domination and unscrip-tural authority, offered darkness for light,
error for truth, pagan concepts in place of Scriptural truth, human
authority overriding divine mandates, pomp to replace the Christian
virtue of humility, and hier-archicalism as a substitute for Biblical
church order. From this moment the Roman Catholic Church was doomed, for
it had confirmed its defiance of the God of heaven and no amount of
apparent future success could stall Rome’s inexorable march to its final
appointment before the judgment bar of God. On that day there will be no
haughty pontiff, no proud prelate, no vain priest, for in that day—
every heart shall melt, and all hands shall be
feeble, and every spirit shall faint, and all knees shall be weak as
water: behold, it cometh, and shall be brought to pass, saith the Lord
God. (Ezekiel 21:7)
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