indulgences? A. Doing, in the best manner we can, what is prescribed to obtain them, and wait the effect of them from the mercy of God, who alone knows the secrets of the heart.-Q. On what are indulgences founded? A. On the satisfaction of Jesus Christ and of the saints.-Q. Why do you add the satisfaction of the saints to that of Jesus Christ? A. Because of the goodness of God, who is willing, on the behalf of his most pious servants, to forgive the others. -Q. Why besides? A. Because the satisfaction of the saints are united to that of Jesus Christ, whence they derive all their value.Q. Who has a right to give indulgences? A. The pope in the whole church, and the bishops in their diocesses, with the limitations appointed by the church."

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Such is the precious doctrine of the infallible church respecting indulgences. I would appeal to your types, if they were capable of receiving an appeal, whether they were ever employed in putting together such a jumble of impiety and nonsense? From this document I am enabled to take higher ground. I maintain now, not only that the pope, and the church of which he is the head, grant indulgence to commit sin, but that they actually command it. They make it the duty of a Papist to commit sin. I rest this very heavy charge on the answer to the fourth question above quoted : The mind of the church is, to grant indulgences only to those who attend to the duty of satisfying, on their part, divine justice." Perhaps some of your Protestant readers will not, at first sight, perceive the enormous wickedness of this; but I appeal to every serious and enlightened Christian, whether he can imagine greater wickedness than an attempt to do what God has declared that it is impossible that a creature can do, and what he declares to be already perfectly accomplished, not by a mere creature, but by his own Son? The revelation of divine mercy by Jesus Christ, and the command to believe in him, is virtually a command to cease from every attempt to satisfy divine justice for ourselves, or to make our peace with God; but the church of Rome sets its miserable votaries to a work which it is not only impossible for them to do, but the very attempt to do which, is an act of rebellion against God. To satisfy divine justice! The man who attempts to do this, or who thinks he can do it, must have as low ideas of the Divine Being, as the man who sees and worships his god in a stock or a stone, or any other work of his own hands. Hence the connexion of this doctrine of indulgences with the worship of saints and images, and the uniting the merit of the saints with that of the Saviour, which shows that the poor Papist looks upon God as such a one as himself. Christ has satisfied divine justice by the sacrifice of himself once for all; and every man that believes in him becomes interested in that sacrifice. The justice of God is satisfied with regard to him; the anger of God is turned away from him; he needs no other sacrifice or satisfaction; and instead of attempting to satisfy divine justice by his own penances, or the divine law by his own doings, he is taught, from a principle of love and gratitude as a saved sinner, to live a life of humility and obedience to his heavenly Father. This is the true Catholic; this is a member of the church universal, which unites the earth to heaven.

But the Papist is taught by his church to satisfy divine justice for

himself; and, if he cannot make it entirely out, he gets the grace and indulgences of the church, and the merits of the saints, to help him; and, if all should be too little, he has a corps de reserve in the merits of Christ, to which, however, he will not likely apply if he can do better. This subject is too serious for ridicule; it is delusion and imposition all over, and the effect of it is to ruin the souls of men. He that rejects the sacrifice of Christ, or who places any confidence whatever in his own merits, or the merits of any creature, refuses the only remedy which divine mercy has provided for the salvation of our fallen race; and, by disbelieving the divine testimony concerning the Saviour, he is guilty of the dreadful wickedness of calling the God of truth a liar. Many Protestants, I am afraid, are guilty of the same thing; but it is of the nature of popery to make men do so; and the Romish church authoritatively not only indulges, but commands the commission of sin.

In my next letter I shall discuss this subject a little further, and then advert to the indulgences granted by Luther and the other reformers. I am, &c.

GLASGOW, 15th June, 1818.

A PROTESTANT.

CHAPTER IV.

ANOTHER LETTER BY PAX.-FURTHER REMARKS OF PROTESTANT ON THE SUBJECT OF INDULGENCES: THEIR ORIGIN. TAX OF THE APOSTESTIMONY OF CLAUDE D'ESPENCE OF DUPIN. LUTHER'S AL

TOLIC CHANCERY.

LEGED INDULGENCE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE GLASGOW CHRONICLE.

SIR-When I concluded my last letter, and declined answering your correspondent, I did so with the conviction that no additional provocation would emanate from his pen until he had settled the previous question; but, as Addison observes, "it is indeed impossible to kill the weed the soil has a natural inclination to produce." I feel myself forcibly called upon to notice his letter of Saturday last, which, if I had no other, is a convincing proof of the truth of my remarks. He argues, as yet, on mere supposition, unsupported by a single fact, and is silent on those truths opposed to his fallacious assertions.

I will strictly adhere to my first principle of avoiding a controversy on the differences of religious opinions. My object is not to throw my gauntlet in the face of every man who does not think as I do, but to crush prejudices, by opposing truth to error, and the olive branch to the spirit of persecution. Who can blame me in this enlightened country, where men are allowed the full freedom of conscience, and where, I hope, these sparks of prejudice are only emitting the faint light of an expiring fire?

Every impartial observer must have been struck with the very feeble resistance made by your correspondent in his last letter, whereby he occupies twenty-four lines of your columns in comparing his own temper with that of his opponent, and calculating how old I VOL. I-4

shall be when the Kilravack bull expires. This is not to the purpose. I defied him to produce the bull, with the meaning he ascribes to it, even allowing the benefit of the errata he claims; and it may not be irrelevant here to observe, that it is rather unfortunate for your correspondent, that the proprietors (perhaps the manufacturers) of the bull will not allow the publication of it, which might be effected easily, without dispossessing themselves of it, and that the reverend gentleman who is reported to have seen it should be out of town. I also defied him to prove, that by an indulgence was meant the remission of sins; (for a person in sin cannot derive the benefit of an indulgence;) to which he replies by a long letter, remarkable only for its cobweb texture, and a deficiency of that courtesy and good nature he blames in the members of our constitution.

Is there not apparent, in your correspondent's writing, a spark of that spirit which Protestants themselves blame in the first reformers? Luther enacted many things, according to his own assertion, solely to spite the church of Rome; hence, I suppose, the reiterated use of those epithets he knows are only used in derision and contempt; hence, he assures me, the repetition of that part of a former letter which he finds gave offence: and let me here observe, the Catholics of Glasgow never withheld the acknowledgment and thanks to their brethren Protestants, for having suggested, and with them framed, an institution which has drawn forth the admiration of a sister kingdom, and the patronage of one of our monarch's sons. No, sir; it was the concluding part that should never have been penned or printed, and which truth itself could not palliate. He denies Catholics even the appellation of Catholic, because he says the name is arrogantly assumed. I again refer to our house of parliament, where some enlightened Protestants, in a debate connected with the Catholic question, objected to the word Catholic being used exclusively to denote the church of Rome; they did not substitute Papist or Papists; they knew it was an odious expression, and that mockery blunts the edge of serious reasoning; they used the term Roman Catholic.

The principles of the Catholic church do not emanate from a pope, but from the great Founder of the Christian faith; and, if a pope were to preach tenets contrary to those contained in the Testament, he would be deposed, and a successor appointed; and the followers of the ex-pope would then, and only then, be called Papists. Before I conclude, let me beg of those who are not tainted with the venom of prejudice, not to receive as truths those allegations ungenerously charged on Catholics, because they remain unanswered. There are in every Christian some points of faith so delicately refined, so hallowed, so sacredly planted in their bosoms, that to encourage a discussion of them with those whose boast it is to treat every sentiment and opinion not their own with contempt, would to me appear a sinful provocation.

Had your correspondent taxed the Catholics with any one principle which they profess, I would gladly have acknowledged it; but he proceeds in the same unheeded course, and deals out misrepresentations with an unsparing hand. He asserts the Catholics believe the pope to be infallible. They believe him to be the head of the church; but they know him to be a man, and not their god, as he contemptu

ously asserts. But, if by such absurd sophistry he means to prove his first assertion, I must acknowledge they are fit pillars to support the unholy edifice he has raised with his own hand, at the expense of his neighbour's nicest feelings, his own integrity as a writer, and his charity as a Christian.

My pursuits and my absence will prevent me troubling you for some time; and, as I hope your correspondent will be silent when I return, I hope I shall not be tempted to take up my pen again, which, if it were to raise one angry frown from me, would be my greatest regret. Yours, &c.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE GLASGOW CHRONICLE.

PAX.

SIR-I know that Papists maintain that indulgences are meant only to relieve sinners from the temporal punishment which their sins deserve, or, at most, from the pains of purgatory; but this is disproved by the catechism, of which I quoted so largely in my last letter. We are there told that the church, as a good mother, when she grants indulgences, "gives nothing to her children but what serves to relieve them in this world and in the next." Indulgences, therefore, serve to relieve Papists from the punishment which their sins deserve in the world to come. To this, let me add the declaration of the divine, angelic, and seraphic doctor, St. Thomas, a pillar of the popish church. "There actually exists," says he, "an immense treasure of merit, composed of the pious deeds and virtuous actions which the saints have performed, beyond what is necessary for their own salvation, and which are therefore applicable to the benefit of others. The guardian and dispenser of this precious treasure is the Roman pontiff, and, of consequence, he is empowered to assign, to such as he thinks proper, a portion of this inexhaustible source of merit, suitable to their respective guilt, and sufficient to deliver them from the punishment due to their crimes." Here, then, is a plenary remission of all their crimes, and of all the punishment which they deserve, whether in this world or the next. It is not said to those who can afford to pay for it; but the practice of the Romish church showed that they knew how to supply the ellipsis. The merits of Christ are out of the question here. Nothing is necessary but the merits of fellow-creatures, who, it seems, had done more good works than were necessary for their own salvation; while the man who takes his religion from the Bible knows that, though all the good works of all the men in the world, since the fall of Adam, were put into one common stock, they would not be sufficient to merit one breath of air.

It was the practice of the Romish church to enjoin certain penances for certain transgressions. By and by, they began to relax in the severity of their discipline. Dupin, a popish historian, writing. of the twelfth century, says, "The practice of public penance for public sins was not yet entirely abolished; but it was become very rare, because the remission of sins was to be obtained in other ways, and chiefly by the crusade and pilgrimages. They began to reserve the remission of certain sins to the pope and the bishops." So far as appears, nobody then doubted that it was in the power of the church,

and of the pope as her head, to allow certain sins to be committed, without subjecting the individual to the usual penances; and, when the permision was signified in writing, the document alone, or the fact and the document taken together, constitute what, in the primary sense of the term, was called an indulgence. But the matter did not remain long in this situation. An additional import was given to the word: the practice was extended, and the remission of penances prepared the way for the remission of sins. If the individual was freed from all penitentiary inflictions in the former case, in the latter he was freed from all punishment whatever; and, if the indulgence was plecary, he might transgress with impunity every statute of the decafogue, and every ordinance of the church. To this favoured individual, purgatory, and even hell itself, were divested of their terrors; in the prospect of the last judgment, he was already acquitted. Edin. Ency. Vol. VIII. p. 316.

On this subject, Dupin speaks with great tenderness. He had mentioned the origin of indulgences in the twelfth century; and, when writing of the fifteenth century, he informs us, in few words, that "indulgences granted by the popes were more common than ever: they had become a kind of traffic." This is as much as could be expected from a Papist; but it shows that the wickedness of the holy church had by this time risen to a great height. It will amuse your readers to see the nature of this traffic, and the prices which were paid for indulgence to commit certain sins. A book was published at Rome, entitled, "The Tax of the Apostolic Chancery," in which the price of absolution, for every vice that the pope professed to pardon, was fixed. I will not pollute your pages by many extracts, but mention two or three things, to show your readers in what estimation Papists held the privilege of committing certain crimes, and Now the crimes themselves were estimated for a layman murdering a larman, a sum equal to about 7s. 6d. ; for him that killeth his father or mother, wife or sister, 10s. 6d. ; for laying violent hands on a clergyman, so it be not to the effusion of blood, 10s. 6d. Thus, it seems, to strike a clergyman, though it did not break his skin, was as great a crime as killing one's own parents. For a priest to marry was a erime for which no sum could atone; at least I find nothing for this in the list; but for a priest to keep a concubine was only 10s. 6d. For license to eat flesh in Lent, 10s. 6d; for a queen to adopt a child, 300: This book has been often printed, both in popish and Protestant countries; and the Protestant princes inserted it among the causes of their rejecting the council of Trent. When Papists saw what use the Protestants made of it, they put it into the list of prohabited books upon the pretence of its having been corrupted by the Protestants; but the many editions of it which have been published in popish countries, and which the Papists themselves could not, and did not, disown, (though perhaps they will disown it now,) were more than sufficient to justify the reproaches of Protestants, and to cover Kone with contusion, if she were capable of it. It was printed at A 1314; at Cologne, 1515; at Paris, 1520, 1545, and 1625. See Pree Thoughts on the Toleration of Popery, by Calvinus Minor, (the late Rev. Archd. Bruce, of Whitburn,) a book which contains a great mass of information on the subject of popery, with the most