The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

;838 OF INDULGENCES.give you letters, allproperly sealed, by which even the sinsthat you intend to commit may be pardoned." I would not exchange my privileges for those of St Peterin heaven ; for I have saved more souls by my indulgencesthan the apostle by his sermons." There is no sin so great that an indulgence cannot remit; and even if any one [which is doubtless impossible]had offered violence to the blessed Virgin Mary, Mother ofGod, let him pay,—only let him pay well,—and all will beforgiven him." But more than this," said he ;" indulgences avail notonly for the living, but for the dead.is not even necessary.For that repentance" Priest ! noble ! merchant ! wife ! youth ! maiden ! doyou not hear your parents and your other friends who aredead, and who cry from the bottom of the abyss, We ' aresuffering horrible torments ;a trifling alms would deliver usyou can give it, and you will not V" At the very instant,'' continued Tetzel, " that the moneyrattles at the bottom of the chest, the soul escapes from purgatory,and flies liberated to heaven."*And even since the Reformation, and more especially incountries where its light has not penetrated, we find thistrade as actively carriedon as ever, though without the extravaganceand grossness of Tetzel. " I was surprised,"says the authoress of " Rome in the Nineteenth Century,"*'to find scarcely a church in Rome that did not hold up atthe door the tempting inscription of ' Tndulgenzia Plenaria!''Two hundred days'* indulgence I thought a great reward forevery kiss bestowed upon the great black cross in the Colosseum; but that is nothing to the indulgences for ten, twenty,and even thirty thousand years, that may be bought at noexorbitant rate in many of the churches; so that it is amazingwhat a vast quantity of treasure may be amassed in theother world with very little industry in this, by those who* D'Aubignd's History of the Reformation, vol, i. pp. 241, 242.