lawful for any man to publish or compose another faith or creed than that which was defined by the Nicene council: and that whosoever shall dare to compose or offer any such to any persons willing to be converted from paganism, Judaism, or heresy, if they were bishops or clerks, they should be deposed; if laymen, they should be accursed." And yet in the church of Rome faith and Christianity increase like the moon; Bromyard complained of it long since, and the mischief increases daily. They have now a new article of faith, ready for the stamp, which may very shortly become necessary to salvation; we mean that of the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin Mary. Whether the pope be above a council or no; we are not sure whether it be an article of faith amongst them or not: it is very near one, if it be not. Bellarmine would fain have us believe that the council of Constance, approving the bull of pope Martin the Fifth, declared for the pope's supremacy. But John Gerson, who was at the council, says', that the council did abate those heights to which flattery had advanced the pope; and that before that council they spoke such great things of the pope, which afterwards moderate men durst not speak; but yet some others spake them so confidently before it, that he that should then have spoken to the contrary would hardly have escaped the note of heresy: and that these men continued the same pretensions even after the council. But the council of Basil decreed for the council against the pope; and the council of Lateran, under Leo the Tenth, decreed for the pope against the council. So that it is cross and pile; and whether for a penny, when it can be done; it is now a known case it shall become an article of faith. But for the present it is a probationary article; and, according to Bellarmine's expression, is fere de fides, it is almost an article of faith; they want a little age, and then they may go alone. But the council of Trent hath produced a strange new article; but it is sine controversia credendum, it must be believed, and must not be controverted: that "although the ancient Fathers did give the communion to infants, yet they did not believe it necessary to salvation." Now this being a matter of fact, whether they did or did not believe it, every man that reads their writings can be able to inform himself: and besides that it is strange that this should be r De Potest. Eccles. Concil. 12. s De Concil. Author. 1. 2. c. 17. s. 1.

t Sess. 21. c. 4.

determined by a council, and determined against evident truth (it being notorious, that divers of the Fathers did say it is necessary to salvation); the decree itself is beyond all bounds of modesty, and a strange pretension of empire over the Christian belief. But we proceed to other instances.

SECTION III.

The Roman doctrine of indulgences an innovation. No mention of them in the canon law of Gratian or in P. Lombard. What indulgences the old church gave to penitents. What they signify in

66

the new Roman; the value of them disputed; but the merchandise and abuses continue.

THE Roman doctrine of indulgences was the first occasion of the great change and reformation of the western churches, begun by the preachings of Martin Luther and others; and besides that it grew to that intolerable abuse, that it became a shame to itself, and a reproach to Christendom, it was also so very an innovation, that their great Antoninus confesses, that 'concerning them we have nothing expressly, either in the scriptures, or in the sayings of the ancient doctors ":" and the same is affirmed by Sylvester Prierias. Bishop Fisher of Rochester says, that in the beginning of the church there was no use of indulgences; and that they began after the people were a while affrighted with the torments of purgatory; and many of the schoolmen confess that the use of indulgences began in the time of pope Alexander the Third, towards the end of the 12th century: but Agrippa imputes the beginning of them to Boniface the Eighth who lived in the reign of King Edward the First of England, 1300 years after Christ. But that in his time the first jubilee was kept, we are assured by Crantzius. This pope lived and died with very great infamy, and therefore was not likely from himself to transfer much honour and reputation to the new institution. But that about this time indulgences began, is more than probable; much before, it is certain they were not. For in the whole canon law, written by Gratian, and in the sentences of Peter Lombard, there is nothing spoken of indulgences now because they lived in the time of pope Alexander III, if he had introduced them, and much rather if they had been as ancient as S. Gregory, (as some vainly and weakly pre

u Part. I. Sum. tit. 10. c. 3.

x In art. 18. Luther.

y Intravit ut vulpes, regnavit ut leo, moriebatur ut canis, de eo sæpius dictum.

tend, from no greater authority than their own legends,) it is probable that these great men, writing bodies of divinity and law, would have made mention of so considerable a point, and so great a part of the Roman religion, as things are now ordered. If they had been doctrines of the church then, as they are now, it is certain they must have come under their cognizance and discourses.

Now lest the Roman emissaries should deceive any of the good sons of the church, we think it fit to acquaint them, that in the primitive church, when the bishops imposed severe penances, and that they were almost quite performed, and a great cause of pity intervened, or danger of death, or an excellent repentance, or that the martyrs interceded, the bishop did sometimes indulge the penitent, and relax some of the remaining parts of his penance; and according to the example of S. Paul, in the case of the incestuous Corinthian, gave them ease, lest they should be swallowed up with too much sorrow. But the Roman doctrine of indulgences is wholly another thing; nothing of it but the abused name remains. For in the church of Rome they now pretend that there is an infinite of degrees of Christ's merit and satisfaction beyond what is necessary for the salvation of his servants: and (for fear Christ should not have enough) the saints have a surplusage of merits, or at least of satisfactions, more than they can spend, or themselves do need: and out of these the church hath made her a treasure, a kind of poor man's box; and out of this, a power to take as much as they list to apply to the poor souls in purgatory; who because they did not satisfy for their venial sins, or perform all their penances which were imposed, or which might have been imposed, and which were due to be paid to God for the temporal pains reserved upon them, after he had forgiven them the guilt of their deadly sins, are forced sadly to roar in pains not inferior to the pains of hell, excepting only that they are not eternal. That this is the true state of their article of indulgences, we appeal to Bellarmine. Now concerning their new foundation of indulgences, the first stone of it was laid by pope Clement VI. in his Extravagant

Tertull. 1. ad Martyr. c. 1. S. Cyprian lib. 3. ep. 15. apud Pamelium 11. Concil. Nicen. 1. can. 12. Conc. Ancyr. c. 5. Concil. Laodicen, c. 2. S. Basil. in Ep. canonicis habentur in Nomocanone Photii,

can. 73.

a Communis opinio DD. tam theologorum, quam canonicorum, quod sunt ex abundantia meritorum quæ ultra mensuram demeritorum suorum sancti sustinuerunt, et Christi, Sum. Angel. v. Indulg. 9. b Lib. 1. de Indulgent. c. 2. et 3.

Unigenitus, de pœnitentiis et remissionibus, A. D. 1350. This constitution was published fifty years after the first jubilee, and was a new device to bring in customers to Rome at the second jubilee, which was kept in Rome in this pope's time. What ends of profit and interest it served, we are not much concerned to inquire; but this we know, that it had not yet passed into a catholic doctrine, for it was disputed against by Franciscus de Mayronise and Durandus d not long before this Extravagant; and that it was not rightly formed to their purposes, till the stirs in Germany, raised upon the occasion of indulgences, made Leo the Tenth set his clerks on work to study the point and make something of it.

But as to the thing itself, it is so wholly new, so merely devised and forged by themselves, so newly created out of nothing, from great mistakes of scripture, and dreams of shadows from antiquity, that we are to admonish our charges, that they cannot reasonably expect many sayings of the primitive doctors against them, any more than against the new fancies of the Quakers, which were born but yesterday. That which is not, cannot be numbered; and that which was not, could not be confuted. But the perfect silence of antiquity in this whole matter is an abundant demonstration that this new nothing was made in the later laboratories of Rome. For, as Duranduse said, the holy Fathers, Ambrose, Hilary, Hierom, Augustine, speak nothing of indulgences. And whereas it is said that S. Gregory, DC years after Christ, gave indulgences at Rome in the stations, Magister Angularis, who lived about 200 years since, says "he never read of any such any where ;" and it is certain there is no such thing in the writings of S. Gregory, nor in any history of that age or any other that is authentic: and we could never see any history pretended for it by the Roman writers, but a legend of Ledgerus brought to us the other day by Surius; which is so ridiculous and weak, that even their own parties dare not avow it as true story; and therefore they are fain to make use of Thomas Aquinas upon the sentences, and Altisiodorensis, for story and record. And it were strange that if this power of giving indulgences to take off the punishment, reserved by God after the sin is pardoned, were given by Christ to his church, that no one of the ancient doctors should tell any thing of it: insomuch that there is no one

e Ubi supra.

d Ib. Dist. 20. q. 3.

e In 4. 1. Sen. Dist. 19. q. 2.

writer of authority and credit, not the more ancient doctors we have already named, nor those who were much later, Rupertus Tuitiensis, Anselm, or S. Bernard, ever took notice of it; but it was a doctrine wholly unknown to the church for about MCC years after Christ and cardinal Cajetan told pope Adrian VI. that to him that readeth the decretals it plainly appears, that "an indulgence is nothing else but an absolution from that penance which the confessor hath imposed;" and therefore can be nothing of that which is nowadays pretended.

True it is, that the canonical penances were about the time of Burchard lessened and altered by commutations; and the ancient discipline of the church in imposing penances was made so loose, that the indulgence was more than the imposition, and began not to be an act of mercy but remissness, an absolution without amends it became a trumpet, and a levy for the holy war, in pope Urban the Second's time; for he gave a plenary indulgence and remission of all sins to them that should go and fight against the Saracens : and yet no man could tell how much they were the better for these indulgences: for concerning the value of indulgences, the complaint is both old and doubtful, said pope Adriane; and he cites a famous gloss, which tells of four opinions all catholic, and yet vastly differing in this particular : but the Summa Angelica reckons seven opinions concerning what that penalty is which is taken off by indulgences: no man could then tell; and the point was but in the infancy, and since that, they have made it what they please: but it is at last turned into a doctrine, and they have devised new propositions, as well as they can, to make sense of it; and yet it is a very strange thing; a solution not an absolution, (it is the distinction of Bellarmine,) that is, the sinner is let to go free without punishment in this world, or in the world to come; and in the end, it grew to be that which Christendom could not suffer: a heap of doctrines without grounds of scripture or catholic tradition; and not only so, but they have introduced a way of remitting sins, that Christ and his apostles taught not; a way destructive of the repentance and remission of sins which was preached in the name of Jesus: it brought into the church false and fantastic hopes, a hope that will make men ashamed; a hope that does not glorify the merits and perfect satisfaction of Christ; a doctrine expressly dishonourable to the full and free pardon given us by God f Verb. Indulgentia.

e In lib. 4. sent.