its original intention. But the system of " Indulgences proper is scarcely found before the eleventh century and the time of the Crusades.2 It is confessed on all sides that this great movement marks an epoch in the history of indulgences, and that practically a new departure was taken at the Council of Clermont (1095), when Urban II. declared that to those who would take up arms against the Infidel, he remitted the penance due to their sins, and promised to those who should die in the combat the pardon of their sins and life eternal; and when the Council formulated their decision in these words "Whosoever shall go to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God out of pure devotion, and not for the purpose of obtaining honour or money, let the journey be counted in him of all penance." 4 " From this time may be said to date the medieval system, whereby an "Indulgence or remission of penance, and of some or all of the temporal penalties attached to sin, was granted in return for certain acts of devotion whereby the Church profited. Such indulgences were granted, not only to those who "took the Cross," but to those who took part in the building of churches and cathedrals, and in many other pious acts, so that practically the expenditure of a certain sum of money could always secure them, and the line between this and the actual sale of an indulgence for money was a very 1 On the Penitential System and the Commutation of Penance see Strong's Bampton Lectures, pp. 314 and 342, where the good and evil of the system are both frankly recognised. 2 There are, however, indications of something like it in the ninth century, when John VIII. (882) said that those who had been killed in war against the heathen, fighting for the Church, received life eternal; and that he gave them absolution, as much as he had power to do. See Lépicier, History of Indulgences, p. 189. 3 Synodalis Concio Urbani II., Mansi, xx. p. 821. "Quicunque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecuniæ adeptione ad liberandum Ecclesiam Dei Jerusalem profectus fuerit, iter illud pro omni pœnitentia reputetur.”—Ib. p. 816. thin one, and not easy to discern. Originally the idea. may have been only of the remission of canonical penance; but it very soon came to mean a great deal more than this. The canonical penance did not exhaust the temporal, as distinct from the eternal, penalties of sin; and since "purgatory "was a part of the temporal penalty, the indulgence was supposed to avail for a remission of a part or all of the pains to be there undergone. Moreover, the indulgence could be used for others than the person who performed the meritorious act, and could thus be transferred to the account of the departed, and used for the benefit of the souls in purgatory; 2 and since it was called indiscriminately " remissio," " relaxatio," and "venia peccatorum," and was said to be granted a culpa et a venia,3 the door was opened to the notion that 1 It is necessary to remember carefully this distinction. According to the theory which underlies the granting of indulgences, even after the sin is forgiven and its guilt (culpa) pardoned, there always remains a certain amount of temporal penalty (pœna) still to be paid either here or in purgatory. The beginning of this is seen in Albertus Magnus: "Delet gratia finalis peccatum veniale in ipsa dissolutione corporis et animæ, etc.: Hoc ab antiquis dictum est; sed nunc communiter tenetur, quod peccatum veniale cum hinc deferatur a multis, etiam quantum ad culpam, in purgatoria purgatur."-In Compend. Theol. Verit. iii. 13, quoted in Usher, Answer to a Jesuit, p. 165. Still more definite is the statement of the Council of Trent: "Si quis post acceptam justificationis gratiam cuilibet peccatori pœnitenti ita culpam remitti et reatum æternæ pœnæ deleri dixerit, ut nullus remaneat reatus pœnæ temporalis exsolvendæ vel in hoc sæculo vel in futuro in purgatorio, antequam ad regna cœlorum aditus patere possit: anathema sit."-Conc. Trid., Sessio vi. canon 30. 2 According to the formal theory of the Church of Rome, as laid down by Sixtus IV. in a Constitution of 1477, indulgences for the departed only avail per modum suffragii, i.e. "the Church has no direct power over the souls of the departed. She can but humbly entreat God to accept the merits of Christ, and, having respect to them, mercifully to remit the whole or a portion of the pains due to the souls suffering in purgatory" (Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, p. 485). If this is all, it is impossible for the person who procures the indulgence to know whether it has been of any avail at all. * There was no doubt that this form was anciently used; but the Council of Constance (1418) decreed that all indulgences granted with this formula it involved a promise of eternal forgiveness; and thus the grossest errors and superstitions were admitted and, ic cannot be doubted, were encouraged by the authorities in order to fill the coffers of the Church. Thus an enormous stimulus was given to the system by the institution of the "Jubilee" in the year 1300, when Boniface VIII. offered "the fullest forgiveness of sins" to all those who for fifteen days should devoutly visit the churches of S. Peter and S. Paul in Rome.1 This naturally drew a vast crowd of pilgrims to the city, and greatly enriched the Church; consequently, instead of being held at the expiration of every hundred years, as was originally intended, the period was shortened, first to fifty years by Clement VI. by his famous Bull" Unigenitus," in which he boldly expounded the doctrine of the "treasury of the Church" committed to the successors of S. Peter; 2 then by Urban VI. to thirty-three years (1389); and finally by Paul II. to twenty-five (1470). Naturally, protests were raised from time to time,3 but in spite of them the system which evoked the scorn of devout Churchmen like Dante, were revoked and annulled; and Benedict XIV. (De Syn. Diœc. xiii. 18. 7) holds that all such are spurious; while modern writers say that if the phrase remission of sins occurs in the grant of an indulgence, it means the remission of punishment. See Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, p. 482. 1 The words of the Bull are these: "Non solum plenam et largiorem, imo plenissimam suorum concedimus veniam peccatorum." On the Jubilee see Robertson, Church History, vol. vi. p. 326 seq. 2 Cf. Neander, Church History, vol. ix. p. 59 (Eng. tr.). 3 See an account of some of the earlier and less known protests in Neander, Church History, vol. vii. p. 487. The later denunciations of the whole system by Wiclif, and Huss, and Jerome of Prague are well known. See Creighton's History of the Papacy, vol. i. p. 325. * See Paradiso, Canto xxix. 1. 123–115— "Ora si va con motti, e con iscede, A predicare, e pur che ben si rida, ! as well as of Chaucer1 and Langland, grew into the scandal of the open sale of indulgences by Tetzel and the "quæstores." At the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the words of the Roman Catholic historian, Lingard, the preachers, "not content with their sermons from the pulpit, offered indulgences in the streets and markets, in taverns and in private houses; they even taught, if we may credit the interested declamation of their adversary, that every contributor, if he paid on his own account, infallibly opened to himself the gates of heaven; if on account of the dead, instantly liberated a soul from the prison of purgatory."& III. The Theological Defence offered for Indulgences, involving Works of Supererogation, and the Teaching of Scripture on the Subject. It has been necessary to give this brief sketch of the growth of the practical system of indulgences, because it Per cui tanta stoltezza in terra crebbe, Now is our preaching done with jestings slight Yet such a bird doth nestle in their cape, That if the crowd beheld it, they would know And thus such madness there on earth doth grow, To each Indulgence eager crowds will flow." -Plumptre's Translation. 1 See the description of the "Pardonere,' ""That streit was comen from the court of Rome," in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales— "His wallet lay beforne him in his lappe, Bret-ful of pardon come from Rome al hote." 2 Piers the Plowman, Passus I. 1. 66 seq. Pass. X. 1. 316 seq. 8 Lingard, History of England, vol. iv. c. vii. Cf. for the state of things in England at a somewhat earlier period, Gascoyne's Liber Veritatum, P. 123. is only in connection with them that the notion of works of supererogation" came into came into prominence. Nothing is more certain from history than the fact of the gradual growth of the system, bit by bit, without any clear conception being formed by anyone of what it really meant, or very much serious thought being bestowed upon it. But when the custom of granting indulgences had made its way and was adopted into the regular system of the Church, it was impossible to avoid awkward questions being raised. Explanations of its meaning were asked for, and a theological defence of it was required. This was supplied by the schoolmen, and in it "works of supererogation" play an important part. The original system, whereby canonical penance imposed by the Church was removed by the same authority, was naturally and properly defended as the exercising of the power of “ binding and loosing" which the Church possessed by Christ's own gift. But when the indulgence was something more than this, when it could be transferred to the benefit of others, and availed for the dead and mitigated the pains of purgatory, something more was was needed. needed. Even the doctrine of the union of the faithful in the one Body, together with the power of intercessory prayer, was totally inadequate to bear the superstructure of the popular system. Accordingly the schoolmen of the thirteenth century took up a phrase that had been used some time earlier, and elaborated the doctrine of the "thesaurus ecclesiæ." Availing themselves of the old distinction between "counsels" and "precepts," they taught that the voluntary works over and above God's commandments, which had been performed by the saints, and which were not needed to merit " their own salvation, were not lost or wasted, but went into the treasury of the Church; and that, together with the infinite merits of Christ, these works of |