ere is
an irrepressible conflict. To uphold and defend the one is to attack and
overthrow the other. Our Saviour Himself declared, "I came not to send
peace, but a sword,"(166) Said Luther, a few years after the opening of
the Reformation: "God does not guide me, He pushes me forward, He carries
me away. I am not master of myself. I desire to live in repose; but I am
thrown into the midst of tumults and revolutions."(167) He was now about
to be urged into the contest.

The Roman Church had made merchandise of the grace of God. The tables of
the money-changers(168) were set up beside her altars, and the air
resounded with the shouts of buyers and sellers. Under the plea of raising
funds for the erection of St. Peter's church at Rome, indulgences for sin
were publicly offered for sale by the authority of the pope. By the price
of crime a temple was to be built up for God's worship,--the corner-stone
laid with the wages of iniquity! But the very means adopted for Rome's
aggrandizement provoked the deadliest blow to her power and greatness. It
was this that aroused the most determined and successful of the enemies of
popery, and led to the battle which shook the papal throne, and jostled
the triple crown upon the pontiff's head.

The official appointed to conduct the sale of indulgences in
Germany--Tetzel by name--had been convicted of the basest offenses against
society and against the law of God; but having escaped the punishment due
to his crimes, he was employed to further the mercenary and unscrupulous
projects of the pope. With great effrontery he repeated the most glaring
falsehoods, and related marvelous tales to deceive an ignorant, credulous,
and superstitious people. Had they possessed the word of God, they would
not have been thus deceived. It was to keep them under the control of the
papacy, in order to swell the power and wealth of her ambitious leaders,
that the Bible had been withheld from them.(169)

As Tetzel entered a town, a messenger went before him, announcing, "The
grace of God and of the holy father is at your gates."(170) And the people
welcomed the blasphemous pretender as if he were God Himself come down
from heaven to them. The infamous traffic was set up in the church, and
Tetzel, ascending the pulpit, extolled indulgences as the most precious
gift of God. He declared that by virtue of his certificates of pardon, all
the sins which the purchaser should afterward desire to commit would be
forgi