committed to the care of St. Peter and his successors, may be disbursed,
under the form of indulgences, by sale for money. A traffic in
indulgences was thus carried on to a great extent through the medium of
the monks, who received a commission upon the profits. Of course, it is
plain that the religious conception of such a transaction is liable to
adverse criticism--the bartering for money so holy a thing as the merit
of our Redeemer. This was, however, only the ostensible explanation,
which it was judged necessary to present to sincerely pious communities:
behind it there lay the real reason, which was essentially of a
political kind. It was absolutely necessary that papal Rome should
control a revenue far beyond that arising in a strictly legitimate way.
As all the world had been drained of money by the senate and Caesars for
the support of republican or imperial power, so too there was a need of
a like supply for the use of the pontiffs. The collection of funds had
often given rise to contentions between the ecclesiastical and temporal
authorities, and in some of the more sturdy countries had been
resolutely resisted. To collect a direct tax is often a troublesome
affair; but such is human nature--a man from whom it might be difficult
to extort the payment of an impost lawfully laid, will often cheerfully
find means to purchase for himself indulgence for sin. In such a
semi-barbarian but yet religious population as that with which the
Church was dealing, it was quite clear that this manner of presenting
things possessed singular advantages, an obvious equivalent being given
for the money received. The indulgence implied not only a release from
celestial, but also, in many cases, from civil penalties. It was an
absolute guarantee from hell.

[Sidenote: Martin Luther.] It is said that the attention of Martin
Luther, formerly an Augustinian monk, was first attracted to this
subject by the traffic having been conferred on the Dominicans instead
of upon his own order at the time when Leo X. was raising funds by this
means for building St. Peter's at Rome, A.D. 1517. That was probably
only an insinuation of Luther's adversaries, and is very far from being
borne out by his subsequent conduct. His first public movement was the
putting forth of ninety-five theses against the practice. He posted them
on the door of the cathedral of Wittenberg, and enforced them in his
sermons, though at this time he professed obedience to the