Take the following extracts as a specimen of the blasphemous speeches of this daring impostor, and all under the sanction of the pope and the archbishop of the place.
"Indulgences are the most precious and the most noble of God's gifts. Come, and I will give you letters, all properly sealed, by which even the sins that you intend to commit may be pardoned. I would not change my privileges for those of St. Peter in heaven, for I have saved more souls by my indulgences than the apostle by his sermons. There is no sin so great that an indulgence cannot remit. But, more than this, indulgences avail not only for the living but for the dead. Priest! noble! merchant! wife! youth! maiden! do you not hear your parents and your other friends who are dead, and who cry from the bottom of the abyss? We are suffering horrible torments! a trifling alms would deliver us; you can give it, and you will not! Oh, stupid and brutish people, who do not understand the grace so richly offered! Why, the very instant your money rattles at the bottom of the chest, the soul escapes from purgatory, and flies liberated to heaven. The Lord our God no longer reigns, He has resigned all power to the pope."
The wild harangue of the coarse bellowing monk being over, the terrified and superstitious crowd hastened to purchase the pardon of their sins and the deliverance of their friends from the fires of purgatory. From the royal family down to those who lived on alms, all found money to buy forgiveness. Money poured in plentifully; the papal chest overflowed; but alas! alas! the moral effects were fearful. The easy terms on which men could obtain the pope's license for every species of wickedness, opened the way to the grossest immorality, and insubjection to all authority. Even Tetzel himself was convicted of adultery and infamous conduct at Innspruck, and sentenced by the Emperor Maximilian to be put into a sack and thrown into the river; but the Elector
Frederick of Saxony interfered, and obtained his pardon. The unblushing Dominican proceeded on his way as the representative of his holiness the pope, just as if nothing had happened.