SOME little time ago we were strolling about a lovely Italian town, on the outskirts of which stood its cemetery. We presently found ourselves opposite to a series of small chapel-like buildings, each of which had before its open entrance, instead of a door, an iron grating; indeed almost the whole front was composed of gratings. The sun was shining so brilliantly, and the shade within the buildings so deep that, for an instant, we did not realize what they contained. Row upon row, pile upon pile, all around the three walls of the chapels were skulls and bones—the remains of the townspeople of former years. In one of these chapels, directly opposite the grating, was a kind of altar, and placed about it, were five skulls, having on them their owners’ old caps. These were the skulls of five priests who had officiated in bygone days, prayed for the dead, and taken money for their prayers. Now, the priests were dead, and their skulls, crowned with the dusty old caps, were offered to view. It was a pitiable sight, and not a little barbarous, at least according to the ideas of Protestants, who can see but faint respect to the dead in the exposure of their bones.
A strange text for a sermon on the contents of these chapels was inscribed upon the grating of one of them. The text was in the shape of a legend over a slit in a piece of iron, and was to this effect: “Cast in a coin to buy prayers for the poor dead ones!”
Yes! pray for the departed ones, upon whose skulls and bones you gaze; pray for the poor dead, their souls are all in purgatory, they all are in darkness, in misery, in fire, in torment. Pray for them, everyone, and help them out. Pray for the priests who made the mass, who interceded with saints, angels, and the Virgin, to induce Jesus to induce God to be merciful; pray for the people for whom the mass was made, and for whom the prayers were sung; pray for them all alike, for they all are in purgatory—but put a penny in the slot. No penny, no prayer! The merit lies in the priests’ prayers, and your penny will buy of that merit. Yet all the pennies given and all the prayers paid for, during the lifetime of these poor dead are confessedly so weak, so inefficacious, had so little merit in them, that you bystanders must come to their help with your penny!
But will the prayers your pennies buy be of greater worth than were those of the dead upon whose bones you look? When your turn comes, your bones shall help to adorn the chapel walls, and then your unhappy soul will be in purgatory, and your relations and friends and the benevolent shall be asked to pray for you—that is, through the priests, and they of course must be paid for their work.
We need, however, no more of this sermon. Never was there a more profitable religion—speaking pecuniarily—than that of praying for the dead. We appeal to our readers! Could you save your friend, not to say your child or parent, from torment by payment, then, surely, if you had a particle of kindness in your heart, you would give not your penny merely, but your whole substance for his redemption. The poor, who believe that prayers for the dead avail, are ground down to pay to their last penny; their love for their friends ever calling for their money.
But what profit is there in praying for the dead? The Holy Ghost says, “Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ.” (1 Peter 1:18-19). The wealth of a man cannot redeem any from death; how much less shall money avail for the soul after death? If death cannot be bought off, who, afterward, shall unlock the prison door? “None can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him: for the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth forever.” (Psa. 49:7, 8).
Our Redeemer gave Himself for our redemption. He paid the price by His own blood. This He did out of the love of His own blessed heart, and as much for the poor as the rich. He is our Redeemer, and none else; His heart and the heart of His Father is love, and such as plead for prayer to move God toward us in love, do but slander the very heart of God and of Jesus. “When they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both,” is God’s way of goodness, revealed by Christ, towards sinners, whether their sins are the five hundred or the fifty. (Luke 7:41).
The idea of the payment of money being necessary to man’s salvation is a most grievous sin against the wounds and sufferings of Jesus. What! shall a sinner be able to purchase a place in heaven because he has a long purse? And must another burn in purgatory, just because his relatives are poor? Jesus died for rich and poor alike, and “when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both.”
If a man honestly prays for the dead, he must believe that they can be helped by his prayers, and that the dead need such help. Naturally he also believes that by-and-by he will require similar assistance. Now, it is evident that such belief discredits the absolute and perfect efficacy of the atoning blood of Christ. For if that blood is sufficient to cleanse away our sins, nothing else is required to do this. And if God is magnified in His justice and righteousness in relation to our sins, by the blood of His Son shed for our sins, it is self-evident, that to offer many prayers in order to make up a sum of merit as an inducement to God to pardon our sins, is but to insult Him by casting a reproach upon the value of the blood of His Son. Cardinal Wiseman tells us, “that, by the voluntary performance of expiatory works we may disarm the anger of God, and mitigate the inflictions which His justice has prepared.” But every prayer made for such purpose is practically telling God that the blood of Christ is not of sufficient value to cleanse us from all sin, and casts reproach upon His atonement.
We are justified now in this lifetime, and we are justified freely by God’s grace, and this the Bible declares is through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (See Rom. 3:23-26) God has set Him forth, a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins.
Upon the belief that the dead may be benefited by the prayers of the living, a most extraordinary and anti-christian notion has been created. A common sight to be seen before the images of the Virgin and of saints is a notice to the effect that so many prayers said before the image will result in an indulgence. We will give our readers the words of one of these notices, which may be seen on the image of St. Peter set up in the Oratory, Brompton, London:
“To those who, being truly contrite, pray before this statue for the welfare of the Holy Church and the intention of the Supreme Pontiff—
“Fifty days’ indulgence, once a day, applicable to the souls in purgatory.”
A friend, who inquired of the priest present, was informed by him, that to all sin committed, was attached temporal and eternal punishment. Eternal punishment was removed, he said, in confession and contrition, absolution being granted by the priest as the representative of the Church. Temporal punishment then remained, and this might be endured in this life or hereafter. An indulgence, he added, related to the remission of some part of the penance, which had to be inflicted upon the soul, as a remedial agent for its good; and, he said, the penance was intended to draw the soul nearer to God. He then said, “All virtue in prayers, fastings, and meritorious works was through the merits of Jesus Christ.”
He continued, “I do not know what may be in store for me hereafter in the shape of purification, in other words, what intensity of suffering my case may require, therefore I gain upon earth by penance and indulgence all possible curtailment.”
This priest was upon the lines of the heathen in his belief, for his hope for purification and fitness for God’s presence lay in the future fires of purgatory—not in the atonement of Jesus for sins. He did not know, as the believer in Jesus does, what may be in store for him hereafter. His remarks as to the virtue in our prayers and fastings being through the merits of Jesus Christ, do but make the matter worse, for Jesus is Saviour alone. His sufferings for our sins, not our own sufferings for our sins, are our salvation.
The statue in question is a copy of that which stands in St. Peter’s, Rome; it is of gilded wood, and the feet are brass. It represents the apostle seated, and holding in his left hand a key. Let us quote a verse or two from the Revelation of Jesus Christ, chapter 1. “I saw... One like unto the Son of Man... and His feet [were] like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace... And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen; and have the keys of death and of hell.” Neither the church, nor the Apostle Peter, but Jesus only, holds in His hands the keys of death and the grave.
Where does Jesus the Lord, and where does God, His Father, say one word to us about indulgences? It is, however, not pretended that there is Scripture evidence for indulgences being of divine origin, or that in the word of God there is authority to be found for them; indeed, indulgences do not seem to have been heard of before the year 600 A.D.
We must add a little more about them, as they are now getting so common in England. Indulgences may be bought with money as well as with prayers; they have been advertised in the daily papers in England, and offered for sale under the form of giving a subscription to a charitable object. It should never be forgotten that in former y ears a large trade was done in indulgences, and that by the sale of them untold wealth came to the coffers of the church. Thousands and thousands of years of exemption from purgatorial flames were offered in exchange for gold, and people of all nations crowded to buy the offered parchments or papers whereon the exemptions from suffering were written.
Let us hear what that famous seller of indulgences, Tetzel, said— “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 which you intend to commit may be pardoned. 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”?
Then, as his eloquence waxed fervent, he would exclaim, “At the very instant that the money rattles at the bottom of the chest the soul escapes from purgatory, and flies liberated to heaven. Now you can ransom so many souls, stiff-necked and thoughtless man; with twelve groats you can deliver your father from purgatory, and you are ungrateful enough not to save him.”
One day a poor miner met a seller of indulgences. “Is it so,” he inquired, “that we can by throwing a penny into the chest ransom a soul from purgatory?” “It is so,” was the answer. “Ah, then,” replied the miner, “what a merciless man the pope must be, since for want of a wretched penny he leaves a poor soul crying in the flames so long!” Another famous salesman was Samson, of Milan. On one occasion, after mass, he marched round the churchyard at the head of a procession chanting the office for the dead. Suddenly he stopped, looked up to heaven, and, after a pause, shouted, “See how they fly!” His keen vision beheld the spirits escaping from purgatory, and winging their way to paradise!
An echo came from the steeple, “See how they fly!—see how they fly!” while a shower of feathers fell upon the company, and the crowd saw, perched on the height, a man, whom they termed half-witted, but who thus dared to turn Samson’s strength in opening the gates of purgatory into ridicule.
Unless people had believed in the efficacy of prayer for the dead, they would not have prayed or paid for indulgences, and as the sale of them was a very great, if not the chief, cause that lead to the Reformation, we place them—praying for the dead, and selling indulgences—together in this paper. In the old times such men as Tetzel used to visit countries at the head of a procession; the drum would be beaten, and noise and show enlisted to give honor to the salesman of the pope’s pardons.
When Luther first heard of Tetzel and his traffic, he said, “By the help of God, I will make a hole in his drum,” and he had good cause so to speak, for as he sat to hear confession, and the people owned to him their thefts and heinous offenses, Luther, the priest, bade them break off from., their evil ways, or he could not absolve them. Then they told him they were already absolved, and that they should not leave off their sins, and showed him their indulgences!
Luther’s horror of the immorality of the business, his fear of God, and his love for the souls of men, led him to nail up his famous Ninety-five Theses upon the church door in Wittemberg, and that great act, perhaps more than any other, led to the Reformation! The Deformation, as many of our ceremonial Protestants now describe it Those famous propositions were the battle cry for liberty. Men arose and rebelled against the tyranny, the immorality, and the falsehood of the system of religion which professed to buy men’s souls out of punishment for sin for silver and gold—which abstracted the wealth so acquired, and, far worse than all, which denied the grace of God, and which trampled under foot the atoning blood of Christ.