HKB
Satisfactions.
This doctrine of satisfaction has given rise to indulgences. For by indulgences they pretend, that the deficiency of our abilities to make satisfaction is supplied, and even proceed to the extravagance of defining them to be the dispensation of the merits of Christ and of the martyrs, which the Pope distributes in his bulls. Now, though such persons are fitter subjects for a mad‐house than for arguments, so that it would be of little use to engage in refuting errors so frivolous, which have been shaken by many attacks, and begin of themselves to grow obsolete, and totter towards a fall, yet, as a brief refutation will be useful to some minds hitherto uninformed on the subject, I shall not altogether omit it. And indeed the establishment and long continuance of indulgences, with the unlimited influence retained by them amidst such outrageous and furious licentiousness, may serve to convince us in what a deep night of errors men were immersed for several ages. They saw, that they were themselves objects of the public and undissembled ridicule of the Pope and the dispensers of his bulls; that lucrative bargains were made concerning the salvation of their souls; that the price of salvation was fixed at a trifling sum of money, and nothing presented gratuitously; that under this pretext, contributions were extorted from them, which were vilely consumed on brothels, pimps, and revellings; that the greatest advocates of indulgences were the greatest despisers of them; that this monster was daily making longer strides in licentious power and luxury, and that there was no end, that more trash was continually produced, and more money continually extorted. Yet they received indulgences with the greatest veneration, adored them and purchased them; and those who had more discernment than others, yet considered them as pious frauds, by which they might be deceived with some advantage. At length, since the world has permitted itself to recover a little the exercise of reason, indulgences become more and more discredited, till they altogether disappear.