Page:Pastoral Letter Promulgating the Jubilee - Spalding.djvu/27

Rh prayer extinguishes the flames, curbs the fury of lions, suspends wars, appeases combats, calms tempests, puts the demons to flight, opens the gates of heaven, breaks the bonds of death, cures diseases, drives away misfortunes, strengthens tottering cities, averts the scourges of heaven, and defeats the attacks of men; there are no evils which prayer does not dissipate."

As you are already well informed. Venerable and Beloved Brethren, a Jubilee is the most ample form of Plenary Indulgence. You have also been fully instructed, that an Indulgence is a remission only of the temporal punishment, which often remains due to sin, after the guilt itself and the eternal punishment consequent upon it have been already remitted. It not only, then, is no pardon of sin, but it necessarily pre-supposes that the sin itself has been already pardoned, and, in this case only, can it take effect. Such being clearly the doctrine of the Catholic Church, we are not to heed the clamor of sectarians, who, either wholly misapprehending or grievously misstating our belief on this subject, pretend that an Indulgence is a license to commit sin, or at least an incentive to sin. Rather should we, during this holy season of prayer, pour forth earnest supplications to the Father of Lights, that He would vouchsafe to remove the scales from the eyes of those erring brethren, many of whom, through blindness and an evil education, seem always ready to believe everything but the truth, as it is in Christ Jesus.

An Indulgence can surely be no incentive to sin, since it can take no effect whatever in the soul until the sin has been previously forgiven, by the merits of the blood of Christ, applied through the sacrament of Penance. To obtain this forgiveness, the Catholic Church requires not only all the conditions which the sects usually assign, such as faith and sincere repentance; but, moreover, confession to a lawfully authorized minister of Christ, and some works of satisfaction and mortification, deriving their supernatural