Page:The spiritual venality of Rome.djvu/41

18 their purpose — and happily for ours likewise; for their easy security, or the necessity of the case, has left and perpetuated monuments, which it has long heen impossible for them to destroy or conceal.* And among them those which we are now about to examine, and to which the preceding statements will have suffi- ciently introduced the reader^ are not the least important and remarkable. tery. Letter lii. Indulp^ences, however, were 80 flouriahiog a speculation, and had incre ased so enormously, that it was found necessary to weed this wilderness, in order to find room for fresh plants. In 1678 two Decrees were passed at Bome, alxdishing a vfist number of indulgences caUed apocryphal. CoUei. Tmt£ des iiiduL tome L pp. 413, &c. 18 often safficient. And in cases for beyond those of simple per- mission, how can it be a matter of wonder, that the most un- bounded lieence was practised as to the purchase of pardon and abtolntion? We have a remarkable statement to this eifect, as our own country is conoerned, in the Homily, 0/ Good Works; and it contains evideoce peculiarly worthy of regard. The ho* mily is with satisfactory evidence given to the pen of Cranmer. At a t iF"^ when from their very circumstances, the reformers must have sustained, and therefore known, both ehaiacteia, that which th^ had left as well astbat which they assumed in its places it was peifectlj idle to suppose^ that they would^ or could« mmeptnefU "Bixgery* Distance of time, and change of dreumstahces, enable modern Papists to advance the charge; and it is indeed their great Palladium. But so was It not when the homiltes were published; and, in that referred to, the fact and netorietj of the Sale of the supposed Merits of Saints is established beyond all possibility of doubt Sects and feigned xeli|^ were neither the My pavt to many among the Jewa,
 * In evil, practice always much outruns permission. A hint