ful revenues of
the popes were insufficient to gratify their extravagance and pomp.
But money, nevertheless, they must have. In order to raise it, they
resorted to extortion and corruption. They imposed taxes on
Christendom, direct and indirect. These were felt as an intolerable
burden; but such was the superstition of the times, that they were
successfully raised. But even these were insufficient to gratify papal
avarice and rapacity. They then resorted, in their necessities, to the
meanest acts, imposed on the simplicity of their subjects, and finally
adopted the most infamous custom which ever disgraced the world.

[Sidenote: The Sale of Indulgences.]

They pardoned sins for money--granted sales of indulgences for crime.
A regular scale for absolution was graded. A proclamation was made
every fifty, and finally every twenty-five years, of a year of
jubilee, when plenary remission of all sin was promised to those who
should make a pilgrimage to Rome. And so great was the influx of
strangers, and consequently of wealth, to Rome, that, on one occasion,
it was collected into piles by rakes. It is computed that two hundred
thousand deluded persons visited the city in a single month. But the
vast sums they brought to Rome, and the still greater sums which were
obtained by the sale of indulgences, and by various taxations, were
all squandered in ornamenting the city, and in supporting a luxurious
court, profligate cardinals, and superfluous ministers of a corrupted
religion. Then was erected the splendid church of St. Peter, more
after the style of Grecian temples, than after the model of the Gothic
cathedrals of York and Cologne. Glorious was that monument of reviving
art; wonderful was its lofty dome; but the vast sums required to build
it opened the eyes of Christendom to the extravagance and presumption
of the popes; and this splendid trophy of their glory also became the
emblem of their broken power. Their palaces and temples made an
imposing show, but detracted from their real strength, which consisted
in the affections of their spiritual subjects. Their outward grandeur,
like the mechanical agencies which kings employ, was but a poor
substitute for the invisible power of love,--in all ages, and among
all people, "that cheap defence" which supports thrones and kingdoms.

[Sidenote: The Corruptions of the Church.]

Another great evil was, the prevalence of an idolatrous spirit. In the
churches and chapels, and even