ivorces.

The rejection of miracle-evidence, and the substitution of legal
evidence in its stead, accelerated the approach of the Reformation. No
longer was it possible to admit the requirement which, in former days,
Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his treatise, "Cur Deus Homo,"
had enforced, that we must first believe without examination, and
may afterward endeavor to understand what we have thus believed. When
Cajetan said to Luther, "Thou must believe that one single drop of
Christ's blood is sufficient to redeem the whole human race, and the
remaining quantity that was shed in the garden and on the cross was left
as a legacy to the pope, to be a treasure from which indulgences were
to be drawn," the soul of the sturdy German monk revolted against such
a monstrous assertion, nor would he have believed it though a thousand
miracles had been worked in its support. This shameful practice of
selling indulgences for the commission of sin originated among the
bishops, who, when they had need of money for their private pleasures,
obtained it in that way. Abbots and monks, to whom this gainful commerce
was denied, raised funds by carrying about relics in solemn procession,
and charging a fee for touching them. The popes, in their pecuniary
straits, perceiving how lucrative the practice might become, deprived
the bishops of the right of making such sales, and appropriated it to
themselves, establishing agencies, chiefly among the mendicant orders,
for the traffic. Among these orders there was a sharp competition, each
boasting of the superior value of its indulgences through its greater
influence at the court of heaven, its familiar connection with the
Virgin Mary and the saints in glory. Even against Luther himself, who
had been an Augustinian monk, a calumny was circulated that he was
first alienated from the Church by a traffic of this kind having been
conferred on the Dominicans, instead of on his own order, at the time
when Leo X. was raising funds by this means for building St. Peter's, at
Rome, A.D. 1517. and there is reason to think that Leo himself, in the
earlier stages of the Reformation, attached weight to that allegation.

Indulgences were thus the immediate inciting cause of the Reformation,
but very soon there came into light the real principle that was
animating the controversy. It lay in the question, Does the Bible owe
its authenticity to the Church? or does the Church owe her authenticity
to the B