by the universal original sin
universally exposed to damnation, indeed, the helpless victims of
eternal misery. In the fulness of time, Christ appeared, and
offered himself to suffer in their stead to secure their
deliverance. His death cancelled the whole sum of

8 Bretschneider, Entwickelung der Dogmatik, sect. 112, Nos. 37 50.

9 So affirmed by the Council of Carthage, Canon II.

10 The violence done to moral reason by these views is powerfully
exposed in Bushnell's Discourse on the Atonement: God in Christ,
pp. 193-202.

original sin, and only that, thus taking away the absolute
impossibility of salvation, and leaving every man in the world
free to stand or fall, incur hell or win heaven, by his personal
merits. From that time any person who lived a perfectly holy life
which no man could find practically possible thereby secured
eternal blessedness; but the moment he fell into a single sin,
however trivial, he sealed his condemnation: Christ's sacrifice,
as was just said, merely removed the transmitted burden of
original sin from all mankind, but made no provision for their
personal sins, so that practically, all men being voluntary as
well as hereditary sinners, their condition was as bad as before:
they were surely lost. To meet this state of the case, the Church,
whose priests, it is claimed, are the representatives of Christ,
and whose head is the vicegerent of God on earth, was empowered by
the celebration of the mass to re enact, as often as it pleased,
the tragedy of the crucifixion. In this service Christ is supposed
literally to be put to death afresh, and the merit of his
substitutional sufferings is supposed to be placed to the account
of the Church.11 As Sir Henry Wotton says, "One rosy drop from
Jesus' heart Was worlds of seas to quench God's ire."

In one of the Decretals of Clement VI., called "Extravagants," it
is asserted that "one drop of Christ's blood [una guttula
sanguinis] being sufficient to redeem the whole human race, the
remaining quantity which was shed in the garden and on the cross
was left as a legacy to the Church, to be a treasure whence
indulgences were to be drawn and administered by the Roman
pontiffs." Furthermore, saints and martyrs, by their constant self
denial, voluntary sufferings, penances, and prayers, like Christ,
do more good works than are necessary for their own salvation; and
the balance of merit the works of supererogation is likewise
accredited to the Chur