History of the Reformation Author:Henry Stebbing Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 1? CHAP. II. REMARKS ON THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF INDULGENCES. COMMENCEMENT OF THE FREACHING OF INDULGENCES UNDER LEO Z. TETZEL. LUTHER. HIS OPFOSITIO... more »N TO TETZEL. IS CITED TO AFFEAR BEFORE THE FOPE. AFFEARS AT AUGSBURG. ESCAFES. BIS DIFFICULTIES AT THIS PERIOD. Such was the general state of Christendom, when Leo X. began to find that the ordinary revenues of the church were not sufficient to supply the demands of his luxurious tastes. Too refined to practise open tyranny, and too haughty to abridge his expenditure, he saw himself constrained to employ the resources of the most ingenious policy to escape the inconveniences with which he was evidently threatened. Unhappily for mankind, religion, when corrupted, furnishes pretences for fraud and oppression, which defy the sagacity of ordinary minds. The reasoning by which a certain class of fundamental truths are established may easily, to an unpractised ear, be employed in the defence of error. Truth and falsehood are opposites; but the distance between them is not often distinctly perceived ; and, when the intervening space is filled up with sophistry, or mysticism, thousands may be led from the one to the other without fear or resistance. The luxury of Leo would bare exhausted the revenues of a kingdom. He is said to have spent 100,000 gold pieces at his coronation ; on which occasion he rode, as if the chief of a royal triumph, the Thracian horse on which he had been taken prisoner at Ravenna. " Fuit autem is dies," says his biographer, " omnium qui a Gothicis temporibus Romans urbi felicius illuxerint, longe ctarissimus : nunquam enim uHum vel ampliore vel ornatiore hominum concursu speetaculum celebratum fuisse, vel le- gendo, vel audiendo meminerant. Protects erant aulxis regiones, ridebant janus civium...« less