APPENDIX. On Indulgences. As there are no transactions mentioned more frequently or with greater detestation by Mr Brown in his letters than the indulgences, we shall feel necessitated not only to extract them shortly from Wodrow, but to give an account of their rise and progress. No part of the world has justly attracted the attention of mankind equal to the city of Jerusalem. It was founded by Melchizedek, forty-six years after the birth of Abraham, and two thousand one hundred and seven before the birth of Christ. He, with respect to his Divine nature, was before Abraham. There Melchizedek reigned king of Salem, and there he officiated as priest of the Most High God. There Abraham offered up Isaac his son, his only son. There the tabernacle was ultimately reared. There David and Solomon reigned, and there the most magnificent building that man ever built, was erected, where He who built all things, for a long period manifested his glory. There, nearly, the Saviour of the world was born, and his birth announced by the angelic hosts, and homage paid him by the wise men and princes of the East. There, at twelve years of age, he disputed with the doctors, and there he attended the Jewish festivals, and performed some of his beneficent miracles. There he was unjustly condemned, and there he suffered and gave his precious life a ransom for many. There he was buried, and there he rose again from the dead, and near to it he ascended gloriously on high. There he sent down the promise of the Father, and his purchase, the most precious gift of the Holy Spirit. There the gospel, by his special order, was first preached, and there thousands in one day were converted to the faith. There the Christians were first persecuted, and from thence they were scattered abroad. This wonderful city was destroyed, and the very foundations thereof razed, by Titus the eleventh emperor of Rome, about seventy years after the Messiah suffered. (Julius Cæsar is by this reckoned the first emperor. There were twelve Cæsars-Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian.) About sixty years after, Jerusalem was partly rebuilt by Adrian, who built the wall between Newcastle-uponTyne and Carlisle. About A.D. 320, Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, built the church of the Holy Sepulchre, where millions of nominal, and some real Christians have performed their vows, and which was burnt down on the night of October 11, 1808. The following lines by an old traveller deserve to be inserted: "Saviour of mankind! Man, Immanuel, Who, sinless, died for sin, who vanquish'd hell; Mahomet, the Impostor of Arabia, commenced his mission about A.D. 620. His Hegira, or flight from Mecca to Medina, took place in 622. Jerusalem was taken by Omar, his successor, in 637. His successors in a short time erected an empire, extending from the banks of the Ganges to the Straits of Gibraltar. The Arabians or Saracens, while they kept possession of the Holy Sepulchre, permitted the Christians, (so termed,) on the payment of a moderate tribute, to pay their superstitious vows in peace and safety. When the Turkomans, or Turks, a Tartar race, were made to embrace Islamism or Mahomedanism, they wrested Jerusalem from the Saracens in 1063. It became then oppressive and dangerous to make a pilgrimage to the Holy City and Holy Sepulchre. Peter the Hermit attempted it; but after he returned, he preached the first Crusade to take the Holy City from the Infidels. It was to induce princes, nobility, gentry, and commoners of all grades to entertain the fanatical frenzy to take the Holy City, and Holy Sepulchre from the followers of Mahomet, that Pope Urban II. in the eleventh century first bethought himself of the issue of indulgences. Indulgences in the Romish Church are a remission of the punishment due to sin, granted by the Church, and supposed to save the sinner from purgatory. According to the doctrine of the Romish Church, all the good works of the saints, over and above those which were necessary towards their own justification, are deposited together with the infinite merits of Jesus Christ, in one inexhaustible treasury. The keys of this were committed to St Peter, and to his successors the popes, who may open it at pleasure, and, by transferring a portion of this superabundant merit to any particular person for a sum of money, may convey to him either the pardon of his own sins, or a release for any one in whom he is interested, from the pains of purgatory. The form of the indulgences was as follows:-" May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon thee, and absolve thee by the merits of his most holy passion. And I, by his authority, that of his blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of the most holy pope, granted and committed to me in these parts, do absolve thee; first, from all ecclesiastical censures, in whatever manner they have been incurred; then, from all thy sins, transgressions, and excesses, how enormous soever they may be, even from such as are reserved for the cognizance of the holy see; and as far as the keys of the Holy Church extend, I remit to you all punishment which you deserve in purgatory, on their account and I restore you to the holy sacraments of the church, to the unity of the faithful, and to that innocence and purity which you possessed at baptism; so that when you die the gates of punishment shall be shut, and the gates of the paradise of delight shall be opened; and if you shall not die at present, this grace shall remain in full force when you are at the point of death. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." By the sale of these impious indulgences, and the preaching of Peter, in 1096, a million of men marched to take Jerusalem. They defeated Solyman, and took Nice in 1097. They defeated 600,000 Saracens, and took Antioch in 1098. In 1099 they took Jerusalem, and put every human being to the sword. The Second Crusade was preached by St Bernard, in 1146. Three hundred thousand fighting men left Europe, never to return. Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, cut them all off, and retook Jerusalem in 1187. The Third Crusade was undertaken in 1188, when 300,000 fighting men again sailed for the Holy Land. There Richard I. of England (accompanied by David Earl of Hun : Sa tingdon, brother of William King of Scots, from whom Richard received 12,000 merks of silver to equip him for the Holy War) defeated the mighty Saladin at Acre, and having concluded a peace with him, returned in 1192. ladin died in 1193 at Damascus, having caused his winding sheet to be carried as a standard through every street of the city, while a crier went before, proclaiming with a loud voice, "This is all that remains to the mighty Saladin, the conqueror of the East." Humanity, moderation, and science were, at that time, entirely on the side of the Saracens. The Fourth Crusade was undertaken in 1195, by the emperor Henry VII. The Fifth Crusade was proclaimed in 1198, conducting which, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, in 1202, seated himself on the throne of Constantinople. The Sixth Crusade commenced in 1228. The next year a peace was made with the Sultan, the brother of Saladin, for ten years, and the possession of Jerusalem, obtained by treaty, but it was wrested from the Europeans by the Tartars, who fled from the irruption of Genghis Khan, about 1240. The Seventh Crusade was headed by St Louis XI. of France, in 1249, but he and his nobility were taken prisoners in 1250. He concluded a truce for ten years, and was liberated by paying a stipulated ransom. The Eighth Crusade was undertaken in 1270, by St Louis, who died near the ruins of Carthage. About 1275, the Pope sent a Legate called Bayamond, (improperly called Bagimont,) to collect the tenth of all the ecclesiastical benefices in Scotland, for the relief of the Holy Land. The Scottish clergy were not disposed to pay, nor did they allow the legate to return, but the Auld Taxation of Bagimont is a sort of standard by which the value of the benefices in Scotland, about that time, may be ascertained. The sum total of the tithes of all the benefices amounted to £3,324, 7s. in the reign of James V. In 1291, the town of Acre or Ptolemais was taken by the Sultan of Egypt, and the Christians entirely driven out of Syria. The barefaced sale of indulgences by Tetzel, a Dominican Friar, in 1517, was one of the proximate causes of the Reformation. It made Martin Luther, an Augustine friar, to reflect and doubt, and finally to dispute and dissent. Luther had previously found a neglected copy of the Bible in the library of his monastery, and perused it with avidity, and the entrance of God's word had given light which shone more and more to the perfect day. Without, perhaps, having any of these examples in his eye, Charles II. thought proper to grant three indulgences to his subjects, the first of which we extract from Wodrow, because the most of those who may read this book may not be in possession of his history. The first runs thus:- "Charles R. Right trusty, and right well-beloved cousins and counsellors, &c. Whereas, by the act of council and proclamation at Glasgow, in the year 1662, a considerable number of ministers were at once turned out, and so debarred from preaching of the gospel, and exercise of the ministry; we are graciously pleased to authorise you, and our privy council, to appoint so many of the outed ministers as have lived peaceably and orderly in the places where they have resided, to return and preach, and exercise other functions of their ministry, in the parish churches where they formerly resided and served, (provided they be vacant,) and to allow patrons to present to other vacant churches such others of them as you shall approve of; and that such ministers as shall take collation from the bishop of the diocese, and keep presbyteries and synods, may be warranted to lift their stipends as other ministers of the kingdom; but for such as are not, or shall not be collated by the bishop, that they have no warrant to meddle with the local stipend, but only to possess the manse and glebe; and that you appoint a collector for those, and all other vacant stipends, who shall issue the same, and pay a yearly maintenance to the said not collated ministers, as you shall see fit to appoint. That all who are restored, and allowed to exercise the ministry, be in our name, and by our authority, enjoined to constitute and keep kirk-sessions, and to keep presbyteries and synods, as was done by all ministers before 1638, and that such of them as shall not obey our command, in keeping presbyteries, be confined within the bounds of parishes where they preach, aye and while they give assurance to keep presbyteries for the future. That all who are allowed to preach be strictly enjoined not to admit any of their neighbours or any other parishes into their communion, nor baptize their children, nor marry any of them, without the allowance of the minister of the parish to which they belong, unless it be vacant for the time. And, if it be found, upon a complaint made by any presbytery unto our privy council, that the people of the neighbouring or other parishes resort to their preachings, and desert their own parish churches, that, according to the degree of the offence or disorder, you silence the minister who countenances the same, for shorter or longer time; and upon a second complaint, verified, that you silence again, for a longer time, or altogether turn out, as you see |