failed to impute all sorts of unworthy motives to him for making choice of the Dominican, John Tetzel, as his chief sub-commissioner, or quæstor, in preaching the Indulgence. But, says Dr. Gröne, is not the Archbishop's choice of Tetzel tantamount to a refutation of the calumnies heaped upon him as one of the vilest, not only of friars, but of men? Archbishop Albert proceeded with the greatest caution, and issued very clear and exact instructions, both on the nature of the Indulgence, and the manner in which it should be preached. Had Tetzel really been the notoriously bad monk Protestant writers say he was, how could the Archbishop, with the knowledge of such a fact, have ventured to choose him at all? How could Tetzel be expected to preach with any effect, if, as is asserted, he was a disgrace to his order, a man who did not scruple openly to perpetrate the worst excesses? But Archbishop Albert of Mentz had, as we have seen, very particular reasons of his own for promoting, as much as possible, the success of Pope Leo's Indulgence, and, accordingly, he made choice of Tetzel as his chief quæstor, not because he thought a coarse sordid monk of infamous reputation the likeliest person he knew of to stir up the religious fervour of the people, but because he judged this might best be done by one who, while eminent alike for piety and for zeal in the cause of the Church and the Holy See, enjoyed the renown of being one of the most eloquent preachers then living in Germany. What motive could be more natural, more just, more obvious than this?

Tetzel entered on his duties as preacher of the papal Indulgence for the Archbishop of Mentz with his accustomed zeal and ability. What he had to announce in virtue of the "Instructio Summaria" of the Archbishop was substantially this: That all persons who repented of, and confessed, fasting, their sins, who received Holy Communion, said certain prayers in seven different Churches, or before as many altars, and contributed according to their means a donation towards S. Peter's Basilica, should obtain full remission of the temporal punishment due to their sins, once for their lives, and then as often as they should be in danger of death; that this Indulgence might be applied by way of intercession to the souls in Purgatory, while bedridden people were to be able to obtain it by devoutly confessing and communicating in their chambers before a sacred image or picture.

In the entire document, says Dr. Gröne, there does not occur a thought which the Church at the present day would hesitate to subscribe. The "Instructio Summaria" further declares, that those who cannot afford a pecuniary donation

are not therefore to be denied the grace of the Indulgence, which seeks not less the salvation of the faithful than the advantage of the Basilica. "Let such as have no money," it says, "replace their donations by prayer and fasting, for the Kingdom of Heaven must not stand more open to the rich than the poor." What a refutation have we here of the slanderous clamour against Pope Leo's Indulgence as an alleged traffic in sin! With respect to the conduct of Tetzel himself and his subordinates, they are admonished to lead an exemplary life, to avoid taverns, and to abstain from unnecessary expense. That cases of levity nevertheless took place, Dr. Gröne admits, but he strenuously denies that Tetzel gave cause for animadversion. Finally, the "Instructio Summaria" directed that all Indulgences of a particular or local kind, should be declared, in virtue of the Pope's Bull, as suspended for eight years in favour of the one now granted by his Holiness, a declaration which did not fail to excite a bitter spirit of opposition and jealousy, especially among the religious orders and confraternities, of which Tetzel had to bear the brunt.

In the church of All Saints, at Wittenberg, there was a costly shrine of relics presented by the reigning elector Frederic, afterwards surnamed the Wise. At his request Pope Leo X., so recently as 1516, had attached to this shrine an Indulgence for the yearly festival of All Saints. The offerings which this Indulgence would produce, Frederic designed to apply for the benefit of the new university which he had founded. Hence, he regarded the Papal Indulgence for S. Peter's at Rome as a grievance, and, but for an imperial mandate requiring all the German princes to throw no impediment in its way, he would have forbidden its being preached in his territories.

Frederic, moreover, had a grudge against Rome on the following grounds. The Holy See had, in compliance with his request, consented to confer on his natural son the coadju torship to a benefice in commendam. But the Commendator himself dying when the diploma conferring the coadjutorship had just been completed, a new diploma conferring the vacant commendatory had to be prepared instead, entailing on Frederic, who was of a very parsimonious disposition, the vexatious necessity of having to pay the fees twice over. This he ruminated upon in his sullen way, and set it down in his mind as a conclusive proof of that grasping, overreaching spirit which the enemies of the Church in that age accused her of in such exaggerated terms. Frederic the Wise was also involved in a dispute with the Archbishop of Mentz, respecting certain territorial rights at Erfurth.

The Augustinian hermits of Wittenberg sympathised with their munificent patron the Elector. He permitted them to make use of the funds accruing from the local indulgence of All Saints towards the expenses of a new convent and church which they had in course of erection. But the temporary suspension of the latter Indulgence in favour of the one preached by John Tetzel for Pope Leo X. and Archbishop Albert inconvenienced and annoyed them all the more, as their buildings were on the point of completion. Neither was their ill will towards Tetzel the less that, in his character as a Dominican, he was their ardent opponent in the scholastic and theological disputes of the day; and, besides being a preacher of such talent and influence, was a dignitary of the court of Inquisition at Cologne, where, of course, the Dominicans presided.

In spite of all obstacles, Tetzel preached the Indulgence with signal success at Leipsic, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Berlin, and other places. At length, about the end of October, 1517, he arrived at Yüterbock, near Wittenberg, just at the time for gaining the special Indulgence of All Saints. In vain the Augustinians secretly did what they could to prevent the people from flocking to hear him. The very students of the new Wittenberg university, expressly founded as it was as a rival to that of Leipsic, deserted the lecture-halls in such numbers that the professors were filled with alarm and indignation. In particular, Doctor Martin Luther was exasperated to find himself so completely eclipsed by the proximity of Tetzel, against whom he fruitlessly inveighed in the temporary church of the Augustinian hermits. Even his own penitents, regardless of his admonitions and refusals of absolution, forsook his confessional to obtain the Indulgence proclaimed at Yüterbock. All at once they seemed to forget the maxims he had taken so much pains to instil into their minds respecting Divine grace and good works! Long had he waited for an opportunity to broach his new doctrine openly, and he and his disciples resolved that now or never was the time to do so.

Accordingly, on the 31st of October Luther posted up his famous ninety-five Theses at the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, and challenged all the world to dispute with him on the doctrine they maintained. Ostensibly they were levelled against the alleged abuses of the Papal Indulgence. But attacks on the doctrine itself, as well as on the authority of the Pope, were insidiously intermingled with them.

"Not the affair of the Indulgence, not Tetzel, not the corruption and ignorance of the clergy, not the decay of discipline," says Dr. Gröne, "but the

circumstance that Luther, previous to the posting up of his Theses, was a heretic, and found support in the Elector Frederic-this it was that gave rise to the great schism in the Church."

Dr. Gröne substantiates his assertion by authenticated facts, and a critical examination of Luther's ninety-five Theses, which, says he :

Were the point of transition from secret to open, from timid to obstinate, heresy. They were the seed which, sown in the soil, contains, not only virtually, but really, all that, as germ and plant, it has a right to contain. They were the result, the production of Luther's mental life, corroded, as it was, by error and learned self-conceit, they were as intimately united with it as the stem is with the root, therefore they could only be abandoned in case the author himself transformed his entire interior life. Hence, too, is to be derived the obstinacy with which Luther clung to them, with which he would still have clung to them, even if they had not earned him general applause ; hence the circumstance that, in defending them, he involved himself deeper and deeper in heresy.

By means of the press Luther's Theses were soon spread all over Germany. Tetzel, seeing the riotous applause they met with from the enemies of the Church generally, and from his own enemies in particular, suspended his preaching; and, with the concurrence of the Archbishop of Mentz, repaired for advice to his former preceptor, Dr. Conrad Wimpina, at that time Rector of the University of Frankfort on the Oder. Wimpina advised him to answer Luther's challenge with a series of antitheses. Tetzel did so, and published against Luther's ninety-five Theses, a hundred and six antitheses. They obtained for him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In the clearest manner they set forth the true Catholic doctrine of the absolute necessity of repentance, confession, and satisfaction, for the pardon of sin, affirming that though an Indulgence exempts the sinner from the vindicatory penalties of the Church, it leaves him just as much bound as ever to submit to her medicinal and preservative ones; that it does not derogate from the merits of Christ, since its whole efficacy is due to the atoning passion of Christ; as also that the Pope has power only by means of suffrage to apply the benefits of an Indulgence to the souls in Purgatory. Moreover, to say the Pope cannot absolve the least venial sin is erroneous; and equally so to deny that all Vicars of Christ have the same power as Peter had: rather, to assert that Peter, in the matter of Indulgences, had more power than they, is both heretical and blasphemous.

One of the many slanders on Tetzel is that he was not the author of the antitheses that he published, but that Dr. Wim