Four Hundred Years

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. A comparatively unknown priest and professor in a small German town on the border of civilization sought to ease his pastoral conscience by inviting the learned doctors of his day to discuss with him a very si'rnple ques tion of Biblical teaching and Christian morals: Can par don for sins be sold and bought at so much per? There was nothing unusual in his action: hundreds of others had done the same thing before him, many more after him. Nor was the question difficult. There has never lived a person who has truly believed that a moral debt can be liquidated in hard cash. But in every age there have been persons credulous enough to become impressed with a pretension of mysterious spiritual power; and there have been others of a shrewdly calculating disposition who have thought it a fine convenience to be permitted to settle their account, if not With God, at least with the Church, on the contract plan of Give and Take, rather than on the terms which the Redeemer offers, when He says: Repent and believe the Gospel! Every age, too, has produced enterprising men who would contrive in some way to accommodate these interesting religious bargain hunters.