Tetzel entered the towns with noise and pomp, amid waving of flags,
singing, and the ringing of bells. Clergy, choristers, monks, and nuns
moved in procession before and after him. He himself sat in a gilded
chariot, with the Bull of his authority spread out on a velvet cushion
before him.
The churches were his salesrooms, lighted and decorated for the
occasion as in highest festival. From the pulpits his boisterous
oratory rang, telling the virtues of indulgences, the wonderful power
of the keys, and the unexampled grace of which he was the bearer from
the holy lord and father at Rome.
He called on all--robbers, adulterers, murderers, everybody--to draw
near, pay down their money, and receive from him letters, duly sealed,
by which all their sins, past and future, should be pardoned and done
away.
Not for the living only, but also for the dead, he proposed full and
instantaneous deliverance from all future punishments on the payment
of the price. And any wretch who dared to doubt or question the saving
power of these certificates he in advance doomed to excommunication
and the wrath of God.[7]
Catholic divines have labored hard to whitewash or explain away this
stupendous iniquity; but, with all they have said or may say, such
were the presentations made by the hawkers of these wares and such was
the text of the diplomas they issued.
A dispensation or indulgence was nothing more nor less than a
pretended letter of credit on Heaven, drawn at will by the pope out of
the superabundant merits of Christ and all saints, to count so much on
the books of God for so many murders, robberies, frauds, lies,
slanders, or debaucheries. As the matter practically worked, a more
profane and devilish traffic never had place in our world than that
which the Roman hierarchy thus carried on in the name of the Triune
God.