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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 4
But light and darkness cannot harmonize. Between truth and
error there is an irrepressible conflict. To uphold and defend the one
is to attack and overthrow the other. Our Saviour himself declared,
“I came not to send peace, but a sword.” [
Matthew 10:34
.] Said
Luther, a few years after the opening of the Reformation, “God does
not conduct, but drives me forward. I am not master of my own
actions. I would gladly live in repose, but I am thrown into the midst
of tumults and revolutions.” He was now about to be urged into the
contest.
The Roman Church had made merchandise of the grace of God.
The tables of the money-changers were set up beside her altars, and
the air resounded with the shouts of buyers and sellers. Under the
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plea of raising funds for the erection of St. Peter’s church at Rome,
indulgences for sin were publicly offered for sale by the authority of
the pope. By the price of crime a temple was to be built up for God’s
worship,—the corner-stone laid with the wages of iniquity. But
the very means of Rome’s aggrandizement provoked the deadliest
blow to her power and greatness. It was this that aroused the most
determined and successful of the enemies of popery, and led to the
battle which shook the papal throne to its foundation, and jostled the
triple crown upon the pontiff’s head.
The official appointed to conduct the sale of indulgences in
Germany—Tetzel by name—had been convicted of the basest of-
fenses against society and against the law of God; but having escaped
the punishment due to his crimes, he was employed to further the
mercenary and unscrupulous projects of the Romish Church. With
great effrontery he repeated the most glaring falsehoods, and related
marvelous tales to deceive an ignorant, credulous, and superstitious
people. Had they possessed the word of God, they would not have
been thus deceived. It was to keep them under the control of the
papacy, that they might swell the power and wealth of her ambitious
leaders, that the Bible had been withheld from them.
As Tetzel entered a town, a messenger went before him, an-
nouncing, “The grace of God and of the holy father is at your gates.”
And the people welcomed the blasphemous pretender as if he were
God himself come down from Heaven to them. The infamous traffic
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was set up in the church, and Tetzel, ascending the pulpit, extolled
indulgences as the most precious gift of God. He declared that by