To increase these evils, the Church, though she possessed large revenues, was not contented with her acquisitions, but retained a power of practising further on the ignorance of mankind. She even bestowed on each individual priest a power of enriching himself by the voluntary oblations of the faithful, and left him still an urgent motive for diligence and industry in his calling. And thus that church, though an expensive and burdensome establishment, was liable to many of the inconveniences which belong to an order of priests, trusting entirely to their own art and invention for obtaining a subsistence.
The advantages attending the Romish hierarchy were but a small compensation for its inconveniences. The ecclesiastical privileges, during barbarous times, had served as a check on the despotism of kings. The union of all the western churches under the supreme pontiff facilitated the intercourse of nations, and tended to bind all the parts of Europe into a close connection with each other. And the pomp and splendor of worship which belonged to so opulent an establishment, contributed in some respect to the encouragement of the fine arts, and began to diffuse a general elegance of taste by uniting it with religion.
It will easily be conceived that, though the balance of evil prevailed in the Romish church, this was not the chief reason which produced the reformation. A concurrence of incidents must have contributed to forward that great revolution.
Leo X., by his generous and enterprising temper, had much exhausted his treasury, and was obliged to employ every invention which might yield money, in order to support his projects, pleasures, and liberalities. The scheme of selling indulgences was suggested to him, as an expedient which had often served in former times to draw money from the Christian world, and make devout people willing contributors to the grandeur and riches of the court of Rome. The church, it was supposed, was possessed of a great stock of merit, as being entitled to all the good works of all the saints, beyond what were employed in their own justification; and even to the merits of Christ himself, which were infinite and unbounded; and from this unexhausted treasury the pope might retail particular portions, and by that traffic acquire money to be employed in pious purposes, in resisting the infidels, or subduing schismatics. When the money came into his exchequer, the greater part of it was usually diverted to other purposes.[*]