Wesley Corpus

2. The Church of Rome teaches, that “good works truly merit eternal life.” This is flatly contrary to what our Saviour teaches: “When ye have done all those things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: We have done that which was our duty to do.” (Luke xvii. 10.) A command to do it, grace to obey that command, “and a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” must for ever cut off all pretence of merit from all human obedience. 3. That a man may truly and properly merit hell, we grant; although he never can merit heaven. But if he does merit hell, yet, according to the doctrine of the Church of Rome, he need never go there. For “the Church has power to grant him an indulgence, which remits both the fault and the punishment.” Some of these indulgences extend only to so many days; some, to so many weeks; but others extend to a man’s whole life; and this is called a plenary indulgence. These indulgences are to be obtained by going pilgrimages, by reciting certain prayers, or (which is abundantly the most common way) by paying the stated price of it. Now, can anything under heaven be imagined more horrid, more execrable than this? Is not this a manifest prostitution of religion to the basest purposes? Can any possible method be contrived, to make sin more cheap and easy % Even the Popish Council of Trent acknowledged this abuse, and condemned it in strong terms; but they did not in any degree remove the abuse which they acknowledged. Nay, two of the Popcs under whom the Council sat, Pope Paul III., and Julius III., pro ceeded in the same course with their predecessors, or rather exceeded them; for they granted to such of the Fraternity of the Holy Altar as visited the Church of St. Hilary of Chartres during the six weeks of Lent, seven hundred and seventy-five thousand seven hundred years of pardon. 4.