154 THEOLOGY. 



lionized as such, is not only tolerated, but required by the Roman 

 Catholic or more properly the Roman Church. This Church also 

 requires auricular or private confession of all sins, to the priests, 

 who claim power to pardon the same ; and it maintains that we may 

 save ourselves by our own good works, and have a surplus for the 

 benefit of others, called works of supererogation ; on the strength of 

 which it grants, or has granted not only pardons, but indulgences 

 to commit any future sin with impunity, for a certain price. It also 

 sanctions the monastic system, and prohibits the marriage of priests. 

 In enforcing conformity to these doctrines and requisitions, the In- 

 quisition, established in 1204, by the agency of Dominic de Guzman, 

 founder also of the Dominican order of monks; and the Society of 

 Jesuits, or order of Jesus, founded in 1536, by Ignatius Loyola, a 

 Spanish soldier and devotee, were engines of tremendous and most 

 cruel power. 



After the modern discoveries in the East Indies, and America, the 

 Roman church made great efforts to convert those regions to its own 

 faith ; in India, by Francis Xavier, the Jesuit, who preached in Hin- 

 doostan, Ceylon, and Japan, and died in the year 1552 ; in Mexico, by 

 Zummaraga, its first bishop ; in Peru, by Hernandez Lucqiie, who 

 was associated with Pizarro, in its conquest ; and in Brazil, by Vieyra, 

 and other Jesuits. The first Roman Catholic establishment in the 

 United States was in Maryland, under Calvert, son of Lord Baltimore, 

 in 1634. 



2. We come next to speak of the Reformation ; by which a 

 large portion of the Church was restored to a purer form of Chris- 

 tianity; although the reformers themselves afterwards became divided, 

 on various abstract or minor points of Christian doctrine. The In- 

 quisition was first directed against the Waldenses and Jllbigenses, 

 who had long opposed the corruptions of the Roman Church ; and 

 had been condemned therefor, by the great Lateran Council, at Rome, 

 in 1139. But the pioneer of the Reformation is usually considered 

 to have been John WicMiffe, of Yorkshire, England, who died in 

 1387. He attacked the jurisdiction of the pope and bishops, and ex- 

 posed their absurdities and impositions. His followers were called 

 Wicldiffit.es, or improperly Lollards ; (this last being a sect of Ger- 

 man dissenters) ; but they were few in number and unsupported ; and 

 their doctrines made but feeble progress. The same was the case 

 with the Hussites in Bohemia, the followers of John Huss, who suf- 

 fered martyrdom in 1415. It was reserved for Martin Luther to 

 brave the thunders of the Vatican, (the papal palace), and to effect, on 

 a large scale, the Reform so much needed. 



Luther was an Augustinian Monk, and a professor of Theology at 

 Wittemberg, when he first ventured to preach against the abuse of 

 indulgences, then offered for sale there, by Tetzel, a Dominican friar 

 or monk, A. D. 1517. This was followed by long and widening 

 disputations ; and in 1519, Luther, sustained by the elector Frederick 

 of Saxony, began to deny the title of the pope to supremacy or infal- 

 libility. He was excommunicated by the pope, Leo X., in 1520; 

 and outlawed by Charles V., by the Edict of Worms, in 1521 ; but 

 he lived to translate the Bible into the German language, and to see 



