imposed penalties is remembered, the most valuable of all Indulgences were those which had regard to the unimposed penalties; the priest might make a mistake, but God did not blunder. While Indulgences were always connected with satisfactions, and changed with the changes in the meaning of the latter term, they were not the less influenced by a distinction which came to be drawn between _attrition_ and _contrition_, and by the application of the distinction to the theory of the Sacrament of Penance. During the earlier Middle Ages and down to the thirteenth century, it was always held that _contrition_ (sorrow prompted by love) was the one thing taken into account by God in pardoning the sinner. The theologians of the thirteenth century, however, began to draw a distinction between this godly sorrow and a certain amount of sorrow which might arise from a variety of causes of a less worthy nature, and especially from servile fear. This was called _attrition_; and it was held that this _attrition_, though of itself too imperfect to win the pardon of God, might become perfected through the confession heard by the priest, and in the sacramental absolution pronounced by him. Very naturally, though perhaps illogically, it was believed that an imperfect sorrow, though sufficient to procure absolution, and, therefore, the blotting out of eternal punishment, merited more temporal punishment than if it had been sorrow of a godly sort. But it was these temporal penalties (including the pains of Purgatory) that Indulgences provided for. Hence, Indulgences appealed more strongly to the indifferent Christian, who knew that he had sinned, and at the same time felt that his sorrow was not the effect of his love to God. He knew that his sins deserved _some_ punishment. His conscience, however weak, told him that he could not sin with perfect impunity, and that something more was needed than his perfunctory confession to a priest. He felt that he must do _something_—fast, or go on a pilgrimage, or purchase an Indulgence. It was at this point that the Church intervened to show him how his poor performance could be transformed by the power of the Church and its treasury of merits into something so great that the penalties of Purgatory could be actually evaded. His cheap sorrow, his careless confession, need not trouble him. Hence, for the ordinary indifferent Christian, _Attrition_, _Confession_, and _Indulgence_ became the three heads of the scheme of the Church for his salvation. The one thing that satisfied his conscience was the burdensome thing he had to do, and that was to procure an Indulgence—a matter made increasingly easy for him as time went on.