They pardoned sins for money--granted sales of indulgences for crime. A regular scale for absolution was graded. A proclamation was made every fifty, and finally every twenty-five years, of a year of jubilee, when plenary remission of all sin was promised to those who should make a pilgrimage to Rome. And so great was the influx of strangers, and consequently of wealth, to Rome, that, on one occasion, it was collected into piles by rakes. It is computed that two hundred thousand deluded persons visited the city in a single month. But the vast sums they brought to Rome, and the still greater sums which were obtained by the sale of indulgences, and by various taxations, were all squandered in ornamenting the city, and in supporting a luxurious court, profligate cardinals, and superfluous ministers of a corrupted religion. Then was erected the splendid church of St. Peter, more after the style of Grecian temples, than after the model of the Gothic cathedrals of York and Cologne. Glorious was that monument of reviving art; wonderful was its lofty dome; but the vast sums required to build it opened the eyes of Christendom to the extravagance and presumption of the popes; and this splendid trophy of their glory also became the emblem of their broken power. Their palaces and temples made an imposing show, but detracted from their real strength, which consisted in the affections of their spiritual subjects. Their outward grandeur, like the mechanical agencies which kings employ, was but a poor substitute for the invisible power of love,--in all ages, and among all people, "that cheap defence" which supports thrones and kingdoms. [Sidenote: The Corruptions of the Church.] Another great evil was, the prevalence of an idolatrous spirit. In the churches and chapels, and even in private families, were innumerable images of saints, pictures of the Virgin, relics, crucifixes, &c., designed at first to kindle a spirit of devotion among the rude and uneducated, but gradually becoming objects of real adoration. Intercessions were supposed to be made by the Virgin Mary, and by favorite saints, more efficacious with Deity than the penitence and prayers of the erring and sinful themselves. The influence of this veneration for martyrs and saints was degrading to the mind, and became a very lucrative source of profit to the priests, who peddled the bones and relics of saints as they did indulgences, and who invented innumerable lies to attest the genuineness and antiquity of the objects they sold, all of which were parts of the great system of fraud and avarice which the church permitted.