The earlier papal indulgences were remissions of penance, and were often given on such tolerable grounds as pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and loyal observance of the papal institution of a "Truce of God" on certain days of the week; indeed, one of the original motives may even have been that of controlling the mercenary proceedings of bishops. But when once the popes had proffered plenary indulgence to all crusaders, decency was at an end. It was obvious that the effect was demoralizing to the last degree; and still the practice continued. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Pope Innocent III offered absolution from all sins past and future, dispensation from the payment of interest on debts, and exemption from the jurisdiction of the ordinary law courts, to all who would serve for a given period in the crusade against the Albigensian and other heretics in the territory of the Count of Toulouse. Later, similar inducements were offered to all who would take up arms against the Moors in Spain. If the moral sense of Christendom were not thus wholly destroyed, it is because all social life necessitates some minimum of morality, which no system can uproot. Thenceforth the practice went from bad to worse, despite many earnest protests from the better and saner sort of Churchmen, till it became possible for popes to allot the traffic in indulgences in given districts as kings allotted trading monopolies, and the enormity of the practices of the agents gave a sufficient ground for the decisive explosion of the Reformation. Before that explosion an attempt was made, on the lines of ancient Roman law, to give the practice plausibility by the formula that the indulgence was granted "out of the superfluous merits of Christ and the saints," a treasure of spare sanctity which it lay with the pope to distribute. But this doctrine, which savoured so much of the counting-house, was contemporaneous with the worst abuse the principle ever underwent after the age of the Crusaders. § 3. Rationalistic Heresies