It is undoubtedly true that the doctrine of purgatory, conceived as part of a system of future rewards and punishments, has exerted on the whole an influence favorable to morality. But the institution lends itself easily to misuse. In the Middle Ages the doctrine of indulgences was applied to souls in purgatory, and the shortening of the period of their suffering there made dependent not alone upon the prayers of their friends on earth, but often practically upon the payment of sums of money, designated as alms to the poor or gifts to the Church. The forgiveness of sins was thus too often made a commercial transaction. Thus the doctrine of purgatory, beyond controversy, contributed essentially to that despiritualizing of religion and that deadening in wide circles of the moral sense which characterized the later medieval period and which, through inevitable reaction, helped to provoke the Protestant revolt. The effect upon morals of the abolition of purgatory by the reformers was immediate and far-reaching. Many specific duties were at once dropped from the moral code. Prayers for the dead ceased to be a pious duty; they were not even morally permissible. Furthermore, the performance of such good works as the making of pilgrimages and the giving of alms for the benefit of souls in purgatory not only ceased to be regarded as meritorious, but came to be looked upon as positively wrong. Besides these direct ethical consequences of the abolition of purgatory there were indirect ethical results which we shall notice in another connection.[719] [Sidenote: Effects of the religious reform upon the virtue of toleration[720]] Ultimately the Reformation, largely through the outworkings of the principle of the right of private judgment in matters of conscience, was destined to foster the growth of the important virtue of toleration. But throughout the first three centuries of Protestantism, owing mainly to the great emphasis laid by the reformers on the doctrine of the supreme ethical value of correctness of religious belief, this principle of the right of private judgment exerted little appreciable influence upon the moral evolution. Holding fast to the doctrine of the criminality of wrong belief, the new Church like the old was necessarily intolerant. It regarded heresy with dread, looked upon toleration as a fault, and, whenever circumstances favored, engaged in persistent and unrelenting persecution to maintain uniformity of religious belief. It was not till late in the modern period that religious toleration came generally to be recognized by the Protestant conscience as a virtuous disposition of supreme worth. CHAPTER XVIII THE MORAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE INCOMING OF DEMOCRACY: THE NEW SOCIAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONSCIENCE I. FORCES DETERMINING THE TREND OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT [Sidenote: The incoming of democracy]