After the cross was erected, and the arms of the pope suspended over it, Tezel mounted the pulpit, and with a tone of assurance began to extol the value of the indulgences in presence of the crowd who had been attracted to the church by the ceremony. The people listened and stared on hearing the wondrous virtues of which he told them. A Jesuit historian, speaking of the Dominicans with whom Tezel was associated, says, "Some of these preachers failed not, as usual, to outrage the subject which they treated, and so to exaggerate the value of the indulgences as to make people suppose they were certain of their own salvation, and of the deliverance of souls from purgatory as soon as the money was paid."[299] If such were the scholars, we may judge what the master was. Let us listen to one of his harangues after setting up the cross. [299] Hist. du Luthéranisme par le P. Maimbourg, de la Compagnie du Jésus, 1681, p. 21. "Indulgences are the most precious and most sublime gift of God. "This cross (pointing to the red cross) has the very same efficacy as the actual cross of Jesus Christ.[300] [300] Luth. Op. (W.) xxii, p. 1393. "Come, and I will give you letters under seal, by which even the sins which you may have a desire to commit in future will all be forgiven. "I would not exchange my privileges for that of St. Peter in heaven; for I have saved more souls by my indulgences than the apostle by his sermons. "There is no sin too great for an indulgence to remit; and even should any one (the thing, no doubt, is impossible) have done violence to the Holy Virgin Mary, mother of God, let him pay, let him only pay well, and it will be forgiven him.[301] [301] Tezel defends and reiterates this assertion in his Anti-Theses published the same year. (Th. 99, 100, and 101.) "Sub-commissariis in super ac prædicatoribus veniarum imponere, ut si quis per impossibile Dei Genitricem semper Virginem violasset, quod eumdem indulgentiarum vigore absolvere possent, luce clarius est." (Positiones fratris J. Tezelii quibus defendit indulgentias contra Lutherum.) Moreover, to enjoin the sub-commissaries and preachers of pardon, that if any one should, by impossibility, have violated the Mother of God, always Virgin, they could absolve him in virtue of indulgences, is clearer than day. "Think, then, that for each mortal sin you must, after confession and contrition, do penance for seven years, either in this life or in purgatory. Now, how many mortal sins are committed in one day, in one week? How many in a month, a year, a whole life?[302] Ah! these sins are almost innumerable, and innumerable sufferings must be endured for them in purgatory. And now, by means of these letters of indulgence, you can at once, for life, in all cases except four, which are reserved to the Apostolic See, and afterwards at the hour of death, obtain a full remission of all your pains and all your sins."