SAINT PETER’S CATHEDRAL, Sylvester Hassell The sixteenth century was the period of the fixed and executed purpose of the popes to build at Rome a religious structure to be known as “St. Peter’s,” designed to eclipse in costly and colossal magnificence all the other temples of earth; and, though intended by the popes to be a grand perpetual monument of Roman Catholic glory, yet designed by Providence to be a grand perpetual monument of Roman catholic shame, proclaiming forever to the world the bottomless abyss of corruption into which an organization calling itself the “Holy Catholic Church” had descended to offer in the public marts of Europe the unblushing sale for gold of unlimited indulgences for past, present, and future sins—the declared object of the popes being to devote the gold to the erection of the cathedral of “St. Peter’s;” against which tremendous and unparalleled abomination Martin Luther was raised up by the Holy Spirit to utter a mighty trumpet blast of God’s absolute and eternal predestination of his people to everlasting life, of justification by faith alone, and salvation by grace alone, which reverberated all over Roman Catholic Europe, aroused sleeping millions from their nocturnal slumbers, and shook to its center the kingdom of Mystical Babylon.” (Hassell)
Pope Julian II. (1503-1513) was a bold unscrupulous politician and warrior, who devoted his administration to intriguing and fighting for his own aggrandizement. In 1506, changing the plans of Nicholas V., he laid the foundation-stone of the present cathedral of “St. Peter’s,” which was finished in 1644 at a cost of sixty millions dollars. The “elegant heathen Pope” Leo X. (1513-1521), having exhausted his treasury in lavish expenditures, and yet desiring to immortalize his administration by the completion of “St. Peter’s,” commissioned and sent out a number of Dominican monks to sell indulgences or pardons for sins in order to raise money for this purpose.
John Tetzel, one of these monks, went to Juterboch, four miles from Wittenberg, in Saxony, and, with unequaled exaggerations and shamelessness, “sold grace for gold as dear or cheap as he could.” He had a price for every sin, and so deluded the people that money poured into his coffers from men, women and children, rich and poor, even from beggars; and he boasted that he had saved more souls by his indulgences than the Apostle Peter had saved by his sermons, and that the red cross he carried had as much efficacy as the cross of Christ. He declared that Christ since his ascension had nothing more to do with the church till the last day, but had entrusted all to the pope, his vicar and viceregent. Tetzel had, years before, squandered large amounts of their iniquitous gains in the most abominable dissipations.
The cup of Rome’s iniquity seemed, indeed to be full. God no longer suffered this diabolical mockery of his holy religion to proceed unrestrained. Foreknowing all things, he had for thirty-three years been preparing, in the heart of Germany and in the bosom even of the Roman communion, a man qualified by his experience and by the Divine Spirit to meet this very emergency.” (Hassell) (See also under Martin LUTHER)