6 Sermon Illustrations on False Teaching

A little boy, when asked what was his favorite text in the Bible, repeated the stirring order of Gen. Dix when he was Secretary of War: "If any man hauls down the American flag, shoot him on the spot." A great Sunday-school man, when encouraging teachers to meet often together for mutual improvement, enforced his remarks by adding, "As the good book says, 'Birds of a feather should flock together.'" Dr. Peirce.

Pope Julius II began the building of the magnificent church at Rome, but left it unfinished. His successor, Leo X, was desirous to complete this superb edifice, but being involved in debt, and finding the apostolic treasury exhausted, he had recourse to the selling of indulgences, a gainful traffic, for the procuring a sufficient sum of money. Accordingly, in 1517 he published general indulgences throughout all Europe, to such as would contribute to the building of St. Peter's. The sum of ten shillings was sufficient to purchase the pardon of sins, and the ransom of a soul from purgatory!

The dealers in indulgences had established themselves at Hagenau in 1517. The wife of a shoemaker profiting by the permission given in the instruction of the commissary-general, had procured against her husband's will, a letter of indulgence, and had paid for it a gold florin. Shortly after, she died; and the widower omitting to have mass said for the repose of her soul the curate charged him with contempt of religion, and the judge of Hagenau summoned him to appear before him. The shoemaker put in his pocket his wife's indulgence, and repaired to the place of summons. "Is your wife dead?" asked the judge. "Yes," answered the shoemaker. "What have you done with her?" "I buried her and commended her soul to God." "But have you had a mass said for the salvation of her soul?" "I have not—it was not necessary;—she went to heaven in the moment of her death." How do you know that "—"Here is the evidence of it." The widower drew from his pocket the indulgence, and the judge in presence of the curate, read, in so many words, that in the moment of death, the woman who had received it would go, not into purgatory, but straight into heaven. "If the curate pretends that a mass is necessary after that," said the shoemaker, "my wife has been cheated by our holy father the Pope; but if she has not been cheated, then the curate is deceiving me." There was no reply to this defence, and the accused was acquitted. It was thus that the good sense of the people disposed of these impostures.