Salvation Is Not for Sale
No Indulgences. No Price. Christ Paid It.
$35
Premium 100 percent combed ring-spun cotton, preshrunk
SALVATION IS NOT FOR SALE over an engraved, locked indulgence chest with a nail through a blank indulgence, then No indulgences. No price. Christ paid it, on the back. The Patriarch Outfitters mark sits upper left chest, and the sleeve carries a Nehemiah 4:14 cross cut through to the shirt color. Printed to order on a premium tee of preshrunk 100 percent combed ring-spun cotton in a fitted cut, with a Patriarch Outfitters label inside the neck that lists the size, country of origin, and material.
Larger sizes cost a little more to make.
Made to order and ready in 2 to 5 business days, then 3 to 7 in transit. Flat-rate US shipping of $6 per order is added at checkout.
Details
- Fabric
- Premium 100 percent combed ring-spun cotton, preshrunk
- Fit
- Fitted cut
- Construction
- Side-seamed
- Shrinkage
- Preshrunk fabric that can still shrink slightly
- Printed to order in one ink
- Sleeve
- Right sleeve print
- Label
- Patriarch label inside the neck with the size, country of origin, and material
- Care
- Wash cold inside out, tumble dry low or hang dry, do not iron the print. Hot water can shrink the fabric.
- Placement
- Back, Front, Neckline detail and Sleeve
Front and back
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Front -
Back
The story
In the spring of 1517 the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel was preaching an indulgence in the towns around Wittenberg. The Roman church taught that an indulgence released a person from the temporal punishment still owed for sins, drawn from a treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints, and that it could be applied to the dead in purgatory. Tetzel sold the letters for money. Part of the proceeds went to the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and part repaid the debts of the Archbishop of Mainz, who had borrowed to buy his office.
A rhyme attributed to Tetzel's preaching ran, "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs." Luther named that claim in his twenty-seventh thesis and called it human doctrine. He dated the Ninety-Five Theses at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. The dispute over indulgences became the Reformation.
Christ paid it
The Reformers did not answer Tetzel with a cheaper price. They answered with Scripture: a sinner is justified freely, by God's grace alone, through faith alone, for the sake of Christ alone. The Westminster Confession of Faith says that Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are justified. The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 says the same in its own eleventh chapter. Nothing is left owing, so nothing is left to sell.
Isaiah 55 had already made the offer. "Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."
The chest on the back is a modern engraving, not a drawing of a surviving object. The nail and hammer stand for the Theses at Wittenberg. The words on the shirt are Patriarch Outfitters' own, apart from the line from Isaiah.
The blank on the indulgence is the printed form itself. The oldest dated printing in Europe is one of those blanks, made in Gutenberg's shop in 1454. Read how the same press carried Luther.
