Definition of "indulgence"

will all they that either through indulgence to others or fondness to any sin in themselves, substitute for repentance any thing that is less than a sincere, uniform resolution of new obedience

1654, H[enry] Hammond, Of Fundamentals in a Notion Referring to Practise, London: […] J[ames] Flesher for Richard Royston, […]

As indulgence in several wives depended mainly on the length of a man's purse, the poor naturally contented themselves with monogamy.

1922, Maneckji Nusservanji Dhalla, Zoroastrian Civilization‎, page 220

"In other words, the ONLY indulgences we'll be getting for a while is fixing your wardrobe. This means no new manga. No new games. Nothing. Get used to it."

2013, Jocelyn Samara D., Rain, volume 1, page 199

I made but one error—giving way to petulance in the earlier instance; that lost me the Prince of Conti. Temper is bourgeois indulgence, though I own to a predilection for it.

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), page 5

If all these gracious indulgences are without any effect on us, we must perish in our own folly.

a. 1729, John Rogers, The Goodness of God a Motive to Repentance

To understand how indulgences were intended to work depends on linking together a number of assumptions about sin and the afterlife, each of which individually makes considerable sense.

2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 555