[Sidenote: Love for truth]

The Reformation was the sincere effort of honest men to restore the
truth of primitive Christianity, that the world might again experience
the triumph of evangelical faith. To the everlasting credit of the
Continental reformers be it said that their motives were not selfish.
They sought not for themselves freedom of thought and speech nor
church power. Their immediate object was the restoration of the
gospel; all other results were but secondary. Nothing is more
certain than that at the first Luther had no idea of assailing the
organization of the papal church. Most of the reformers at the first
still believed most earnestly in the imperial government of the
universal church; and they relinquished this long-cherished ideal only
when driven by force of circumstances which were at first unseen and
unsuspected. Luther did not at first question the doctrine of the
supremacy of the pope; but when he found that the reigning pope could
not be reconciled with the principles of truth which he taught, Luther
proposed to appeal the matters in question to a general council,
notwithstanding the melancholy example, a century earlier, of the
Council of Constance and the fate of John Huss and Jerome of Prague.

[Sidenote: Indulgences]

The real occasion for the outbreak of the Reformation was the papal
traffic in indulgences. Leo X had great need of money for the building
of St. Peter's, and other undertakings, and in order to fill the
coffers of the church he had recourse to the sale of indulgences.
The power of dispensing these indulgences in Saxony in Germany was
committed to a Dominican friar named Tetzel, a fanatical enthusiast