within the Church itself there was seething inquietude, and thousands of
its purest souls longed, prayed and struggled for its practical
amendment. To emancipate the Church from the clutches of the autocracy
of Rome; to remove the abuses that, in the course of centuries, had
grown round and sullied its primitive purity; to lighten the fiscal
oppression of the Papacy and to check the rapacity of the Cardinals; to
reform and discipline the priesthood; even to modify certain doctrines
and dogmas: such were the aspirations of some of the most devout,
eminent and cultured sons of the Church. Outside its communion there
were many forms of heresy, which, though generally regarded as
disreputable and often treated as criminal, the apparently all-powerful
Church had never been able entirely to eradicate. And, at first at
least, both these forces favoured the efforts of the early Lutheran
Reformers.

The influence of the Reformation, of "the New Learning," on
theological, ethical, social and political thought can scarcely be
overestimated. Under the supremacy of the Church of Rome, men, educated
and uneducated, had come to rely almost entirely on authority and
precedent, and had lost the habit of self-reliance, of unswerving
dependence on the dictates of reason, which was one of the
distinguishing characteristics of the classical philosophers and their
disciples, as it is of the modern scientific school of thought. In
short, concerning matters spiritual and temporal, Faith had usurped the
function of Reason. Hence any innovations, whatever their abstract
merit, were regarded not only with justifiable suspicion and caution,
but as entirely unworthy of consideration, unless, of course, they could
be shown to be in accordance with accepted traditions and doctrines, or
had received the sanction of the Church. But even the Church itself was
popularly regarded as bound by tradition and precedent; and when the