Saints had virtually come to be regarded not as symbols, but as idols
possessed of various degrees of power, the assistance of one and the same
saint proving more or less efficacious according to the shrine favoured by
his suppliant.

[Sidenote: Evidence from Colet and More (1512-18)]

These facts are not disputable. They were fully recognised by Reformers of
the type of Colet and More, who would have had the Church reform herself by
reverting to the primitive and orthodox expression of the doctrines of
which these deformities were a corrupt latter-day misrepresentation, and to
the ideals of life and conduct which had been overlaid by ceremonial
observances. The primitive doctrines they accepted without question; as
regarded the ceremonial observances, they objected to them not in
themselves but only so far as they obscured in practice the much higher
value of moral ideals. In the view of such men the remedy for heresies lay
in the hands of the clergy: would they but bring their lives into some
conformity with primitive ideals, surrendering the pursuit of place,
profit, or pleasure to tread in the footsteps of the apostles, heresy would
perish of inanition.

[Sidenote: Later evidence]

When Colet was preaching at St. Paul's, when More was imagining the
_Utopia_, when Erasmus was preparing his _Praise of Folly_ and
his edition of the Greek Testament, the name of Luther was still unknown.
Their aim was the active propagation of reform; not to exercise thereon a
restraining influence, which at that time would have seemed superfluous.
The only reason they could have had for understating the existing
corruption would have been fear of the authorities, a fear from which both