an indulgence and invite contributions in return for spiritual
favors, we are charged with greed. People think all is done merely for
the sake of extorting money. No one trusts us. We have no more credit
than a bankrupt merchant."

[Sidenote: Immorality of clergy]

Much is said in the literature of the latter Middle Ages about the
immorality of the clergy. This class has always been severely judged
because of its high pretensions. Moreover the vow of celibacy was too
hard to keep for most men and for some women; that many priests, monks
and nuns broke it cannot be doubted. And yet there was a sprinkling of
saintly parsons like him of whom Chancer [Transcriber's note: Chaucer?]
said

"Who Christes lore and his apostles twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve,"

and there were many others who kept up at least the appearance of
decency. But here, as always, the bad attracted more attention than the
good.

The most reliable data on the subject are found in the records of church
visitations, both those undertaken by the Reformers and those
occasionally attempted by the Catholic prelates of the earlier period.
Everywhere it was proved that a large proportion of the clergy were both
wofully ignorant and morally unworthy. Besides the priests who had
concubines, there were many given to drink and some who kept taverns,
gaming rooms and worse places. Plunged in gross ignorance and
superstition, those blind leaders of the blind, who won great reputations
as exorcists or as wizards, were unable to understand the Latin service,
and sometimes to repeat even the Lord's prayer or creed in any language.

{26}

[Sidenote: Piety]

The Reformation, like most other revolutions, came not at the lowest ebb
of abuse, but at a time when the tide had already begun to run, and to
run strongly, in the direction of improvement. One can hardly find a
sweeter, more spiritual religion anywhere than that set forth in
Erasmus's _Enchiridion_, or in More's _Utopia_, or than that lived by
Vitrier and Colet. Many men, who had not attained to this conception of
the true beauty of the gospel, were yet thoroughly disgusted with things
as they were and quite ready to substitute a new and purer conception and
practice for the old, mechanical one.

Evidence for this is the popularity of the Bible and other devotional
books. Before 1500 there were nearly a hundred editions of the Latin
Vulgate, and a number of translations in