as afforded at
thirty-six livres, three ducats. Perjury came to seven livres and three
carlines. Pardon for murder, if not by poison, was cheaper. Even a
parricide could buy forgiveness at God's tribunal at one ducat; four
livres, eight carlines. Henry de Montfort, in the year 1448, purchased
absolution for that crime at that price. Was it strange that a century or
so of this kind of work should produce a Luther? Was it unnatural that
plain people, who loved the ancient Church, should rather desire to see
her purged of such blasphemous abuses, than to hear of St. Peter's dome
rising a little nearer to the clouds on these proceeds of commuted crime?

At the same time, while ecclesiastical abuses are thus augmenting,
ecclesiastical power is diminishing in the Netherlands. The Church is no
longer able to protect itself against the secular aim. The halcyon days
of ban, book and candle, are gone. In 1459, Duke Philip of Burgundy
prohibits the churches from affording protection to fugitives. Charles
the Bold, in whose eyes nothing is sacred save war and the means of
making it, lays a heavy impost upon all clerical property. Upon being
resisted, he enforces collection with the armed hand. The sword and the
pen, strength and intellect, no longer the exclusive servants or
instruments of priestcraft, are both in open revolt. Charles the Bold
storms one fortress, Doctor Grandfort, of Groningen, batters another.
This learned Frisian, called "the light of the world," friend and
compatriot of the great Rudolph Agricola, preaches throughout the
provinces, uttering bold denunciations of ecclesiastical error. He even
disputes the infallibility of the Pope, denies the utility of prayers for
the dead, and inveighs against the whole doctrine of purgatory and
absolution.

With the beginning of the 16th century, the great Reformation was
actually alive. The name of Erasmus of Rotterdam was already celebrated;
the man, who, according to Grotius, "so well showed the road to a
reasonable reformation." But if Erasmus showed the road, he certainly did
not travel far upon it himself. Perpetual type of the quietist, the
moderate man, he censured the errors of the Church with discrimination
and gentleness, as if Borgianism had not been too long rampant at Rome,
as if men's minds throughout Christendom were not too deeply stirred to
be satisfied with mild rebukes against sin, especially when the mild
rebuker was in receipt of livings and salaries fr