nity would induce
the nation to sweep them away.

[Sidenote: Corruption of the Medieval Church.]

The corruptions in the doctrine of the church were hardly less notable
than those in the lives of its clergy. The sufficiency and supremacy of
the written Word of God were denied, and co-ordinate authority was
claimed for tradition. The Virgin Mary and the saints departed were
asserted to share the office which Scripture reserves for the one
Mediator between God and man. Penances and other external acts of
work-righteousness were alleged to co-operate in the pardon of sin with
the "one obedience" by which "many are made righteous." The sacraments
were asserted to produce their effect _ex opere operato_,--not by the
working of the Spirit in them that by faith receive them. Belief in the
literal transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper
was rigidly enforced and substituted for that spiritual presence and
spiritual manducation which the earlier church had maintained. The
doctrine of a purgatory after this life was invented, and the virtue of
masses for the dead therein detained was persistently taught and
required to be believed. The Roman church was affirmed to be the mother
and mistress of the churches, and its head to be the successor of St
Peter and the Vicar of Christ.

[Sidenote: The Reforming Priests.]

Yet it must never be forgotten that, even in these degenerate days,
there were those among the ministers of the church who wept in secret
over the abominations that were done, who longed for the dawn of a
better day, and, in their parishes or cloisters or colleges, sought to
prepare the way for it, and who succeeded in doing so with many of
their younger comrades, and only made up their minds in the end to
abandon the old church when all their efforts for its revival proved
vain. Nay, the men who initiated and carried to a successful issue the
struggle for a more thorough reformation than the others desired, the
martyrs, confessors, and exiles, were almost all from the ranks of the
priesthood of the old church--from the regular as well as from the
secular priesthood; from the Dominican and Franciscan monasteries as
well as from the Augustinian abbeys; and from none more largely than the
Augustinian Priory of St Andrews, and the College of St Leonard founded
in connection with it, notwithstanding that its prior for the time being
was so far from what he ought to have been. At least twenty priests