clesiastics resolved to abate the scandals of the Church. The
Councils of Constance and Basle may be looked upon as an embodiment of
the same sentiment. The resolution to limit the papal authority and to
put a superior over the pope arose from a profound conviction of the
necessity of such a measure. Those councils were precursors of the
coming Reformation. In other countries events had long been tending in
the same direction: in Sicily and Italy by the acts of Frederick II.; in
France through those of Philip the Fair. The educated had been estranged
by the Saracens and Jews; the enthusiastic by such works as the
Everlasting Gospel; the devout had been shocked by the tale of the
Templars and the detected immoralities in Rome; the patriotic had been
alienated by the assumptions of the papal court and its incessant
intermeddling in political affairs; the inferior, unreflecting orders
were in all directions exasperated by its importunate, unceasing
exactions of money. In England, for instance, though less advanced
intellectually than the southern nations, the commencement of the
Reformation is perhaps justly referred as far back as the reign of
Edward III., who, under the suggestion of Wiclif, refused to do homage
to the pope, but a series of weaker princes succeeding, it was not until
Henry VII. that the movement could be continued. In that country the
immediately exciting causes were no doubt of a material kind, such as
the alleged avarice and impurity of the clergy, the immense amount of
money taken from the realm, the intrusion of foreign ecclesiastics. In
the South of France and in Italy, where the intellectual condition was
much more advanced, the movement was correspondingly of a more
intellectual kind. To this difference between the north and the south
must be referred not only the striking geographical distribution of
belief which was soon apparent, but also the speedy and abrupt
limitation of the Reformation, restrictedly so called.

[Sidenote: The theory of supererogation,] In recent ages, under her
financial pressure, Rome had asserted that the infinite merits of our
Saviour, together with the good works of supererogation of many holy
men, constituted, as it were, a fund from which might be discharged
penalties of sins of every kind, for the dead as well as the living, and
therefore available for those who had passed into Purgatory, as well as
for us who remain. [Sidenote: and nature of indulgences.] This fund,