SOCIAL CONTROL 39 1
From the tithes incumbent on the faithful, and from the sale of masses, absolutions, and other pious services, the priests were able to derive a vast revenue. Of this a large part was diverted from the support of the local working clergy and drawn toward certain centers to be enjoyed by those at or near the apex of the hierarchy. 1
When the peoples of northern Europe began hacking at the tentacles by which the Latin church held them fast, it was pre- cisely these superstitions that suffered. The laity, headed by Luther, declared that the priest is not distinguished from the layman save that he exercises at the bidding of the church a ministerial office, and that the church is not the hierarchy, but the communion of the saints. Calvin insisted that confession should be made, not to the priests, but to the congregation, and that sins are forgiven, not by priestly intercession, but as a mat- ter of free grace. The terrible power to grant or to withhold the sacrament was assailed when the Hussites made the lay chalice their symbol. The Reformers recognized not the church but the Scriptures, privately interpreted, as the final seat of authority in matters of belief. Worship was conducted in the vernacular. The mass was abolished, lay participation in wor- ship was enlarged, and the public sermon before hearers armed with the Bible gave the laymen an important check upon the clergy.
Taken all in all the Protestant Reformation was economic rather than intellectual in origin. 2 It was a lay revolt, not the revolt of human reason, and the immediate result was a decay, not of belief in the supernatural, but of those particular beliefs
1 " The Holy See, in the fourteenth century, grasped almost the whole disposable patronage of the church throughout Europe and openly offered it for sale. In this market for spiritualities it is significant to observe that benefices with cure of souls were held at a higher price than those without cure, as though there was a specu- lative value in the altar and the confessional In addition to this source of
demoralization there was the shameless issue of dispensations to hold pluralities which had long been the cause of untold injury to the church and which ever grew more reckless, and there was, moreover, the showering of numberless benefices on the creatures of the curia, the cardinals, and their dependents, with dispensations for non-residence." (H. C. LEA, A History of Confession and Indulgences, Vol. I, p. 246).
2 Cf. BROOKS ADAMS, The Law of Civilization and Decay, chaps, vii and viii.
