Again; the public worship of God was in a language the people could not understand, but rendered impressive by the gorgeous dresses of the priests, and the magnificence of the altar, and the images and vessels of silver and gold, reflecting their splendor, by the light of wax candles, on the sombre pillars, roofs, and windows of the Gothic church, and the effect heightened by exciting music, and other appeals to the taste or imagination, rather than to the reason and the heart. The sermons of the clergy were frivolous, and ill adapted to the spiritual wants of the people. "Men went to the Vatican," says the learned and philosophical Ranke, "not to pray, but to contemplate the Belvidere Apollo. They disgraced the most solemn festivals by open profanations. The clergy, in their services, sought the means of exciting laughter. One would mock the cuckoo, and another recite indecent stories about St. Peter." Luther, when he visited Italy, was extremely shocked at the infidel spirit which prevailed among the clergy, who were hostile to the circulation of the Scriptures, and who encouraged persecutions and inquisitions. This was the age when the dreadful tribunal of the Inquisition flourished, although its chief enormities were perpetrated in Spain and Portugal. It never had an existence in England, and but little influence in France and Germany. But if the Church did not resort, in all countries, to that dread tribunal which subjected youth, beauty, and innocence to the inquisitorial vengeance of narrow-minded Dominican monks, still she was hostile to free inquiry, and to all efforts made to emancipate the reason of men. The spirit of religious persecution, which inflamed the Roman Church to punish all dissenters from the doctrine and abuses she promulgated, can never be questioned. The Waldenses and Albigenses had suffered, in darker times, almost incredible hardships and miseries--had been almost annihilated by the dreadful crusade which was carried on against them, so that two hundred thousand had perished for supposed heresy. But reference is not now made to this wholesale massacre, but to those instances of individual persecution which showed the extreme jealousy and hatred of Rome of all new opinions. John Huss and Jerome of Prague were publicly burned for attempting to reform the church, and even Savonarola, who did not deny the authority of the popes, was condemned to the flames for denouncing the vices of his age, rather than the evils of the church. [Sidenote: Necessity for Reform.]