These scandals—an acknowledged thing at Rome—greatly exasperated the citizens of Geneva, and made the better disposed long for a reformation of faith and morals. They said that soldiers use their arms as their officers command them: that the monks and priests (they should have said all christians) ought also to use their lives as their chief orders them; and that if they make a contrary use of them, they enlist under the standard of vice and avow themselves its soldiers. The worthy citizens of Geneva could not make that separation between religion and morality, of which the greater part of the clergy set the example. In proportion as the Reformation made progress in the world, the opposition increased against a piety which consisted only in certain formulas, ceremonies, and practices, but was deprived of its true substance—living faith, sanctification, morality, and christian works. Christianity, by the separation which Rome had made between doctrines and morals, had become like one of those spoilt and useless tools that are thrown aside because they can no longer serve in the operations for which they were made. The reformers, by calling for a living, holy, active faith, were again to make christianity in modern times a powerful engine of light and morality, of liberty and life. [Footnote 712: Acts i. 15; vi. 5; xv.] [Footnote 713: See above, vol. i. p. 371.] [Footnote 714: 'Nunc vero cum te Gebennæ reipublicæ gratia abesse constat ... reficiemur. Utilitatem autem non vulgarem recens factis civibus per te comparari.'—Zwingle to Thomas ab Hofen, 4 Jan. 1527. _Epp._ ii. p. 9.] [Footnote 715: 1 Peter ii. 9.] [Footnote 716: 'Hic Genevæ numerus Evangelii doctrinam confitentium augeri incipiat.'—Ab Hofen to Zwingle, January 17, 1527. Zwinglii _Epp._ ii. p. 15.] [Footnote 717: 'You shall receive a hundredfold, and shall possess everlasting life.'] [Footnote 718: 'Clerici queruntur homines neque amplius sacra dona præbere velle, neque tam vehementer ad indulgentias currere.'—Ab Hofen to Zwingle. Zwinglii _Epp._ ii. p. 16.] [Footnote 719: 'Quousque meæ vires valeant, in ea re nequaquam me defecturum esse.'—Ab Hofen to Zwingle. Zwinglii _Epp._ ii. p. 15.] [Footnote 720: 'In mediis reipublicæ negotiis, Christi negotiorum minime sis negligens.'—Zwinglii _Epp._ ii. p. 9.] [Footnote 721: 'Optime de Gebennæ civibus merebere, si non tantum leges eorum ac jura, quantum animos componas.'—Ibid. p. 10.] [Footnote 722: 'Animos autem quid melius componet, quam ejus sermo atque doctrina qui animos ipse formavit?'—Ibid.] [Footnote 723: 'Hæ enim ubi crescunt, tyrannorum audacia coerceretur.'— Ibid.] [Footnote 724: 'Non quasi torpentem sim expergefacturus; sed currentem adhortor.'—Zwinglii _Epp._ ii. p. 10.] [Footnote 725: 'In hac urbe clerici sunt ad 700, qui manibus pedibusque impediunt, quominus Evangelii doctrina efflorescat.'—Zwinglii _Epp._ ii. p. 10.]