In the month of January 1522, the council and university of Wittemberg regulated the celebration of the Lord's Supper according to the new ritual. They were, at the same time, engaged on the means of reviving the moral influence of religion; for the Reformation was destined to restore simultaneously faith, worship, and morality. It was decreed not to tolerate mendicants, whether they were begging friars or not; and that in every street there should be some pious man commissioned to take care of the poor, and summon open sinners before the university and the council.[97] [97] Keinen offenbaren Sünder zu dulden......Ibid. 540. [Sidenote: IN THE ROMISH SYSTEM.] Thus fell the mass--the principal bulwark of Rome; thus the Reformation passed from simple teaching into public worship. For three centuries the mass and transubstantiation had been peremptorily established.[98] From that period everything in the Church had taken a new direction; all things tended to the glory of man and the worship of the priest. The Holy Sacrament had been adored; festivals had been instituted in honour of the sublimest of miracles; the adoration of Mary had acquired a high importance; the priest who, on his consecration, received the wonderful power of "making the body of Christ," had been separated from the laity, and had become, according to Thomas Aquinas, a mediator between God and man;[99] celibacy had been proclaimed as an inviolable law; auricular confession had been enforced upon the people, and the cup denied them; for how could humble laymen be placed in the same rank as priests invested with the most august ministry? The mass was an insult to the Son of God: it was opposed to the perfect grace of His cross, and the spotless glory of His everlasting kingdom. But if it lowered the Saviour, it exalted the priest, whom it invested with the unparalleled power of reproducing in his hand, and at his will, the Sovereign Creator. From that time the Church seemed to exist not to preach the Gospel, but simply to reproduce Christ bodily.[100] The Roman pontiff, whose humblest servants created at pleasure the body of God himself, sat as God in the temple of God, and claimed a spiritual treasure, from which he drew at will indulgences for the pardon of souls. [98] By the Council of Lateran, in 1215. [99] Sacerdos constituitur medius inter Deum et populum. Th. Aquin. Summa, iii. 22. [100] Perfectio hujus sacramenti non est in usu fidelium, sed in consecratione materiæ. Ibid. Quest. 80.