It would indeed have been well had at least the Catholic Church at that critical period been free from weakness and abuse. Her Divine power of blessing the nations, it is true, still survived, her preaching of the truth, her treasure of the Sacraments, in short, her soul, was unchanged; but, because she was suffering from many lamentable imperfections, the disruptive forces were able to come into play with fatal results. The complaints of eloquent men full of zeal for souls, both at that time and during the preceding decades, particularly in Germany, over the decline of religious life among the Faithful and the corruption in the clergy, were only too well founded, and deserved to have met with a much more effectual reception than they did. What the monk of Wittenberg, with unbridled passion and glaring exaggeration, was about to thunder forth over the world in his mighty call for reform, had already for the most part been urged by others, yea, by great Saints of the Church who attacked the abuses with the high-minded zeal of ripe experience. Strict, earnest and experienced men had set to work on a Catholic reform in many parts of the Church, not excepting Germany, in the only profitable way, viz. not by doctrinal innovation, but by raising the standard of morality among both people and clergy. But progress was slow, very slow, for reasons which cannot be dealt with here. The life-work of the pious founder of his own Congregation might well have served Luther as an admirable example of moral regeneration and efficiency; for the aim of Andreas Proles was, as a Protestant writer remarks: “A strong and mighty Reformation”; he lived in hopes that God would shortly raise up a hero capable of bringing it about with strength and determination, though the Reformation he had in his mind, as our historian allows, could only have been a Reformation in the Catholic sense.[92] Another attractive example of reforming zeal was also given under Luther’s very eyes by the Windesheim Congregation of the Brethren of the Common Life, with whom he had been in friendly intercourse from his boyish days.