The same year was distinguished by another work, calculated to advance the Reformation a step farther. “The Institution of a Christian Man,” or the _Bishops’ Book_, as it was called in popular language, from the quality of those who were chiefly concerned in composing it. It consists of an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, the Seven Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Pater-noster, the Ave Maria; to which are annexed the two articles on Justification and Purgatory (as they were published in 1536), the others having been inserted in the body of the work under their respective heads. The mere index of contents is enough to show that much still remained for the reformers to do; still much was herein done. The corruption of man was strongly asserted, his faculties as well as his appetites, his reason no less than his will,[323] contrary to the doctrine of the schools, which had limited its effects to the latter and lower half of our nature;[324] the virtues of redemption were consequently vindicated, and were placed in a position from which the dogma of merit had depressed them. The superstitious attention to trifles of ceremonial, whilst the great moral duties were disregarded, was rebuked--the dread, for instance, of eating an egg on Friday, as contrasted with the indifference felt for a breach of the most fundamental laws of charity.[325] The dishonest substitution, in sermons, of fables and inventions of men, for the Scriptures, was reproved, together with all wilful misrepresentation of the doctrines contained in the same.[326] On the whole, this was the culminating point of the Reformation, during the reign of Henry: henceforward, that is, from the year 1538, with few intermissions, it ostensibly, though perhaps not in reality, declined.[327]