It has been hinted that the Church made earnest efforts to reform its own members. But this is true only so far as its reputable heads were concerned. Marriage at its best had a taint of sin; its violation was a trifle; but the fulfilment of religious vows and observances was an obligation to which everything else must yield. To St. Peter Damiani marriage was a “frivolous and unmeaning ceremony”; an irregular celebration of Mass was a “horrible crime.” Sexual licence was a necessary evil, of much less importance than an infraction of ecclesiastical laws. Virtue indeed was dangerous when women were occasionally burnt because they refused to become the victims of priestly lust.[11] So late as 1801 it was argued in a tract published at Warsaw that marriage is incestuous and schismatic, and therefore worse than simple licentiousness.[12] Six centuries earlier the German Church had been described by Pope Gregory as “abandoned to lasciviousness, gluttony, and all manner of filthy living,” the clergy “committing habitually wickedness which laymen would abhor.”[13] But the Church did its utmost to stamp out the evil! It did nothing of the kind. Its attempts to reform its servants were occasional, mischievously lenient, and sometimes insincere. Priests, being human beings, were not naturally worse than other human beings. But they formed part of a system which heaped upon them every kind of privilege and exposed them to every variety of temptation. A Bishop of Lausanne who in the thirteenth century tried his hand at reform had to flee for his life; another Bishop in Rome was murdered. In fifteenth-century Germany the Bishop of Paderborn strove desperately for seven years to purify the monasteries. After various attempts had been made to poison him, he was compelled to give up a task which the example of the Vicar of Christ made hopeless. Similar efforts made by St. Charles Borromeo in Milan ended in his failure and narrow escape from martyrdom. In England Cardinal Wolsey’s attempt to enforce a reforming Bull from Rome was frustrated by the notoriety of his own vices. The clergy in the public estimation were given over to a reprobate mind; not only were they immoral, but they squeezed from the people the money which the Pope exacted from them. In 1529 a bill was passed in the House of Lords for the reformation of the clergy, who showed their appreciation of it by a determined opposition.