The Polish king recognises nobody’s supremacy save that of God; instead of assuring the new Pope of his obedience he will sufficiently fulfill his duty if he congratulate him, and at the same time remind him that he should rule the church justly. It is below the dignity of the king to write to the Pope with humility and humbleness.… The clergy should help bear the burdens of the state as well as other citizens; there is no need of being indignant when the king orders the melting of church utensils for public needs. The church has gold not for the purpose of keeping it, but for the purpose of helping the needy. All payments for the benefit of the Pope should be abolished. Poland needs all the funds she can spare for war with invaders and for the preservation of domestic order and peace. The proclamation of jubilee papal bulls as well as fees for funerals, marriages, etc., should be prohibited. The king should nominate the bishops. In order to decrease the number of idlers, the establishment of monasteries in cities should be restricted, the admission for foreigners to them prohibited, and sermons in the German language diminished in number.[20] “Such were the predominant sentiments of the time,” says Dr. Lewinski-Corwin, “in true keeping with the teachings of humanism, which spread in Poland through constant contact with Germany and Italy, in the principles of which several generations preceding the Reformation had been reared, and in accordance with which they shaped their views and opinions.”[21] The condition of the Polish church and the character of the Polish clergy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, too, were favorable to the spread of Reformation ideas in Poland. Lorkiewicz characterizes the Polish church and the Polish clergy of this period thus: The church, which by its calling and its nature, should be the guardian of the oppressed, the defender of the weak against the strong, the moral guide of men, and the regulator of social conditions, had allied itself with those social factors which sap the very life-blood of society, offering it in exchange only a form without content, a body without a soul. It had become a ballast, not such as steadies the easy movement of a light vessel, but such as threatens the storm-tossed ship with certain destruction. The clergy, if it is fit to use such unpalatable comparison, was at this time like an old church beggar, who, having said the prayers that had been paid for, had nothing more pressing to do than to hurry and in a particular and characteristic manner waste the alms he had received.[22]