ssible.

Think of a power which could force King Henry IV., the heir of a long
line of emperors, to strip himself of every mark of his station, put
on the linen dress of a penitent, walk barefooted through the winter's
snow to the pope's castle at Canossa, and there to wait three days at
its gates, unbefriended, unfed, and half perishing with cold and
hunger, till all but the alleged Vicar of Jesus Christ were moved with
pity for his miseries as he stood imploring the tardy clemency of
Hildebrand, which was almost as humiliating in its bestowal as in its
reservation.

Think of a power which could force the English king, Henry II., to
walk three miles of a flinty road, with bare and bleeding feet, to
Canterbury, to be flogged from one end of the church to the other by
the beastly monks, and then forced to spend the whole night in
supplications to the spirit of an obstinate, perjured, and defiant
archbishop, whom four of his over-zealous knights, without his orders,
had murdered, and whose inner garments, when he was stripped to
receive his shroud, were found alive with vermin!

Think of a power which, in defiance of the sealed safe-conduct of the
empire, could seize John Huss, one of the worthiest and most learned
men of his time, and burn him alive in the presence of the emperor!

Think of a power which, by a single edict, caused the deliberate
murder of more than fifty thousand men in the Netherlands alone!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Many assumed the clerical character for no other reason than that
it might screen them from the punishment which their actions deserved,
and the monasteries were full of people who entered them to be secure
against the consequences of their crimes and atrocities.--Rymer's
_Foedera_, vol. xiii. p. 532.

EFFORTS AT REFORM.

To restrain and humble this gigantic power was the desideratum of
ages. For two hundred years had men been laboring to curb and tame it.
From theologians and universities, from kings and emperors, from
provinces and synods, from general councils, and even the College of
Cardinals--in every name of right, virtue, and religion--appeal after
appeal and solemn effort after effort were made to reform the Roman
court and free the world from the terrible oppression. Wars on wars
were waged; provinces on provinces were deluged with blood;
coalitions, bound by sacred oaths, were formed against the giant
tyranny. And yet the hierarchy managed to maintain its assumptions and
to o