eserved for the officiating priest.

This memorial of Ferdinand, drawn up with much distinctness and great
force of argument, was very grateful to the Protestants, but very
displeasing to the court of Rome. These conflicts raged for several
years without any decisive results. The efforts of Ferdinand to please
both parties, as usual, pleased neither. By the Protestants he was
regarded as a persecutor and intolerant; while the Catholics accused him
of lukewarmness, of conniving at heresy and of dishonoring the Church by
demanding of her concessions derogatory to her authority and her
dignity.

Ferdinand, finding that the Church clung with deathly tenacity to its
corruptions, assumed himself quite the attitude of a reformer. A
memorable council had been assembled at Trent on the 15th of January,
1562. Ferdinand urged the council to exhort the pope to examine if there
was not room for some reform in his own person, state or court.
"Because," said he, "the only true method to obtain authority for the
reformation of others, is to begin by amending oneself." He commented
upon the manifest impropriety of scandalous indulgences: of selling the
sacred offices of the Church to the highest bidder, regardless of
character; of extorting fees for the administration of the sacrament of
the Lord's Supper; of offering prayers and performing the services of
public devotion in a language which the people could not understand; and
other similar and most palpable abuses. Even the kings of France and
Spain united with the emperor in these remonstrances.

It is difficult now to conceive of the astonishment and indignation with
which the pope and his adherents received these very reasonable
suggestions, coming not from the Protestants but from the most staunch
advocates of the papacy. The see of Rome, corrupt to its very core,
would yield nothing. The more senseless and abominable any of its
corruptions were, the more tenaciously did pope and cardinals cling to
them. At last the emperor, in despair of seeing any thing accomplished,
requested that the assembly might be dissolved, saying, "Nothing good
can be expected, even if it continue its sittings for a hundred years."

CHAPTER XI.

DEATH OF FERDINAND I.--ACCESSION OF MAXIMILIAN II.

From 1562 to 1576.

The Council of Trent.--Spread of the Reformation.--Ferdinand's Attempt
to Influence the Pope.--His Arguments against Celibacy.--Stubbornness of
the Pope.--Maximilian II.--Disple