The second plan was that of inquiry into the existing order of the Church and detailed amendment of its flagrant faults, with preservation of the main system.

The Council adopted satisfactory measures of reform on neither of these methods.

It contented itself with stipulations and concordats, guaranteeing special privileges to the Churches of the several nations.

But in the following century it became manifest that the Teutonic races had declared for the method suggested by Hus; while the Latin races, in the Council of Trent, undertook a purgation of the Church upon the second of the two plans.

The Reformation was the visible outcome of the one, the Counter-Reformation of the other method.
The Council of Constance was thus important in causing the recognition of a single Pope, and in ventilating the divergent theories upon which the question of reform was afterwards to be disputed.