Plunged in gross ignorance and superstition, those blind leaders of the blind, who won great reputations as exorcists or as wizards, were unable to understand the Latin service, and sometimes to repeat even the Lord's prayer or creed in any language.
{26} [Sidenote: Piety] The Reformation, like most other revolutions, came not at the lowest ebb of abuse, but at a time when the tide had already begun to run, and to run strongly, in the direction of improvement.

One can hardly find a sweeter, more spiritual religion anywhere than that set forth in Erasmus's _Enchiridion_, or in More's _Utopia_, or than that lived by Vitrier and Colet.

Many men, who had not attained to this conception of the true beauty of the gospel, were yet thoroughly disgusted with things as they were and quite ready to substitute a new and purer conception and practice for the old, mechanical one.
Evidence for this is the popularity of the Bible and other devotional books.

Before 1500 there were nearly a hundred editions of the Latin Vulgate, and a number of translations into German and French.

There were also nearly a hundred editions, in Latin and various vernaculars, of _The Imitation of Christ_.