The number of these brotherhoods was great and their popularity general.
[Sidenote: Clash of new spirit with old institutions] Had the forces already at work within the church been allowed to operate, probably much of the moral reform desired by the best Catholics would have been {27} accomplished quietly without the violent rending of Christian unity that actually took place.

But the fact is, that such reforms never would or could have satisfied the spirit of the age.

Men were not only shocked by the abuses in the church, but they had outgrown some of her ideals.

Not all of her teaching, nor most of it, had become repugnant to them, for it has often been pointed out that the Reformers kept more of the doctrines of Catholicism than they threw away, but in certain respects they repudiated, not the abuse but the very principle on which the church acted.

In four respects, particularly the ideals of the new age were incompatible with those of the Roman communion.
[Sidenote: Sacramental theory of the church] The first of these was the sacramental theory of salvation and its corollary, the sacerdotal power.