Note 107 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

Schmidlin, as above. Also Albert Weiss, as above, p. 108, allows: “The conditions of things at the commencement of the sixteenth century were such that their continuance was clearly impossible, and it was easy to predict a catastrophe.... The abuses were great and had become in some cases intolerable, so that we can understand how many lost courage, patience and confidence.... It is true that everything was not corrupt, but the good there was was too feeble to struggle with success against the evil.” Nevertheless, in the genesis of the movement which led to the falling away from the Church, in spite of the more favourable view of the conditions which Weiss elsewhere takes, the real abuses in the Church, even in his own account, play a prominent part. That Luther’s work was not “necessary in view of the moral corruption” (p. 6), and that it “did not follow as an inevitable result” of the same (p. 37), but, on the contrary, was merely facilitated by circumstances, will be granted him by all who review the period with an unprejudiced mind.