Pure passivity in God's hands, simple abandonment to his will was the only way of salvation; not by works but by faith in the Redeemer was man sanctified.

The thought, though by no means new in Christianity, was, in the application he gave it, the germ of the religious revolution.

In it was contained the total repudiation of the medieval ecclesiastical system of salvation by sacrament and by the good works of the cloister.

To us nowadays the thought seems remote; the question which called it forth outworn.

But to the {66} sixteenth century it was as intensely practical as social reform is now; the church was everywhere with her claim to rule over men's daily lives and over their souls.