38 The Faith of Our Fathers been personal virtue, prayer, preaching, and the Sacraments. Every genuine reformer had those weapons at his disposal within the Church. She possesses, at all times, not only the principle of undying vitality, but, besides, all the elements of reformation, and all the means of sanctification. With the weapons I have named she purified morals in the first century, and with the same weapons she went to work with a right good will, and effected a moral reformation in the sixteenth century. She was the only effectual spiritual reformer of that age. What was the Council of Trent but a great reforming tribunal? Most of its decrees are directed to the reformation of abuses among the clergy and the laity, and the salutary fruits of its legislation are reaped even to this day. St. Charles Borromeo, the nephew of a reigning Pope, was the greatest reformer of his time. His whole Episcopal career was spent in elevating the morals of his clergy and people. Bartholomew, Archbishop of Braga, in Portugal, preached an incessant crusade against iniquity in high and low places. St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Alphonsus, with their companions, were conspicuous and successful reformers throughout Europe. St. Philip Neri was called the modern Apostle of Rome because of his happy efforts in dethroning vice in that city. All these Catholic Apostles preach by example as well as by word. How do Luther and Calvin, and Zuinglius and Knox, and Henry VIII. compare with these genuine and saintly reformers, both as to their moral character and the fruit or their labors? The private lives of these pseudo-reformers were stained by [028] cruelty, rapine, and licentiousness; and as the result of their propagandism, history records civil wars, and bloodshed, and bitter religious strife, and the dismemberment of Christianity into a thousand sects. Instead of co-operating with the lawful authorities in extinguishing the flames which the passions of men had enkindled