Head and members alike mourned the need to reform — ruined councils, Lateran barkers, and later historians prove it
The necessity of reforming the Christian Church in her head (so named, though by a striking abuse) as well as in her members was something every Christian estate of that age — spiritual and temporal, Germans and French above all — both saw clearly and mourned with heavy grief.
They pressed for amendment by humble prayers everywhere, and partly by sharper threats, against the utterly wrecked teaching and life of Popes Julius, Alexander, and Leo — after those men and their like had dodged, crushed, and even trampled the most wholesome councils (Basel, Constance, and at last Pisa, continued at Milan and finished at Lyons in France) by a thousand frauds and foul arts, and after opposite councils that barked mordantly enough — the Lateran ones above all, and other brickish assemblies they claimed as their own.
So too the most famous men of our own age, sharers in that excellent Reformation won by God's grace, have laid the same necessity out at length: among those specially called Reformed, the great Hottinger (ὁ πάνυ), in Ecclesiastical History Parts V–VI and in the Historico-Theological Analecta, Dissertation I, pages 1–82; among other Evangelicals, after Chytraeus and Celestine in the openings of their Augsburg-Confession histories, the illustrious Seckendorf in Lutheranism defended against Maimbourg, Baclerus in the Memorial of sixteenth-century affairs (p. 263 ff.), and most recently the celebrated Ulm divine Elias Viel in a special treatise.
Latin
Necessitatem Reformationis in Capite Ecclesiae Christianae, (per insignem licèt abusum sic dictô) perinde atque in membris, uti istius temporis Status Christianorum omnes, tàm Spirituales, quàm Temporales, maximè ex Germanis & Gallis, & agnoverunt distinctè, & gravissimè doluerunt, quin profligatissimae Doctrinae pariter atque Vitae Papis, Juliis, Alexandris, Leonibus (post elusa ab his suique similibus elisaque, imò protrita planè ac conculcata Concilia saluberrima, Basiliense, Constantiense, Pisanum denique, Mediolani continuatum, Lugduni verò in Galliis confectum, idque per mille fraudes artesque malas, Concilia etiam opposita, mordaciter satis latrantia, i.e. Lateranensia potissimùm, aliaque lateritia à se habita) supplicibus passim de emendando precibus, partim acrioribus minis inculcarunt; ita hujus quoque aetatis, Viri per Orbem celeberrimi Reformationisque praeclarissimae, Dei gratiâ impetratae, participes, ex Reformatis in specie sic dictis ὁ πάνυ Hottingerus, tam in Historia Ecclesiastica, Parte V. & VI. quàm in Analectis Historico-Theologicis, Dissert. I. à pag. 1. ad 82. ex aliis Evangelicis, post Chytraeum & Celestinum, in Historiarum suarum Augustanae Confessionis Exordiis, etiam illustris Seckendorfius in Lutheranismo adversus Majemburgum defenso, Baclerus in Memoriali de rebus gestis Seculi XVI. p. 263. & seqq. & novissimè Celebris nominis Theologus Ulmensis, Dominus Elias Viel, peculiari Tractatu, pluribus expositum dederunt.