reverend person to be spiritually planted, like a tree of life in the
midst of paradise, and to be transplanted from this land of ours, into
his orchard, you will chiefly take care to reform, by your conduct and
doctrine, all the churches, that all generations may call your land
blessed through your beatitude. This, too, we thirst for with a
sincere heart, that the spirit of tempests, which is wont to rage
furiously about the pinnacle of honor, may never wrest you from the
concern of your sanctification; lest, by reason of any deficiency in
you, the deepest abyss of disgrace should succeed to the highest
summit of dignity. And this we ardently long for, that, as the
regulation of the Church universal belongs to you, you will take care
to create such cardinals, free of reproach, as shall know how to
appreciate your burthen, and be willing and competent to aid you in
supporting it; not regarding ties of country, quality of birth, or
extent of power; but that they love God, hate avarice, thirst after
justice, and burn with the zeal of souls. Nor are we slightly affected
by the desire that, as the unworthiness of ministers is detrimental
above all things to the Church, you will vigilantly watch, whenever
your Providence shall happen to be petitioned, touching the collation
of benefices, lest any unworthy person intrude into the Patrimony of
the Crucified. And seeing that the Holy Land,--blest by the origin of
our redemption,--consecrated by the life and death of Christ,--a land
which Christian devotion holds in particular respect,--is distracted
by incursions of the infidels, and polluted by their abominations, we
wish from our very soul that you would provide men, of your own devout
solicitude, in its defence. And, in regard of that empire of
Constantinople,--once so illustrious, now so wofully desolate,--what
Christian man ought not to desire that, by your care and prudence, it
may receive timely consolation? For the rest, we confide and hope in
the Lord, that, as you have not failed, while rising from virtue to
virtue, and from honor to honor, to shine according to the exigence of
each of them, so you will not fail, now that you are called to the
apogee of apostolical elevation, to illustrate and inflame the subject
Church, in such a manner, as shall permit no one to hide himself from
your light and heat; and that, after your death, you will leave behind
such vestiges of sanctity, that your native land,--which congratulate