agogue as the consideration of just
this letter.

The sympathy by which we cannot doubt it to have been primarily inspired
is here overspread by the man's rampant fanaticism, there diluted by the
prophecies from which he cannot even now refrain; and, throughout, the
manner is that of the pulpit-thumping orator. The first half of his
letter is a prelude in the form of a sermon upon Faith, all very trite
and obvious; and the notion of this excommunicated friar holding forth
to the Pope's Holiness in polemical platitudes delivered with all the
authority of inspired discoveries of his own is one more proof that at
the root of fanaticism in all ages and upon all questions, lies an utter
lack of a sense of fitness and proportion. Having said that "the just
man liveth in the Lord by faith," and that "the Lord in His mercy
passeth over all our sins," he proclaims that he announces things
of which he is assured, and for which he is ready to suffer all
persecutions, and begs his Holiness to turn a favourable eye upon the
work of faith in which he is labouring, and to give heed no more to the
impious, promising the Holy Father that thus shall the Lord bestow upon
him the essence of joy instead of the spirit of grief. Having begun, as
we have seen, with an assurance that "the Lord in His mercy passeth over
all our sins," he concludes by prophesying, with questionable logic,
that "the thunders of His wrath will ere long be heard." Nor does he
omit to mention--with an apparent arrogance that again betrays that same
want of a sense of proportion--that all his predictions are true.

His letter, however, and that of Cardinal della Rovere, among so
many others, show us how touched was the world by the Pope's loss and
overwhelming grief, how shocked at the manner in which this had been
brought about.

The commission which Alexander had appointed for the work of reform had
meanwhile got to work, and the Cardinal of Naples edited the articles of
a constitution which was undoubtedly the object of prolonged study and
consideration, as is revealed by the numerous erasures and emendations
which it bears. Unfortunately--for reasons which are not apparent--it
was never published by Alexander. Possibly by the time that it was
concluded the aggrandizement of the temporal power was claiming his
entire attention to the neglect of the spiritual needs of the Holy See.
It is also possible--as has been abundantly suggested--that the stern
mood of peni