i Francesco afterwards
redeemed his life by offering weighty evidence against his powerful
accomplices. But what he revealed is buried in the oblivion with which
the Council of Ten in Venice chose to cover judicial acts of
State-importance.

It is worth considering that in all the attempts upon Sarpi's life,
priests, friars, and prelates of high place were the prime agents.[149]
Poor devils like Poma and Parrasio lay ready to their hands as
sanguinary instruments, which, after work performed, could be broken if
occasion served. What, then, was the religious reformation of which the
Roman Court made ostentatious display when it secured its unexpected
triumph in the Council of Trent?

[Footnote 148: _Vita di F. Paolo_, p. 68: 'Le cose che vennero a
pubblica notizia e certe sono: che molte persone nominate in quella
cifra, di _Padre_, fratelli, e cugini, per le contracifre consto, dal
Generale de' Servi in fuori, niuna esser di dignita inferiore alia
Cardinalizia.']

[Footnote 149: Sarpi says that no crime happened in Venice without a
friar or priest being mixed in it (_Lettere_, vol. i. 351).]

We must reply that in essential points of moral conduct this
reformation amounted to almost nothing, and in some points to
considerably less than nothing. The Church of God, as Sarpi held,
suffered deformation rather than reformation. That is to say, this
Church, instead of being brought back to primitive simplicity and purged
of temporal abuses, now lay at the mercy of ambitious hypocrites who
with the Supreme Pontiff's sanction, pursued their ends by treachery and
violence. Its hostility to heretics and its new-fangled doctrine of
Papal almightiness encouraged the spread of a pernicious casuistry which
favored assassination. Kings at strife with the Catholic Alliance,
honest Christians defending the prerogatives of their commonwealth,
erudite historians and jurists who disapproved of substituting Popes in
Rome for God in heaven, might be massacred or kidnapped by ruffians red
with the blood of their nearest relatives and carrying the condemnation
of their native States upon their forehead. According to the
post-Tridentine morality of Rome, that morality which the Jesuits openly
preached and published, which was disseminated in every prelate's
ante-chamber, and whispered in every parish-priest's confessional,
enormous sins could be atoned and eternal grace be gained by the
merciless and traitorous murder of any notable man wh