he perceived, rendered impossible by the Tridentine
decrees. Yet, though the dearest hope of his heart had been thus
frustrated, he set nothing down in malice, nor vented his own
disappointment in laments which might have seemed rebellious against the
Divine will. Sarpi's personality shows itself most clearly in the
luminous discourses with which from time to time he elucidates obscure
matters of ecclesiastical history. Those on episcopal residence,
pluralism, episcopal jurisdiction, the censure of books, and the
malappropriation of endowments, are specially valuable.[151] If no other
proof existed, these digressions would render Sarpi's authorship of the
History unmistakable. They are identical in style and in intention with
his acknowledged treatises, firmly but calmly expressing a sound
scholar's disapproval of abuses which had grown up like morbid
excrescences upon the Church. Taken in connection with the interpolated
summaries of public opinion regarding the Council's method of procedure
and its successive decrees, these discourses betray a spirit of
hostility to Rome which is nowhere openly expressed. Sarpi illustrated
Aretino's cynical sentence: 'How can you speak evil of your neighbor? By
speaking the truth, by speaking the truth!'--without rancor and without
passion. Nothing, in fact, could have been more damaging to Rome than
his precise analysis of her arts in the Council.

I have said that the History of the Tridentine Council, though it
confirmed Sarpi's heretical reputation, would not justify us in
believing him at heart a Protestant.[152]

[Footnote 151: _Opere di Paolo Sarpi_, Helmstaedt, 1761, vol. i. pp. 200,
233, 311; vol. ii. pp. 89, 187.]

[Footnote 152: This contradicts the opinion of Hallam and Macaulay, both
of whom were convinced that Sarpi was a Protestant at heart. Macaulay
wishes that he had thrown off the friar's frock. In a certain sense
Sarpi can be classified with the larger minds among the Reformed
Churches of his age. But to call him a Protestant who concealed his real
faith, argues coarseness of perception, incapacity for comprehending any
attitude above and beyond belligerent Catholicism and Protestantism, or
of sympathizing with the deeply-religious feelings of one who, after
calculating all chances and surveying all dogmatic differences, thought
that he could serve God as well and his country better in that communion
which was his by birthright. To an illuminated intellect there w