t limits
on ecclesiastical encroachment. The dread lest Europe should succumb to
Rome, now proved by subsequent events an unsubstantial nightmare, was
real enough for this Venetian friar, who ran daily risk of assassination
in down-trodden servile Italy, with Spanish plots threatening the
arsenal, with France delivered into the hands of Florentines and
casuists, with England in the grip of Stuarts, and with Germany
distracted by intrigues. He could not foresee that in the course of a
century the Jesuits would be discredited by their own arts, and that the
Papacy would subside into a pacific sovereignty bent on securing its own
temporal existence by accommodation.

The end of Sarpi's life consecrated the principles of duty to God and
allegiance to his country which had animated its whole course. He fell
into a bad state of health; yet nothing would divert him from the due
discharge of public business. 'All the signs of the soul's speedy
departure from that age-enfeebled body, were visible; but his
indefatigable spirit sustained him in such wise that he bore exactly all
his usual burdens. When his friends and masters bade him relax his
energies, he used to answer: My duty is to serve and not to live; there
is some one daily dying in his office.[172] When at length the very
sources of existence failed, and the firm brain wandered for a moment,
he was once heard to say: 'Let us go to S. Mark, for it is late.'[173]
The very last words he uttered, frequently repeated, but scarcely
intelligible, were: 'Esto Perpetua.'[174] _May Venice last forever_!
This was the dying prayer of the man who had consecrated his best
faculties to the service of his country. But before he passed away into
that half slumber which precedes death, he made confession to his
accustomed spiritual father, received the Eucharist and Extreme Unction,
and bade farewell to the superior of the Servites, in the following
sentence: 'Go ye to rest, and I will return to God, from whom I came.'
With these words he closed his lips in silence, crossing his hands upon
his breast and fixing his eyes upon a crucifix that stood before
him.[175]

[Footnote 172: Fulgenzio's _Life_, p. 98.]

[Footnote 173: _Ibid._ p. 105.]

[Footnote 174: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 175: Letter of the Superior to the Venetian Senate, printed in
the _Lettere_, vol. ii. pp. 450-453. It is worth meditating on the
contrast between Sarpi's and Bruno's deaths. Sarpi died with the
consolations of