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Do not allow that to prevail which the iniquity of the times and a spirit as rebellious against God as against your empire has stirred up, but rather what so many great pontiffs, and with them the consent of the universal Church, has decreed.

But as soon as Protestantism came to contest, not only the temporal, but even the spiritual supremacy of the Popes; when, taking advantage of the trouble of the Church, the so-called Catholic sovereigns, while pretending to render all honor to the spiritual supremacy of the sovereign Pontiffs, refused to acknowledge in them any right of lifting their warning voice, and calling on the powers of the world to obey the great and unchangeable laws of religion and justice, then did the long- established stability of Europe begin to give way, while the whole continent entered upon its long era of revolution, which is still in full way, and, as yet, is far from having produced its last consequences.

His bias against, and his enmity of, the Papacy are as obvious as they are notorious, and in his endeavours to bring it as much as possible into discredit he does not even spare his generous patrons, the Medicean Popes Leo X and Clement VII. If he finds it impossible to restrain his invective against these Pontiffs, who heaped favours and honours upon him, what but virulence can be expected of him when he writes of Alexander VI? He is largely to blame for the flagrant exaggeration of many of the charges brought against the Borgias; that he hated them we know, and that when he wrote of them he dipped his golden Tuscan pen in vitriol and set down what he desired the world to believe rather than what contemporary documents would have revealed to him, we can prove here and now from that one statement of his which we have quoted.

IN recognition of Brinnaria's complete and incontrovertible vindication Commodus decreed an unusually sumptuous state banquet at the Palace, inviting to it all the most important personages of the capital, including the more distinguished senators, every magistrate, the higher Pontiffs, the Flamens in a body and most of his personal cronies.

It is not eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my amicable adversaries. They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but huntsmen questing after elements of truth. Neither must they be boys to be instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I may wrangle and agree on equal terms.

Doubtless in his mind he rebuilt the palaces of the Caesars, whilst before him rose great shadowy forms arrayed in purple, visions of his real ancestors, those emperors and Supreme Pontiffs who alone could tell him how one might reign over every nation and be the absolute master of the world.

Confined to their respective temples and cities, they remained without any connection of discipline or government; and whilst they acknowledged the supreme jurisdiction of the senate, of the college of pontiffs, and of the emperor, those civil magistrates contented themselves with the easy task of maintaining in peace and dignity the general worship of mankind.

Hitherto Roman history had been imperfectly treated. It is unfortunate that such crude conceptions of its nature prevailed. Even Cicero says, opus hoc unum maxime oratorium. It had been either a register of events kept by aristocratic pontiffs from pride of race, or a series of pictures for the display of eloquence.

The nucleus of the present magnificent collection of books and manuscripts was formed in the Lateran Palace in the year 465 by Bishop Hilary; and, augmented by succeeding pontiffs, the accumulated stores were transferred in 1450 by Pope Nicholas V., the founder of Glasgow University, to the Vatican.

Not only did he devote his prodigious talent to musical eccentricities which made the hair of the pontiffs stand on end, but he showed a perverse predilection for queer themes, bizarre subjects, and often for equivocal and scabrous situations; in a word, for everything which could offend ordinary good sense and decency. He was quite happy when the people howled, and the people did not fail him.