The fight made by Sarpi on behalf of the independence of the State, and particularly of the right of the State to supervise and control its literary productions was, notwithstanding, of first importance for the intellectual activities of Europe. The arguments used in Venice were repeated in Madrid, Paris, Zurich, and Oxford. Time was gained for authors and for printers until, largely by means of the presses which the Church was endeavouring to throttle, the spirit of resistance to the domination of the Papacy and the feeling of national independence against the right of Rome to lay down the law for Europe had gathered so much strength that the claims of the Church were either withdrawn or very much moderated. In 1602, an instance occurred of censorship on the part of the Church not for the expression of heretical opinions, but for the omission from a work of authority of certain passages which the Church considered to be important. The work was a commentary by Suarez on the Tractate _De Censuris_ of Thomas Aquinas. The permission to the booksellers Ciotto and Franceschi to print the volume was given by the Venetian censorship only on condition of the omission of the passages in question. The Congregation of the _Index_ at Rome thereupon forbade said booksellers to continue the printing of the work (the publication of which was stigmatised as a _crimen falsi_) under penalty of excommunication. The omitted passages contained attacks upon the temporal authority of princes. Sarpi pointed out that the formula of the _imprimatur_ was unwisely worded, in that it expressed the “approbation” of the Government for the works issued, thus assuming on the part of the State a practical approval of the doctrines contained in such work. The term should, he suggested, be modified to “with the permission.” In 1611, Thomas Preston, writing under the _nom de plume_ of Roger Widdrington, published his _Apologia Cardinalis Bellarmini_, and in 1613, his _Disputatio Theologica_. Both works were placed on the _Index_ by a special decree of the Congregation, _Nisi auctor quam primum se purgaverit_. The Nuncio in Venice begged that the decree might be published and enforced upon Venetian booksellers. The Government, acting under Sarpi’s advice, refused to allow the prohibition to take effect in Venice, on the two grounds that the theological doctrines taught by Widdrington were sound and orthodox, and that his arguments against the pernicious doctrine of the temporal authority of the Pope over princes were eminently worthy of dissemination. It will be noted that the Nuncio had in his application expressly conceded one of the principal contentions of the Republic that no Roman prohibition was valid in Venice until confirmed by the Government.