He planned it with deliberation. He spared no pains to put it into effect. He did not want to ruin the Church, because She was the foundation upon which He would build His dynasty. Something of the kind was of absolute and imperious necessity. The Forged Decretals and Donation of Constantine, (which foist had been put forth in a Brief of the Lord Hadrian P.P. I to the Emperor Charlemagne,) “the magic pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the Popes,” severely had been criticized as early as the Twelfth Century. It was left, however, to Messer Lorenzo della Valla mercilessly to denounce them as forgeries in 1440, as already has been shewn here. When the Lord Alexander P.P. VI ascended the pontifical throne fifty-two years later, both Decretals and Donation had been thrown overboard from the Barque of Peter, to lighten the ship: and the Pope had no title-deeds to shew, forged or otherwise, for Peter’s Patrimony. Any diplomatist would see that a right, of some kind more inexpugnable than Prescription, was desirable. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI chose Conquest, and the Founding of a Borgia Dynasty. The office of the Church He magnified, that She the better might help the state. He intended that His descendants, members of the House of Borgia, though nominally the vassals should be the suzerains of His Successors: that Borgia should wear the double-crown of Princeps, as well as, and by means of the triple crown of Pontifex Maximus,—that a dynasty of Borgia should occupy both pontifical and imperial thrones. There was ruin in the scheme: but not that ruin which vulgarly might be supposed. It was an intelligent enough policy—of a worldly sort. Only—it was not inspired by religion, nor restrained by morality. When it fell to pieces, the Lord Julius P.P. II was able of its fragments alone to build the Papal States which lasted more than three centuries and a half until 1870.