Still, however, the great light which the study of antiquity threw out in the fifteenth century, was fitted only to destroy, and not to build up. The honour of saving the Church could not be given either to Homer or Virgil. The revival of letters, sciences, and arts did not found the Reformation. The Paganism of the poets, on reappearing in Italy, rather strengthened the Paganism of the heart. The scepticism of the school of Aristotle, and a contempt of everything not connected with philology, took possession of many of the Literati, and engendered an infidelity which, while it affected submission to the Church, in reality attacked the most important truths of religion. Peter Pomponatius, the most famous representative of this impious tendency, taught at Bologna and Padua, that the immortality of the soul and providence are only philosophical problems.[86] John Francis Pica, nephew of Pica de la Mirandôla, tells of a pope who did not believe a God,[87] and of another who, having confessed to one of his friends, that he did not believe in the immortality of the soul, appeared one night after his death to the same friend, and said to him, "Ah! the eternal fire that consumes me, makes me but too sensible of the immortality of that soul, which, according to the view I held, was to die with the body." This reminds us of the celebrated words which Leo X is alleged to have said to his Secretary Bembo, "All ages know well enough of what advantage this fable about Christ has been to us and ours."[88]... Frivolous superstitions were attacked, but their place was supplied by infidelity, with its disdainful sneering laugh. To laugh at things, however sacred, was fashionable, and a proof of wit; and if any value was set on religion, it was merely as a mean of governing the people. "I have a fear," exclaimed Erasmus in 1516, "and it is, that, with the study of ancient literature, ancient Paganism will re-appear." [86] De Immortalitate Animæ, de Predestinatione et Providentia, etc. [87] Qui nullum Deum credens." (J. F. Pici de Fide, Op. ii, p. 820.) Who believing in God. [88] "Ea de Christo fabula." (Mornæi, Hist. Papatus, p. 820.) It is true that then, as after the sarcasms of the age of Augustus, and as in our own times, after those of the last century, a new Platonic philosophy sprung up and attacked that irrational incredulity, seeking, like the philosophy of the present day, to inspire some respect for Christianity, and restore the religious sentiment to the heart. The Medici at Florence favoured these efforts of the Platonics. But no philosophical religion will regenerate the Church and the world. Proud, disdaining the preaching of the cross, and pretending to see nothing in Christian doctrines but figures and symbols, which the majority of men cannot comprehend, it may bewilder itself in a mystical enthusiasm, but will always prove powerless, either to reform or to save.