If the Popes would have been content to have been the heads of the Church in holiness and good life, and not in majesty and grandeur, the world would never have conceived so many sinister thoughts of their actions; therefore if there be murmurs in _Rome_, and the rest of Christendome, the Popes may thank themselves, for the fault is not in those that murmur, but in those that furnish them with a lawful subject for their complaints. But let us speak truth: In the time that the Popes left to the Emperours the secular care of government, and all the interests of the temporal state, holiness and good life did shine in the Popes, as well as in the Church and Church-men; miracles were frequent, and Saints multiplied as fast as tyrant Emperours. But as soon as the Popes usurped the civil power, and began to meddle with state matters, their holiness disappeared, miracles vanished, and by a strange mutation the Emperors became Saints, and the Popes as passionate for the temporal interest as the greatest Tyrants. The Hereticks go further, and say, that the Popes are really Tyrants, as having introduced the Inquisition, which by constraining mens consciences to an exteriour worship of what they abhor, does more severely punish the breach of one of the Popes Orders, then it does the violation of one of Gods Commandements. To this the Popes oppose, as a defence, the reason of policy, that obliges them to establish the Inquisition, leaving to their Divines the task of answering the other more sharp objection; who having no other way to extricate themselves from that difficulty, have written, to confute the Hereticks, such vast volumns of Controversie, that they being not able to read them, remain in their obstinacy, with no small dammage to the Pope and his Divines. But this strange change of the Popes, from spiritual to temporal, and from holy Bishops to Politick Princes, is not so much to be attributed to the Popes themselves, as to their Nephews and kindred, there is the source and origin of the disease; for while the Popes lead a private life, and let their Nephews alone in their own homes, they were eminent for their zeal to the true Religion; but they had no sooner introduced them into _Rome_, but forgetting themselves, they fell to idolizing their Nephews, and for the increase of their greatness, employed not only the gold of the Church, but even all the pains and fatigues of the Popedom, nay even the consciences of their whole flock. Experience teaches us, that many Popes, and particularly those of the greatest reputation, in the beginning of their Popedome did not only renounce their kindred, and refuse to own them, but with a solemn oath did protest to the Cardinals, that they would govern alone, and not admit their kindred upon any pretext whatsoever; so far they were from giving them a share in the government.