The history is so short and yet so sufficient, the sequence so natural and clear, the proofs so judiciously introduced, that it can never be read without delight and admiration of the author’s skill. And this is more striking to those who have toiled at the verbose books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where tedious quotations, accumulated, not selected, disguise the argument they are meant to confirm. Except the first book of Machiavel’s History of Florence, I do not remember any earlier summary of facts so lucid and pertinent to the object. That object was, with Father Paul, neither more nor less than to represent the wealth and power of the church as ill-gotten and excessive. The Treatise on Benefices led the way, or rather was the seed thrown into the ground that ultimately produced the many efforts both of the press and of public authority to break down ecclesiastical privileges.[56] [54] Ranke is the best authority on this dispute, as he is on all other matters relating to the papacy in this age, vol. ii., p. 324. [55] He was supposed to have discovered the valves of the veins, the circulation of the blood, the expansion and contraction of the pupil, the variation of the compass. A quo, says Baptista Porta of Sarpi, aliqua didicisse non solum fateri non erubescimus, sed gloriamur, cum eo doctiorem, subtiliorem, quotquot adhuc videre contigerit, neminem cognovimus ad encyclopædiam. Magia Naturalis, lib. vii., apud Ranke. [56] A long analysis of the Treatise on Benefices will be found in Dupin, who does not blame it very much. It is worth reading through, and has been commended by many good judges of history. |History of Council of Trent.|