desk, it is almost certain that the spirit with which they were inspired would have infected Cardan's brain, and prompted him to repeat in words the views on religion and a future state which he had already put on paper, for he rarely let discretion interfere with the enunciation of any opinion he favoured. In the _Paralipomena_ are many passages written in the spirit of universalism, and treating of the divine principle as something which animates wise men alone, wise men and philosophers of every age and every clime, Aristotle being the head and chief. Plato and Socrates and the Seven Sages adorn this illustrious circle, which includes likewise the philosophers of Chaldea and Egypt. Opinions like these were no longer the passport to Papal favour or even toleration. The age of the humanist Popes was past, and the Puritan movement, stimulated into life by the active competition of the Reformers, was beginning to show its strength, so that a man who spoke in terms of respect or reverence concerning Averroes or Plato would put himself in no light peril. Thus for those of Cardan's enemies who were minded to search and listen it must have been an easy task to formulate against him a charge of heresy, specious enough to carry conviction to such a burning zealot as Pius V. This Pope, in his new regulations for the maintenance of Church discipline, requisitioned the services of physicians in the detection of laxity of religious practices, or of unsoundness. "We forbid," he says in one of his bulls, "every physician, who may be called to the bedside of a patient, to visit for more than three days, unless he receives an attestation that the sick man has made fresh confession of his sins."[228] Cardan, with his irritable temper, may very likely have treated this regulation as an unwarrantable interference with his profession, and have paid no attention to it. Again, he evidently followed Hippocrates in rejecting the supernatural origin of disease; a position greatly in advance of that held by certain of the leading physiologists of the time.[229] Thus in more ways than one he may have laid himself open to some charge of disrespect shown to religion or to the spiritual powers. The absence of any other specific accusation and the circumstances of his incarceration, taken in conjunction with the foregoing considerations, almost compel the conclusion that his arrest and imprisonment in 1570 were brought about by a charge of impiety whispered by some envious tongue which will never now be identified. The sanction given by the authorities of the Church to his writings in 1562, operated without doubt to mitigate the punishment which fell upon him, and suffered him, after due purgation of his offences, to enjoy for the residue of his days a life comparatively quiet and prosperous under the patronage of Pius V.