Moses, and in the matter of ecclesiastical princedoms. For in two discourses at the Rucellai gardens, at which I was present, he returned to these subjects, and said: 'In fact no legislator has ever given his people a new body of laws, without alleging the intervention of the divinity; for otherwise they would not have been accepted. It is certain that there exist many benefits of which a wise and prudent man foresees the consequences, but nevertheless of which the evidence is not sufficiently striking to convince all minds. To resolve that difficulty the wise man hath recourse to the gods.... The Florentines believe themselves to be neither ignorant nor rude, and, nevertheless, Fra Girolamo Savonarola made them believe that he had conversations with God. I do not pretend to decide if he were right or wrong, for one should not speak without respect of so extraordinary a man. I only say, that a great multitude of people believed him, without having seen anything supernatural which could justify their belief; but his whole life, his knowledge, and the subject of his discourses, should have been enough to make them give credence to his words. One must never be astonished at having failed to-day, where others once succeeded; for mankind, as I have said in my preface, are born, live, and die, according to the same laws.' "And if you, Master Bates, would ask me how it is possible that such matters should be so spoken of, openly, in this country, which licence would not be permitted elsewhere, I shall offer in reply his own words on ecclesiastical princedoms. For he says: 'Certainly, if religion had been able to maintain itself as a Christian republic, such as its divine founder had established, the States which professed it would have been happier than they are now. But how is she fallen! and the most striking proof of her decadence is to see that the peoples bordering on the Church of Rome, that capital of our religion, are precisely the least religious. If one examines the primitive spirit of her institutions, and when he sees how far her practice hath departed from them, he might easily believe that we are approaching a time of ruin or of retribution. And, since some assert that the happiness of Italy depends on the Church of Rome, I should bring against that Church several reasons which offer themselves to my mind, among which there are two extremely grave, and which I think, cannot be denied. First, the evil examples of the court of Rome have extinguished in this country all devotion and all religion, which fact carries in its train innumerable inconveniences and disorders; and as, wherever religion reigns one must believe the existence of good, so wherever it hath disappeared one must suppose the presence of evil. We owe it then, we other Italians, to the Church and to the priests that we are without religion or morals, but we owe them one other obligation, which is the source of our ruin; it is that the