“You are aware,” they say, “that your predecessors were “willing to be flattered. It was unnecessary to de− “sire it, they would have been sufficiently so without “exacting it; for adulation follows princes as a sha− “dows follows a body, and to this day the throne is “difficult of access to uncompromising truth. But, “in order to secure themselves the better from its “intrusion, your predecessors surrounded them− “selves with skilful doctors, whom they commanded “not to teach duties, but to justify caprices. The “talents of these doctors were to be exercised, “in discovering every thing to be lawful which pre− “sented itself as agreeable. For instance they have “declared the sovereign pontiff absolute master of “the benefices of Christendom; and, as a lord has “the right of selling his domains, that so, they con− “clude, the head of the church can never be guilty “of simony, and that in affairs relating to benefices, “simony can only exist when the seller is not pope. “By this, and similar reasoning, they have arrived “at the sweeping conclusion they were to demon− “strate, to wit, that, that which is pleasing to the “pope is always lawful to him. Behold, holy fa− “ther, the remonstrating cardinals add, behold the “indubitable source from whence have issued as “from the wooden horse, all the abuses, and all the “plagues which have afflicted the church of God.” ³⁰⁴ It commences with these words: “Consuererunt Romiani Pontiiicis,” and contains twenty-four paragraphs. ³⁰⁵ See Appendix. Paul III. had destined for his grandson, Octavius Farnese, the States of Parma and Placentia: Charles V. who intended to unite them to the duchy of Milan, was threatened with the heaviest censures. Afterwards the pontiff wished for Parma for the Holy See, and they say, died of grief when he learned that Octavios was on the point of obtaining this duchy. Julius III. by agreement with the emperor, refused the investiture to Farnese; but the king of France, Henry II. protected the duke, and sent him troops. At this news Julius excommunicated the king of France, and threatened to place the kingdom under interdict. Henry was not terrified; he forbade his subjects from taking money to Rome, or addressing themselves to others than the usual prelates in ecclesiastical matters. This firmness softened the holy father, who even laboured to reconcile the emperor with the king of France. After Marcellus II. who reigned but twenty-one days, John Peter Caraffa, was elected pope, who took the name of Paul VI.: