Neither the politicians nor the prophet had discerned, what Luther and the nations of the North saw clearly, that a fresh element of spiritual vitality was necessary for the regeneration of society; or in other words, that good government presupposes living religion, and not that religion should be used as an engine for the consolidation of empire over the people.[2] [1] Mach.

_Disc._ i.

12, after exposing the shams on which, as he believed, the religious institutions of Numa rested, asserts that, however much governors may be persuaded of the falseness of religions, it is their duty to maintain them: 'e debbono ...
come che le giudicassero false, favorirle e accrescerle.' [2] Yet read the curious passage (_Disc_.iii.

1) in which Machiavelli discusses the regeneration of religion by a return to its vital principle, and shows how S.Francis and S.Dominic had done this in the thirteenth century.

It was precisely what Luther was designing while Machiavelli was writing.
The inherent feebleness of Italy in this respect proceeded from an intellectual apathy toward religious questions, produced partly by the stigma attaching to unorthodoxy, partly by the absorbing interests of secular culture, partly by the worldliness of the Renaissance, partly by the infamy of the ecclesiastics, and partly by the enervating influence of tyrannies.