30/90 Common sense and freedom have so far conquered in Europe that Sarpi's opinions, then denounced as heresies, sound now like truisms; and his candid boast that he was the first to break the neck of Papal encroachments upon secular prerogative, may pass for insignificant in an age which has little to fear from ecclesiastical violence. Venetian Dispatches in Mutinelli's _Storia Arcana_, vol.iii.p. 67.] [Footnote 134: The treatise which Sarpi translated was Gerson's _Considerations upon Papal Excommunications_. Gerson's part in the Council of Constance will be remembered. See Creighton's _History of the Papacy_, vol.i.p. |