68: 'Le cose che vennero a pubblica notizia e certe sono: che molte persone nominate in quella cifra, di _Padre_, fratelli, e cugini, per le contracifre consto, dal Generale de' Servi in fuori, niuna esser di dignita inferiore alia Cardinalizia.'] [Footnote 149: Sarpi says that no crime happened in Venice without a friar or priest being mixed in it (_Lettere_, vol.i.

351).] We must reply that in essential points of moral conduct this reformation amounted to almost nothing, and in some points to considerably less than nothing.

The Church of God, as Sarpi held, suffered deformation rather than reformation.

That is to say, this Church, instead of being brought back to primitive simplicity and purged of temporal abuses, now lay at the mercy of ambitious hypocrites who with the Supreme Pontiff's sanction, pursued their ends by treachery and violence.

Its hostility to heretics and its new-fangled doctrine of Papal almightiness encouraged the spread of a pernicious casuistry which favored assassination.