In the end the badness of their cause was proved by the recourse they had to conspiracies of pimps, friars, murderers, and fanatics, in order to stifle that voice of truth which told them of their aberration from the laws of God.
It was not merely by his polemical writings during the interdict, that Sarpi won the fame of heretic in ultra-papal circles.

In his office as Theologian to the Republic he had to report upon all matters touching the relations of State to Church; and the treatises which he prepared on such occasions assumed the proportions, in many instances, of important literary works.

Among these the most considerable is entitled _Delle Materie Beneficiarie_.

Professing to be a discourse upon ecclesiastical benefices, it combines a brief but sufficient history of the temporal power of the Papacy, an inquiry into the arts whereby the Church's property had been accumulated, and a critique of various devices employed by the Roman Curia to divert that wealth from its original objects.

In 'this golden volume,' to use Gibbon's words, 'the Papal system is deeply studied and freely described.' Speaking of its purport, Hallam observes: 'That object was neither more nor less than to represent the wealth and power of the Church as ill-gotten and excessive.' Next in importance is a _Treatise on the Inquisition_, which gives a condensed sketch of the origin and development of the Holy Office, enlarging upon the special modifications of that institution as it existed in Venice.