So also are his sympathies with those reformed nations which enjoyed liberty of conscience and independence of ecclesiastical control.

Yet his first duty was to Venice; and since the State remained Catholic, he personally had no intention of quitting the communion into which he had been born and in which he was an ordained priest.

All Churches, he wrote in one memorable letter to Casaubon, have their imperfections.

The Church of Corinth, in the days of the Apostles, was corrupt.[167] 'The fabric of the Church of God,' being on earth, cannot expect immunity from earthly frailties.[168] Such imperfections and such frailties as the Catholic Church shared with all things of this world, Sarpi was willing to tolerate.

The deformation of that Church by Rome and Jesuitry he manfully withstood; but he saw no valid reason why he should abandon her for Protestantism.