They are a public plague, the plague of the world, chameleons who take their color from the soil they squat on, flatterers of princes, perverters of youth.

They not only excuse but laud lying; their dissimulation is bare and unqualified mendacity; their malice is inestimable.

They have the art so to blend their interests and that of Rome, seeking for themselves and the Papacy the empire of the world, that the Curia must needs support them, while it cowers before their inscrutable authority.

They are the ruin of good literature and wholesome doctrine by their pitiful pretense of learning and their machinery of false teaching.

On ignorance rests their power, and truth is mortal to them.