Moreover, it seemed impossible for an Italian to rise above the conception of a merely formal reformation, or to reach that higher principle of life which consists in the enunciation of a new religious truth.  The whole argument in the Discorsi which precedes the chapter I have quoted, treats religion not in its essence as pure Christianity, but as a state engine for the maintenance of public order and national well-being.[1] That Milton and Cromwell may have so regarded religion is true:  but they had, besides, a personal sense of the necessity of righteousness, the fear of God, at the root of their political convictions.  While Machiavelli and Guicciardini wished to deprive the Popes of temporal sovereignty, in order that the worst scandals of their Court might be suppressed, and that the peace of Italy might be secured, Savonarola desired to purge the Church of sin, but to retain its hierarchy and its dogmas inviolate.  Neither the politicians nor the prophet had discerned, what Luther and the nations of the North saw clearly, that a fresh element of spiritual vitality was necessary for the regeneration of society; or in other words, that good government presupposes living religion, and not that religion should be used as an engine for the consolidation of empire over the people.[2]

[1] Mach. Disc. i. 12, after exposing the shams on which, as he believed, the religious institutions of Numa rested, asserts that, however much governors may be persuaded of the falseness of religions, it is their duty to maintain them:  ’e debbono ... come che le giudicassero false, favorirle e accrescerle.’

[2] Yet read the curious passage (Disc. iii. 1) in which Machiavelli discusses the regeneration of religion by a return to its vital principle, and shows how S. Francis and S. Dominic had done this in the thirteenth century.  It was precisely what Luther was designing while Machiavelli was writing.

The inherent feebleness of Italy in this respect proceeded from an intellectual apathy toward religious questions, produced partly by the stigma attaching to unorthodoxy, partly by the absorbing interests of secular culture, partly by the worldliness of the Renaissance, partly by the infamy of the ecclesiastics, and partly by the enervating influence of tyrannies.  However bold a man might be, he dread of heretic; the term paterino, originally applied to religious innovators, had become synonymous in common phraseology with rogue.  It was a point of good society and refined taste to support the Church.  Again, the mental faculties of Italy had for three centuries been taxed to the utmost in studies wide apart from the field of religious faith.  Art, scholarship, philosophy, and meditation upon politics had given a definite direction to the minds of thinking men, so that little energy was left for those instinctive movements of the spirit which produced the German Reformation.  The great work