Meanwhile, ’were it not for State policy there would be found hundreds ready to leap from this ditch of Rome to the summit of Reform.’[162] The hope of some improvement at Venice depends mainly upon the presence there of embassies from Protestant powers—­England, Holland and the Grisons.[163] These give an opportunity to free religious discussion, and to the dissemination of Gospel truth.  Sarpi is strong in his praise of Fra Fulgenzio for fearlessly preaching Christ and the truth, and repeats the Pope’s complaint that the Bible is injurious to the Catholic faith.[164] He led William Bedell, chaplain to Sir H. Wotton and afterwards Bishop of Kilmore, to believe that Fra Fulgenzio and himself were ripe for Reform.  ‘These two I know,’ writes Bedell to Prince Henry, ’as having practiced with them, to desire nothing so much as the Reformation of the Church, and, in a word, for the substance of religion they are wholly ours.’[165] During the interdict Diodati came from Geneva to Venice, and Sarpi informed him that some 12,000 persons in the city wished for rupture with Rome; but the government and the aristocracy being against it, nothing could be done.[166]

[Footnote 162:  Lettere, vol. ii. p. 283.]

[Footnote 163:  Ib. p. 110, 311.]

[Footnote 164:  Ib. vol. i. pp. 220, 222, 225, 231, 239.]

[Footnote 165:  Campbell’s Life, p. 132.]

[Footnote 166:  Ib. p. 133, 135.]

Enough has now been quoted to throw some light upon Sarpi’s attitude toward Protestantism.  That he most earnestly desired the overthrow of ultra-papal Catholicism, is apparent.  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.  In his own conscience he remained free to serve God in spirit and in truth.  The mind of the man in fact was too far-seeing and too philosophical to exchange old lamps for new without a better prospect of attaining to absolute truth than the dissenters from Catholicism afforded.  His interest in Protestant, as separate from Catholic Reform, was rather civil and political than religious or theological.  Could those soaring wings of Rome be broken, then and not till then might the Italians enjoy freedom of conscience, liberty of discussion and research, purer piety, and a healthier activity as citizens.