Some of his successors welcomed it and adapted them-
selves to it. Some of them resisted it, not in the
interests of morality but of their own paltry local
ambition. Alexander VI. strikes us as a monstrous
figure to stand at the end of the century of refinement
and revival ; but Macchiavelli, a most competent eye-
witness, regarded him as the type of the princes and
the policy of his time. If Europe was somewhat
startled by what it heard of his iniquities, those who



LECT. XVIIi



Falsehood
of modern
Paganism,



The Pope-
dom of the
Revival,



296



UNIVERSAL MORALITY.
liiSCT. XVII.
The new
world.
The Dia-
logiies of
Erasmus,



The pic-
ture of
Social
Morality
which they
present.
followed him exceeded other monarchs in the lust of
conquest, excelled all in intrigue. From those whose
main object was to win some paltry principality issued
the spiritual decrees, the examples of spiritual wisdom
and character which the Universe was to obey and
copy. For Greece was Mahometan and America had
been discovered. The Pope who used the Sultan to
do murders for him, bade the most Catholic monarch
take possession of the new world in Christ's name.
What kind of life and government the Spaniards would
exhibit to those who had worshipped the gods of
Mexico and Peru, might be conjectured from the
authority under which they conquered, from that spe-
cimen of life and government which they deemed the
most sacred and divine.
