“If such religion had been maintained by the princes of the Christian republic as was ordered by its giver, the Christian states and republics would be more united, much happier than they are. Nor can one make any better conjecture as to its decline than to see that those peoples who are closest to the Roman church, the head of our religion, have less religion. Whoever might consider its foundations and see how much present usage is different from them might judge, without doubt, that either its ruin or its scourging is near.”