No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then among the upper classes what is called the 'Renaissance of science and art' took place, which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an assertion that religion was unnecessary.

in the upper, rich, more educated classes of European society doubt arose as to the truth of that understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christian…

So the majority of the highest classes of that age. even the popes and ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. They did not believe in the Church doc…

However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity, however degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but even with the life-conce…

I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from …

Popery is such a thing as cannot, but for want of a word to express it, be called a religion; nor is it to be mentioned with that civility which is otherwise d…

Ces deux moities de Dieu, le pape et l'empereur!