jority of these did not think it
worth their while to make an open rupture with the Church. Theological
hair-splitting reminded them only of the mediaeval scholasticism from
which they had been emancipated by classical culture. They were less
interested in questions touching the salvation of the individual or the
exact nature of the sacraments, than in metaphysical problems suggested
by the study of antique philosophers, or new theories of the material
universe.

[Footnote 10: See Berti's _Vita di G. Bruno_, pp. 105-108.]

The indifference of these men in religion rendered it easy for them to
conform in all external points to custom. Their fundamental axiom was
that a scientific thinker could hold one set of opinions as a
philosopher, and another set as a Christian. Their motto was the
celebrated _Foris ut moris, intus ut libet_.[11] Nor were ecclesiastical
authorities dissatisfied with this attitude during the ascendancy of
humanistic culture. It was, indeed, the attitude of Popes like Leo,
Cardinals like Bembo. And it only revealed its essential weakness when
the tide of general opinion, under the blast of Teutonic revolutionary
ideas, turned violently in favor of formal orthodoxy. Then indeed it
became dangerous to adopt the position of a Pomponazzo.

[Footnote 11: This maxim is ascribed to the materialistic philosopher
Cremonini.]

The mental attitude of such men is so well illustrated by a letter
written by Celio Calcagnini to Peregrino Morato, that I shall not
hesitate to transcribe it here. It seems that Morato had sent his
correspondent some treatise on the theological questions then in
dispute; and Calcagnini replies:

'I have read the book relating to the controversies so much agitated at
present. I have thought on its contents, and weighed them in the balance
of reason. I find in it nothing which may not be approved and defended,
but some things which, as mysteries, it is safer to suppress and conceal
than to bring before the common people, inasmuch as they pertained to
the primitive and infant state of the Church. Now, when the decrees of
the fathers and long usage have introduced other modes, what necessity
is there for reviving antiquated practices which have long fallen into
desuetude, especially as neither piety nor the salvation of the soul is
concerned with them? Let us, then, I pray you, allow these things to
rest. Not that I disapprove of their being embraced by scholars and
lovers of antiquity