Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/153

 He understood parental relation, if not affection, and would not renounce it when his intellectual progeny was concerned.

It is by no means affirmed that Vergerio was without his infirmities: far from it. He was precipitate and rather intemperate. But with all his failings, and their effects, he has done far more essential service to the cause of religious truth, and appears to have been generally and prevailingly actuated by a more sincere and zealous anxiety for the interests of pure religion, and the salvation of human souls, than perhaps many, if not all, of those who assume to sit in judgment upon him, and condemn him. At all events, there are few writings among the multitudinous remains of his time and cause, which have conveyed to our distant age more singular and important information. Except for him we had known little of the knavery and imposition of Rome, in the province of religious literature, as it is exhibited in the early Italian Indexes. Many of his small works, of which article will shew what was their number, were ephemeral: but many, though small, were, and are, of permanent interest; and I heartily wish he had been allowed by the bigotry of his