Page:The Voyage Of Italy Or A Compleat Journey through Italy, The Second Part.pdf/352

, Carlo Maderno, and now Cavaliero Bernino, have brought it on to this perfection: that the whole Church it self is nothing but the Quintessence of wit and wealth strained into a religious design of making a handsome house to God, and of fulfilling, the divine oracle which promised; that magna crit gloria domus istius novissimæ, plusquam primæ.

Going at last out of this Church, and summing up in my thoughts all the rarities I had seen in it, I began to think of Ammoninus (a holy primitive Saint and afterwards Bishop in the Council of Sardis ) of whom its written, that coming to Rome with S. Athanasius, he desired to see nothing there but S. Peter's Church, and knew not the way to any place else; I think, that if this good man had seen S. Peters Church as it is now, he would never have cared for seing any thing else in the world, and would even have forgot his way home too.

Near to the Church of S. Peter stands the Vatican Palace, where