Cleo. If you believe a Providence, what demonstration can you have, that God does not direct men in an affair of higher importance to all Christendom, than any other you can name?
Hor. This is an ensnaring, and a very unfair question. Providence superintends and governs every thing without exception. To defend my negative, and give a reason for my unbelief, it is sufficient, if I prove, that all the instruments, and the means they make use of in those elections, are visibly human and mundane, and many of them unwarrantable and wicked.
Cleo. Not all the means; because every day they have prayers, and solemnly invoke the Divine assistance.
Hor. But what stress they lay upon it may be easily gathered from the rest of their behaviour. The court of Rome is, without dispute, the greatest academy of refined politics, and the best school to learn the art of caballing: there ordinary cunning, and known stratagems, are counted rusticity, and designs are pursued through all the mazes of human subtlety. Genius there must give way to finesse, as strength does to art in wrestling; and a certain skill some men have in concealing their capacities from others, is of far greater use with them, than real knowledge, or the soundest understanding. In the sacred college, where every thing is auro venale, truth and justice bear the lowest price: Cardinal Palavicini, and other Jesuits, that have been the stanch advocates of the Papal authority, have owned with ostentation the Politia religiosa della chiésa, and not hid from us the virtues and accomplishments, that were only valuable among the Purpurati, in whose judgment over-reaching, at any rate, is the highest honour, and to be outwitted, though by the basest artifice, the greatest shame. In conclaves, more especially, nothing is carried on without tricks and intrigue; and in them the heart of man is so deep, and so dark an abyss, that the finest air of dissimulation is sometimes found to have been insincere, and men often deceive one another, by counterfeiting hypocrisy. And is it credible, that holiness, religion, or the least concern for spirituals, should have any share in the plots, machinations, brigues, and contrivances of a society, of which each member, besides the gratification of his own passions, has nothing at heart but the interest of his party, right or wrong, and to distress every faction that opposes it?
Cleo. These sentiments confirm to me what I have often heard, that renegadoes are the most cruel enemies.
Hor. Was ever I a Roman Catholic?
Cleo. I mean from the social system, of which you have been the most strenuous assertor; and now no man can judge of actions more severely, and indeed less charitably, than yourself, especially of the poor cardinals. I little thought, if once I quitted the scheme of deformity, to have found an adversary in you; but we have both changed sides it seems.
Hor. Much alike, I believe.
Cleo. Nay, what could any body think to hear me making the kindest interpretations of things that can be imagined, and yourself doing quite the reverse?
Hor. What ignorant people, that knew neither of us, might have done, I do not know: but it has been very manifest from our discourse, that you have maintained your cause, by endeavouring to show the absurdity of the contrary side, and that I have defended mine by letting you see, that we were not such fools as you would represent us to be. I had taken a resolution never to engage with you on this topic, but you see I have broke it: I hate to be thought uncivil; it was mere complaisance drew me in; though I am not sorry that we talked of it so much as we did, because I found your opinion less dangerous than 1 imagined: you have owned the existence of virtue, and that there are men who act from it as a principle, both which I thought you denied: but I would not have you flatter yourself that you deceived me, by hanging out false colours.