Excerpt from Italy and the Italian Islands, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, Vol. 2 of 3 But even before that time, the church had declined deeply both in doctrine and discipline; and the decay became still more lamentable in the unhappy period which followed. There were numerous good men, and a few who maintained in many points the purity of the gospel faith; but the ecclesiastical community at large was stained by increasing departure from evangelical truth, by an undue assumption of power on the part of the higher members of its government, by a worldly and arrogant temper in its priests, by a half-pagan splendour in its ceremonies, and (perhaps the worst fault of all) by an ascetic spirit, which led the clergy to encourage the growing inclination of devout laymen to seclude themselves from all the active duties of life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.