Political liberty is the residuary legatee of ecclesiastical animosities. - Neville Figgis

Machiavelli was always considering the practical problem, how is Italy to be saved?

From the Monarchomachi we naturally pass to the Jesuits, the real agents of the Counter-Reformation, and partly also of Spanish aggression. Nearly all of the Jesuit writers of importance in the earlier years of their existence are Spaniards, or Philo-Spaniards. We must regard their attitude as partly, at least, determined by national feeling—even in spite of their professed aims.

It is the transformation of the desire to persecute into the claim of an inherent right to exist on the part of religious bodies that historically produces those limitations upon State actual which are the securities of freedom.