Did machiavelli revere christian or pagan ideals?

Can I say both?

Machiavelli has at times been accused of being an atheist, or certainly of being critical of the church of his day.  And he revered and read pagan authors such as Cicero and Livy.  But he also had a reverence for what he thought the Christian religion could be, if applied to promoting civic virtue.  So he was not a traditional or typical Christian for his time, but one who had reverence for virtues he saw in common between pagan and biblical authors.

In his book, Machiavelli's God (Princeton University Press, 2010, Antony Shugaar, translator), Maurizio Viroli argues that "republican liberty needs a religion that instills and supports devotion to the common good" and also that "Christian religion properly interpreted is apt to serve such a civic task."  According to Viroli, Machiavelli believed the Roman Catholic Church had wrongly applied the principles of the Christian religion, taking authority to the church that belonged to the people and making the success of the earthly community seem at odds with hope in a heavenly community.