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The question then was, what should be done in respect to the remaining articles in difference between the churches? It is to be wished, that it had been left to Bossuet, and Molanus, to settle them, in the way of amicable explanation, in which they had settled, the two important articles, which we have mentioned.
In all this, far from having an eye to my advantage, I have no eye to any man; I see but God, and I am content with what He does." Bossuet had triumphed: his vaster mind, his more sagacious insight, his stronger judgment had unravelled the dangerous errors in which Fenelon had allowed himself to be entangled.
He was well aware that by lending himself to such amenities he would lose caste morally with the King, and that if by his loyalty he had won royal attachment and regard, all this would have been irretrievably lost. Thus M. de Bossuet was of those who say, "Hate me, but fear me," rather than of those who strive to be loved.
He had been brought up as a Protestant, and had practised that religion. In the end the arguments of Bossuet so convinced him that he lost from that time all his doubts, became steadfastly attached to the Catholic religion, and strove hard to convert to it all the Protestants with whom he spoke.
The greatest Doctor that the Church of Rome has produced since the schism of the sixteenth century, Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, was engaged in framing an elaborate reply.
Bossuet was the real head and the pride of the great Catholic church of France in the seventeenth century; what he approved of was approved of by the immense majority of the French clergy, what he condemned was condemned by them.
From the Eclaircissemens Historiques of M. de Rullhiêres, and the life of Bossuet, by M. Baussét , it seems evident, that Lewis the Fourteenth, had been induced, to believe, that the number of Protestants was much smaller; that the conversions of them, would be much more rapid, general, and sincere; and that the measures, for hastening their conversion, would be much less violent than they really were.
While his general thesis coincided with that of Voltaire the gradual advance of humanity towards a state of enlightenment and reasonableness, he made the idea of Progress more vital; for him it was an organising conception, just as the idea of Providence was for St. Augustine and Bossuet an organising conception, which gave history its unity and meaning.
It is, they say, the love of truth which induces them to examine most scrupulously the miracles of the saints; nothing should be believed, or be proposed to belief, but what is true. But Bossuet said of bad critics: "They are content, provided they can pass for more subtle observers than others, and they find themselves sharper, in not giving credit to so many wonders."
They represented either the French classics Racine, Bossuet, Châteaubriand, Lamartine which had formed the study of Julie's convent days, or those other books George Sand, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Mazzini, Leopardi, together with the poets and novelists of revolutionary Russia or Polish nationalism or Irish rebellion which had been the favorite reading of both Lady Rose and her lover.
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