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Updated: June 24, 2025
No one in Canada could deny the value of his services at the time of crisis which was not a matter of months but of years. Father Goyer, of the Récollets, delivered a eulogy which in fervour recalls Bossuet's funeral orations over members of the royal family. But the most touching valedictory was that from Champigny, who after many differences had become Frontenac's friend.
There is a fine austerity about Bossuet's energetic criticism; it is so free from breathless eagerness, and so severe without being thinly bitter. The churchmen of a generation or two later had fallen from this height into gloomy peevishness.
It was a counterblast to Bossuet's Histoire Universelle. That book had shown the world's history as a part of the providential order a grand unfolding of design. Voltaire's view was very different.
Again, Bossuet's expressions of 'the concatenation of the universe, of the interdependence of the parts of so vast a whole, of there coming no great change without having its causes in foregoing centuries, and of the true object of history being to observe, in connection with each epoch, those secret dispositions of events which prepared the way for great changes, as well as the momentous conjunctures which more immediately brought them to pass all these phrases seem to point to a true and philosophic survey.
What is the book which M. Flaubert perused day and night, and which has inspired the passages that the Government Attorney condemns? It is by Bossuet! What I shall read to you is a fragment of Bossuet's discourse upon Illicit Pleasures. I shall bring you to see that all these incriminated passages are not plagiarized; the man who appropriates an idea is not a plagiarist but imitations of Bossuet.
The passage is so important, that it is proper to present it to the reader in Bossuet's own words.
Chrysostom; Bossuet's was Homer. Bunyan's was the old legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton, which in all probability gave him the first idea of his 'Pilgrim's Progress. One of the best prelates that ever sat on the English bench, Dr. John Sharp, said "Shakspeare and the Bible have made me Archbishop of York."
I thought it most amusing that the King should have commissioned M. de Bossuet to deliver this second missive, and I believe I said as much to certain persons, which perhaps gave rise to a rumour that he actually brought me love-letters from the King. But the purveyors of such gossip could surely know nothing of Bossuet's inflexible principles, and of the subtlety of his policy.
He composed, in his own mind, with Combeferre's philosophical and penetrating eloquence, Feuilly's cosmopolitan enthusiasm, Courfeyrac's dash, Bahorel's smile, Jean Prouvaire's melancholy, Joly's science, Bossuet's sarcasms, a sort of electric spark which took fire nearly everywhere at once. All hands to work. Surely, the result would answer to the effort. This was well.
Sulpice, gave an excellent piece of advice to Portalis, the Minister of Religion. "If I were in the emperor's place," said he, "I should take purely and simply the catechism of Bossuet, and thus avoid an immense responsibility." Napoleon had a liking for Bossuet's genius and doctrine, and the idea pleased him.
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