energy and extraordinary powers of body and mind with which God had endowed him. With unremitting toil he thus devoted himself for more than twenty years to the pastoral charge, until, in the last year of his life, incessant pain and weakness disabled him from its continuance. He paid great attention to the proper regulation of the seminary in his diocese, especially urging upon the students who were in training for the priesthood, the importance of perfecting themselves in the art of speaking in public, so as to be able to preach constantly to their congregations. In conducting the controversy with protestants, he deemed this qualification to be one of paramount necessity. In all his relations with his clergy there was that blending of simplicity with dignity, and of frankness with firmness, which is distinctive of true moral greatness. In the clerical conferences which he held frequently in different parts of his diocese, it was his delight to discuss and resolve questions of practical difficulty bearing on the duties of pastors; and nothing was more remarkable than the way in which he knew how to adapt the level of his conversation, and even his manners, to that of the less refined and educated members of the priesthood whom he found in remote districts. He held a diocesan synod once a year; and these were the occasions which he always chose for delivering "canonical admonitions" to such of his clergy as might be liable to censure. This was a favourite plan with him, and succeeded admirably. He used to say, "A bishop should instruct, rather than institute proceedings. Men do not appeal from the word of God." He preached regularly on Sundays and holidays in his cathedral, but after he came to Meaux he never wrote his sermons. Shortly before mass one Sunday, Fleury and the Abbé Ledieu, his secretary, entering his study unannounced, saw him on his knees, with head bare and the gospel in his hand, absorbed in meditation; such was usually his sole preparation for preaching. In another department of pastoral duty, his astonishing labours must not be wholly passed over. There are extant more than seven hundred letters of advice and direction on religious matters addressed by him to nuns, especially to the widow Cornuan. In giving advice on such subjects, he took St. Francis de Sales for his model. They fill the eleventh and twelfth volumes of the Benedictine edition of his works. As a proof of his firmness and ability as a ruler, we may quote the celebrated case of the exemption of Jouarre. This monastery, which under the terms of an ancient papal brief, claimed exemption from the jurisdiction of the bishop of the diocese, had fallen into a state of great relaxation. The abbess, a princess of the house of Lorraine, resided for a few weeks in the year at Jouarre, and passed the rest of her time in the gay world of Paris. When all entreaty and admonition had failed, Bossuet, undeterred by the influence at court of the powerful relatives of the abbess, instituted a process in the grand chamber of the parliament of Paris, and obtained a decree annulling the exemption. But the inmates of the abbey still made a contumacious resistance to the actual exercise of the episcopal jurisdiction, and the narrative of the skill, patience, and firmness, with which Bossuet at last succeeded in overcoming this resistance, forms the best illustrative comment on his character.
Into the regulation of his domestic life Bossuet carried the same conscientiousness and resolution which distinguished him in his public career. The mass of work which he contrived to get through is something confounding to ordinary conceptions. "But," as his secretary, quoted by de Bausset, well observes, "a man accustomed to lose not a single moment, has time for all his duties; a man all whose pleasures, and even his very sleep, are a study, has years more extended, and a longer life than ordinary mortals." The one point on which he seems to have failed was household economy; he trusted his pecuniary affairs entirely to a steward, and they consequently became somewhat involved in the last years of his life. His country-house at Germigny, near Meaux, was the favourite resort of princes, nobles, and ecclesiastics—of all that was highest and best in France, and all the illustrious foreigners that visited Paris. The great Condé, Fleury the historian, the Abbé Renaudot, d'Herbelot the celebrated orientalist, and la Bruyére, author of the Caractères, were among his intimate friends. Boileau relates that he submitted to him in 1695 the MS. of his epistle Sur l'amour de Dieu, an attack upon the false casuists; and that Bossuet, after reading it twice or three times, honoured it with his hearty approbation. Similarly the Athalie of Racine was shown to and approved by him before publication. But to give even a summary of the varied relations, all interesting and worthy of himself, in which this great man stood to the savans, the poets, and the general society of his age, would require a volume rather than an article. Before entering upon the closing scenes of Bossuet's life, it is necessary to say a few words, first, on his controversy with protestants; secondly, on his dispute with Fenelon; thirdly, on such of his works as will not have been mentioned in connection with the two previous heads. No notice of the life of Bossuet could be considered complete which did not give some historical account of the controversy which he waged for fifty years against protestantism; for a subject which took up so much of the time and thoughts of so great a man, and his writings on which created so great a sensation in Europe, could not fairly be left out of sight by an impartial biographer.
In 1654, when Bossuet published at Metz his first controversial work, the "Refutation du Catechisme de M. Paul Ferri," protestantism was still numerously and powerfully supported in France. At Metz, in particular, the Huguenots mustered very strong, and it was here that their annual synod of ministers was held. Thinking, as he became more deeply engaged in the controversy, that one principal cause of estrangement was the distorted view which many protestants had of the catholic doctrines, Bossuet conceived the idea of composing a short and clear exposition, showing both what these doctrines were and what they were not, to which he could refer an inquirer or an opponent. This was the origin of the "Exposition de la foi Catholique," the perusal of which is said to have converted Turenne. The work remained for many years in manuscript, and was published, at the urgent entreaty of Turenne himself, in 1671. In 1678, while Bossuet was at court, occurred his famous conference with Claude. It was brought about by Mdlle. Duras, a niece of Turenne, who had been educated as a protestant, but was now leaning to Catholicism. Each of the disputants published a version of the conference, but with many discrepancies. When Bossuet went to Meaux in 1682, he found the protestants very numerous in the diocese. He organized a regular system of missions for their conversion, which was attended with considerable success. Like St. Augustine, he set his face against the employment of any other means for the attainment of religious uniformity but those of instruction and persuasion. He never once called for the interference of the civil power against the protestants; but, on the contrary, in the case of M. Seguier and others, succeeded, by appealing to the court, in checking the persecuting exercise of authority sanctioned by the marquis de Louvois. It is an ascertained fact that he was not consulted, and had no concern whatever, in the fatal measure of the revocation of the edict of Nantes. His fairness, kindness, and straightforwardness, were acknowledged by the protestants themselves, who never taxed one of his episcopal acts with injustice or severity. In 1688 appeared the famous work, announced many years before, known as the "Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes." Burnet, who was roughly handled in it, and Jurieu, wrote replies, to which Bossuet responded in his "Defence de l'Histoire," &c., and his "Avertissemens aux Protestans," published in 1691 and 1689 respectively. From 1691 to 1701 an interesting correspondence was carried on between Bossuet and Leibnitz on the subject of a reunion between the catholic and Lutheran churches. Bossuet, who had the project much at heart, would have gone so far as to concede the cup to the laity of the Lutheran communion, if they desired it, and to relax the law of celibacy in favour of the existing Lutheran ministers, upon their becoming catholic priests. Leibnitz at first entered warmly into the scheme, but political considerations induced him after a time to moderate his zeal, and at last, in 1701, to break off the correspondence altogether. In that year, by the death of the duke of Gloucester, the princess Anne's only surviving child, the succession of the house of Hanover to the British throne became almost a certainty, and it would not do for a confidential servant of that house to continue a correspondence which might bring upon his patrons a suspicion of Rome-ward tendencies, and thus imperil their acceptability to protestant England. Writing to Fabricius in 1708, Leibnitz says—"All our rights over England are founded upon the exclusion and hatred of the Roman religion.; therefore whatever acts might bring upon us the appearance of being lukewarm opponents of Rome, are deservedly to be avoided." It is possible, however, that this correspondence had a real effect upon the secret convictions of Leibnitz; for in his posthumous work, the Systema
