“Dans les choses nécessaire, l’unité; dans les douteuses, la liberté; dans tous les cas, la charité.” In these few words one may look for the keynote of Bossuet’s whole life. Temperate in all things, yet possessed with an eloquence more moving, it was said, than that of any man since the days of the Christian Fathers, and employed always in the cause of the Church he loved so well, the “Aigle de Meaux” well deserves his place among the greatest ecclesiastics France has ever known, and France, just at this time, was rich in ecclesiastical genius. There was Fénélon at Cambrai and Mascaron at Tulle, there were Massillon and Bourdaloue, Arnauld and Fleury--all of them men of note, both in the pulpit and in the world of books; but Bossuet stands out before them all. He made an early entrance into the cultivated world, preaching his first sermon, upon a subject chosen at random, in the salon of the Hôtel Rambouillet, when hardly out of his teens; and the Marquis de Feuquières, who had introduced him into this society of Précieuses, soon found reason to be proud of his protégé. The young man was destined to go on as he had begun; a few more years saw him established as Canon of Metz, the close friend of Condé and of the Calvinist Paul Ferri, with whom he never tired of disputing theological questions in a perfectly amicable spirit, acting up to his maxim of “liberty in doubtful things”; and finally his reputation brought him to Paris, where he preached during Lent, 1656, and brought before the world the sermon as he created it, purified from the profanities of an immoral age, strengthened by his steadfast simplicity, and quickened by the fire of his eloquence. Bossuet found that in spite of himself his fame as an orator--a fame after which he had never striven--was firmly established in the capital, and after he had preached before the king in the chapel of the Louvre his success was practically assured. Honours and dignities came fast upon him; he became Bishop of Condom, and in the following year (1670) was entrusted with the education of the Dauphin, while the Académie Française opened its doors to his genius, and in 1681 he was appointed to the See of Meaux. Hardly had Bossuet settled down, however, in the quiet little _évêché_, with its pleasant green garden, than he was called out again into the world of noise and controversy. In 1682 Louis XIV. convoked the famous assembly of clergy to discuss the breach which had lately disclosed itself between the State of France and the Papacy. The king contended for the right of patronage over any vacant sees or benefices, claiming that so long as they remained unoccupied, their revenues fell due to the Crown; and called together the clergy of the realm to uphold his right and to draw up a code of rules that should set a line between spiritual and temporal authority. Bossuet preached the sermon which was to open the Convocation; and his clear practical sense