In 1680 Bossuet left the Dauphin, who then married a Bavarian princess, and one year later he was called to the bishopric of Meaux. Louis XIV. was then taking steps leading to the important and fatal venture by which three years later he repealed the Edict of Nantes, and forbade the existence in France of the Protestant religion. No one can deny Bossuet's share in determining the king to follow a policy so fatal to the interests of France, but at the same time so much in accord with the views of Rome. A natural outcome would have been the raising of Bossuet, who was certainly then the greatest orator, the greatest writer, and the greatest theologian in the Catholic clergy, to the Cardinalate. Still Bossuet was never a cardinal. The explanation lies in Bossuet's conduct in the year 1682. The King of France in that year called together a General Assembly of the clergy of France, a kind of National Council. His object was to have the clergy assert its national character, and to state that in civil matters it was subject not to the Pope, but to the King. The various statements to that effect constitute what is known as 'The Liberties of the Gallican Church.' The statements were adopted after being drafted by Bossuet, who had at the opening of the sessions delivered before the Assembly his celebrated 'Sermon on the Unity of the Church,' the main part of which is an eloquent defense of the above-stated views. France was too powerful then for the see of Rome not to yield, but no favors were thenceforth to be expected for the spokesman of the French national clergy. Still the great divine continued his efforts, and in 1688 he put forth the most complete and masterly exposition of his beliefs, his 'History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches.' The Revolution of 1688-89 in England did not in the least, sad though it seemed, weaken his faith in the ultimate triumph of Catholicism. In France at that time the English revolution was not considered an assertion by the people of political and religious rights, but the carrying out of a detestable family conspiracy of a daughter and son-in-law with their father's enemy. This better than anything else explains the hatred which was harbored against William III., and which found expression in the works even of as free-minded a writer as La Bruyère. It is during the period of the fiercest struggle between Louis XIV. and William III. that Bossuet carried on with the German philosopher Leibnitz a series of negotiations, the object of which was the return to Catholicism of Protestant Germany. We need hardly state that the negotiations utterly failed.