There is a mysticism in all this which it is dangerous to admit into a popular religion; but while we read, we feel wonderstruck and saddened to think how a man so heavenly good as Fénélon, and so noble minded as Bossuet, could have drawn matter for hate and pain out of such materials: charity, love of God, the welfare of man,--such were the missiles levelled at each other; and human passion could tip with poison these celestial-seeming weapons. Sir Walter Scott has, with the wisdom of a sage, remarked, that it is matter of sadness to reflect how much easier it is to inflict pain than communicate pleasure.[109] The controversy of Bossuet and Fénélon is a melancholy gloss on so true a text. The cause was now carried to Rome. The tenets of Fénélon objected to by Bossuet were two:--1st, that a person may obtain an habitual state of divine love, in which he loves God purely for his own sake, and without the slightest regard to his own interests, even in respect to his eternal happiness. 2dly, that in such a state it is lawful, and may even be considered an heroic effort of conformity to the divine will, to consent to eternal reprobation, if God should require such a sacrifice. Certainly no general good could arise from men entertaining the belief that God might eternally punish those submissive to his law; and if we add to these fundamental objections the exaggerated point of view in which madame Guyon placed them, and Fénélon in some degree approved, maintaining the possibility of a state of divine love dependent only on faith and a kind of mental absorption in the deity, from which prayer and meditation on divine blessings were absent, and which confounded resignation with indifference to salvation, and conjoin to this unnatural supposition, the high-flown and, we may almost say, desecrating expressions with which it was supposed right to address the Deity, we cannot help siding with Bossuet's opinions, while we blame his conduct, and admire that of Fénélon. The former carried on his cause at Rome through his nephew, the abbé Bossuet, and the abbé de Phillippeaux, both attached to the bishop de Meaux, but both tainted by all the violence of party spirit, which is always most virulent in religious disputes. The abbé de Chanterac, a relation of Fénélon, and his most intimate and confidential friend, a man of probity, gentleness, and learning, and inspired by a sincere affection and veneration for the archbishop, was the agent of the latter at Rome. At first the king and the bishop de Meaux fancied that the pope would at once condemn a book they reprobated: but Innocent XII. appointed a commission. The commissioners stated objections. Bossuet and Fénélon were called upon to deliver answers. These answers were printed; and hence arose a controversy, now forgotten, but to the highest degree exciting at the time, in which Bossuet displayed all his energy and eloquence, and Fénélon poured forth the treasures of his intellect and his heart. His