CHAPTER XVIII.

The Controversy on Quietism

 

In the midst of the excitement caused by these attempts to resuscitate the half-extinguished embers of the strife on the Five Propositions of Jansenius, another theological conflict was proceeding simultaneously, which involved circumstances of a specially painful character, though in its results it was not lastingly injurious to the Church. This was the memorable dispute on Mysticism, or Quietism.

The peculiar form of devotional religion known under these names was not, as most readers are aware, the offspring of the seventeenth century. It rests, in fact, on a substratum of truth which is coeval with man’s being, and expresses one of the elementary principles of our moral constitution. Although, in the course of ages, that truth was overlaid and obscured by successive accretions of error, it survived by its intrinsic vitality; and its manifold modifications served at once to attest its Divine origin, and to exhibit the industry of man in applying it, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, to the details of his interior life and experience. The system of the Mystics arose from the instinctive yearning of man’s soul for communion with the Infinite and the Eternal. Holy Scripture abounds with such aspirations—the Old Testament as well as the New; but that which under the Law was “a shadow of good things to come,” has been transformed by Christianity into a living and abiding reality. The Gospel responds to these longings for intercommunion between earth and heaven by that fundamental article of our faith, the perpetual presence and operation of God the Holy Ghost in the Church, the collective “body of Christ,” and in the individual souls of the regenerate. But a sublime mystery like this is not incapable of misinterpretation; and history teaches us that no Christian century has been exempt from one or another of the endless fallacies and extravagances for which it has been made the pretext. The Church has ever found it a difficult matter to distinguish and adjudicate between what may be called legitimate or orthodox Mysticism and those corrupt, degrading, or grotesque versions of it which have exposed religion to reproach and contempt. Some Mystics have been canonized as saints; others, no less deservedly, have been consigned to obloquy as pestilential heretics.

It was in the East—proverbially the fatherland of idealism and romance—that the earliest phase of error in this department of theology was more or less strongly developed. We find that in the fourth century the Church was troubled by a sect called Massalians or Euchites, who placed the whole of religion in the habit of mental prayer; alleging as their authority the Scriptural precept “That men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” They were for the most part monks of Mesopotamia and Syria; there were many of them at Antioch when St. Epiphanius wrote his Treatise against heresies, a.d. 376. They held that every man is from his birth possessed by an evil spirit or familiar demon, who can only be cast out by the practice of continual prayer. They disparaged the Sacraments, regarding them as things indifferent; they rejected manual labour; and, although professing to be perpetually engaged in prayer, they slept, we are told, the greater part of the day, and pretended that in that state they received revelations from above; on the strength of which they uttered predictions, which were proved to be false by the event. They believed, moreover, that it is possible for man to attain in this life to a condition in which he is not only like God, but equal to Him; and that those who reach this summit of perfection are altogether incapable of sin, even of thought, or of ignorance. The Massalians did not openly separate from the Church; they were condemned, however, by two Councils—one at Antioch in 391, the other at Constantinople in 426.

Delusions of the same kind were reproduced from time to time in the Oriental Church; and, as is commonly the case, the originators of error were followed by a race of disciples who advanced considerably beyond them. The Hesychasts, or Quietists of Mount Athos in the fourteenth century, seem to have been fanatics of an extreme type. They imagined that, by a process of profound contemplation, they could discern internally the light of the Divine Presence—the “glory of God”—the very same which was disclosed to the Apostles on the Mount of Transfiguration. Hence they were also called Thaborites. The soul to which this privilege was vouchsafed had no need to practise any of the external acts or rites of religion, but remained in imperturbable and ineffable repose in perfect union with God. Such, they maintained, is the Beatific Vision enjoyed by saints and angels. They admitted, however, that this supernatural Light was not of the actual essence of the Godhead, though it was uncreated and incorruptible; and that in all instances in which the Almighty has revealed himself to mankind, they have not beheld His essence, but only this mysterious Effulgence distinct from it. They called it His energy, or operation. The strange and self-contradictory notions of these Greek ascetics were vehemently combated by Barlaam, a Calabrian monk of great learning, and were as strenuously defended by Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica. Councils were held repeatedly to discuss the intricate questions thus raised concerning the Divine Essence. The principal opponents of the Thaborites belonged to the Latin communion ; and hence the affair assumed the aspect of an international quarrel between the two great sections of Christendom. The decision was in favour of the visionaries of Mount Athos, whose doctrine was declared to be part of the authoritative teaching of the Greek Church; and Barlaam was finally condemned at Constantinople in 1351.

The theory of abstract contemplation, with the extraordinary fruits supposed to be derived from it, travelled in due course into the West, and there gave birth to the far-famed school of the Mystics, of which there were various ramifications. The earliest exponent of the system in France was John Scotus Erigena, the contemporary and friend of Charles the Bald; who, by his translation of the treatises ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, and by his original works, greatly promoted the growth of that transcendental idea of personal religion which was afterwards so widely accepted in the Latin Church. Erigena sought to engraft the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria upon the dogmatic theology of Rome; an attempt which succeeded to a certain point, but which involved throughout a dangerous tendency. In insisting on the perfectibility of human nature through assimilation and union with the Deity, he lost sight of the essential distinction between matter and spirit, and lapsed insensibly into the snares of Pantheism. Erigena incurred the censures of the Holy See; but the results of his teaching were permanent. A current of thought and feeling set in from bis time, which, while in some minds it inspired much genuine devotion and exalted saintliness, betrayed itself elsewhere in outbursts of extravagant enthusiasm and deadly self-deception.

The Mystics, or Theosophists as some style them, attained a position of high renown and influence at Paris towards the close of the twelfth century. Here two of the ablest expositors of the learning of the middle age, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, initiated crowds of ardent disciples into the mysteries of the “via interna,” and of “pure love”—that marvellous quality by which the soul, sublimated and etherealized, ascends into the very presence-chamber of the King of kings; which is the bond of ecstatic and indissoluble union between the creature and the Creator. The school of St. Victor opposed itself vigorously to the dry disputatious spirit of the dialectic philosophy, and became a real and lasting power in the Gallican Church. The path thus traced was trodden by many who were to take rank eventually as the most perfect masters of spiritual science; among them are the venerated names of Thomas a Kempis, St. Bonaventura, John Tauler of Strasburg, Gerson, and St. Vincent Ferrier. It was the same burning consciousness of supernatural intuition—of immediate intercourse with the Unseen through the power of Divine love—that produced in later days a St. Theresa, a St. Jean de la Croix, an Ignatius Loyola, an Alfonso Rodriguez, a St. François de Sales, a St. Jeanne Françoise de Chantal.

But, on the other hand, it is not less true that emotional religion has been found to degenerate, in modern as well as in ancient times, into manifold forms of moral aberration. The fallacy originally engendered by Manichean Dualism has proved more or less seductive in every age. To exalt above measure the dignity and privileges of the spiritual element in man carries with it the danger of disparaging the material part of our nature; and this results in the preposterous notion that, provided the soul be absorbed in the contemplation of things Divine, the actions of the body are unimportant and indifferent. How often the Church has combated and denounced this most insidious heresy is well known to all who have a moderate acquaintance with its history. Under the various appellations of Beghards, Fratricelli, Cathari, Spirituals, Albigenses, Illuminati, Guerinets, and Quietists, the self-same delusion has been sedulously propagated in different parts of Christendom, and with the same ultimate consequences. A revival of the last-named sect, the Quietists, took place in Spain about the year 1675, when Michel de Molinos, a priest of the diocese of Saragossa, published his treatise called ‘The Spiritual Guide,’ or, in the Latin translation, ‘Manuductio spiritualis.’ His leading principle, like that of his multifarious predecessors, was that of habitual abstraction of the mind from sensible objects, with a view to gain, by passive contemplation, not only a profound realisation of God’s presence, but so perfect a communion with Him as to end in absorption into His essence. This spiritual perfection supersedes all conscious exercise of the reason, and all definite acts of penitence, faith, and devotion; it implies an utter abandonment of the active faculties to God, so that the soul rests in silent immoveable tranquillity on Him, absolutely indifferent to everything except His inward voice and operation. But while the inner man was thus concentrated upon the Invisible—while self was thus immolated and annihilated, to the extent of suppressing every movement of the natural intellect and the natural will—it was apparently forgotten that the grand principles of distinct personality and direct moral responsibility were in the same ratio obscured and disowned. The door was opened, in fact, for a renewal of the wildest disorders of ancient Gnosticism.

The danger, however, was quickly discovered, and the remedy applied with promptitude and vigour. Cardinal Caraccioli, Archbishop of Naples, in a letter to the Pope in January, 1682, laid before his Holiness the peculiar tenets and practices of the rising sect, and the scandals which he apprehended from them in his diocese; and in February, 1687, Cardinal Cibo, Prefect of the Congregation of the Holy Office, addressed a circular upon the subject to the bishops, directing them to institute the necessary enquiries with a view to judicial proceedings which had been already determined on. These measures of the Roman authorities are said to have been instigated by Louis XIV, who ordered his ambassador, Cardinal d’Estrées, to urge upon the Pope the imperative duty of crushing the new upgrowth of resuscitated heresy. Persons of the highest distinction—Cardinals, Inquisitors, nay, even Pope Innocent himself—were suspected of sharing these dangerous opinions. Molinos was arrested and imprisoned, and in due time the Inquisition condemned sixty-eight propositions from his works; a sentence which was confirmed by a Papal bull in August, 1687. Having undergone public penance, he was admitted to absolution; after which, in merciful consideration of his submission and repentance, he vas consigned for the rest of his days to the dungeons of the Holy Office. Here he died in November, 1692.

Many of the sentiments maintained by Molinos are highly reprehensible, both in themselves and in the conclusions towards which they tend by legitimate inference; but it seems doubtful whether his own mind was corrupted by them. Many writers describe him as personally a man of blameless life and sincere piety. It is asserted that his followers were betrayed into immoral excesses, and very probably some such cases occurred; though even this is strenuously denied by his apologists.

The principles of Quietism had struck root so deeply, that they were not to be soon dislodged either by the terrors of the Inquisition or by the well-merited denunciations of the Vatican. The system was irresistibly fascinating to minds of a certain order. Among those who were dazzled by it was the celebrated Jeanne Marie De la Mothe Guyon—a lady of good family, of superior talents carefully cultivated, attractive in person and manners, impulsive, energetic, ambitious of social power. Married, when scarcely more than a child, to a man of mature age and uncongenial temper, Madame Guyon’s early life had been one of disappointment and isolation. She was left a widow while still young; and was no sooner free from the matrimonial yoke, than, disdaining the prosaic sphere to which she had hitherto been confined, she soared into the regions of supernatural illumination and ideal perfection. Nor was she content to pursue this exalted track in selfish solitude. She believed that she had an extraordinary vocation; she felt herself destined to be the instrument of converting others; to become the foundress of a school or an Order, after the example of Madame de Chantal; to originate great works of charity; to be the guide, the counsellor, the oracle, of enquiring souls. Her first step in this career was taken under the auspices of the Bishop of Geneva, Mgr. d’Arenthon, who invited her to join an establishment which he was forming at Gex for the conversion of Protestant females in that district. Here Madame Guyon made the acquaintance of the Superior, a Barnabite monk named Lacombe. His zeal for Mysticism was as fervent as her own; but he was a man of feeble judgment, and altogether of inferior mental calibre. A close friendship sprung up between them; Lacombe, from having been the director, became ere long the devoted disciple of Madame Guyon; and her connexion with this brainsick fanatic was the circumstance which first exposed her to the blasts of obloquy and persecution. The Bishop of Geneva became dissatisfied with Lacombe, and removed him from the institution at Gex; upon which Madame Guyon followed him to Thonon in the Chablais, and there exerted herself in various ways as a religious instructor, giving lectures, holding discussions, visiting the sick, and encouraging people of all classes to come to her for private advice. She travelled for like purposes in the north of Italy and the south of France ; sojourning for some time at Grenoble, where her treatise called ‘Moyen court et très facile pour l’oraison’ was printed in 1685. At length, in 1686, she arrived in Paris, accompanied by Father Lacombe.

It was precisely at this moment that the scandal connected with the case of Molinos had reached its height. The French bishops were busily employed in hunting down his adherents (who were believed to be still numerous) and uprooting the remains of the proscribed heresy. Lacombe soon made himself notorious by his eccentricities; he was denounced to the Archbishop of Paris (De Harlai), and that prelate, apprehensive of an attempt to revive the worst features of Quietism, procured an order for his arrest. Through the malicious intrigues of a relation, Madame Guyon became implicated in the charges against her confessor; she was arrested in January, 1688, by virtue of a lettre de cachet, and conducted to the Convent of the Visitandines de Ste. Marie.

Strictly speaking, it was unjust to prosecute her as a pupil of Molinos; for it appears that she had no acquaintance whatever either with that individual or his writings. Their ideas, however, were essentially the same, having been drawn from the same source, namely, the works of the Spanish Mystics, particularly those of St. Theresa and St. Jean de la Croix. The resemblance between the ‘Moyen court’ and the ‘Guide Spirituelle’ was too manifest to be mistaken. Another of Madame Guyon’s works, the ‘Cantique des Cantiques, interprété selon les sens Mystiques,’ was a further development of the same theory; and in the ‘Torrents Spirituals,’ which at this time existed only in manuscript, she laid bare the most esoteric depths of the system. But the prejudice against her seems to have arisen in the first instance not so much from any critical examination of her writings as from a general imputation of religious extravagance, including some suspicion as to incorrectness of morals.

Madame Guyon’s first imprisonment lasted eight months. She regained her freedom through the influence of Madame de Maintenon, who had conceived au interest in her from the accounts given by the inmates of the convent of her edifying conduct and many engaging qualities. A reaction now ensued in her favour. Recommended by the patronage of one who, in all but the name, was Queen of France, she found herself admitted on a footing of confidential friendship into some of the highest circles of the capital. She became a frequent guest at the hotel of the Duke de Beauvilliers, governor of the Duke of Burgundy, a councillor of state, and one of the most distinguished ornaments of the Court. Here she speedily made herself the centre of attraction, and captivated all around her. The three sister Duchesses of Beauvilliers, Chevreuse, and Mortemart, (daughters of the minister Colbert), yielded to her ascendency, hung upon her words, and almost worshipped her as a messenger direct from heaven. Even the soberminded Madame de Maintenon, who was in habits of constant intercourse with this great family, was smitten with the prevailing fascination. Here, too, Madame Guyon enjoyed the society of one who was to be the most illustrious of her adherents, the Abbe de Fenelon, at that time recently appointed preceptor to the “children of France.”

Such was the impression made by Madame Guyon upon the mind of Madame de Maintenon, that after a time the latter introduced her to the “dames de St. Louis,” who presided over a semi-conventual establishment which she had founded at St. Cyr, near Versailles. These ladies received her with the utmost distinction, listened in breathless excitement to her “conferences,” and encouraged her to take a leading part in the religious instruction of the place. This injudicious proceeding led to complications which must for ever be regretted. It so happened that a cousin of Madame Guyon’s, Madame de la Maisonfort, was at the head of the educational staff at St. Cyr, and a special favourite with Madame de Maintenon. She embraced the views of her kinswoman with enthusiasm, and propagated them both among teachers and pupils. Ere long the whole house was permeated by the atmosphere of Quietism. The books and manuscripts of Madame Guyon were passed eagerly from hand to hand. The language of the Mystics became vernacular among the nuns; they were perpetually discussing the state of contemplation, passive prayer, holy indifference, self-annihilation, the trials of the saints, and disinterested love. The contagion spread to the soeurs converses, who neglected their household work in their anxiety to scan these mysteries, which were all the more attractive in proportion as they were abstruse and unintelligible.

At St. Cyr Madame Guyon frequently met with Fenelon, who was confessor to Madame de la Maisonfort, and was in fact, though not ostensibly, the ecclesiastical director of the institution. That two spirits of such an order should have been instinctively drawn towards each other is surely nothing marvellous. To some writers it seems unaccountable that one in the position and with the intellectual superiority of Fenelon should have been accessible to the spells of a woman who, however talented and accomplished, had shown herself strangely deficient in judgment, and was looked upon in many quarters as a deluded visionary. They have remarked, with a view to explain it, that Fenelon, with all his erudition, all his eloquence, all his refinement, all his spirituality, was not thoroughly trained in theological science; that he lacked precision of thought; that he was rather an orator than a philosopher; rather an idealist than a logician; rather persuasive than profound. Without denying that there is justice in this criticism, it is important that we should not exaggerate the amount of influence obtained by Madame  Guyon over Fenelon. Their relations have been misrepresented; as if hers had been the governing mind, while he was little more than an apt scholar; she the heaven-sent guide, and he the submissive disseminator of her teaching. This is a false colouring of the case. No one who approached Madame Guyon could be insensible to the peculiar charm of her personal character; and Fenelon appreciated it equally with others. Moreover, the natural bias of his mind, and the direction of bis studies from his youth up, predisposed him to sympathize with her views of experimental religion; but these very circumstances qualified him, in an eminent degree, to judge of their soundness and truth. Though not, perhaps, a consummate master of theology in its widest range, Fenelon was deeply versed in one important branch of it, namely, the theology of the Mystics; and he was therefore better able than most others to decide how far Madame Guyon was in accord with those whom the Church had authorized to speak on such matters in her name, and how far she was the dupe of her own overwrought feelings and exuberant imagination. That his admiration of her genius, and his predilection for the characteristic features of Mysticism, did not prevent him from discriminating between the true and the false, the laudable and the questionable, both in her writings and her conduct, is a fact of which we have abundant evidence. In his ‘Reponse a la Relation sur le Quietisme,’ and in his correspondence with Madame de Maintenon and M. Tronson, he gives a transparently candid account of the rise and progress of his acquaintance with Madame Guyon, and explains his mature view of her case in all its bearings. At first, he says, he was prejudiced against her, from what he had heard reported about her travels. These impressions were dispelled by the perusal of a letter from the Bishop of Geneva; that prelate declared that he esteemed and honoured Madame Guyon infinitely; that he could not in conscience speak otherwise than in the highest terms of her piety and morals; and that he had but one fault to find with her, namely, that she sought to introduce her own system into all the religious houses of the diocese, irrespectively of the rules and statutes of their foundation. This, observes Fenelon, was merely the indiscreet zeal of a woman who was too anxious to communicate to others things winch she deemed salutary and edifying.

“I never had any natural inclination,” he writes again, “either towards her person or her writings. I never remarked anything extraordinary about her, which might tend to prepossess me in her favour. While in the perfect enjoyment of her liberty, she explained to me her religious experience, and all her sentiments. There is no need to discuss her peculiar language, which I do not defend, and which is of no great consequence in a woman, provided the meaning be Catholic. She is naturally prone to exaggeration, and incautious in her mode of speaking. She is even apt to place too much confidence in those who question her. I count for nothing her pretended prophecies and revelations; and I should have but a poor opinion of her if I thought that she esteemed them very highly. A person who is devoted to God may mention incidentally something which has passed through her mind, without forming any positive judgment upon it, or wishing that others should consider it seriously. It may he an impression from God, for His gifts are inexhaustible; but it may also be a baseless imagination. The principle of loving God exclusively for His own sake, absolutely renouncing all self-interest, is a principle of pure faith, which has no sort of connection with miracles and visions. No man can be more circumspect or dispassionate than I am on that point.”

In another letter he says, “I saw Madame Guyon often, as all the world knows; I esteemed her, and I allowed her to enjoy the esteem of persons of high eminence, whose reputation is dear to the Church, and who had confidence in me. It was impossible that I should be ignorant of her writings. Although I did not examine them all completely, I became acquainted with them sufficiently to feel in doubt about her, and to question her with the greatest strictness. I repeatedly made her explain to me what she thought upon the topics in agitation. I demanded of her the precise value of each of the terms of that mystical phraseology which she employed in her writings. I ascertained distinctly, on each occasion, that she understood them in a sense perfectly innocent and perfectly Catholic... Let others, who know nothing of Madame Guyon but her writings, interpret them, if they please, with rigour; I do not interfere; I do not defend or excuse either her person or her writings. But, for my own part, I am bound in equity to judge of the meaning of her writings by her sentiments, with which I am intimately acquainted, rather than to pronounce upon her opinions from the literal sense of her expressions—a sense which she never meant them to convey.”

These testimonies prove that Fenelon’s approbation of Madame Guyon was, from the first, reserved and qualified. He regarded her as one who had made great advances in the spiritual life, and as a dutiful daughter of the Church in intention and principle; but he was fully alive to her failings in the way of unmeasured language, though he thought her entitled to considerable indulgence even on that score; first by reason of her sterling integrity, and secondly by reason of her sex. It must be remembered, also, that Fenelon had seen only the printed works of Madame Guyon, and knew nothing whatever of her manuscript productions—the ‘Torrents,’ the ‘Autobiography,’ the ‘Exposition of the Apocalypse,’ and others;—the latter of which were far more objectionable than the former, both in point of rhapsodical style, and as to heterodox specu­lation in doctrine. In a word, the relations of Fenelon to Madame Guyon were those of one self-reliant and independent mind to another. He was drawn towards her by congeniality of natural taste, and by a sympathetic interest in the deepest and most inscrutable mysteries of personal religion; but it were a mistake to suppose that he blindly surrendered his judgment to hers, or that he ever exchanged the dignity of his office as a priest for the character of a proselyte or a disciple.

Nevertheless it was natural, and perhaps inevitable, that as soon as the name of Madame Guyon became notorious in society, and she was known to have been the cause of serious discord and commotion at St. Cyr, a certain amount of suspicion should fall upon Fénélon, who was supposed, and with reason, to be her most influential supporter in that institution. Symptoms of the coming storm appeared in 1693. The Bishop of Chartres, Godet-Desmarais, in whose diocese St. Cyr was at that time situated, viewed with alarm the morbid tone of sentiment which had invaded the sisterhood, and felt it his duty, both as bishop of the diocese and as the spiritual adviser of Madame de Maintenon, to warn her against what he deemed an evil of no common magnitude. There is no need to take it for granted, with some writers, that he was actuated in this step by jealousy of Fenelon. The question of Mysticism (particularly the deve­lopment of it then prevalent) was one upon which conscientious Churchmen might take opposite sides without any infusion of unworthy feeling, simply from the incentive of zeal for truth, or cogent sense of duty. Bishop Godet held Fenelon in sincere regard. For bis sake he long delayed to impart his misgivings to Madame de Maintenon ; and, when he did so, he scrupulously avoided saying anything which could implicate his friend in the errors which he denounced. Madame de Maintenon was slow to be convinced. She was familiar with the ‘Moyen court’ of Madame Guyon (which had been recommended to her by Fenelon), and had even read some part of it to the king; but Louis, who was “not sufficiently advanced in piety to relish such a method of perfection,” had dismissed it as dreamy and fantastical. The monitions of her confessor opened her eyes to the danger; yet, from her great esteem for Fenelon, she refrained from moving in the affair until she had taken the opinions of other divines of the highest standing. She con­sulted Bossuet, de Noailles, Bourdaloue, Brisacier, Joly the superior of St. Lazare, and Tronson, under whom Fenelon had studied at the Seminary of St. Sulpice. Their verdict was unanimous against Madame Guyon and her system; and Madame de Maintenon hesitated no longer. She notified to Madame Guyon that her visits would not be acceptable for the future at St. Cyr. The sisters were forbidden to read her books; her manuscripts, together with certain papers written by Fenelon, were withdrawn from circulation; and it was hoped that by these vigorous measures order and tranquillity would soon be re-established. The Bishop of Chartres seemed satisfied with this submission to his pastoral authority; and there was no disposition to proceed further against Madame Guyon, could she have been content to take her dismissal quietly, and to remain in silence. But, unfortunately, she now appealed to the arbitration of Bossuet; who, with his masculine straightforward­ness and logical rigidity of mind, was of all men the least likely to judge her leniently. She was determined to this step by the advice of Fenelon, who induced her to submit to the Bishop of Meaux not only her published works, but also her manuscript effusions, which she had never communicated even to himself. Bossuet spent several months in perusing them, and was shocked to find that they abounded with preposterous absurdities, be­tokening a mind in a state of chronic disorder. Some of her pretensions were precisely those of the Spiritualists of our own times. She claimed to be “clairvoyante;” she saw into the innermost depths of souls; and not only so, but she possessed “ a miraculous authority both over the bodies and the minds of those whom the Lord had given to her, so that their internal condition seemed to be wholly in. her hands.” She was a reservoir of superabundant grace, the overflowings of which she dispensed, by a somewhat materialistic process, to those who were placed in personal contact with her. It was in this way that she obtained relief when half-suffocated by the redundance of her spiritual gifts. She spoke of herself as the appointed instrument of God’s most marvellous operations; as invested with a prophetical, or rather an Apostolical, mission; as the minister of a new dispensation. “That which I bind shall be bound, and that which I loose shall be loosed ; I am that stone fixed by the holy Cross, rejected by the master-builders.” In her ‘Commentary on the Apocalypse’ she indulged in flights of fancy of an equally exorbitant kind.

However startled and scandalized, Bossuet seems to have treated Madame Guyon on this occasion with much forbearance. He wrote letters to her replete with weighty reasoning and fatherly counsel. He held a lengthened interview with her, in which he earnestly laboured to dispel her illusions, combating more especially her strange notion that to implore anything of God (for instance, the pardon of our sins) is an act of self­interest, incompatible with “pure love” and entire conformity with the Divine will. He was unable to disabuse her of this error; but she made repeated promises of submission to his instructions, and engaged to remain for a time in retirement, according to his advice.

Bossuet next visited Fenelon, with whom he was still on terms of intimacy, and strove to open his eyes to Madame Guyon’s hallucinations, by laying before him extracts from those parts of her writings which he had never before seen. He expected that his friend’s opinion of these extracts would have agreed altogether with his own; but instead of this he was met with extenuations, qualifications, and evasions; and in the end he went his way without success, mourning over the eclipse of such a noble mind.

The march of events, however, had already convinced Fenelon of the necessity of caution. After 1693 his communications with Madame Guyon were extremely rare. He resigned the office of confessor to Madame de la Maisonfort. He requested that the letters of spiritual counsel which he had written for the benefit of certain inmates of St. Cyr might be suppressed; and he explained his principles at length to Madame de Maintenon, guarding himself against unwarrantable inferences, defending himself from the charge of innovation, and professing all reverent submission to the tradition of the Church. He was evidently conscious that he had become an object of mistrust; and it was soon apparent that his favour and position at court were seriously in jeopardy.

Still, if Madame Guyon could have acquiesced in the advice which she had voluntarily solicited, and remained in patient seclusion, these unfavourable impressions would probably have died away without leaving injurious results. But in 1694 her restlessness returned; and she petitioned the king, through Madame de Maintenon, for a commission, half clerical and half lay, to report, not only on the soundness of her writings, but on the truth of rumours which she alleged to be current against her moral character. As to the lay commissioners this request was refused, since the vague calumnies referred to were credited by none; but three ecclesiastics were named to undertake the theological enquiry—Bossuet, De Noailles, and Tronson; and they proceeded to hold a series of conferences, extending over many months, at a country-house at Issy, belonging to Tronson as Superior of the congregation of St. Sulpice. These conferences were conducted in strict secrecy. Even the Archbishop of Paris, to whose jurisdiction as diocesan the affair properly belonged, was not consulted. He took offence in consequence, and showed his feelings by forestalling, in a pastoral ordonnance of October 16, 1694, the judgment of the commissioners on the matter in hand. He condemned a treatise on Mental Prayer by Father Lacombe, and the two principal works of Madame Guyon, as containing false and pernicious doctrine, long since censured by the Councils of Vienne and Trent; and pointed out that they were essentially opposed to Christianity, by encouraging con­tempt for external duties and observances, by disparaging mortification and rules of asceticism, by prescribing indifference to those means which are the best calculated to promote holiness and salvation, and by fostering the mistaken persuasion that God may be possessed even in this life as He is in Himself, without any intermediate instruments.* Bossuet and his col­leagues took little notice of this manifesto of their metropolitan. They pursued their task, observing that it was not their inten­tion to act in the way of episcopal jurisdiction, but simply to lay down doctrinal conclusions for the guidance and satisfaction of those who had shown confidence in them by naming them to compose the commission.

But what was the part reserved for Fenelon in an investigation which concerned him so nearly, and which, in respect of deep knowledge of the questions in debate, he was more competent to direct than any one of the triumvirate at Issy? His name was excluded from the Commission; partly because there was too much reason to regard him as a partisan of Madame Guyon, and partly because his friends (among whom Bossuet must still be reckoned) wished to prevent his having the opportunity of compromising himself further at this critical moment. The authority of Bossuet was paramount in the Commission; and indeed the spirit of ecclesiastical dictatorship, which by this time had become habitual to him, was but too manifest throughout the proceedings. Conscious, however, that he had but a slight acquaintance with mystical theology, he applied to Fenelon to furnish him with extracts from ancient and modern sources to assist the Commissioners in forming their conclusions, especially with regard to the cardinal point at issue, that of the disinterested love of God. Fenelon accordingly collected a catena of authorities on this subject from Mystics of the highest repute, from St. Clement of Alexandria down to St. Francois de Sales, which he forwarded to Bossuet, together with copious comments of his own, for the purpose of proving that writers of this peculiar stamp are not always to be understood literally; that exaggeration of style is one of their characteristic features, and that after making all due allowance on that score, the result would be more than amply sufficient to establish the doctrine of pure love, and to satisfy all those who, while zealous for true Mysticism, were equally alive to the dangers of illusion. This humble office Fenelon fulfilled with all his native sincerity and simplicity; expressing himself at the same time in terms of almost abject deference to the judgment of Bossuet, and declaring that, whatever might be the ultimate decision, his own suffrage could not fail to conform to it. “Be under no anxiety about me,” he writes; “I am in your hands like a little child. You are kind enough to say you desire that we should be of one mind; for my part I am ready to go further, and to say that we are already agreed beforehand, in whatever sense you may decide. Even if what I have read should seem to me more clear than that two and two make four, I should consider it less clear than my obligation to distrust my own understanding, and to prefer to it that of a prelate like yourself. Do not take this for a mere compliment; it is a serious and literal truth.” f Bossuet having apparently hinted some doubts as to the orthodoxy of his views, Fenelon protests that he only desires to be instructed; that he is ready to retract and abandon the slightest error, and that even if the judgment of his superior should be mistaken, he should obey with the utmost docility and confidence, from the principle of supreme devotedness to the guidance of the Church. These assurances from a friend to whom he was still attached, though he believed him to be treading on dangerous ground, had doubtless much weight with Bossuet; nor could lie refuse to admit, on the strength of the evidence adduced by Fenelon, that the consensus in favour of certain maxims to which he was per­sonally disinclined was more emphatic than he had hitherto imagined. Hence he was led to hope that existing differences might in time disappear, and that he might be the means, on the one hand, of saving the reputation of his friend, and on the other of establishing disputed truths on a firmer foundation, to the edification of the Church.

Under these circumstances, the reports which were beginning to prevail to the discredit of Fenelon were for a time checked and silenced; and, on the recommendation of Madame de Maintenon, he was nominated to the archiepiscopal see of Cambrai in the spring of 1695.

No sooner was he designated to the highest order of the ministry, than it became plain that he could no longer be confined to the subordinate place which he had hitherto occupied with regard to the deliberations at Issy. He was admitted, therefore, ostensibly to the conferences on a footing of equality with the other commissioners; but in point of fact their labours were already terminated; and almost immediately afterwards the famous ‘ Articles of Issy were presented to Fenelon for signature, though he had no share in drawing them up. This unceremonious treatment did not prevent him from expressing his readiness to accept the Articles, provided certain alterations and additions were adopted, which he specified. His suggestions were agreed to, and the 12tb, 13th, 33rd, and 34th articles were inserted in order to meet his views. Upon this he declared that he was “willing to sign them with his blood.” No doubt he spoke sincerely; he regarded the Articles as a correct exposition of the authorised doctrine, so far as they went, on the truths in question, and as a test whereby true Mysticism might be discriminated from the false, the sound from the corrupt and dangerous. One of them, the 33rd, contains a statement which, we may be perfectly sure, owed its admission to the personal solicitation of Fenelon. It runs thus:—“It is also allowable to encourage, in truly pious and humble souls, a submission and consent to the will of God, even if, by an entirely false supposition, it should please Him to keep them in eternal torments instead of that eternal blessedness which He has promised to the righteous; without depriving them, notwithstanding, of His grace and His love. This is an act of perfect abandonment, and of pure love practised by the saints; and by souls truly perfect it may be usefully practised with the special grace of God; without detracting at the same time from the obligation of other acts of piety which we have already defined as essential to Christianity.” The Bishop of Mirepoix wrote to Bossuet to express his surprise that he should have assented to this article, which appeared to sanction one of the most unwarrantable speculations of the Mystics.* Bossuet replied that he had well reflected on it, and that he found the sentiment in the works of so many approved authors (among whom he instances St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, St. Isidore of Damietta, St. Theresa, and St. François de Sales), that he thought it was not possible to call it in question. After all, he says, it was only affirming, in other words, that the love of God is in itself far more desirable than all imaginable torments are revolting to our nature.

It would appear, then, that the Articles of Issy were conceived in a spirit of forbearance and mutual concession; and as such, might well be regarded as a treaty of pacification. They were signed by the commissioners and by Fenelon on the 10th of March, 1695; and there is reason to believe that this act was understood on all hands as the seal of a cordial reconciliation.

The fate of Madame Guyon remained to be determined. She had voluntarily placed herself, with Bossuet’s consent, in a convent at Meaux, during the examination of her writings, in order to be completely under his eye and control. Here her conduct was in every respect commendable; the Superior and sisterhood attested that they had been edified by her perfect regularity, sincerity, humility, gentleness, and patience, and by her deep devotion towards the mysteries of the Catholic Faith. During this time she underwent more than one examination before the commissioners, at which Bossuet is said to have treated her with some severity. When the Conferences terminated, that prelate dictated to her an act of submission, by which she accepted the thirty-four Articles, and condemned with heart and mouth everything contrary to them, together with all other errors, whether in her own works or elsewhere. She repudiated all writings attributed to her, with the exception of the ‘Moyen court’ and the ‘Cantique des Cantiques,’ renouncing these likewise except in so far as they agreed with the Catholic and Apostolic Faith, “from which she had never intentionally swerved for a single instant.” She assented to the condemnation of her books pronounced by the Bishops of Meaux and Châlons in their pastoral ordonnances. Lastly, she engaged to obey the injunctions of the Bishop of Meaux, which forbade her for the future to write books, to teach dogmatically in the Church, or to undertake in any shape the guidance of souls; professing her desire to live henceforth in entire separation from the world, and in the practice of “a hidden life with Jesus Christ.” In a further statement, appended to Bossuet’s pastoral letter, Madame Guyon protested a second time “ that she had never intended to advance anything at variance with the doctrine and spirit of the Catholic and Roman Church, to which she had ever been obedient and submissive, and would so continue, with God’s help, to the last hour of her life.”

Upon the faith of these declarations, which, as we have said, were prescribed by Bossuet himself, that prelate delivered to Madame Guyon, on her quitting his diocese, a certificate, expressed as follows:—“We, Bishop of Meaux, certify to all whom it may concern, that, in consequence of declarations of submission signed by Madame Guyon, and of the prohibition which she has accepted to write, teach, or dogmatize in the Church, or to circulate her works in print or manuscript, or to engage in any way in the guidance of souls; having regard also to the testimonies which have been made to us in her favour during the six months which she has passed in the convent of St. Mary in our diocese, we continue to be satisfied with her conduct, and have confirmed her in that use of the Holy Sacraments in which we found her. We declare, moreover, that she has always expressed herself in our presence as detesting the abominations of Molinos, and others elsewhere condemned, in which it does not appear to us that she was ever implicated; and we did not intend to include her in the mention made of those errors in our ordonnance of April 16, 1695. Given at Meaux on the 1st of July, 1695.”

It cannot be denied that this document has in great measure the air of a justification of Madame Guyon, with reference both to her principles and her conduct. It proceeds upon the fact that she had candidly acknowledged and renounced her errors; it attests the purity of her morals and her many Christian virtues, and it acquits her of all complicity in the excesses of Molinos and other apostles of Quietism. Fenelon, therefore, had good reason to testify his amazement, on a subsequent occasion, that such a voucher should have been given to her, if Bossuet conscientiously believed her to be guilty of the grave delinquencies which he afterwards laid to her charge. If the Bishop of Meaux, who had scrutinized the whole of her writings, and had subjected her to searching examinations viva voce, could excuse her on the ground that her intentions were harmless and that she had always been orthodox at heart, why might not a similar line of vindication be open to the Archbishop of Cambrai, who knew only those of her publications which were admitted to be the least worthy of censure?

For the time, however, all differences seemed at an end. Bossuet expressed a strong desire to officiate at the consecration of Fenelon ; and persisted in seeking an arrangement to that effect, in spite of certain impediments which at first seemed likely to prevent it. The ceremony was to take place at St. Cyr, in the diocese of the Bishop of Chartres, and the question arose whether that prelate could yield precedence to another, on an occasion when by his office he would be naturally entitled to preside. High authorities pronounced in the negative; but Bossuet cited ancient Councils to prove that a diocesan bishop may, even within his own jurisdiction, give way to his senior in the episcopate, when both belong to the same province; and although there were other points on which difficulties were suggested, these were overruled, and the matter was finally settled according to his wishes. Fenelon was consecrated Arch­bishop of Cambrai in the chapel of St. Cyr on the 10th of June, 1695. Bossuet was the consecrating prelate; the Bishop of Châlons (De Noailles) acted as first assistant; and the third place was filled by the Bishop of Amiens, who was substituted for the Bishop of Chartres.

But notwithstanding this demonstration of restored harmony, there still lurked in the mind of Bossuet a residuum of doubt as to the soundness of Fenelon with regard to those great principles of Christian ethics which he believed to be imperilled by the Quietism of the day. He had not been perfectly satisfied with his conduct at the time of the signing of the Articles. Fenelon had promised absolute submission; yet when the Articles were tendered to him he had hesitated and demurred, proposed alterations, stipulated for additions. His subscription was looked upon as a recantation in disguise, and with some justice; but Bossuet was not contented with this qualified success. He was seriously alarmed at the progress of the fanatical notions which were identified with Madame Guyon, and which seemed to spread more and more widely in proportion to the efforts made to repress them. He knew that Fenelon was supposed, though perhaps unjustly, to favour these errors, and he felt that the Church was likely to derive damage rather than profit from bis elevation to one of its highest dignities, unless the propagators of false doctrine were precluded, once for all, from sheltering themselves under the sanction of his name. He resolved, therefore, to give him a fresh opportunity of renouncing, distinctly and positively, the “evil communications” which had exposed him to so much sinister criticism; and for this purpose he begged him to signify his approval of a new work in which he was engaged in refutation of the false Mystics. This was his famous ‘Instruction sur les états d’oraison.’

In his pastoral letter of April 1695, Bossuet had promised to put forth a more ample exposition both of the truths to be embraced and of the errors to be shunned, with regard to the obscure points of theology then so vehemently debated. To this work he applied himself with his characteristic energy, and was employed upon it during the latter half of 1695 and part of the following year. It contains a minute philosophical analysis of the state of the soul in the exercise of devotion, and especially in the so-called “passive prayer.” The author shows, from the writings of approved mystics, that, while they recognize a condition in which the soul is so absorbed in the contemplation of God that conscious ratiocination and other mental acts are for the time excluded, yet this does not imply a total or permanent, but only a temporary, suspension of the ordinary faculties. The suppression of “discursive acts” is limited to the duration of the passive prayer; instead of which, the modern mystics maintained that this “passivity” was a fixed condition, upon which they entered by an “acte perpetuel,” or “universel,” which had no need to be repeated; thus doing away with the duty of practising devotion by any conscious and deliberate movement of the will. Again, he combats the mischievous notion that explicit acts of faith are unnecessary for those who pursue this novel road to perfection; that the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation, the Divine attributes, the articles of the Creed, the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, are no longer proper objects of direct contemplation to the soul which is already in union with the very essence of the Godhead.* It was pretended that our Lord’s humanity need not, and cannot, be kept distinctly in view in such a state, because it is merged in his Divine Personality. “He who thinks of God,” says Molinos, “thinks of Jesus Christ;” and he adds that “no one continues to make use of the means when once he has obtained the end.” Another point attacked in this treatise with conclusive force is the abuse of the doctrine of self-abandonment and self-annihilation. The “holy indifference” vaunted by Quietists was such that the soul experienced no impulsion either on the side of enjoyment or of privation; although its love of God was immeasurable, it nevertheless had no desire of Paradise, either for itself or others; no solicitude for the success of anything done either for its own salvation or that of its neighbour. It cannot be distressed either by its own perdition or by that of any other creature. The soul must will nothing except what God himself has willed from all eternity. Lastly, Bossuet demolishes the false position that the state of “passive contemplation” is essential in all cases to Christiau perfection. He points out that, according to the great masters of theology, this state does not belong to justifying grace,—“gratia gratum faciens,”—but, like the gifts of prophecy, tongues, or miracles, to extraordinary grace,—“gratia gratis data;” otherwise it would follow that some of the most admirable saints were but imperfect and inexperienced in the ways of God; for to St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom, St. Bernard,—whom the Church honours as the brightest examples of spirituality,— this perpetual state of contemplation, with its “mystical incapacities,” was utterly unknown. St. Theresa, speaking of these peculiar conditions of prayer—the prayer of “quietude,” of “union,” and the like,—says that superiority of merit does not depend upon the possession of these gifts, inasmuch as there are many saintly persons who have never received them, and that many have received them who have never become saintly; to which she adds that such gifts may be highly profit­able towards advancement in virtue, but that he who acquires them by his labour is far more meritorious. The same doctrine is inculcated by St. François de Sales, who, though he had no personal experience of the special grace in question, attained incontestably to the loftiest degrees of the pure love of God.

Having completed this elaborate justification of the Articles of Issy, Bossuet sent it in manuscript to the Archbishop of Cambrai, taking it for granted, apparently, that he would not hesitate to sanction it with his approval, in common with the Bishop of Châlons (now advanced to the See of Paris) and the Bishop of Chartres. He felt that he had a right to expect this; first, because Fenelon had subscribed the Articles, upon which the ‘Instruction’ was only an extended and methodical commentary; and next, because he had solemnly, repeatedly, and with every demonstration of sincerity, declared his resolution to abide by the judgment of Bossuet and his colleagues upon the matters in debate. To his great surprise, however, the Archbishop declined to approve the work, and returned it after a very hasty examination,! through the Due de Chevreuse, whom he commissioned to explain his reasons. The ground of refusal was that the ‘Instruction’ was a tissue of personal attacks upon Madame Guyon. With regard to fundamental doctrine, he declared that he could not perceive a shadow of discrepancy between himself and Bossuet; but he could not in conscience assent to such a rigorous condemnation of a person for whom he had entertained high esteem, and whom he believed (as, indeed, her accuser himself had formerly acknowledged) to be innocent of any evil intent.

The whole force of this objection evidently turns upon the meaning of the phrase “personal attacks.” It was impossible for Bossuet, in laying bare the nature of a system which he deemed to be fraught with peril to religion and to society, to avoid alluding to the circumstances which had led to the inquiry; and among these he could not but refer to the works which had been published to the world by Madame Guyon, as well as to those of Molinos, Malaval, and other extreme mystics, which had latterly excited so much attention. These works constituted the overt facts which had occasioned the conferences of Issy; and it was in refutation of the errors therein propounded that the Commissioners had drawn up their XXXIV. Articles, to which Fenelon, in concert with them, had affixed his signature. If Fenelon was not prepared to condemn Madame Guyon,  he ought never to have signed those articles; and the truth is, that he placed himself in a false position by so doing. Having signed them, he became identified with the opponents of a system of which Madame Guyon had been one of the most enthusiastic advocates; and it is clear that he could not abruptly dissociate himself from their subsequent proceedings without laying himself open to the charge of inconsistency. Was there anything in Bossuet’s treatment of the controversy in his ‘Instruction’ that exonerated the Archbishop from adhering to the course to which his previous acts had pledged him? It would be difficult to maintain the affirmative. Bossuet had made frequent quotations, indeed, from the ‘Moyen court’ and the ‘Cantique des Cantiques,’ for the purpose of exposing what he considered to deserve censure in their principles and tendencies; but he cannot be said to have indulged in offensive imputations against the author. Nothing is spared in the way of acute and telling criticism of the mistaken theory upon which these books are based; but there is no attempt to fasten upon Madame Guyon the charge either of culpable motives or of discreditable conduct. To affirm, then, that he had represented her as a prodigy of wickedness, as the author of a “ monstrous system which, under the pretence of spirituality, subverted the Divine law, established fanaticism and impurity, confounded the distinctions between virtue and vice, destroyed all social subordination, and sanctioned every species of hypocrisy and falsehood—such assertions savoured strongly (to say the least) of misapprehension and exaggeration.

Moreover, it must not be concealed that the Archbishop’s personal estimate of Madame Guyon was in no small degree self-contradictory. At one moment he spoke of her as a poor ignorant woman, whose books he would not attempt to defend directly or indirectly, since he considered them censurable in their true and literal sense; at another, when asked to join his episcopal brethren in denouncing the doctrine of those books, he replied that to do so would be to violate his conscience, and to “insult without cause a person whom he has revered as a saint,” and from whose character and example he has derived “infinite edification.” “I am not obliged,” he cries, “to censure all the bad books which appear, particularly those which are absolutely unknown in my own diocese. Such a censure could not be demanded of me except for the purpose of removing suspicions which may have arisen as to my opinions; but I have other and more natural means of dispelling such suspicions, without going out of my way to torment a poor woman against whom so many others have already fulminated, and with whom I have been on terms of friendship. Nor is it expedient that I should make any distinct declaration against her writings; for the public would not fail to conclude that it was a kind of abjuration which had been extorted from me. Such a personal censure would not be required of me even by the Inquisition; and I will never consent to it unless out of obedience to the Church, whenever she may think fit to draw up a Formulary on the subject, as was done in the case of the Jansenists.”

But it is not difficult to read “between the lines” of Fenelon’s correspondence, especially of his letters to Bossuet, that there were secret reasons which prompted his conduct at this moment of embarrassment, besides those which he openly assigned. He had been wounded to the quick by fresh measures of inexcusable rigour which had been taken against Madame Guyon. That unfortunate person had been arrested for the second time, and was committed prisoner to Vincennes in December 1695. Orders were given to treat her well, but at the same time not to permit her to hold communication with any human being, either personally or by letter. It was soon known that this act of cruelty had been instigated by Bossuet. “It was a thunder­stroke,” says St. Simon, “for M. de Cambrai and his friends, and for the little flock.” Not the slightest intimation had been vouchsafed to any one of them beforehand ; and the Archbishop must have felt from that moment that his place in Madame de Maintenon’s favour, and his general prospects of worldly prosperity, were dangerously compromised.

Madame Guyon, after her departure from the convent at Meaux, had failed to fulfil the engagements into which she had entered with Bossuet. Instead of proceeding, according to her promise, to a watering-place in the country, she returned clandestinely to Paris, and concealed herself in a lodging in the Hue St. Antoine, deceiving Bossuet as to her place of abode by giving him a false address. She continued to see her friends, to disseminate her doctrines, and to attract fresh proselytes. She was even indiscreet enough to exhibit the certificate of the Bishop of Meaux, as a proof that her orthodoxy was guaranteed by that all-powerful prelate. This provoked Bossuet; and he persuaded Madame de Maintenon, and through her the king, that it was not safe to allow such an accomplished propagandist to remain at liberty. Such was his ascendency at this period, that although Madame de Maintenon, Archbishop de Noailles, and even Louis himself, would have preferred a gentler treatment, his advice prevailed, that she should be immured in a State prison.

Madame Guyon was by no means so tractable on this occasion as before. She was examined repeatedly; but, far from betraying fear or promising submission, she defended herself with remarkable spirit and pertinacity. With a view to induce her to recant, Fenelon was appealed to with increased urgency to condemn her doctrine publicly; but this course, as we have seen, he resolutely rejected. At length, in the hope of being released from confinement, she consented to sign a form of general submission to her diocesan, the Archbishop of Paris. This document was drawn up by Fenelon, and approved by M. Tronson; and the prisoner, after signing it, was transferred from Vincennes to a house at Vaugirard, where she enjoyed comparative comfort. She was, however, strictly watched and guarded.

The effect of these events was to place Fenelon more and more prominently before the eyes of the world as the patron of an odious sect, and especially as the indulgent apologist of Madame Guyon. The public could not appreciate his over-refined distinctions between condemning her doctrines and attacking her person; between the positive inculcation of error and mere venial slips of hyperbolical language. He had allowed himself to be drawn into an equivocal position; and in spite of all the resources of rhetoric and special pleading, it was inevitable that a certain amount of opprobrium should henceforth attach to his name.

On the other hand, he gained admiration from his contemporaries, and posterity has amply confirmed their verdict, for his generous adherence to a friend whom he believed to be the victim of injustice, even at the risk of personal reputation and worldly success. From this time must be dated his estrangement from Bossuet;—an estrangement which was too soon to be converted into active antagonism.

Fenelon was not content with rejecting the imperious demands of the Bishop of Meaux in a case in which he considered (though perhaps over-scrupulously) that his own honour was at stake. He felt it necessary to put forth, in self-justification, a statement of his views as to the true meaning of the Articles of Issy. Such was his object in undertaking the memorable treatise entitled ‘Explication des maximes des saints sur la vie interieure.’ His plan was to arrange, in separate paragraphs, first those canons of mystical theology which had been accredited as orthodox, and secondly the false deductions, misinterpretations, and abuses which had served to bring Mysticism into suspicion and contempt in modern times. Nothing could have been better devised, had the subject been one upon which no previous action had been taken by those in authority; but under existing circumstances it only served to provoke dissension in the episcopate, and to make confusion worse confounded. Fenelon’s first care was to submit his composition, with unre­served frankness, to the judgment of the Archbishop of Paris (De Noailles) and M. Tronson, as two of the commissioners who had framed the Articles of Issy. The Archbishop scrutinized it throughout, with the assistance of his confidential theologian M. Beaufort; he suggested certain alterations, which were immediately adopted by the author in his presence; and in the end he pronounced the book “correct and useful,” adding that Fenelon’s only fault in his eyes was that of being “ too docile.” He recommended, however, that the opinion of some other professed theologian should be taken; and Fenelon accordingly consulted the Abbé Pirot, one of the most eminent doctors of the Sorbonne, and well-known to be a personal friend of Bossuet. That experienced critic, after an attentive perusal, declared that the ‘Explication’ was “a golden book.”

But the intended publication was kept a profound secret from Bossuet; and this was a fatal mistake. Bossuet had been President of the Commission at Issy. With what propriety could a detailed commentary on the acts of that Commission be published by one who had taken part in them, without previous communication with him? Fenelon pleaded that it was impossible for him to ask Bossuet to sanction his forthcoming work, when he had just refused to approve that prelate’s ‘Instruction.’ But the misfortune was, that he should ever have allowed himself to be placed in this invidious position. One false step entails another. Was it wise to separate himself, in a transaction so important, from such distinguished colleagues in the episcopate, to whose judgment he professed the highest possible deference? His excuse was, that the ‘Instruction’ was a libellous attack on Madame Guyon. But if so, why did he not press the objection to the work at the time he was asked to approve it? We have the assurance of Bossuet himself that, had he done so, anything in the way of reasonable alteration or suppression would have been agreed to in order to give him satisfaction. Was this, again, the sole motive of his refusal ? Was there not, besides, an unwillingness, when it came to the point, to join in a positive condemnation of Madame Guyon’s opinions; although, in private conversation and correspondence, he had often declared that he by no means agreed with them? Had he taken a more consis­tent course, the way would have been opened, in all probability, for explanations and concessions on the part of those who differed from him, which would have spared the Church the scandal of the melancholy scenes which followed.

As it was, the “eagle of Meaux” naturally resented the attempt to ignore him by re-opening, without his knowledge or consent, a controversy which he regarded as already terminated. Although Fenelon had not informed him of his purpose, he was perfectly well aware of it. “I hear,” he writes to the Abbé de Maulevrier, “that M. de Cambrai is writing on spirituality. I feel sure that this proceeding will cause great scandal; first, because after what he obliged me to say of his refusal to approve my book, he will never be willing to condemn Madame Guyon’s writings, and this would be to introduce a new distinction between the ‘ droit ’ and the ‘ fait,’ implying that M. de Paris and 1 condemned that lady without understanding her real meaning. I could not in conscience tolerate this; and shall feel compelled to point out that the books which he seeks to support contain a doctrine subversive of true piety. Secondly, I perceive, from M. de Cambrai’s letters and speeches, that he will strive to establish the possibility of perpetual passivity;— an idea leading to illusions which are past endurance. I am assured that he will leave in doubt and obscurity articles upon which it is indispensably necessary, at the present conjuncture, that he should explain himself. And if this be so, how can I be excused from making known to the whole Church the great danger of such dissimulation ? It is clear that, since there has been no mutual concert among us as to what ought to be said, the object is to show that M. de Paris and I were wrong in condemning Madame Guyon; which I would acknowledge without hesitation if it were true. I am reduced to this dilemma; either it is intended to set forth the same doctrine which I have taught, or it is not. If it be the same, the unity of the Church requires that we should come to a previous understanding ; if it be different, I am compelled either to write against it, or to abandon the truth.”

The Archbishop of Paris requested Fenelon to abstain from publishing his ‘Explication’ until the work of Bossuet on the same subject, which had been so long in preparation, should have issued from the press. Fenelon assented; but the Duc de Chevreuse and other friends, in their eagerness to secure for him the advantage of being heard before the attack of his opponent, hurried forward the printing of the book, and it appeared, without Fenelon’s knowledge, in January 1697, about a month before Bossuet’s ‘Instruction.’

It was received with a general clamour of disapprobation. “Scarcely any one except theologians,” says St. Simon, “could understand it; and they only after reading it three or four times. It had the misfortune to be praised by no one; and the connoisseurs pronounced it to contain, under a barbarous phraseology, pure Quietism, divested indeed of everything gross and offensive, but obvious at first sight; together with various subtleties quite novel, and extremely difficult both to comprehend and to prac­tise. I am not giving my own judgment upon what is so far beyond me, but relating the universal sentiment expressed at the time; and nothing else was then talked of, even among the ladies; à propos to which people repeated Madame de Sevigne’s witticism in the heat of the disputes upon grace,—‘I wish religion could be made a little thicker; for it seems in the way to evaporate altogether by dint of being subtilized.’ The book offended everybody; the ignorant, because they understood nothing about it; the rest, from the difficulty of comprehending and following the line of argument, especially in a barbarous and unknown dialect; the prelates opposed to the author, on account of the magisterial air assumed in distinguishing the true from the false maxims, and by reason of the errors which they detected in those which were pronounced to be sound.”

Bossuet, in his ‘Relation sur le Quietisme,’ paints in vivid colours the scene of excitement that prevailed. “The city, the Court, the Sorbonne, the religious communities, the learned, the ignorant, men, women, all classes without exception, were indignant, not at the affair itself, which few were acquainted with, and which none understood thoroughly, but at the audacity of such an ambitious decision, at the over-refinements of expression, at the unheard-of novelties, at the entire uselessness and ambiguity of the doctrine. Then it was that the public outcry reached the sacred ears of the king, and he learned what we had so sedulously concealed from him; he learned, from a hundred mouths, that Madame Guyon had found a defender at his Court, in his palace, and near the persons of the princes his children; with how much displeasure, may be estimated from the piety and wisdom of that great monarch. We spoke the last; everyone knows that we were met with just reproaches from so good a master, for not having sooner disclosed to him what we knew.”

Great, indeed, must have been the amazement and indignation of Louis, when a prelate like Bossuet, in whom he placed unbounded confidence as the veteran and invincible champion of orthodoxy in France, threw himself at his feet, and implored pardon for having hitherto concealed from his sovereign the “fanaticism” of his unhappy brother. Hating, as he did, sects, controversies, intrigues, and religious novelties of all kinds, the idea that he had unwittingly entrusted the education of his grandchildren and the government of a vast diocese to one who might prove to be a second Molinos, was unspeakably abhorrent to his mind. He had always disliked Fenelon, the loftier qualities of whose character he was incompetent, to appreciate, though he had sufficient sagacity to discern its weaknesses; and this announcement doubtless convinced him that such a man could no longer safely discharge the office of Preceptor to the princes.

Fenelon complains, in the ‘Reponse a la Relation,’ that Bossuet made no attempt, at this crisis of his fortunes, to soften and dispel the royal apprehensions. A word from him, he says, would have sufficed for this purpose; but he refused to utter it. Had he stated that the ‘Explication des maximes’ was about to be revised a second time, by enlightened prelates and divines, and that they fully hoped to come to an understanding with the author, and persuade him to retract the ill-advised language and objectionable sentiments which had justly alarmed the Church, the king would have been pacified, the mouths of scandal­mongers stopped, and concord in the end restored. Bossuet, certainly, made no such representations to the throne. Under the keen feelings of irritation which Fenelon’s conduct had provoked, it was not natural that he should do so; and we may presume, moreover, that he did not deem it consistent with his duty. 

It was at once resolved to make every possible exertion to induce the Archbishop of Cambrai to retract his errors. But the means chosen for this purpose were such as had little chance of success. Bossuet proposed, at first, to communicate to Fenelon privately, in writing, his remarks upon his book, and that they should afterwards examine them together, in company with the Archbishop of Paris, M. Tronson, and M. Pirot, with a view to mutual explanation and satisfaction. But Fenelon declined to meet Bossuet for this purpose. He was reduced, he said, to the painful necessity of no longer treating with him personally, in consequence of his unfriendly behaviour for several years past.*This widened the breach between them; and Bossuet, abandoning the hope of arriving at a pacific solution, felt himself forced into an attitude of open hostility. The result was that Fenelon, instead of excluding his opponent, was himself excluded from the proceedings instituted for the consideration and correction of his work. Bossuet withheld his promised “remarks” from month to month; and, meanwhile, arrangements were made for a series of conferences at the archiepiscopal palace in Paris, between the Archbishop, the Bishop of Meaux, the Bishop of Chartres, M. de Beaufort, and the Abbé Pirot; and here the ‘Explication des maximes’ was dissected with unsparing rigour, all leanings towards a more indulgent treatment being overruled by the commanding authority of Bossuet.

The general impressions under which Bossuet entered upon this investigation may be gathered from the following extract from a letter to his nephew, the Abbe Bossuet, dated March 24, 1697:—“ The book is indefensible and abandoned. The Jesuits, who at first supported it, now only talk of the best means of correcting it; and those which have been proposed hitherto are but feeble. Father La Chaise has told the king that one of their fathers, said to be a great theologian, has discovered in it forty-three propositions requiring emendation. There are in this book several statements directly contrary to the Thirty-four Articles which the author has signed; among others, to the 8th and the 11th. The doctrine which pervades the book as to indifference to salvation, and the involuntary distress of the inferior nature in Jesus Christ, is erroneous and full of ignorance. The absolute sacrifice of salvation, and positive acquiescence in perdition and damnation, is manifestly impious, and censured by the 31st Article subscribed by the author. A species of love which in one place is termed impious and sacrilegious, is described in another as a preparation towards justification. You will find, about page 97, the pure essence of Quietism; that is to say, the notion of waiting indolently for grace, under the pretext that it must not be anticipated. Many passages cited as from St. Francois de Sales are either not to be found in the writings of that saint, or are wrested from their meaning, or even manifestly garbled. The primary definitions upon which the system turns are false and erroneous. The Advertisement, and the whole style of the work, seem unspeakably arrogant; and such is the over-refinement from beginning to end, that most persons cannot understand it at all. After reading it, nothing remains except the pain of finding religion reduced to mere phrases, subtleties, and abstractions. I write all this with grief, on account of the scandal which falls on the Church, and the dire disgrace which threatens one in whom I had hoped to find the most valued of my friends, and whom I still love sincerely. I am not at liberty to keep silence after what he says in his Advertisement—that his object is to expound the doctrine which M. de Paris and I established in the Thirty-four Articles. We should be prevaricators were we to hold our peace, and the doctrine of the new book would be imputed to us. For the rest, he has assured the king and all the world that he means to be as docile as a child, and that he is ready to retract forthwith, if it can be shown that he has fallen into error. We shall put him to the proof; for it is with himself that we intend to commence. I will only add that the work of this prelate abounds with contradictions, and that the true and the false are mingled together throughout.”

In subsequent letters he thus relates the progress of the examination:—“We have continued our conferences—M. de Paris, M. de Chartres, and myself—and have fixed upon the propositions which we consider to deserve censure, and which are somewhat numerous; intending to send them at the earliest moment to M. de Cambrai, together with the precise grounds on which we object to them. We shall afterwards do whatever may be requisite, in the spirit of charity, for the defence of the truth. The good intentions of M. de Cambrai being well known to us, wo cannot doubt that he will explain himself to the satisfaction of the Church; and it would be deeply painful to us to be compelled to forward information to Rome in denounce­ment of errors which tend to the subversion of religion.” Shortly afterwards he writes, “As to the affair of M. de Cambrai, there is no further need to make a mystery of it. He has thought fit to write to the Pope on the subject; and he has done rightly, if he has written with all due submission and sincerity. But, since we have reason to fear that he may equivocate, and are convinced that we ought not to allow his book to circulate, we feel ourselves obliged to inform the Pope of the importance of the case, and of the motives which induce us to communicate our views to his Holiness. We see that M. de Cambrai persists in defending Madame Guyon, whom we believe to be a Molinosist, and whose books we cannot permit to remain unsuppressed without endangering the whole of religion. We have exercised all possible patience, and have made every effort to terminate the affair by methods of charity; but, since we are driven to Rome, it will be necessary to speak out in spite of ourselves, and to show that we are by no means disposed to spare a col­league who has put religion and truth in jeopardy.”

Fenelon had, indeed, taken the bold step of appealing to Rome for a judgment on his book, which, as he thought, had no chance of being fairly dealt with in France. He was not disposed to accept the extrajudicial arbitration of three prelates, however eminent, to whom he owed no canonical obedience, and whose verdict, moreover, he looked upon as a foregone conclusion. For, although the Archbishop of Paris and the Bishop of Chartres showed an inclination from time to time to relent in his favour, such symptoms were always peremptorily repressed by Bossuet, who was now stern and almost rancorous in his determination to coerce him into submission. He resolved, therefore, to anticipate their sentence by demanding the inter­position of the Apostolic See. His letter to the Pope for this purpose is dated April 27, 1697. 

He explains to the Holy Father the reasons which had led him to write on the inward life and contemplation. There were those, he says, who had abused the approved maxims of the saints by attempting to introduce pernicious errors, which the ignorant and worldly turned into derision. The doctrines of Quietism had been favoured, unconsciously, by many mys­tical writers of sincere piety and the best intentions, from want of caution in their terminology, and from pardonable ignorance of theological science. It was this which had impelled two illustrious prelates to promulgate the Articles of Issy, as also to condemn certain little books, some passages of which, taken in their obvious sense, deserved censure. But, as men are for ever falling from one extreme into another, this proceeding had been made a pretext for decrying, as chimerical and extravagant, the pure love of the contemplative life. Hence he felt called upon to do what in him lay towards fixing the boundaries between the true and the false, between the ancient and safe and the novel and dangerous. He then sketches in outline the contents of his book. “I have condemned,” he says, “the ‘permanent act’ of the Quietists, showing that it engenders spiritual indolence and lethargy. I have asserted the indispensable necessity of the distinct exercise of every virtue. I reject that doctrine of passive prayer which excludes the co-operation of free-will in meritorious actions. I disallow all ‘quietude’ except that inward peace through which the acts of the soul are performed ‘ in such a way as to appear to simple persons not distinct acts, but an abiding condition of union with God.’ I maintain that, in all grades of perfection, the Christian grace of hope must be cultivated as essential to salvation; that we must hope for, desire, and seek, salvation, and that as a personal boon and blessing, inasmuch as God wills it, and comma'nds that we should will it as tending to His glory.* Lastly, I have taught that this state of pure and perfect love is very rarely attained; and that, though habitual, it is subject to interruption and fluc­tuation. It is not inconsistent with daily sins of infirmity, nor with acts which, although good, are in a lower degree pure and disinterested.”

 

Such, according to the testimony of the author himself, are the salient points of this celebrated brochure. In a memorial to the Nuncio at Paris, Fenelon protested that his object throughout had been to conform to the Articles of Issy; that he believed ex animo the doctrine there enunciated; and that he was ready to prove before the Holy Father that he had never in any instance contradicted them. “As I hope,” he says in the same document, “to obtain the king’s permission to make a journey to Rome, which is necessary for my peace of conscience and for the honour of my ministry, I promise to submit with entire docility and without reserve to the decision of his Holiness, after he has condescended to hear me. God is witness that I have no prepossession in favour of any suspected book or suspected person. God, who searches the heart, knows that I have never held any belief beyond what is expressed in my book. I condemn and detest any interpretations of an im­pious or deceptive tendency which may have been assigned, without just reason, to this work. I am ready to condemn whatever doctrine and whatever writing his Holiness may think fit to condemn. If he should judge it necessary to condemn my book, I shall be the first to assent to its condemnation, to prohibit it in the diocese of Cambrai, and to publish a mandement embodying his censure.”

It is, nevertheless, incontestable that there are discrepancies which cannot easily be reconciled between the ‘Explication des maximes’ and the Articles of Issy. Not to mention other instances, the ‘ Explication ’ teaches that under certain circumstances the soul may carry self-sacrifice to such an extreme as to abandon the desire of salvation, and to acquiesce in its own eternal perdition, if such should be the Divine will. Whereas the Articles declare, on the contrary, that all Christians, in whatever condition, are bound to desire and seek eternal life as a direct object; that indifference to salvation, under whatever circumstances, is inadmissible; that souls under corrective suffering are not permitted to acquiesce in feelings of despair and the prospect of perdition. Fenelon, it is true, acknowledges that the happiness of heaven is the object of desire to the perfect Christian; but he draws a distinction between the formal object and the actuating motive. Salvation, he says, is to be desired, not as a personal boon, not as our own deliverance from eternal misery, not as the reward of our merits, not as the greatest of all our interests, but because it conduces to the glory of God—because He wills it, and requires us to will it for His sake. The key to his system lies in the definition of the term self-interest. He seems to have meant by it the natural principle of self-love, or selfishness, which, without being positively vicious, is mercenary, and belongs to the “old Adam.”

But it was argued on the opposite side, that this theory of disinterestedness destroys the exercise of Christian hope;—a grace which can hardly be conceived to exist independently of the motive of eternal beatitude. The Apostle says, “We are saved by hope”; now hope implies of necessity some admixture of self-interest; so that, if the pursuit of heaven is to be separated from any such consideration, it would follow that one of the three great “theological virtues” must be eliminated from the character and condition of the perfect Christian. This was, in fact, the capital error charged against Fenelon’s teaching both by Bossuet and by the Bishop of Chartres. The “Pastoral Letter of the latter prelate exposes the fallacies into which lie had fallen on this subject perhaps more forcibly than anything that appeared in the course of the controversy.

It was soon significantly intimated to the author of the ‘Explication des maximes,’ that, whatever might be the issue of his appeal to the Pope, he was already condemned by Louis XIV. He had written to the king to request that he might be permitted to proceed to Rome to defend himself in person; promising to see no one but the Pope and those whom he might appoint to conduct the examination, to live in perfect privacy, and to return immediately after the conclusion of the affair. His Majesty, in his reply, dated August 1, 1697, rejected his petition; and moreover, ordered him to quit Versailles immediately, to repair to his diocese, and not to leave it without permission. Fenelon obeyed the mandate; but was so distressed by its suddenness and severity that he fell ill before reaching Cambrai. Resolved, however, that his cause should not suffer at Rome for want of a well-qualified advocate, he lost no time in sending thither the Abbe de Chanterac, Archdeacon of Cambrai, his relation and intimate friend; one whose wisdom, learning, and virtue fully entitled him to such a mark of confidence. Bossuet, on his part, was already provided with a representative at the Papal Court, in his nephew the Abbe Bossuet;—a person whose savage animosity against Fenelon, and neglect of the ordinary rules of self-restraint, added tenfold bitterness to this deplorable strife. He was seconded by the Abbé Phélipeaux, canon and grand-vicar of Meaux; who drew up a complete account of the controversy, leaving an injunction in his will that it should not be published till twenty years after his decease.

There is no apparent ground to doubt (though the contrary has been maintained) that the two principals in this theological duel were governed by motives equally conscientious, equally worthy of their position and profession. Both were alike convinced that they were defending truths of the profoundest moment, and forwarding the best interests of Christianity. “This is no question of personal honour,” says Fenelon, “nor of the opinion of the world, nor of the pain which must naturally follow from the humiliation of defeat. I believe that I am acting with sincerity; I am as much afraid of being presumptuous, as I am of being feeble, time-serving, and timid in the defence of truth. If the Pope condemns me, I shall be undeceived, and by that means the vanquished will reap all the real advantages of victory. If, on the other hand, my doctrine is not condemned, I shall endeavour, by respectful silence, to appease those of my colleagues whose zeal has been roused against me, and who have imputed to me a doctrine which I hold in no less horror than themselves. Perhaps they will be induced to do me justice, when they witness my good faith... Let us not regard the purposes of men, nor their proceedings; let us see nothing in all this but God alone. Let us be children of peace, and peace will abide with us; it may be bitter, but it will be all the more pure. Let us not mar the uprightness of our intentions by perverseness, by passion, by worldly machinations, by natural eagerness to justify ourselves. Let us simply estab­lish our good faith; let us allow ourselves to be corrected, if it be necessary; and let us endure correction, even if we deserve it not.”

Nor would it be less unjust to attribute to the high-souled Bossuet the petty vice of jealousy towards a rival star which was supposed to threaten his own supremacy in the ecclesiastical hemisphere. He was incapable of such weakness. Standing, as he did, on the highest pinnacle of professional fame—crowned with the well-earned laurels of a life of conflict—secure of the confidence of his sovereign—the undisputed dictator of religious policy in Prance—he had nothing left to desire in the way of external honour and pre-eminence. His appreciation of Fenelon’s powers was always frank and generous; he acknowledged without hesitation that he possessed genius superior to his own. “As for those,” he says, “who cannot believe that zeal in the defence of truth may be pure and without thought of temporal interest, or that it is sufficiently attractive to be the sole motive of exertion, let us not be angry with them. Let us not suppose that they judge us with predetermined malice; and after all, as St. Augustine says, let us cease to be surprised if they impute to human beings the imperfections of humanity.” Again;— “I have no quarrel with M. de Cambrai, except that which exists between him and all the bishops, and the whole Church, on account of bis mistaken doctrine. I beg therefore that you will call the attention of the Cardinal f to the injustice which he would do me by representing this affair as if it were at all personal to myself. You may tell him that I have not, and never have had, any private dissension with the Archbishop of Cambrai, to whom I have at all times shown every sort of kindness—a fact of which all the world, and the king himself, are witnesses.” “M. de Cambrai,” he writes to the same correspondent, “continues to publish everywhere that it is I, and I alone, who am stirring up the cabal against him. The only cabal that I have engaged in consists in having striven to detach him from the obstinacy of Madame Guyon—in which I only seconded the efforts of Madame de Maintenon, to whose patronage he owes everything;—and in having concealed his errors from the king, in the hope that he might be induced to retract them. The king reproved me, and with too much reason, for having caused, through my reticence on this painful topic, his promotion to the Archbishopric of Cambrai. This is the whole extent of my offences against him; this is all my cabal.”

Bossuet expressed from the first his confidence that Fenelon’s book would be condemned. He believed in the justice of his cause, and in the force of truth; but, in addition to this, he was secretly acquainted with the purpose of his royal master, and knew that he was prepared to exercise any amount of pressure upon the oracle of the Vatican, in order to extort the response which he desired. Louis had already written an autograph letter to the Pope,§ in which he described the ‘Explication’ as having incurred grave censure from Gallican prelates and divines, and intimated, in terms not to be mistaken, that he should not be satisfied unless their judgment were confirmed by that of the Holy See. The “Declaration” of the three prelates was, by his order, made public at the same moment, and delivered to the Nuncio for transmission to Home. This was a clear and powerful statement of the whole case as viewed by the adversaries of Fenelon; summing up his errors in the two comprehensive charges of disparaging the virtue of Christian hope, and of pressing the duty of self-abnegation to the extreme of indifference to salvation. It was a counter-appeal to the arbitration of the Apostolic See; which was thus spontaneously invoked by both parties, and that in a cause which, according to strict Gallican principles, ought to have been decided within the jurisdiction of the home episcopate. The inconsistency was pointed out to Bossuet; who replied that, since Fenelon had been the first to seek the decision of the Pope, a corresponding step on his part was inevitable; and that it would have been far more imprudent to hazard the discussion of such a theme in a provincial Synod, or an Assembly of the clergy, which, from the multiplicity of private interests and passions, might have proved unmanageable. At all events the worst course that could be taken would be that of abandoning the defence of the truth on account of the uncertainty of success. What could be said for the zeal and courage of bishops, if it should fail them in such an emergency ? Moreover, there was every reason to believe that the sentence on the book would be one of condemnation.

Unforeseen difficulties, however, for a time obstructed and retarded this result. Fenelon found friends among the Jesuits. He had never been connected with them previously; so far from it that in his earlier years he was suspected of sympathizing with the Jansenists, and was twice excluded from promotion on that account. The ‘Explication des maximes,’ however, was zealously supported by some of the most eminent Jesuits, including Fathers La Chaise and de Valois; and (so far as they dared) the Order intrigued at Rome to procure the acquittal of the author. His cause was also energetically advocated by Cardinal de Bouillon, who had just succeeded Cardinal Forbin Janson as French Charge d’ Affaires at the Pontifical court. De Bouillon was a vain, pretentious, arrogant man, who had made himself ridiculous by affecting the style and privileges of a sovereign prince, and was in consequence no favourite with Louis XIV. The Dukes of Beauvilliers and Chevreuse had obtained for him the appointment at Rome; and in acknowledgment of the obligation, he engaged to employ all the influence of his office in furthering the interests of their friend the Archbishop of Oambrai. His private feelings impelled him in the same direction. Between the houses of De Noailles and De Bouillon there was an ancient grudge, which the Cardinal would very gladly have indulged by disconcerting and dis­comfiting the Archbishop of Paris. Bossuet was obnoxious to him by the dazzling lustre of his genius, and the oppressive ascendency which he exercised in Church and State. He was jealous, again, of the growing credit of the Bishop of Chartres, and his confidential relations with Madame de Maintenon. And finally, he was a devoted partisan of the Jesuits. All these considerations concurred to strengthen his resolution to support Fenelon, though he had little or no real acquaintance with the merits of the question in dispute.

On the whole, then, there appeared some prospect that the book might, after all, escape condemnation. Despite the pressing instances of Louis, the examination was conducted with all the deliberate tediousness prescribed by Roman usage. Sixty-four sessions, of several hours each, wore held between October, 1697, and September, 1698; but little progress was made towards a decision. The examiners were the “ Consultors ” of the Holy Office, ten in number; and five of these uniformly declared in Fenelon’s favour. The Pope, perplexed by this division of sentiment, and unwilling to condemn a prelate whose virtues and talents were the theme of universal admiration, referred the case to the Congregation of Cardinals of the Inquisition; and fresh debates commenced, which were continued with the utmost assiduity during many months.

These delays irritated the king and the whole party opposed to Tension. Bossuet, during this tantalizing interval, betrayed his impatience by pouring forth, with feverish impetuosity, a multitude of controversial treatises, which were all marked by his accustomed power of thought and language, but which, to his infinite mortification, were invariably met with equal acuteness, and sometimes with superior felicity of argument, by his accomplished antagonist. The warfare not only arrested the attention of the learned, but excited intense interest among all classes of society in France, and even abroad. On Bossuet’s side the chief publications were his ‘ Summary of the Doctrine of the Explication,’ which appeared in Latin and French, and was laid before the examiners at Rome; his ‘ Preface sur l’Instruction pastorale de M. de Cambrai;’ three tracts in Latin, entitled ‘Mystici in tuto,’ ‘Schola in tuto,’ and ‘ Quietismus Redivivus;’ and lastly, the famous ‘Relation sur le Quietisme,’ perhaps the ablest of his productions in this conflict, but withal characterized by an amount of personal acrimony and invective which cannot be defended. Fenelon replied to these attacks with astonishing rapidity. Every shaft from the enemy’s lines called forth a swift and incisive missile in return; ‘Letters in Answer to the Bishop of Meaux,’ ‘Letters to Archbishop de Noailles,’ criticisms on the Pastoral of the Bishop of Chartres, and, above all, the ‘Reponse a la Relation sur le Quietisme,’ with the ‘ Reponse aux Remarques de l’Eveque de Meaux;’— a series of productions which carried the fame of Fenelon as a master of polemical science to the highest point.

These last-mentioned efforts belong to the final stage of the contest, when, through the lengthened procrastinations of the court of Rome, a grievously embittered state of feeling had set in on both sides. Bossuet’s party were provoked by the difficulties which impeded, and threatened to frustrate, their design. They felt that it was necessary to strike a crushing blow, in order to convince the Pope and the Cardinals that, although Fenelon might still possess some few enthusiastic partisans, his disgrace in a political sense at Versailles was irrevocable. For this purpose it was at one time in contempla­tion to remove the excellent Due de Beauvilliers from his place at court and at the Council-board; but, before taking such a serious step, the king fortunately consulted Archbishop de Noailles; and that prelate, highly to his honour, represented matters in such a light as to induce him to abandon the idea.* The duke’s services, therefore, were retained; but several func­tionaries of a lower rank were abruptly dismissed from office, solely because they were relatives or friends of Fenelon, and supposed to sympathize in his opinions. These were the Abbe de Beaumont, Fenelon’s nephew, sub-preceptor to the princes; the Abbé de Langeron, reader; and Dupuis and LÉchelle, gentlemen of the chamber to the Duke of Burgundy. This malignant spite was even carried so far as to strip Fenelon’s brother of the petty appointment of an exempt of the “garde du corps.”

The action of Bossuet was of a severer kind. He extracted twelve propositions from Fenelon’s work, and caused them to be presented in an irregular way, by personal solicitation, to the doctors of the Sorbonne, accompanied by a form of censure which they were requested to subscribe. Sixty signatures were thus obtained from compliant members of the Faculty; and the document was immediately despatched to Rome, as a proof that theological opinion in France was decidedly adverse to the doctrine in question. It was not an official corporate act of the Sorbonne, but simply of the three-score individual doctors who were induced to sign it; such as it was, however, it made the designed impression upon the minds of many in authority at the Papal court. The censure was drawn up by M. Pirot, the same divine who, on a former occasion, had described the ‘ Explication ’ as worthy of the warmest consideration.

These angry impulses, again, prompted Bossuet to publish two letters addressed to him, under the seal of confidential friendship, by De Rancé Abbot of La Trappe, in which the work of the Archbishop of Cambrai, and the sect with which he was supposed to be in alliance, were denounced in terms of unmeasured indignation. “If the dreams of these fanatics are to be received,” said De Rancé, “ it will be necessary to close the volume of Holy Scripture; to set aside the Gospel, with all its sacred and essential precepts, as if they were practically useless; and even to count for nothing the life and example of Jesus Christ, all adorable as it is. This is a consummate piece of impiety, veiled under a strange and affected phraseology, devised for no other purpose than the deception and seduction of souls.” Bossuet showed this, with other letters, to Madame de Maintenon, who agreed with him that it would be desirable to make them public. This was done accordingly, without previous reference to De Rancé for his consent; and copies were circulated far and wide, much to the injury of Fenelon in the minds of those who, while incapable of forming a judgment personally, knew how to appreciate that of so celebrated an authority as the Abbot of La Trappe. The abbot himself was infinitely annoyed by this unwarrantable breach of propriety.

Meanwhile the persecution of Madame Guyon was revived; for it was hoped that, by raking up fresh suspicion against her character and proceedings, some portion of the scandal might recoil indirectly upon Fenelon. Every vestige of her former influence had been eradicated from St. Cyr. A rigorous search was made for her letters and other manuscripts, every fragment of which was removed from the convent. To make assurance doubly sure, the king expelled three of the sisters who showed a disposition to resist these measures of arbitrary repression, and ordered that they should never, under any circumstances, be permitted to return. Among them was Madame de la Maisonfort, who, on quitting St. Cyr, placed herself under the direction of Bossuet at Meaux; retaining, nevertheless, her warm admiration and veneration of Fenelon, the loss of whose instructions she never ceased to lament.

Immediately afterwards (September, 1698) Madame Guyon was transferred from Vaugirard to the Bastille; and it was given out that revelations had been made by Father Lacombe, then a prisoner at Vincennes, the effect of which was to cast a dark shade upon the nature of their past relations. Lacombe, whose intellect had never been robust, was at this time in a state of pitiable fatuity; and it was preposterous in the extreme to attach any serious import to allegations obtained under such circumstances. Nevertheless it is unhappily certain that an attempt was made by the Abbé Bossuet and others at Rome, under colour of these extorted confessions, to insinuate that the connection between Fenelon and Madame Guyon had not been altogether innocent. Fenelon’s first impulse was to treat the calumny with silent contempt; but, on the appearance of Bossuet’s ‘ Relation sur le Quietisme,’ which contained mysterious allusions pointing in the same direction, his friends, especially Cardinal de Bouillon and the Abbé de Chanterac, represented to him that an equally public refutation of the falsehood was indispensable; and it was now that he wrote his celebrated Apology, the ‘Réponse a la Relation.’ If Bossuet’s attack had raised a ferment in the popular mind, the archbishop’s defence produced a still more extraordinary sensation. The reaction of feeling was electrical. The public voice proclaimed that his justification on the score of morals was complete and triumphant; and, moreover, a strong presumption arose in favour of the orthodoxy of his opinions; since it was argued that his enemies would never have resorted to the disgraceful expedient of personal slander, had they not felt that the charge of heretical doctrine was likely to prove untenable. “We have already given away mere than forty copies of the ‘ Réponse,’ ” writes the Abbé de Chanterac, “and numbers of people are still demanding it with incredible eagerness. The uproar is terrible ; all Rome resounds with it. What comforts me the most is to witness the joy both of private friends and of the public at the entire recognition of your innocence. One of the most learned bishops here said to me, and has said pretty strongly to others, that nothing more could be desired for your justification, and that you have crushed M. de Meaux to powder.” “Never did an apology meet with such general approbation. It is not only its simple unaffected elegance that is admired, but, still more, its force, its gentleness, its persuasive air of truthfulness, which convinces, and which effaces altogether the disagreeable impressions produced by the Relation of M. de Meaux. The Archbishop’s innocence seems to fill the public with universal joy. The Abbé Bossuet is so amazed by it, that he urgently solicited an audience of the Pope, and besought him with extreme earnestness to defer giving judgment in the affair until his uncle should be able to answer the ‘ Reply ’ of M. de Cambrai. His party no longer speak with the same pride and confidence which they displayed after the ‘Relation.’ Their present cue is to say that the history of the facts has nothing to do with the points of doctrine; yet it is clear enough that their great object was to confound the two together, while, on the contrary, it is M. de Cambrai’s interest to keep them separate.” “A prelate of this court, famous for his learning, and high in the esteem and confidence of several cardinals, to whom I presented a copy of your ‘ Réponse,’ told me that it has wrought a great change in the minds of many; that the last time he saw me, he feared that the affair would end unfavourably, because he had heard certain cardinals express their apprehension that your book would be treated as an apology for Madame Guyon; but that, at present, all is going in the right direction.”

Fenelon and his friends were inspirited by this apparent change of fortune; and upon the strength of it an effort was made to settle the case by a compromise. A series of twelve dogmatic statements, or canons, was drawn up, and submitted to the Pope by Cardinal Ferrari; they were shaped affirmatively, and set forth the orthodox tradition on the points at issue, without denouncing any anathemas, or censuring any theological work by name. If the judgment could have taken such a form, the ‘Explication des maximes’ would have remained in reality uncensured, while at the same time the doctrine of the Church would have been clearly established in opposition to Quietism. Innocent, who was sincerely anxious to save the reputation of Fenelon, approved the project; and at one moment its success seemed probable. But the Abbé Bossuet was vigilant, well informed, and resolute. No sooner did he hear of the scheme, than he despatched an extraordinary courier to Paris, and signified to the king that, unless he was prepared to see the Archbishop of Cambrai triumphantly acquitted, he must instantly make an exhibition of authority and determination such as the Vatican could neither misunderstand nor evade. Louis had already remonstrated with the Pope on the vexatious impediments which delayed his judgment; he now exchanged complaints for menaces. “His Majesty learns with surprise and grief that after all his solicitations, and after the repeated promises of his Holiness to cut up by the root the mischief which the Archbishop of Cambrai’s book has wrought throughout the kingdom, when all seemed terminated, and the book was declared by the congregation of Cardinals and by the Pope himself to abound with errors, its friends have proposed a new expedient, the tendency of which is to render all the previous deliberations fruitless, and to renew the whole dispute … His Majesty cannot believe that, under a Pontificate like the present, such a lamentably weak policy can be entertained; and it is clear that it would not be possible for his Majesty to receive or sanction in his dominions anything except that which he has demanded, and which has been promised him, namely, a direct and precise judgment upon a book which has thrown his kingdom into flames, and a doctrine which causes division. Any other form of decision would be useless for the settlement of an affair of such importance, which has kept all Christendom so long in a state of suspense. The promoters of this new plan have manifestly no great concern for the honour of the Holy See, whose authority might by their rashness be plunged in an abyss of difficulties merely for the sake of protecting a book already pronounced to be deserving of censure. It would be too distressing to his Majesty to witness the birth of another schism among his subjects, at the very moment when he is making every available effort to extinguish that of Calvin. And if he should perceive that an affair which seemed almost at an end is being protracted through motives of indulgence which he is at a loss to comprehend, he will know what course he ought to adopt, and will take measures accordingly; cherishing at the same time the hope that his Holiness will be unwilling to reduce him to such painful extremities.”

As it happened, however, this indecent attempt to intimidate the aged Pontiff was unnecessary. He had taken his determination before the royal missive reached his hands; and that determination was in accordance with the dictates of Louis, and adverse to Fenelon. The project of the canons was discussed in the congregation of cardinals, but, with the exception of Cardinal de Bouillon, no one raised a voice in its support. Even Cardinal Ferrari, with whom the idea originated, and Cardinal Albani, who had warmly supported it, ultimately abandoned it as hopeless. The only remaining alternative was to pronounce a direct sentence of condemnation on Fenelon’s work, according to the draft-decree which had been already agreed upon.

On the 12th of March, 1699, Innocent XII at length gave judgment in this memorable cause. It was expressed in the form, not of a bull, but of a brief, condemning the ‘ Explication des maximes des saints ’ in general, and, in particular, twenty-three propositions extracted from it; these were characterised as “rash, scandalous, ill-sounding, offensive to pious ears, pernicious in practice, and respectively erroneous.” The faithful were forbidden, under pain of excommunication, to print, read, possess, or make use of the said book, “inasmuch as they might thereby be misled insensibly into errors already condemned by the Catholic Church.” The principal passages condemned are those to which we have so often referred as comprising the leading features of Fenelon’s system; namely, the disinterested love of God exclusively for His own sake, and the notion of the absolute sacrifice of salvation by a righteous soul under circumstances of extreme spiritual trial. It was remarked, however, that some of the statements which had been most severely criticised in France were altogether untouched by the Papal censure.

The enemies of Fenelon felt, indeed, even in this moment of exultation, that something was wanting to the completeness of their triumph. The twenty-three propositions were pronounced erroneous, but they were not branded as heretical, nor even as “approaching to heresy.” Strenuous exertions had been made to secure the insertion of those epithets, but in vain; a majority of the Cardinals decided on the more lenient course. The censure, again, was promulgated in a brief or letter, instead of the more imposing form of a bull; and certain clauses were omitted, which the Popes usually employed for the purpose of adding weight to their official utterances. On the other hand, phrases had been added which were notoriously opposed to the principles of Gallicanism ; for it was presumed that Louis and his advisers, in their joy at the attainment of their main object, would not be overscrupulous as to points of minor interest, which, under other circumstances, they might have been inclined to dispute.

The courier despatched by Cardinal de Bouillon with the announcement of the Papal judgment reached Versailles on the 22nd of March. Bossuet received the news on the same day; and when he next appeared at Court, the king arranged with him, in a private interview, the measures which it would be necessary to take with a view to the official reception of this important act by the Gallican Church. “It was then, doubtless,” says the Abbé Ledien, “that he suggested the idea, not only of the letters patent, but of the provincial assemblies, in order to render the acceptance more solemn, and to augment the lustre of the king’s triumph. After this, he said to us in private, ‘All will go well; what is requisite will be done; letters patent will be given; the Parliament will make no difficulty.’ The common talk in Paris, however, was of a different tone. ‘It is only a brief; that is nothing. The king will never grant letters patent. The Parliament cannot possibly accept the expression “motu proprio.” When I mentioned these rumours to the bishop, he merely repeated that all would turn out well .... The condemnation of a book against which he had been so continually writing for a long time past was universally regarded as the fruit of his exertions. The more he sought to divest himself of this distinction, the more eagerly was it assigned to him by the public. A perfect concourse of people of all conditions came to congratulate him. The royal family were the first to give the example, both in person and by letter; he received visits from all the bishops who were at Paris; and letters arrived from those who were absent, and from persons of consideration throughout the kingdom, during the space of two months, to wish him joy on the occasion. It was the theme of common conversation, not only in the towns but among country people, that “M. de Meaux had gained his cause at Rome against M. de Cambrai.”

The conduct of tire defeated party, meanwhile, was such as to entitle it to a meed of praise at least equal in degree, how­ever widely differing in character. Few facts in the Church’s annals are more familiar to the general reader than the exemplary submission of Fenelon to the supreme authority of Rome, notwithstanding the crushing humiliation now inflicted on him. The duty of such submission was one of the primary axioms of his religious creed. “Roma locuta est; causa finita est.” Considering the high personal esteem in which he was held by the reigning Pontiff—considering the powerful support which he enjoyed among the Jesuits, the Cardinals, the official staff of the Inquisition—considering, again, the extremely intricate and bewildering nature, of the questions which formed the subject of dispute—there is no doubt that the Archbishop, had he been so minded, might have eluded the censure, and pro­longed the struggle indefinitely. He had a position as strong, to say the least, as that of the Jansenists, who, by means of their fine-drawn distinction between doctrine and fact, had set Pope after Pope at defiance, and were still, after half a century of controversy, uncondemned in their own estimation, though they were heretics in the eyes of all the rest of the Catholic world. But Fenelon disdained such sophistical artifices. It is well known how, on receiving notice of the Papal brief, he ascended the pulpit of his cathedral, where, instead of preaching, as he had intended, on the subject of the day—the Annunciation—he proceeded to enforce the duty of obedience to ecclesiastical authority; and how he drew up forthwith a mandement to his flock announcing his sincere acceptance of the sentence, at whatever cost of personal mortification,

“We adhere to this brief, most dear brethren (such are his words), both with respect to the text of the book and with respect to the twenty-three propositions, simply, absolutely, and without a shadow of reserve. Accordingly, we condemn both the book and the propositions, precisely in the same form and with the same expressions, simply, absolutely, and without restriction. Moreover, we forbid the faithful of this diocese, under the same penalty, to read or retain this book. We shall find comfort, dearest brethren, under our present humiliation, provided that the ministry of the word, which we have received of the Lord for your sanctification, be not weakened thereby, and that, notwithstanding the abasement of the pastor, the flock may grow in grace before God. With our whole heart, then, we exhort you to sincere submission and unreserved docility, lest by any means the simple duty of obedience to the Holy See should be insensibly impaired ; of which obedience we desire, with the assistance of God’s grace, to set you an example to the last moment of our life. God forbid that our name should ever be mentioned, except it be to call to mind that a pastor felt it incumbent on him to be more submissive than the least sheep of his flock, and that he set no bounds to his compliance.” The Archbishop wrote to the Pope to signify, in similar terms of profound humility, his submission to the censure; and received a reply from his Holiness, expressing in gratifying language his satisfaction with his conduct. In the original draft of this letter Innocent had spoken still more decidedly in praise of Fenelon, whose character he had long admired ; but the Abbe Bossuet, who had displayed throughout the affair a spirit of hateful malignity, succeeded, by dint of clamour and intrigue, in procuring the suppression of these eulogistic clauses. Even the victor of Meaux could not refrain from indulging in unfair and captious criticisms on the mandement of his fallen adversary.

Although, in consequence of the readiness shown by Fenelon to bow to the decision of the Holy See, all doubt was removed as to the practical reception of the brief in France, it was deemed necessary, before it was published officially, to observe certain formalities illustrating the great principles of “Gallican liberty” which had been re-affirmed with so much emphasis in 1682. According to these maxims, a judicial sentence of the Pope in a matter of faith cannot be published in France until it has been solemnly accepted in due canonical form by the archbishops and bishops of the realm. Every member of the episcopate is, by virtue of his office, a judge of theological doctrine co-ordinately with the Pope; and the judgments of the Holy Father are not irreversible or infallible unless confirmed by the collective assent of the Church. It was arranged, therefore, that the king should address a circular letter to the metropolitans, desiring them to summon a meeting of their comprovincial bishops to deliberate on the acceptance of the brief. By this expedient it was held that the bishops would individually exercise their functions as colleagues and assessors of the Pope ; and their acquiescence in the judgment would be no mere act of enforced registration, but the expression of their own independent conviction.

“The Provincial Assemblies,” says D’Aguesseau, “were held successively in each province with perfect unanimity, both as to the condemnation of the Archbishop of Cambrai’s book, and as to the preservation of the right of bishops to judge of doctrine, and other features of the liberties of the Gallican Church. A laudable emulation was excited among the different provinces; each aspired to the honour of having maintained most vigorously the power inherent in the episcopal character, of judging either before the Pope, or with the Pope, or after the Pope, and the right of bishops to receive the Papal constitutions only after examination, and in judicial form. The most remarkable circumstance in this solemn attestation of its doctrine by the Gallican Church was that it occurred at a time when we had no difference whatever with the Court of Pome, and when the king was living in perfect intelligence with the Pope, from whom he feared nothing and had nothing to fear. So that it was truth alone, and not the necessity arising from any external conjuncture, which gave occasion to a declaration of the sentiments of the clergy thus authoritative and unanimous.

The Assembly of the province of Paris, which was designed to serve in some measure as a model for the rest, was held in the chapel of the Archbishop’s palace on the 13th of May, 1699. There were present Archbishop de Noailles, the Bishops of Chartres, Meaux, and Blois, and the vicar-general of Orleans, representing Cardinal de Coislin, bishop of that see. Bossuet had feared that some opposition or dissension might arise in the course of the proceedings ; but on the contrary, perfect harmony prevailed, and the procès-verbal was adopted without amendment or division. In this document it was carefully laid down that the acceptance of Apostolic constitutions is to be made by the authorities of the Church after deliberation; the bishops uniting themselves in spirit with his Holiness in the condemnation of error. Such acceptance, again, must include an express declaration that it is not to prejudice the right of bishops to judge in the first instance in causes of doctrine, when they may think it necessary for the good of the Church. The Assembly adverted to the defects of form in the Pope’s brief, to the omission of the customary clauses “Nulli ergo” and “Si quis autem,” and to the insertion of the anti-Gallicau phrase  motu proprio”;—all which irregularities they excused upon various specious considerations. But they added another article, which was a most unjust and unbecoming aggravation of Fenelon’s punishment. Under the plea of deterring his partisans from imitating his example, “like the followers of Gilbert de la Porrée, of whom St. Bernard says that they preferred having that prelate for their master in his error than in his retractation,” they resolved that the king should be requested to revoke the permission granted for printing the condemned book, and to suppress all publications that had been made in defence of it. This was grossly inconsistent; for whereas they professed to be acting in strict accordance with the judgment of the Pope, they well knew that the archbishop’s apologies for his work had been repeatedly declared at Rome to be exempt from censure, and that no mention was to be found of them in the brief which was the occasion of their meeting. The resolution passed, however, unanimously; and the maxim “vae victis” was applied without remorse. The majority of the provinces copied almost verbatim the proceedings of that of Paris; but six out of the seventeen (Toulouse, Narbonne, Sens, Vienne, Auch, and Arles) forbore to insist on the suppression of the apologetic writings.

The most trying scene in the whole drama was that enacted in the province of Cambrai; where it fell to the lot of Fenelon to preside, as metropolitan, over an assembly called together for the purpose of finally sealing the condemnation of his own work. One of his suffragans, Valbelle, Bishop of St. Omer, had the effrontery to attack the touching mandement of his superior, and to insinuate that his professed humility was but that of outward respect, and not of the heart and conscience. It lacked, he said, some expression of penitence; and, were it not for the known integrity of the Archbishop, the door might thus be left open for a relapse into the very error which had been verbally abjured. Fenelon bore the implied insult without a sign of resentment. He calmly pointed out that the terms of his mandement expressed a far deeper acquiescence than one of mere external respect; that he had promised his flock to set them an example of docility and obedience of equal duration with his life; and that he could hardly be suspected of making use of such language with an intent to deceive and trifle with the Church. He was incapable of taking any steps, directly or indirectly, for the sake of eluding the sentence contained in the Pope’s brief. He could not indeed acknowledge, against his conscience, that he had ever really hell the erroneous tenets imputed to him; he had hoped that his work had been so carefully shaped, and balanced by such correctives, as to give no countenance to error; but he gladly renounced his own judgment to conform implicitly to that of the Holy Father. The bishops congratulated him on these edifying sentiments; but nevertheless they made him drink the cup of humiliation to the very dregs. He was com­pelled to decide, as president, in favour of the suppression of all his writings in support of the ‘ Explication des maximes, which was demanded by the plurality of voices; recording at the same time, in the procès-verbal, his own dissent from that measure.

When the Pope’s constitution had thus been accepted by the Provincial Assemblies, the king sent letters-patent to the Parliament, requiring the magistrates to register and publish it, that it might be executed according to due form and tenor. This final step took place on the 14th of August, 1699, after an eloquent “requisitoire” from the Avocat-General D’Aguesseau, which is styled by the President Hainaut “an immortal monument of the solidity of the maxims of the Church of France, for ever honourable to the memory of that great magistrate.” Bossuet, in like manner, commended it as “ a work worthy of the zeal of a bishop or a theologian, rather than of a magistrate ; the officers of the Parliament not being accustomed to manifest so much favour to the Church.” D’Aguesseau showed indeed considerable skill on this occasion in distinguishing, while at the same time he reconciled and harmonized, the rights of the Church and of the Crown, of the Pope and of the Episcopate. “This glorious work,” he says, “the success of which interested in an equal degree religion and the State, the Priesthood and the Empire, is the precious fruit of their perfect intelligence. Never did the two supreme Powers which God has established for the government of mankind concur so zealously, and I may say so felicitously, to the attainment of their commou end, namely, the glory of Him who delivers His oracles by the mouth of the Church, and who causes them to be executed by the authority of sovereigns.” In a fe pregnant sentences he depicts the source and nature of the controversy. “ Dark shades, all the more dangerous in that they borrowed the appearance and lustre of the most brilliant light, had begun to cover the face of the Church. Minds the most elevated, souls the most heavenly, deceived by the false glitter of a dazzling spirituality, were the most ardent in pursuing the shadow of an imaginary perfection; and if God had not abridged the days of illusion and aberration, even the elect (if it were possible, and if I may be permitted to adopt the language of Scripture), would have been in danger of being seduced. The truth made itself heard through the voice of the Pope and of the Bishops; they invoked the light, and light arose out of the depths of darkness. Only a word was necessary to dissipate the clouds of error; and the remedy was so prompt and so effectual, that it has effaced even the remembrance of the malady which threatened us.” He then pays a just tribute of admiration to the magnanimous behaviour of Fenelon;—that pastor from whom the Church might have expected opposition, “if his heart had been the accomplice of his intellect,” but who had “hastened to pronounce against himself a painful yet salutary censure, and had reassured the Church, scared as it was by the novelty of his doctrine, by solemnly announcing submission without reserve, obedience without limits, acquiescence without restriction.” He next recounts the consti­tutional measures which had been taken for the acceptance of the brief: insisting specially on the judicial power of bishops in doctrinal causes, whether separately or in conjunction with the Pope. “Nothing,” he says, “can shake this incontestable maxim, which was born with the Church, and will last as long as the Church;—that each See, being the depository of the faith and tradition of its fathers, has the right to give its testimony to the same, whether separately or in the corporate assembly of bishops; and these individual rays make up that vast body of light which, henceforth till the consummation of all things, will evermore cause error to tremble and truth to triumph. Let us, by a wise moderation, identify the interests of the Pope with those of the bishops ; let us receive his judg­ment with profound veneration, yet without detracting aught from the authority of the other pastors. Let the Pope be always the most exalted, yet not the sole, judge of our faith ; let the bishops always have their seats after him, but nevertheless with him, for the exercise of that power which Christ conferred on them in common, to teach all nations, and to be everywhere and in all ages the light of the world. For these reasons,” he concludes, “ we demand that this brief be registered, with one simple but useful protest, which we find in the subscriptions of an ancient Spanish Council:—Salva priscorum canonum auctoritate.”

Nothing is more remarkable in the history of this affair than the fact that it was terminated by a single decision of that august tribunal, to which Catholics in all ages have been accustomed to appeal for justice in the last resort. D’Aguesseau observes that, in a case of such magnitude, the circumstance is probably without a parallel. After the events which we have just related, the vexed question of Quietism sank rapidly into oblivion. The Archbishop of Cambrai amply redeemed the pledges he had given both before and since bis condemnation. He avoided all allusion to the controversy; he never complained of the sentence; he never regretted that lie bad bound himself to absolute and life-long submission. His friends, for the most part, pursued a similar course; and the consequence was that, although the traditional theory of Mysticism survived in individual minds, and exercised an influence which no external opposition could overthrow, it led to no display of sectarianism, and never again became openly menacing to the peace of the Church.

There are other considerations, however, which suggest a doubt whether the judgment which was thus passively accepted may not have been prejudicial, rather than favourable, to the true principles of Catholicism. Fenelon leaned towards Ultramontane opinions. Hence his sympathy with the Jesuits; hence his friendship with Cardinal de Bouillon; hence the extreme reluctance of the Pope to pronounce his condemnation. Such tendencies predisposed him, when his orthodoxy was attached to recur immediately to Rome; a step highly gratifying to that Court, and one from which it failed not to extract solid advantage. That a Gallman prelate of such eminence should voluntarily seek the decision of a foreign tribunal, ignoring the constitutional rights of his colleagues in the episcopate, and contradicting the maxims which his predecessors had upheld with so much ardour in all ages, was a matter of no small congratulation to the Curia and its supporters. It was, pro tanto, a relinquishment of the doctrine that the bishops, assembled in Provincial or National Synod, are the primary judges of ecclesiastical causes arising within their jurisdiction; it was a direct encouragement to the absolutist pretensions of the Roman Pontiffs, from which the Church had already suffered so severely. This error on Fenelon’s part compromised, as we have seen, Bossuet and those who acted with him, since his appeal to Rome seemed to necessitate a similar movement on their side; and the frequent applications of Louis to Innocent placed the Crown in the same incongruous predicament. When all was over—when the oracle had spoken, and the Pope had arrogated to himself personally, “ motu proprio,” the supreme arbitration of the affair—then the Gallican Church bethought itself of the authority of its own episcopal assemblies; but it is obvious that it was then too late; the proper moment for the exercise of that authority was past. The forms of deliberation, references to historical precedent, protests against usurpation, saving clauses, scrupulous reservations—all were important in their measure, and it was right to employ them ; but it cannot be denied that they were illusory with regard to the adjudication of the case in hand; the bishops had allowed the real functions of their office to be fore­stalled and sacrificed. Every successive instance of such weak­ness damaged the cause of Gallicanism ; and hence we must not be surprised to find that the aggressions upon it became bolder and more offensive, and that, although there was not wanting a firm front of resistance, that resistance was made with diminished resources, and with less and less prospect of ultimate victory.