clergy of France, “that St. Peter and his successors, vicars of Jesus Christ, and the whole church itself, received from God authority over only spiritual matters and such as appertain to salvation, and not over temporal and civil matters, in such sort that kings and sovereigns are not subject to tiny ecclesiastical power, by order of God, in temporal matters, and cannot be deposed directly or indirectly by authority of the keys of the church; finally, that, though the pope has the principal part in questions of faith, and though his decrees concern all the churches and each church severally, his judgment is, nevertheless, not irrefragable, unless the consent of the church intervene.”  Old doctrines in the church of France, but never before so solemnly declared and made incumbent upon the teaching of all the faculties of theology in the kingdom.

Constantly occupied in the dogmatic struggle against Protestantism, Bossuet had imported into it a moderation in form which, however, did not keep out injustice.  Without any inclination towards persecution, he, with almost unanimity on the part of the bishops of France, approved of the king’s piety in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  “Take up your sacred pens,” says he in his funeral oration over Michael Le Tellier,

“ye who compose the annals of the church; haste ye to place Louis amongst the peers of Constantine and Theodosius.  Our fathers saw not as we have seen an inveterate heresy falling at a single blow, scattered flocks returning in a mass, and our churches too narrow to receive them, their false shepherds leaving them without even awaiting the order, and happy to have their banishment to allege as excuse; all tranquillity amidst so great a movement; the universe astounded to see in so novel an event the most certain sign as well as the most noble use of authority, and the prince’s merit more recognized and more revered than even his authority.  Moved by so many marvels, say ye to this new Constantine, this new Theodosius, this new Marciaau, this new Charlemagne, what the six hundred and thirty Fathers said aforetime in the council of Chaloedon, You have confirmed the faith; you have exterminated the heretics; that is the worthy achievement of your reign, that is its own characteristic.  Through you heresy is no more.  God alone could have wrought this marvel.  King of heaven, preserve the king of earth; that is the prayer of the churches, that is the prayer of the bishops.”  Bossuet, like Louis XIV., believed Protestantism to be destroyed.  “Heresy is no more,” he said.  It was the same feeling that prompted Louis XIV., when dying, to the edict of March 8, 1715.  “We learn,” said he, “that, abjurations being frequently made in provinces distant from those in which our newly converted subjects die, our judges to whom those who die relapsed are denounced find a difficulty in condemning them, for want of proof of their abjuration.  The stay which those who were of the religion styled Reformed have made in