Bossuet’s period of study lasted until the year 1652, when at the age of twenty-five he was appointed Archdeacon of Sarrebourg.  By virtue of his position he thenceforward, for no less than seven years, resided in Metz, a city whose peculiar position, especially in religious matters, exerted a powerful influence over the direction of his whole intellectual life.  He found there what was very rare then in France, representatives of three religions.  In addition to the Catholics to whom he was to minister, there were in Metz numerous Protestants,—­both Lutherans, and Calvinists or Presbyterians,—­and a not inconsiderable number of Jews; and the city was used to continuous theological controversy between minister, rabbi, and priest.  The Protestants of Metz received the teachings of two brilliant ministers, David Ancillon and Paul Ferri, the latter of whom soon published a Catechism which was considered by the whole body of French Protestantism the clearest exposition of its doctrines.  The Catholic clergy of France had then not yet renounced the hope of bringing all the inhabitants of the country to place themselves voluntarily under the spiritual guidance of Rome; and the conversions that were announced from time to time from the upper ranks both of Protestantism and Judaism to a certain degree justified such a hope.

Bossuet, while constantly improving his knowledge of the writings of the Fathers, especially of St. Augustine, threw himself into the contest with characteristic energy.  As against the Jews he tried to demonstrate that the coming of Christ is clearly foretold in the Prophecies.  He thus became more familiar with the Old Testament than any other Catholic theologian of his time, and so far molded his style on that of the Bible that it soon became difficult to distinguish in his productions that which came out of the sacred writings from the utterances which belonged only to him.  This was done, however, strange to say, without any knowledge of the Hebrew language.  Bossuet never read the Bible except in Greek or Latin.  There was no good French version of the Bible; and it may be stated here that there is none to the present day which occupies in the French language anything like the position held in English by the Bible of King James, or in German by Luther’s version.

His attitude in regard to the Protestants is more interesting, because more characteristic of the time in which he lived.  France in the seventeenth century had become convinced that harmony, unity, fixedness, are the clearest manifestations of truth, the best guarantees of peace, happiness, and prosperity; that variety and change are signs of error and harbingers of disaster.  Bossuet’s whole effort in his controversy with Protestantism was directed towards demonstrating that Protestantism lacks and that Catholicism possesses the traits which were considered by his contemporaries to clearly belong to truth; and as his opponents were not unwilling to follow him on his chosen ground, as they never for a moment denied his main proposition,—­his statement of the characteristics of truth,—­as he even managed during the controversy to bring about a number of conversions to Catholicism, he left Metz fully convinced that he was waging a successful warfare upon unassailable ground.