uman yet resting upon divine foundations. But neither dogma
nor morals are presented in the manner of the schools; both are made
living powers by the preacher's awe, adoration, joy, charity,
indignation, pity; in the large ordonnance of his discourse each
passion finds its natural place. His eloquence grows out of his theme;
his logic is the logic of clear and natural ideas; he is lucid, rapid,
energetic; then suddenly some aspect of his subject awakens a lyrical
emotion, and the preacher rises into the prophet.

Bossuet's panegyrics of the saints are sermons in which doctrine and
morals are enforced by great examples. His _Oraisons Funebres_ preach,
for the uses of the living, the doctrine of death. Nowhere else does
he so fill the mind with a sense of the greatness and the glory of
life as when he stands beside the bier and reviews the achievements
or presents the characters of the illustrious deceased. Observing
as he did all the decorum of the occasion, his discourses do not
degenerate into mere adulation; some are historic surveys,
magnificent in their breadth of view and mastery of events. He
presents things as he saw them, and he did not always see aright.
Cromwell is a hypocrite and an impostor; the revocation of the edict
of Nantes is the laudable act of a king who is a defender of the faith.
The intolerance of Bossuet proceeds not so much from his heart as
from the logic of his orthodoxy. His heart had a tenderness which
breaks forth in many places, and signally in the discourse occasioned
by the death of the Duchess of Orleans. This, and the eloquent
memorials of her mother, Henrietta, Queen of England, and of the
Prince de Conde, touch the heights and depths of the passions proper
to the grave.

Bossuet's polemic against Protestantism is sufficiently represented
by his _Exposition de la Doctrine Catholique_ (published 1671) and
the _Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes_ (1688). The
latter, in its fifteen books, is an attempt to overwhelm the
contending Protestant communions by one irresistible attack. Their
diversities of error are contrasted with the one, unchanging faith
of the infallible Church. Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, the
Albigenses, the Hussites, the Wicliffites are routed and slain, as
opponents are slain in theological warfare--to rise again. History
and theology co-operate in the result. The characters of the
Protestant Reformers are studied with a remorseless scrutiny, and
a