e or she will be
repulsive. It left an indelible stain on the character of the most
brilliant and gifted woman of her times, and makes us forget her many
virtues. With all her excellences, she goes down in history as a cold
and intolerant woman whom we cannot love. We cannot forget that in a
great degree through her influence the Edict of Nantes was repealed.

The persecution of the Protestants, however, partially reveals the
narrow intolerance of Madame de Maintenon. She sided but with those
whose influence was directed to the support of the recognized dogmas of
the Church in their connection with the absolute rule of kings. The
interests of Catholic institutions have ever been identical with
absolutism. Bossuet, the ablest theologian and churchman which the
Catholic Church produced in the seventeenth century, gave the whole
force of his vast intellect to uphold an unlimited royal authority. He
saw in the bold philosophical speculations of Descartes, Malebranche,
Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Locke an insidious undermining of the doctrines
of the Church, an intellectual freedom whose logical result would be
fatal alike to Church and State. His eagle eye penetrated to the core of
every system of human thought. He saw the logical and necessary results
of every theory which Pantheists, or Rationalists, or Quietists, or
Jansenists advanced. Whatever did not support the dogmas of mediaeval
and patriotic theologians, such as the Papal Church indorsed, was
regarded by him with suspicion and aversion. Every theory or speculation
which tended to emancipate the mind, or weaken the authority of the
Church, or undermine an absolute throne, was treated by him with
dogmatic intolerance and persistent hatred. He made war alike on the
philosophers, the Jansenists, and the Quietists, whether they remained
in the ranks of the Church or not. It was the dangerous consequences of
these speculations pushed to their logical result which he feared and
detested, and which no other eye than his was able to perceive.

Bossuet communicated his spirit to Madame de Maintenon and to the King,
who were both under his influence as to the treatment of religious or
philosophical questions. Louis and his wife were both devout supporters
of orthodoxy,--that is, the received doctrines of the Church,--partly
from conservative tendencies, and partly from the connection of
established religious institutions with absolutism in government.
Whatever was established, w