in the ministrations of the Church, and he had endeavored in some degree to remedy it in his own preaching. But he was reaching that time of life when excess of prudence too often degenerates into a vice. The Church, he apprehended, was in danger, not because religion had become the fashion, but because of the existence of an uncanonical piety among the people,-and he who had so often and so successfully done battle in her defense, felt called upon once more to come to her rescue. But it was a service for which he felt but little desire; one that promised him much labor, and very little reward. Bossuet accordingly drew up a treatise designed to cover the whole ground of controversy, and at once expose the fanaticism of Quietism, and yet keep inviolate the spiritual in religion. His treatise he styled "Instructions concerning the States of Prayer," which, when completed, he submitted to the judgment of his episcopal colleagues. M. Godet, the new Bishop of Chartres, and M. de Noailles, who had recently been made Archbishop of Paris, gave their ready approval to the book; but there were reasons why the Archbishop of Cambray should hesitate. He greatly desired to propitiate the good will of the Bishop of Meaux, with whom his relations were becoming rather critical; he also saw very much in the book with which he most heartily concurred; yet he felt that as a man of honor, and especially as a Christian, he could not give it his unqualified approval. To its doctrinal teachings he made but few objections, though with some of its expressions he was not pleased; but it was full of personal invectives against Madame Guyon, which he believed to be uncalled for and unjust. Others, he said, might innocently do what he declined, for they were only partially acquainted with the case; but as he knew the whole matter, he could not do it without criminality. The refusal, however, was given in the most unobjectionable manner. He remarked that "he did not see any shadow of difficulty between himself and the Bishop of Meaux, on the fundamental question of doctrine." He also firmly, but modestly declared his settled confidence in the purity and excellence of character of Madame Guyon, and gave it as his settled convictions, gained in close conversations with her, that her writings, strictly interpreted, were not a proper index to her religious opinions. This, his final decision, was sent by Fenelon to Madame de Maintenon, by whom it was, of course, at once laid before the king. Bossuet's book was therefore given to the public; but among the names of his approving colleagues, that of Fenelon was not found-and thus the hitherto concealed division became public. None of Fenelon's colleagues and distinguished friends condemned his course in this matter except Bossuet; but they required of him such a statement of his opinions as would effectually vindicate him from the charge of Quietism. He accordingly drew up with all convenient dispatch a treatise which he called the " Maxims of the Saints concerning the Interior Life." This book bore the marks that distinguish everything that proceeded from the pen of its author. In manner it was gentle and conciliatory, but firm and dignified. It was pervaded by a sweet spirit of piety, adapted equally to captivate the heart and to gratify the intellect. It was immediately hailed with great satisfaction by the same eminent persons who had approved of the book of Bossuet; but the Bishop of Meaux, unused as he was to rivalry, to say nothing of defeat, was little gratified at the state things had assumed. He knew, too, that he was secure as to the royal favor in this matter; for the king had no favor for Madame Guyon, and but little for Fenelon. The talents and virtues of the new archbishop commanded the respect of the haughty monarch; but there was a severity in Fenelon's virtue, and a majesty in his moral character that made the proud and debauched potentate ill at ease in his presence. Thus sustained, Bossuet openly expressed his dissatisfaction with Fenelon's explanations, and so the breach became open and confessed. Seldom has theological controversy called out two such champions to contend against each other, and seldom have the matter and circumstances of an intellectual tournament presented so many points of interest. Each combatant had his own peculiar advantages, and both were unequaled, except each by the other. Against the matured intellectual manhood of Bossuet stood the earlier vigor of Fenelon. If the former excelled in the force of his argumentation, the latter possessed the more fertile imagination. While the one remarks said to have been made in private and confidential conversations, or found in private letters, and by insinuating much more than was explicitly declared. Fenelon met this vile assault with the withering dignity of insulted virtue. He mourn spoke with the authority of a man accustomed to command; the other, even more effectually, commanded by his gentleness and affability. Bossuet's naturally strong passions had been sharpened by frequent controversy, and his mind rendered exacting by the homage, that had been paided the humiliation of his venerable and to him; Fenelon's natural gentleness of illustrious opponent, who had come down spirit a gentleness, however, that had from his elevation to become a fabricator no connection with intellectual weakness, and retailer of low slanders; and espe-had been cultivated by self-discipline, cially he lamented the disgrace which the and heightened by piety. Both were emi- episcopal office was likely to suffer by the nently eloquent, as speakers as well as exhibition of two of its incumbents, enwriters; and here, too, their character- gaged in accusing each other of scandalistic differences again appeared: Bossuet ous crimes. And then returning to the was argumentative, vehement, and over- question at issue, with the skill of a pracwhelming, often silencing when he failed ticed controversialist, he fairly turned the to convince, and compelling assent when tide of battle against his antagonist. he did not fully persuade; Fenelon made no pretensions to authority, nor seemed to wish to compel belief, but with a persuasive eloquence that concealed the compact structure of his arguments, charmed the hearts and won the understandings of those whom he addressed. At first the disputants were divided by apparently only unimportant misapprehensions; but, in fact, there were between them great and irreconcilable differences; so that when once the strife was begun, the hope of reconciliation was at an end. Either party could fortify his position by abundant authorities, and each had à portion of truth on his side. Bossuet came down upon his antagonist with an avalanche of arguments, invectives, sarcasms, and lamentations, as if his whole soul was shaken by its pent-up fires; yet was there method and terrible directness in the application of his powers. Fenelon stood firm and self-possessed in the tempest that raged around him, and shook from him the thunders that fell harmlessly upon his head; and in his turn dealt blows that were hard either to parry or resist. For a while the conflict was carried on at its sublime elevation; but at length passion prevailed over reason, and personal criminations took the place of arguments. Bossuet was unused to this kind of opposition; his pride was mortified, alike by its force and its pertinacity, and at length his fears were excited as to the final issue. A desperate effort seemed to be needed, and, forgetting what was due alike to himself and his cause, he attacked the private character of his antagonist, attempting to sustain his allegations by divulging VOL. V.-18 From being a mere question of theology, the controversy became a personal quarrel. On one side were the controversial reputation of the Bishop of Meaux, and the king's disfavor toward Madame Guyon, now exasperated to madness, and seeking to vent itself in the ruin of her good name and that of her friends; on the other were the honor and unsullied virtues of the Archbishop of Cambray. Against Fenelon were arrayed the disciplined powers of the veteran controversialist of Christendom, backed by the zeal of the court and the applause of the sycophantic crowd; while he stood alone, supported only by his conscious integrity and the force of his intellect, made doubly effective by the charm of evident, though unostentatious piety. Yet had the contest been left to be determined in this wise, it seemed evident that his triumph would have been complete. Indifferent beholders were enchanted by his eloquence and lofty virtues; the pious were charmed by the sweetness of his spirit; and the learned confessed the force of his reasoning; while his antagonist virtually conceded to him the palm of victory, by resorting to criminations. The controversy had been a long and severe one; and when all its circumstances are considered, had resulted less disastrously to Fenelon than might have been feared. Bossuet's treatise on Prayer had been followed by Fenelon's "Maxims of the Saints." In these works the two champions took their several positions, though the books themselves were not properly controversial. After these followed a skirmishing warfare of letters, and pamphlets accompanied by a large amount of court-gossip, and oral disputation between the partisans of the two interests. Presently Bossuet, with whom authorship was a profession, came out with a book, the "Account of Quietism," in which all his mighty powers of argument, wit, satire, and ridicule, were brought to bear against the whole body of so-called Quietists, and especially against Madame | Guyon, La Combe, and Fenelon, each of whom in succession was submitted to the scathing and withering operation of the terrible and unscrupulous eloquence of the veteran ecclesiastical gladiator. The effect was everywhere manifest, and apparently annihilating. In less than six weeks from the receipt of Bossuet's book in his exile at Cambray, Fenelon had prepared his reply, and placed printed copies of it in the hands of his friends at both Paris and Rome. "A nobler effusion of the indignation of insulted virtue and genius," says one of Fenelon's biographers, but a great admirer of Bossuet, "eloquence has never produced. In the first lines of it Fenelon placed himself above his antagonist, and to the last preserves his elevation. Notwithstanding my innocence,' says he, 'I was always apprehensive of a dispute of facts. I knew that such a dispute between bishops must occasion considerable scandal. If, as the bishop of Meaux has a hundred times asserted, my book be full of the most extravagant contradictions, and the most monstrous errors, why does he have recourse to discussions, which must be attended with the most terrible of all scandals? But he begins to find it difficult to establish his accusations of my doctrine; the history of Madame Guyon then comes to his aid, and he lays hold of it as an amusing tale, likely to make all his mistakes of my doctrine disappear and be forgotten. The secret of tion, to assume a port still more imposing than that of his mighty antagonist. Much had been expected from him; but none had supposed that he would raise himself to so prodigious a height as would not only repel the attack of his antagonist, but actually reduce him to the defensive." None was more sensible of the advantage gained by Fenelon than Bossuet himself, and his Reply to the Reply was rather an attempt at self-justification than a further attack. But his concessions were neither full nor ingenuous, and Fenelon's brief Remarks on these partial reparations of past wrongs closed the war of books. The controversy was exhausted, and the public interest, which had been kept up to an unusual degree of tension for several years, at length wearied, and subsided into comparative indifference. But this was not permitted to be the case until authority as well as argument had been made to do its utmost. The course things had taken seemed to make an appeal to Rome necessary, and to this both parties willingly assented. The papal throne was then occupied by Innocent XII., and moderate counsels prevailed in the Vatican. The pope was especially solicitous that the matter should be settled at Paris, and had notified the French monarch to that effect; but Louis was a party to the controversy, and would be heard. Accordingly the appeal was made in due form, and a commission of twelve theologians was appointed to examine Fenelon's book; but these having had twelve sessions, found themselves unable to agree upon any decision, and were discharged. private letters written in intimate and relig- The matter was then referred to twelve carious confidence, has nothing inviolable to him. dinals, but with no better success; when He prints letters which I writ to him in the a second congregation of cardinals, after strictest confidence. But all will be useless to fifty-two painful sessions, at length made him; he will find that nothing that is dishon-out, yet not unanimously, to present seveorable ever proves serviceable." The effect of the Reply was greater even than that produced by Bossuet's attack. Fenelon's triumph seemed to be complete. "Never," continues the same writer, "did virtue and genius obtain a more complete triumph. Fenelon's reply, by a kind of enchantment, restored to him every heart. Crushed by the strong arm of power, abandoned by the multitude, there was nothing to which he could look but his own powers. Obliged to fight for his honor, it was necessary for him, if he did not consent to sink under the accusa ral propositions from that book, as "censurable;" but not a few of the cardinals openly defended Fenelon's doctrines. The controversy was thus reproduced at Rome, and each party found champions in the sacred college. The pope would have gladly dismissed the whole affair as trivial and vexatious, but he was constantly buffeted by the French king, and a decision against Fenelon demanded, with the most indecent effrontery. At length, at the end of two years, under the pressure of intimidation from Paris, twenty-three sentences were selected, which, as explained by Fenelon's enemies, were pronounced "erroneous;" but nothing was decreed against Fenelon himself. But Louis did not consent to await the tardy action of the sacred college, nor to limit his own actions by their determinations. While the controversy was at its height, Fenelon received an order from the king to repair to his diocese, and remain there; and, one after another, all his friends were dismissed from the public service, and his own name, as preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy, was struck from the rolls by the king's own hand; and as a refinement of malicious meanness, a son of Madame Guyon, a youth equally innocent and ignorant of Quietism, who held the office of lieutenant in the guards, was dismissed without cause, by a royal mandate. But when the long-delayed condemnation came, it was so far robbed of power to harm, as to seem rather an acquittal—and also a further disappointment awaited the enemies of the persecuted archbishop. Fenelon received the letter of condemnation with characteristic meekness, acknowledging the authority from which it proceeded, and without recanting anything he had before affirmed, he read from his own pulpit the sentence of condemnation. During the progress of these exciting controversies in the high places, the humble name from which the whole arose was almost forgotten by the public; but the eye of power was still upon her. From the castle of Vincennes Madame Guyon was transferred to Vaugirord, whence a year later she was taken to the Bastile. While at Vaugirord a crowning effort of cowardly malice was made to effect her ruin. She was visited by Archbishop de Noailles, accompanied by the curate of St. Sulpice, who read to her a letter purporting to come from Father La Combe, and addressed to herself, in which certain gross improprieties were alluded to as having occurred between them. They then earnestly conjured her to confess her faults and seek forgiveness. Her stern dignity in this time of trial affected favorably the minds of these ministers of wrong, and they left her with mingled emotions of indignation for those who had so basely imposed a forgery upon them, of shame for themselves, and of both pity and admiration for her. It seems that La Combe, worn out by the rigors of a protracted imprisonment, had become demented. The letter in question had been written for him, but his signature was genuine, for while on the passage from his prison to an asylum for the insane, it had been procured from his own hand. He soon after died a complete maniac. Such were the efforts put forth, not only to asperse the reputation of Madame Guyon, but chiefly to blast the spotless name of Fenelon, and justify the vile innuendoes of Bossuet. Madame Guyon passed four long years in the Bastile, having only her maid-servant, who also had become her disciple, for her fellow-prisoner; and here her frail constitution was greatly impaired, and her buoyant spirit subdued by the rigors of a protracted incarceration. The excitement connected with her name and doctrines having subsided, she was then taken out of prison and banished to Blois, where she passed the remainder of her days. The vigor and animal spirits of her youth had departed, and the vapors of her fanaticism had dispersed, but the genial glow of her piety was unabated, and her faith had become rectified without losing its luminous radiance. Her exile became to herself a Patmos, in which holy communings gave solace to her weary spirit, while many a pilgrim from distant provinces sought out her resting place, to hear from her own lips her heart-warm precepts of faith, hope, and love; till, at the age of nearly threescore and ten, she breathed out her spirit in sweet resignation to her God, by whom she had been so strangely led, and so graciously sustained. Fenelon too was an exile, but only such as was quite consistent with the high duties he had assumed when he accepted the episcopal office. In the quiet of his diocese he had ample opportunity to apply to useful ends those shining qualities which might have adorned a court, but which were not less adapted to bless a rustic peasantry. Here opportunity was given him to inculcate in a practical form that pure love, for the defense of which he had suffered so much, and to see demonstrated on the simple minds of his people its wholesome influences. He moved among them as an angel of light; he condescended to their humble condition; he opened to their understandings the sublime verities of the Scriptures, and so completely enshrined himself in their affec tions, that succeeding generations spoke familiarly of him as "the good archbishop." Strangers from all parts of Europe visited him, and all were received with the same genial but unostentatious hospitality. His former pupil, the Duke of Burgundy, though forbidden, on account of his grandfather's hatred of Fenelon, to visit his old preceptor, retained the most lively and affectionate regard for him,-a feeling which Fenelon very fully reciprocated. Thus, loved by all who were capable of being pleased with exalted purity of character, and venerated by all who could appreciate true greatness, lived Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray, till, in 1715, at sixty-five years old, he rested from his works. A halo of pure, unearthly glory surrounds his name; no other star shines with a more lovely radiance in all the galaxy of the eminent dead. We have thus conducted the reader through one of the most remarkable periods in the history of religion since the time of the Reformation. It presents in its chief actors a very interesting group of characters, and it is not without impressive lessons for us who, under better auspices, and with better prospects, find reviving around us aspirations for that "perfect love" which breathes through the pages of Fenelon. from Versailles, that he departed from a course that was honorable alike to his head and his heart; then he consented to sacrifice the bishop to the courtier, and to persecute as a heretic a woman who bore his own certificate to the excellence of her life and character. At this point his politic but unprincipled course contrasts most painfully with Fenelon's generous selfabnegation, in defense of erring but injured innocence. But, like many other generous but impulsive spirits, Fenelon's failed properly to discriminate between Madame Guyon's personal excellences and her religious opinions. In the beginning of the controversy between Bossuet and Fenelon, the ground of truth was with the former rather than the latter. Bossuet's Instructions on Prayer contained a sound, discreet, and judicious body of instructions; and, apart from its attack on Madame Guyon, it was an honor to the heart of a Christian bishop. Fenelon's Maxims of the Saints was also a work of real merit, and especially valuable for the deep tone of spirituality that pervaded it. But it contained many passages of both doubtful orthodoxy and of unsafe practical tendency. Its mysticism is everywhere manifest; nor would the court of Rome have hesitated to condemn the book at once, had not more objectionable mysticisms been canonized in former times. It is true, that by explanations and qualifications, the language used could be made to indicate an unobjectionable sense. But it has been very justly said, that "what is only true with an explanation, is untrue without it;" and judged by this rule there was doubtless much in the Maxims of the Saints that was not true. It is readily granted that neither Fenelon nor Madame Guyon fell into the practical errors, which have been indicated as the legitimate results of the system they favored. This is much to their honor personally, but nothing to the vindication of their teachings. Others, not a few, have been so led astray; and a system is not to be judged exclusively by its influence on the character and life of its originators, but rather by its diffused influences upon its disciples. The merits of the matter in controversy in this celebrated affair have doubtless suffered by the manner in which the controversy was conducted. Very often has a good cause been sacrificed by the intemperate zeal and the unscrupulous proceedings of its advocates, as well as the worse made to appear the better cause, by being associated with and defended by persons whose characters and manners effectually commend whatever they approve. Such, to a very great degree, was the case in this affair. There is good reason to believe that Bossuet and his associates, not excluding Fenelon, believed that a dangerous practical heresy was involved in the system to which the influence of Madame Guyon was giving currency, and that they honestly believed that it was their duty to correct the threatened evil. Nor was the course pur-ance, that a right state of the heart tends sued by the royal commissioners toward Madame Guyon illiberal or severe. It was not till Bossuet had felt an influence It is a practical truth of much import mightily to correct the aberrations of the intellect, while corrupt passions and appetites inevitably obscure the understanding. |