ape therefrom, that he found himself obliged,
at the assembly of the clergy in 1682, to draw up the solemn declarations
of the Gallican church. The meeting of the clergy had been called forth
by the eternal discussions of the civil power with the court of Rome on
the question of the rights of regale, that is to say, the rights of the
sovereign to receive the revenues of vacant bishoprics, and to appoint to
benefices belonging to them. The French bishops were of independent
spirit; the Archbishop of Paris, Francis de Harlay, was on bad terms with
Pope Innocent XI.; Bossuet managed to moderate the discussions, and kept
within suitable bounds the declaration which he could not avoid. He had
always taught and maintained what was proclaimed by the assembly of the
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 excu