of the same mind as Bossuet and
FEnelon. "The king will be pained to decide against your opinion as
regards the new converts," says a letter to him from Madame de Maintenon;
"meanwhile the most general is to force them to attend at mass. Your
opinion seems to be a condemnation of all that has been hitherto done
against these poor creatures. It is not pleasant to hark back so far,
and it has always been supposed that, in any case, they must have a
religion." In vain were liberty of conscience and its inviolable rights
still misunderstood by the noblest spirits, the sincerity and
high-mindedness of the great bishops instinctively revolted against
the hypocrisy engendered of persecution. The tacit assuagement of the
severities against the Reformers, between 1688 and 1700, was the fruit of
the representations of Bossuet, Fenelon, and Cardinal Noailles. Madame
de Maintenon wrote at that date to one of her relatives, "You are
converted; do not meddle in the conversion of others. I confess to you
that I do not like the idea of answering before God and the king for all
those conversions."

At the same time with the controversial treatises, the _Elevations sur
les Mysteres_ and the _Meditations sur l'Evangile_ were written at Meaux,
drawing the bishop away to the serener regions of supreme faith. There
might he have chanced to meet those Reformers, as determined as he in the
strife, as attached, at bottom, as he, for life and death, to the
mysteries and to the lights of a common hope. "When God shall give us
grace to enter Paradise," St. Bernard used to say, "we shall be above all
astonished at not finding some of those whom we had thought to meet
there, and at finding others whom we did not expect." Bossuet had a
moments glimpse of this higher truth; in concert with Leibnitz, a great
intellect of more range in knowledge and less steadfastness than he in
religious faith, he tried to reconcile the Catholic and Protestant
communions in one and the same creed. There were insurmountable
difficulties on both sides; the attempt remained unsuccessful.

The Bishop of Meaux had lately triumphed in the matter of Quietism,
breaking the ties of old friendship with Fenelon, and more concerned
about defending sound doctrine in the church than fearful of hurting his
friend, who was sincere and modest in his relations with him, and humbly
submissive to the decrees of the court of Rome. The Archbishop of
Cambrai was in exile at his