niverselle_ might have furnished an answer, for there the fall of many
empires is detailed. But then the _Discours_ was composed under a single
preoccupation. To Bossuet the establishment of Christianity was the one
point of real importance in the whole history of the world. Over Mahomet
and the East he passed without a word; on Greece and Rome he only
touched in so far as they formed part of the _Praeparatio Evangelica_.
And yet his _Discours_ is far more than a theological pamphlet. Pascal,
in utter scorn for science, might refer the rise and fall of empires to
Providence or chance--the nose of Cleopatra, or "a little grain of sand"
in the English lord protector's veins. Bossuet held fast to his
principle that God works through secondary causes. "It is His will that
every great change should have its roots in the ages that went before
it." Bossuet, accordingly, made a heroic attempt to grapple with origins
and causes, and in this way his book deserves its place as one of the
very first of philosophic histories.

From writing history he turned to history in the making. In 1681 he was
gazetted bishop of Meaux; but before he could take possession of his
see, he was drawn into a violent quarrel between Louis XIV. and the pope
(see GALLICANISM). Here he found himself between two fires. To support
the pope meant supporting the Jesuits; and he hated their casuists and
_devotion aisee_ almost as much as Pascal himself. To oppose the pope
was to play into the hands of Louis, who was frankly anxious to humble
the Church before the State. So Bossuet steered a middle course. Before
the general assembly of the French clergy he preached a great sermon on
the unity of the Church, and made it a magnificent plea for compromise.
As Louis insisted on his clergy making an anti-papal declaration,
Bossuet got leave to draw it up, and made it as moderate as he could.
And when the pope declared it null and void, he set to work on a
gigantic _Defensio Cleri Gallicani_, only published after his death.

The Gallican storm a little abated, he turned back to a project very
near his heart. Ever since the early days at Metz he had been busy with
schemes for uniting the Huguenots to the Roman Church. In 1668 he
converted Turenne; in 1670 he published an _Exposition de la foi
catholique_, so moderate in tone that adversaries were driven to accuse
him of having fraudulently watered down the Roman dogmas to suit a
Protestant taste. Finally in 1688 appe