ared his great _Histoire des
variations des eglises protestantes_, perhaps the most brilliant of all
his works. Few writers could have made the Justification controversy
interesting or even intelligible. His argument is simple enough. Without
rules an organized society cannot hold together, and rules require an
authorized interpreter. The Protestant churches had thrown over this
interpreter; and Bossuet had small trouble in showing that, the longer
they lived, the more they varied on increasingly important points. For
the moment the Protestants were pulverized; but before long they began
to ask whether variation was necessarily so great an evil. Between 1691
and 1701 Bossuet corresponded with Leibnitz with a view to reunion, but
negotiations broke down precisely at this point. Individual Roman
doctrines Leibnitz thought his countrymen might accept, but he flatly
refused to guarantee that they would necessarily believe to-morrow what
they believe to-day. "We prefer," he said, "a church eternally variable
and for ever moving forwards." Next, Protestant writers began to
accumulate some startling proofs of Rome's own variations; and here they
were backed up by Richard Simon, a priest of the Paris Oratory, and the
father of Biblical criticism in France. He accused St Augustine,
Bossuet's own special master, of having corrupted the primitive doctrine
of Grace. Bossuet set to work on a _Defense de la tradition_, but Simon
calmly went on to raise issues graver still. Under a veil of politely
ironical circumlocutions, such as did not deceive the bishop of Meaux,
he claimed his right to interpret the Bible like any other book. Bossuet
denounced him again and again; Simon told his friends he would wait
until "the old fellow" was no more. Another Oratorian proved more
dangerous still. Simon had endangered miracles by applying to them lay
rules of evidence, but Malebranche abrogated miracles altogether. It was
blasphemous, he argued, to suppose that the Author of nature would break
through a reign of law He had Himself established. Bossuet might
scribble _nova, mira, falsa_, in the margins of his book and urge on
Fenelon to attack them; Malebranche politely met his threats by saying
that to be refuted by such a pen would do him too much honour. These
repeated checks soured Bossuet's temper. In his earlier controversies he
had borne himself with great magnanimity, and the Huguenot ministers he
refuted found him a kindly advocate at cou