[857] Vol. i. pp. 265, 266.
[858] Vol. i. p. 149.
[859] Vol. ii. pp. 179, 180.
[860] Vol. ii. p. 269.
[861] Vol. ii. p. 124.
[862] Vol. ii. pp. 451–454.
[863] ‘A quoy nous pourrions joindre un autre monument fort authentique, c'est le résultat de certains pères, et de certains docteurs de l'église, qui tiennent que l'Ante-christ ne viendra point au monde qu'après la dissection, c'est-à-dire après la dissipation de nostre empire. Leur fondement est dans la seconde épistre de saint Paul aux Thessaloniciens.’ Audigier, vol. ii. p. 462.
[864] This is the opinion of Mr. Hallam respecting Bossuet's History of the Variations of Protestant Churches. Const. Hist. vol. i. p. 486: compare Lerminier, Philos. du Droit, vol. ii. p. 86. Attempts have been made by Protestant theologians to retort against the Catholics the arguments of Bossuet, on the ground that religious variations are a necessary consequence of the honest pursuit of religious truth. See Blanco White's Evidence against Catholicism, pp. 109–112; and his Letters from Spain, by Doblado, p. 127. With this I fully agree; but it would be easy to show that the argument is fatal to all ecclesiastical systems with strictly defined creeds, and, therefore, strikes as heavily against the Protestant churches as against the Catholic. Beausobre, in his acute and learned work on Manichæism, seems to have felt this; and he makes the dangerous admission, ‘que si l'argument de M. de Meaux vaut quelque chose contre la Réformation, il a la même force contre le Christianisme.’ Hist. de Manichée, vol. i. p. 526. On Bossuet as a controversialist, see Stäudlin, Geschichte der theologischen Wissenschaften, vol. ii. pp. 43–45; and for a contemporary opinion of his great work, see a characteristic passage in Lettres de Sévigné, vol. v. p. 409.
[865] His method is fairly stated by Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxv. p. 427.
[866] See, on this attempt of Bossuet‘s, some good remarks in Stäudlin, Geschichte der theologischen Wissenschaften, vol. ii. p. 198: 'Kirche und Christenthum sind für diesen Bischoff der Mittelpunct der ganzen Geschichte. Aus diesem Gesichtspuncte betrachtet er nicht nur die Patriarchen und Propheten, das Judenthum und die alten Weissagungen, sondern auch die Reiche der Welt.’