acknowledges neither respect nor restraint, neither law nor custom. Yet notwithstanding his politics, Bossuet never spared the king in the smallest degree from hearing the truth, although his dutiful subject in all worldly matters, according to the appointment of Divine Providence. It is not to be conceived what he might have accomplished had he been the King's Diocesan, instead of a Hardouin de Beaumont, a Harlay, or even instead of that honest theologian and pious Priest, but weak Prelate, de Noailles. Louis XIV., who felt towards the great man a fear analagous to the slavish fear of God, from which he could not free himself,— and among those who approached him, he called Bossuet, the one spotless servant of his God,-Louis XIV., who was equally unwilling to forsake sin or to fall into hell, carefully avoided placing Bossuet in the Episcopal See of his chief city. It must, however, be acknowedged, that under the rule of Louis XIV., many worthy bishops became a blessing to the Church of France, and the Catholic

Church in general, although afterwards he oppressed, and even persecuted, several of them. And this fatal right of nomination, which is entirely irreconcileable with the true constitution of the Church, the Roman Curia, to whom it does not belong, has granted to kings, who are not fit to receive it, in order to obtain other favours in exchange, a bargain by which, as has been said before, the contracting parties give to each other that which belongs to neither of them.

APPENDIX II.

T is much to be wished that the Governments of

IT

Europe may learn what a future they are helping to prepare when they direct their efforts against Christianity, and consequently (speaking from the point of view of a philosopher and a statesman) against the groundwork of all that is truly noble in our civilisation; and that they may become aware that they are deceived and betrayed by parties who take advantage of their miserable blindness to attempt to usurp their power, and who assist each other in this attempt as long as the work to be done is one of ruin and destruction, and then, when the question is of establishing new things in the place of what has been destroyed,

turn their arms against each other. Would that the Governments with truly statesmanlike foresight would learn further, to what it must lead, if the relations of the Church with the State, which are grounded upon and have grown out of the principles of Christianity, are looked upon as foreign to the State, which must soon lead to their mutual relations being regarded and treated as hostile on both sides.

The jus circa sacra which belongs to the State is an inalienable right, like that which belongs to our earthly parents, although both are liable to be, and are, wickedly misused. A State which consents to forego this right, disowns what is of the very essence of human nature. It is the duty of the State to exercise this right with strict justice and equity. Even under the Roman Empire, in the earliest centuries of Christianity, when it was not possible to keep clear of the civil law and State assistance, Christians appealed to them under the empire of Pagan Rome, before it had undertaken the task

of destroying the Church, and in those intervals of refreshment which they always enjoyed from time to time afterwards, during the unparalleled war which seemingly was waged by a power of the most enormous material superiority, in combination with the whole civilisation, intelligence and art of heathendom, against a body totally powerless both in fact and theory, but which was really waged by the world against Almighty God. How much rather must this appeal be considered legitimate in our States, and in the interests of both the great powers alike, whereof the one exists by the immediate appointment of God and only attains to its consummation in eternity, while the other is not less, though mediately, willed and appointed by God, that it may serve as a school wherein man should ripen for that eternal life, and be prepared through the ordinances of this world, whose fashion passeth away,* for the true and eternal order of the kingdom of heaven. How much rather, we repeat, must it be true of our States,

* 1 Cor. vii. 31.

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