Note 864 — Chapter VI

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.