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Ultimately it leaves you frail; it leaves you mortal; it leaves you sinners and demands from you a greater final reckoning before God…. There is among men a type of government that is called arbitrary, but it is not found among us, nor in properly constituted states. Four characteristics are associated with this type of government.
First, its subjects are born slaves, that is, in true bondage, and among them there are no free persons. Second, nothing is possessed as property since all belongs to the prince, and there is no right of inheritance, even from father to son.
Finally, there is no law other than his will. This is what is called arbitrary power. I do not wish to inquire whether it is lawful or unlawful. There are peoples and great empires that are satisfied with it, and it is not for us to disturb them concerning their form of government. It is sufficient for us to say that this type of government is barbarous and odious. These four characteristics are very far removed from our customs, and for this reason arbitrary government does not exist among us.
There is a great difference between a government that is absolute and one that is arbitrary. It is absolute by reason of constraint, there being no power capable of coercing the sovereign who in this sense is independent of all human authority. But it does not follow from this that the government is arbitrary. Because, although anything is permitted to the judgment of God and to a government called arbitrary, it is certain that states have laws against which anything that is done is of no right.
And there is always available a means of redress on other occasions and in other times, so that each remains legitimate possessor of his property, no one being able to believe that he may ever possess anything in security contrary to the laws, whose vigilance and action against injustices and violence is immortal… And it is in this that a government called legitimate is opposed by its nature to arbitrary government….
Government is established in order to free all men from every oppression and violence, as has often been stated. And it is this that creates the state of perfect liberty, there being in essence nothing less free than anarchy, which destroys all legitimate rights among men, and knows no law but that of force. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Week 7: New Imperialism during the Long 19th Century. Search for:. That is, they should govern as God governs, in a manner at once noble, disinterested, benevolent, in a word, divine… God, who created all men from the same earth and equally placed His image and likeness in their souls, did not establish distinctions among them so that some might be proud and others slaves and wretches.
Named bishop of Meaux in , after the completion of his pedagogical task, Bossuet devoted himself to his pastoral duties with Vincentian zeal. He played a leading role in the Assembly of the Clergy , which decreed the subordination of the national churches to the pope.
Chronic kidney stones gradually forced Bossuet to give up his pastoral duties, and he died at Meaux on April 12, Treasure, Seventeenth Century France , which discusses Bossuet at length. The idea of Providence, in Bossuets theology , appears to us as at once a the sanction of the moral law b the very law of history, and c the foundations of apologetics. It is under this aspect that the idea of Providence seems to have presented itself primarily to Bossuet, and that it is found in some sort scattered or diffused in his earliest "Sermons".
Here is the mystery of pain and the solution of the problem of evil. If we did not place entire confidence in Providence , the existence of evil and the prosperity of the wicked would be for the human mind nothing but an occasion of scandal ; and if he did not accept our sufferings as a design of God in our regard, we should fall into despair.
A source of resignation, our trust in Providence is also a source of strength, and it governs, so to speak, the entire domain of moral action.
If our actions are moral, it is by reason of their conformity with, or at least of their analogy to, the views of Providence, and thus the life of the Christian is only a perpetual realization of the Will of God.
We merit, according to our endeavours to know it in order to carry it into effect; and, on the contrary, to demerit consists exactly in not taking account of God's Will or warnings, whether the omission be through negligence, pride , or stubbornness.
If the crash of empires "falling one upon another" does not in truth express some purpose of God regarding humanity, then history, or what is called by that name, is indeed no longer anything but a chaotic chronology , the meaning of which we should strive in vain to disentangle.
In that case, Fortune, or rather Chance, would be the mistress of human affairs; the existence of humanity would be only a bad dream, or phantasmagoria, whose changing face would be inadequate to mask a void of nothingness. We should be fretting ourselves in that void without reason and almost without cause, our very actions would be but phantoms, and the only result of so many efforts accumulated through so many thousands of years would be the conviction, every day more clear, of their uselessness, which would be another void of nothingness.
And why, after all, were there Greeks and Romans? Of what use was Salamis? Why was there a Caesar, and a Charlemagne? Nations like individuals , live only by maintaining uninterrupted communication with God , and it is precisely this condition of their existence which is called by the name of Providence.
The hypothesis of Providence is the condition or the possibility of history, as the hypothesis of the stability of the laws of nature is the condition of the possibility of science. For if there be indeed more than one way which leads to God , or, in other words, many means of establishing the truth of the Christian religion , there is, in Bossuet's view, none more convincing than that which is at once the highest expression and the summing-up of the history of humanity, that is to say, "the very sequence of religion", or "the relation of the two Testaments", and, in a more objective manner, the visible manifestation of Providence in the establishment of Christianity.
It was Providence that made of the Jewish people a people apart, a unique people, the chosen people, charged with maintaining and defending the worship of the true God throughout the pagan centuries, against the prestige of an idolatry which essentially consisted in the deification of the energies of nature. It was Providence that, by means of Roman unity and of its extension throughout the known universe , rendered not only possible but easy and almost necessary , the conversion of the world to Christianity.
It was Providence, again, that developed the features of the modern world out of the disorder of barbarous invasions and reconciled the two antiquities under the law of Christ. But the real truth is that Christianity , in propagating itself, has proved itself. If the action of Providence is manifest anywhere, it is in the sequence of the history of Christianity. And what is more natural under the circumstances than to make of its history the demonstration of its truth?
It was appropriate to insist here upon this idea of Providence, which is, in a manner, the masterpiece of Bossuet's theology. Besides the "Discourse on Universal History", he wrote other works for the education of the Dauphin; notably the "Treatise on the Knowledge of God and of Oneself" and the "Art of Governing, Drawn from the Words of Holy Scripture ", which appeared only after his death; the "Art of Governing", in , and the "Treatise on the Knowledge of God", in To the "Treatise on Free Will" and the "Treatise on Concupiscence", also posthumous, a like origin has been assigned; but this is certainly a mistake; these two works, which contain some of Bossuet's most beautiful pages, were not written for his royal pupil, who certainly would not have understood them at all.
Did he even understand the "Discourse on Universal History"? In this connection it has been questioned whether Bossuet in his quality of preceptor, did not fail in his first obligation , which was, as his critics assert, to adapt himself to his pupil's intelligence. Here we can only reply, without going to the bottom of the question, that the end which Bossuet intended was no ordinary education , but the education of a future King of France , the first obligation incumbent upon whose preceptor was to treat him as a King.
Thus, for that matter, professors in our universities never seem to subordinate their teaching to the capacity of their pupils, but only to the exigencies of the science taught. And we will add, moreover, that as the Dauphin never reigned, no one can really say how much he did, or did not, profit by a preceptor such as Bossuet was. The education of a prince ordinarily, and naturally, ended with his marriage.
The functions of Bossuet as preceptor ceased, therefore, in He had not been appointed Bishop of Meaux; he was made Almoner to the Dauphin, quite in accordance with usage, and the King honoured him with the title of General Councillor Conseiller en tous les conseils. But during his preceptorship, and independancy of any participation in the councils, his authority had nevertheless become of considerable importance at Court, with Louis XIV personally. No member of the French clergy was thenceforth more in evidence than he; no preacher, no bishop.
He had no reason, then, to fear that, having accomplished the education of the Dauphin, his activity would fail to find employment. In truth , the last epoch of his life was to be its fullest. Third period This period was the most laborious, indeed the most painful; and the impassioned struggles in which he becomes engaged will now end only with his life. But why so many struggles at the time of life when most men seek for rest?
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