We shall fail to understand it unless we recognise that it was a pragmatical, opportune work, designed for the needs of the time, and with express references to current tendencies of thought.
One main motive of Bossuet in his lifelong concern for Providence was his conviction that the doctrine was the most powerful check on immorality, and that to deny it was to remove the strongest restraint on the evil side of human nature.

There is no doubt that the free-living people of the time welcomed the arguments which called Providence in question, and Bossuet believed that to champion Providence was the most efficient means of opposing the libertine tendencies of his day.
"Nothing," he declared in one of his sermons (1662), "has appeared more insufferable to the arrogance of libertines than to see themselves continually under the observation of this ever-watchful eye of Providence.

They have felt it as an importunate compulsion to recognise that there is in Heaven a superior force which governs all our movements and chastises our loose actions with a severe authority.

They have wished to shake off the yoke of this Providence, in order to maintain, in independence, an unteachable liberty which moves them to live at their own fancy, without fear, discipline, or restraint." [Passage from Bossuet, quoted by Brunetiere, op.cit.

58.] Bossuet was thus working in the same cause as the Jansenists.
He had himself come under the influence of Descartes, whose work he always regarded with the deepest respect.