It would have been greater if he had possessed the gift of style.
2.
He was not the first to plan a definite scheme for establishing a perpetual peace.

Long ago Emeric Cruce had given to the world a proposal for a universal league, including not only the Christian nations of Europe, but the Turks, Persians, and Tartars, which by means of a court of arbitration sitting at Venice should ensure the settlement of all disputes by peaceful means.

[Footnote: Le Nouveau Cynee (Paris, 1623).
It has recently been reprinted with an English translation by T.W.
Balch, Philadelphia (1909).] The consequence of universal peace, he said, will be the arrival of "that beautiful century which the ancient theologians promise after there have rolled by six thousand years.

For they say that then the world will live happily and in repose.

Now it happens that that time has nearly expired, and even if it is not, it depends only on the Princes to give beforehand this happiness to their peoples." Later in the century, others had ventilated similar projects in obscure publications, but the Abbe does not refer to any of his predecessors.
He was not blinded by the superficial brilliancy of the reign of Louis XIV.