I confess to you that I do not like the idea of answering before God and the king for all those conversions." At the same time with the controversial treatises, the _Elevations sur les Mysteres_ and the _Meditations sur l'Evangile_ were written at Meaux, drawing the bishop away to the serener regions of supreme faith.

There might he have chanced to meet those Reformers, as determined as he in the strife, as attached, at bottom, as he, for life and death, to the mysteries and to the lights of a common hope.

"When God shall give us grace to enter Paradise," St.Bernard used to say, "we shall be above all astonished at not finding some of those whom we had thought to meet there, and at finding others whom we did not expect." Bossuet had a moments glimpse of this higher truth; in concert with Leibnitz, a great intellect of more range in knowledge and less steadfastness than he in religious faith, he tried to reconcile the Catholic and Protestant communions in one and the same creed.

There were insurmountable difficulties on both sides; the attempt remained unsuccessful.
The Bishop of Meaux had lately triumphed in the matter of Quietism, breaking the ties of old friendship with Fenelon, and more concerned about defending sound doctrine in the church than fearful of hurting his friend, who was sincere and modest in his relations with him, and humbly submissive to the decrees of the court of Rome.

The Archbishop of Cambrai was in exile at his own diocese; Bossuet was ill at Meaux, still, however, at work, going deeper every day into that profound study of Holy Writ and of the fathers of the church which shines forth in all his writings.