Minds the most devoted to power had spoken to sovereigns of duties, and to people of rights.

The holy boldness of Christianity had been heard even in the consecrated pulpit, in the presence of Louis XIV.

Bossuet, that sacerdotal genius of the ancient synagogue, had mingled his proud adulations to Louis XIV.

with some of those austere warnings which console persons for their abasement.
Fenelon, that evangelical and tender genius, of the new law, had written his instructions to princes, and his Telemachus, in the palace of the king, and in the cabinet of an heir to the throne.

The political philosophy of Christianity, that insurrection of justice in favour of the weak, had glided from the lips of Louis XIV.