The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Introduction
Introduction[1]
BOSSUET’S editors and biographers dwell with much emphasis not only on the great extent and deep learning of his divers writings on Holy Scripture, but on the very remarkable nature of his love for Biblical knowledge. This originated in an extraordinarily strong impression made upon him by the Bible, on his first direct acquaintance with it, when a mere boy in the class of Rhetoric under the Jesuits at Dijon. Cardinal Bausset gives so vivid an account of this incident in the great preacher’s life that his words are worth quoting : —
'The Elements of Euclid ’ he says 'had revealed to Pascal the secret of his genius. Descartes’s Man seized upon the imagination of Malebranche, and transported him to the sublimest regions of metaphysics. It was reserved for a book far above all human ones to show Bossuet what he was, or rather what he would become; and this book was the Bible. He saw it by chance in his father’s study — devoured some pages of it — and begged leave to carry it off. He was then in the class of Rhetoric : it was the first time he had read the Bible; and his soul experienced a kind of emotion that it had never before known. Every charm of secular poetry and literature appeared to him eclipsed by the magnificent images and lofty conceptions of the sacred writings, which at once completely took possession of him. In his later years, Bossuet loved to recall this first impression, and would feel it again as vividly as when, in the days of his youth, this sudden light had come to shine upon his intellect and give warmth to his soul.’
This marvellous early impression, we are further told, was confirmed and developed by encouragement from Nicolas Cornet, head of the College de Navarre in the Paris University, where young Bossuet was sent for his later education; and the result of it was a passion for the Holy Scriptures, and an ardent, minute, and vigorous method of studying them, which fully account — not merely for his extraordinary knowledge of them — but for the wonderful practical effect, on heart and intellect alike, produced by his use of them in his sermons and other writings.
The Meditations sur l'Evangile, which form, with their companion volume the Elevations sur les Mysteres, a very important portion of Bossuet’s Biblical works, are specially interesting as being quite different in style and method from the sermons and 'discourses,’ which are so much more generally known. They are not argumentative; they are not written on any definite plan; they do not — as many of his sermons do — work out a subject in regular sequence under headings or divisions. They are simply his own thoughts on the Sacred Text, put down as they arose in the mind of one to whom the Word of God was in truth as his daily bread. He said of them himself that he did not intend them to be a dogmatic treatise on religion. 'If you think' — he wrote — 'that I am going to resolve all doubts and to satisfy your curious desires, you are mistaken. I have not taken pen in hand here to teach you the thoughts of man.’
Nevertheless, disconnected as their form may be, these two works are held, by those who know Bossuet well, to contain the whole body of religious knowledge — the Elevations developing all Christian dogma, and the Meditations all Christian morality. The biographer quoted above says that the effect of a really thorough study of them is a peculiar repose of mind and satisfaction of heart, arising from the fact that they make the mysteries of religion as clear as God intended them to be made, and shed a soft light on the Gospel precepts which shows these to be as well fitted to make man happy as to teach him virtue. He declares that by reading them we learn to know 'God, mankind and ourselves’; that they alone may serve the purpose of many books on religion and morality; and that De la Harpe was right when he said : ‘ Those who have not read the Meditations and Elevations do not really know Bossuet.’
These works were written for the Visitation nuns at Meaux. The Meditations sur l’Evangile — of which the 'Sermon on the Mount,’ here presented in an English version, is a small portion — were written first, though in point of subject they are rather the sequel than the introduction to the Elevations sur les Mysteres, In style they are more simple than the latter, which treat of the very origins of religion and of the sublimity and power of God; whilst the subject of the Meditations is 'Jesus Christ Crucified’ and His immediate teaching to man.
How Bossuet wished the book to be practically used he himself tells us in a short preface that he wrote for it, a verbatim translation of which here follows.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
The texts of Holy Scripture quoted in these meditations have been carefully compared throughout with the English Douay Version, in the words of which they are here given.
It is thought best to inform readers of this, as, should the book be used by non-Catholics, they may be here and there surprised at the wording of certain texts which have become familiar to the English-speaking world in the phraseology of the 'Authorized’ Version.
- ↑ N.B. — The substance of this short introduction is taken from some prefatory ' Observations ' by the editor (name not given) of an edition of Bossuet’s works published in Paris in 1845; and from his 'Life' by Cardinal Bausset , which forms Vol. XII. of this edition, and Vol. XXX. of another one published in Paris in 1854.