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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
- ↑ 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.
