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
