Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/15



John-Baptist Massillon was born in 1663, at Hieres, in Provence. His father was a poor citizen of that small city. The obscurity of his birth, which gives such a relief to the splendour of his personal merit, should be the first topic of his praise; and it may be said of him, as of that illustrious Roman who owed nothing to his ancestors, " Videtur ex se natus, He was the son of himself alone." But his humble origin not only reflects high honour upon his own person; it is still more honourable to that enlightened government, which, having taken him from the midst of the people to place him at the head of one of the most extensive diocesses of the kingdom, confronted the prejudice too common even in our days, that Providence has not destined great places to the genius which it has produced in the lower ranks of society: if the disposers of ecclesiastical dignities had not possessed the wisdom, courage, or good fortune, sometimes to forget this maxim of human vanity, the French clergy would have been deprived of the glory of reckoning the eloquent Massillon among their bishops.

After finishing his grammatical studies, at the age of seventeen, he entered into the Oratory. Resolved to consecrate his labours to the church, he preferred (to indissoluble bonds which he might have assumed in some one of our very numerous religious orders) the free engagements contracted in a congregation on which the great Bossuet has bestowed this rare eulogy, " That every one obeys, yet no one commands. " Massillon preserved to the close of his life the most tender and pleasing recollection of the lessons he had received and the principles he had imbibed in this truly respectable society; which, without intrigue and ambition, cherishing and cultivating literature through the sole wish of being useful, has acquired a distinguished name in the annals of art and science; and which, sometimes persecuted, and almost always little favoured, even by those from whom it might expect support, has done all