On this it may be remarked that the essay in question is not so much Christian as theistic; but the suggestion as to the object is plausible. Taine (Essais de critique et d'histoire, ed. 1901) first remarks (p. 11) on the "christianisme" of the essay, and then decides (p. 12) that "he merely exposes in brief and imperious style the reasonings of the school of Descartes." It should be noted, however, that in this essay La Bruyère does not scruple to write: "If all religion is a respectful fear of God, what is to be thought of those who dare to wound him in his most living image, which is the sovereign?" (§ 27 in ed. Walckenaer, p. 578. Pascal holds the same tone. Vie, par Madame Perier.) This appears first in the fourth edition; and many other passages were inserted in that and later issues: the whole is an inharmonious mosaic.
Concerning La Bruyère, the truth would seem to be that the inconsequences in the structure of his essays were symptomatic of variability in his moods and opinions. Taine and Lanson are struck by the premonitions of the revolution in his famous picture of the peasants, and other passages; and the latter remarks (p. 603) that "the points touched by La Bruyère are precisely those where the writers of the next age undermined the old order: La Bruyère is already philosophe in the sense which Voltaire and Diderot gave to that term." But we cannot be sure that the plunges into convention were not real swervings of a vacillating spirit. It is difficult otherwise to explain his recorded approbation of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
The Dialogues sur le Quiétisme, published posthumously under his name (1699), appear to be spurious. This was emphatically asserted by contemporaries (Sentiments critiques sur les Caractères de M. de la Bruyère, 1701, p. 447; Apologie de M. de la Bruyère, 1701, p. 357, both cited by Walckenaer) who on other points were in opposition. Baron Walckenaer (Étude, ed. cited, p. 76 sq.) pronounces that they were the work of Elliès du Pin, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and gives good reasons for the attribution. The Abbé d'Olivet in his Histoire de l'Académie française declares that La Bruyère only drafted them, and that du Pin edited them; but the internal evidence is against their containing anything of La Bruyère's draught. They are indeed so feeble that no admirer cares to accept them as his. (Cp. note to Suard's Notice sur la personne et les écrits de la Bruyère, in Didot ed. 1865, p. 20.) Written against Madame Guyon, they were not worth his while.