Answer:
A
Explanation:
I think the other answer is wrong. With Option B, Mencius never claims that a ruler cannot be challenged. With C, Mencius doesn't even mention God! With D, this is tricky. While Mencius does imply that Heaven is where the legitimacy arises, he also says that Heaven challenges candidates for the title of ruler. So, it's a close run between D and A, but in the end, A closes out because it's more specific. Also, the clearer reason that D is wrong is that it says that Bossuet claims that there is a secular will behind the legitimacy of a ruler, but secular means non-religious, and all Bossuet talks about is religion, so that one is kind of stupid. The passages are pasted below for reference.
Refer to the two passages.
Source 1
"Shun rose [to the empire] from among the channeled fields. Foo Yueh was called to office from the midst of his [building] frames and [earth-] beaters; Kaou Kih from his fish and salt; Kwan E-woo from the hands of the officer in charge of him; Sun Shuh-gaou from [his hiding by] the sea-shore; and Pih-le He from the market-place.
Thus, when Heaven is about to confer a great office on any one, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil; it exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty; and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.
Men constantly err, but are afterwards able to reform. They are distressed in mind, and perplexed in thought, and then they arise to vigorous endeavour. When things have been evidenced in men’s looks, and set forth in their words, then they understand them.
If a ruler have not about his court families attached to the laws and able officers, and if abroad there are no hostile States or other external calamities, the State will generally come to ruin.”
Mencius, fourth century BCE
Source 2
"It appears from all this that the person of the king is sacred, and that it is a sacrilege to attack him. God has His prophets anoint them with a sacred unction, as He has His pontiffs and His altars anointed. But, even without the external application of this unction, their charge renders them sacred, as being the representatives of the divine majesty, delegated by His providence to the execution of His designs. It is thus that God Himself speaks of Cyrus as His anointed—‘his right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him.’ The title of Christ is given to kings; and everywhere we see them called the Christ, or the anointed of the Lord.”
Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, explaining the divine right of kings, 1678
