The Jansenists carried into their religious life more depth of thought and more reflection; they were more firmly bound by religion's sacred liens; there was an austerity in their ideas and in their minds, and that austerity incessantly circumscribed their will by the limitations of duty. They were pervaded, even to their mental habit, by their uncompromising conception of divine justice; their inclinations were antipathetic to the lusts of the flesh. The companions of the community of Port Royal were as pure in heart as the Oratorians, but they were childlike in their simplicity; they delighted in the beauties of nature and in the society of their friends; they indulged their humanity whenever such indulgence accorded with their vocation; they permitted "the fêtes of Christian love," to which we of the present look back in fancy as to visions of the first days of the early Church. Jules Lemaître said in his address at Port Royal:[107] Port Royal is one of the most august of all the awe-inspiring refuges of the spiritual life of France. It is holy ground; for in this vale was nourished the most ardent inner life of the nation's Church. Here prayed and meditated the most profound of thinkers, the souls most self-contained, most self-dependent, most absorbed by the mystery of man's eternal destiny. None caught in the whirlpool of earthly life ever seemed more convinced of the powerlessness of human liberty to arrest the evolution of the inexorable Plan, and yet none ever manifested firmer will to battle and to endure than those first heralds of the resurrection of Catholicism. François de Sales loved the convent of Port Royal; he called it his "place of dear delight"! In its shaded cloisters de Bérulle, Père Vincent, and Saint Cyran laboured together to purify the Church, until the time came when the closest friends were separated by dogmatic differences; and even then the tempest that wrecked Port Royal could not sweep away the memory of the peaceful days when the four friends lent their united efforts to the work which gave the decisive impulsion to the Catholic Renaissance.