The Jesuit conception of religious faith, great as were its merits as originated in the mind of Loyola, theoretically, and in its code drawn up by his gifted successor, Lainez, had displayed its imperfections in its practical working, as time passed. This was more apparent in France even than elsewhere on the Continent; since there papal authority was tempered by regulations which afforded wider scope to thoughtful and devout minds ever occupied by the problem of final salvation and its attainment. “Two such opposed foes encamp them still In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will,” says Friar Lawrence, musing over his “osier cage,” of weeds and flowers. There had been no time on Christian record that the question had not exercised theologians, and when it had burnt into fuller flame, fanned by the ardent soul of Luther, it spread through Europe and was called the Reformation; but the spirit of it had been ever present in the Church, and to endeavour to stamp out the Catholic faith had, in Luther’s earlier days at all events, formed no part of his desire. Yet scarcely had his doctrines formulated, than the fanaticism and extravagance of the ignorant and irresponsible seized upon them, and wrung them out of all size and proportion to fit their own wild lusts and inclinations, “stumbling on abuse,” striving to impose their levelling and socialistic views, and establish a community of goods, and all else in common—even their wives, though dispensing with clothing as a superfluity and a vanity displeasing in Heaven’s sight. So Anabaptism ran riot in Germany under John of Leyden and his disciples; while upon its heels Calvin’s gloomy and hopeless tenets kept men’s minds seething in doubt and speculation over grace and free-will, his narrow creed and private enmity bringing Servetus to hideous and prolonged torture and death at the stake, for heresy. Stirred by the revolt of Protestantism on one side, and the claims of Rome on the other, supported by the Jesuits, speculation gained increased activity within the pale of the Catholic Church, animated further by the writings of Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, whose theories on grace and the efficacy of good works were grounded mainly on the _viâ media_, and it was the following of his opinions by the illustrious students gathered at Port Royal which created the school of Jansenists that included such names as Fénelon, Pascal, and so many others, headed by the Abbé Arnauld, whose sister Angélique was the Superior of the convent of Port Royal, and whose father, the learned advocate, had been so stern an opponent to the Jesuits as to have caused their expulsion from France in the reign of Henri IV. Readmitted later, they found as firm an opponent in his son, who, when still quite young, wrote a brilliant treatise against the danger of Jesuit casuistry.