St Cyran’s chief strength seems to have lain in a concentrated enthusiasm and quiet strength of will which enabled him to hold his own against all opposition, and to subdue other minds larger than his own to his purposes. When the Prince de Condé interceded for him after his arrest, Richelieu’s reply was: “Do you know of whom you are speaking? That man is more dangerous than six armies. _I_ say that attrition with confession is necessary: _he_ believes that contrition is necessary. {106} And in the affair of Monsieur’s marriage all France has given way to me, and he alone has the hardihood to oppose it.” Against all enticements and assaults alike he set a proud and firm faith in his own mission—a patience sublime in its calmness, and in the unwavering consciousness of Divine right on his side. “I am careful to complain of nothing,” he said in his imprisonment. “I am ready to remain here a hundred years; to die here, if God will. I am ready for whatever He designs—for action or for suffering.” The same faith and quiet assurance gave him his marvellous influence over others, and that fascination which made him a power in the cultivated society of Paris. All the Arnauld family more or less owned his influence; and it was his teaching mainly that peopled Port Royal with the Solitaries who have made it so illustrious. The life and work of Jansen seem at first far removed from Port Royal. He returned to Louvain after his sojourn at Bayonne, and became a professor of theology in its famous university, on whose behalf he was employed in several political negotiations with the Spanish Court. Finally he was appointed Bishop of Ypres, in which capacity he is chiefly known in the ecclesiastical world. His fame, however, rests not on any political or ecclesiastical labours, but on the results flowing from his original studies at Bayonne. He never forgot his devotion to St Augustine. He is said to have read the whole of his writings ten times, and the treatises against the Pelagians not less than thirty times. The fruit of all this studious devotion was his work known briefly as the ‘Augustinus,’ {107} published two years after his death (in 1640). Nothing could have seemed more innocent or laudable than the attempt by a bishop of the Church to set forth the doctrine of St Augustine. The book professed to have been undertaken in a humble spirit. “I have avoided error where I could,” says the author; “for the cases in which I could not, I implore the reader’s pardon. . . . Let the knowledge of my sincerity make amends for the simplicity of my error. I know that if I have erred, it is not in the assertion of Catholic truth, but in the statement of the opinion of St Augustine; for I have not laid down what is true or false, what is to be held or rejected according to the faith of the Catholic Church, but only what Augustine taught and declared was to be held.”