r any measure of
self-discipline or associated with any type of religious-mindedness.[13]
He also identifies it with rationalism in ethics as such, as if any
rationalistic ethics, merely because it calls for some measure of
discipline of the passions by "reason," is _ipso facto_ "rigorist."[14]

[12] _Ibid._ I. cxxiv, note.

[13] For example, Kaye cites from Blewitt, a critic of
Mandeville, this passage: "nothing can make a Man honest or
virtuous but a Regard to _some_ religious or moral Principles"
and characterizes it as "precisely the rigorist position from
which Mandeville was arguing when he asserted that our so-called
virtues were really vices, because not based _only_ on this
regard to principle." (_Ibid._ II. 411. The italics in both cases
are mine). The passage from Blewitt is not, of itself, manifestly
rigoristic, while the position attributed to Mandeville is
rigorism at its most extreme.

As further evidence of the prevalence of rigorism, Kaye cites
from Thomas Fuller the following passage: "corrupt nature (which
without thy restraining grace will have a Vent.)" _Ibid._ I.
cxxi, note. But in Calvinist theology "restraining grace," which
was not a "purifying" grace, operated to make some men who were
not purged of sin lead a serviceable social life. (See John
Calvin, _Institutes of the Christian Religion_, Bk. II, Ch. III,
() 3, pp. I. 315-316 of the "Seventh American Edition,"
Philadelphia, n.d.) As I understand it, the role of "restraining
grace" in Calvinist doctrine is similar to that of "honnetete" in
Jansenist doctrine, referred to _infra_. The rascals whom
Mandeville finds useful to society are not to be identified
either with those endowed with the "restraining grace" of the
Calvinists or with the "honnetes hommes" of the Jansenists.

For other instances of disregard by Kaye of the variations in
substance and degree of the rigorism of genuine rigorists, see
_ibid._ II. 403-406, II. 415-416.

[14] See especially F. B. Kaye, "The Influence of Bernard
Mandeville," _Studies in Philology_, XIX (1922), 90-102.

Mandeville was presumably directing his satire primarily at contemporary
Englishmen, not at men who had been dead for generations nor at
participants in Continental theological controversies without real
counterpart