in England, at least since the Restoration. If this is
accepted, then of the men cited by Kaye to show the orthodoxy and the
contemporaneity of rigorism only William Law has any relevance. But Law
was an avowed "enthusiast," and in the England of Mandeville's time this
was almost as heretical as to be an avowed sceptic. Calvinism in its
origins had been unquestionably--though not unqualifiedly--rigoristic. By
Mandeville's time, however, avowed Calvinism was almost extinct in
England; even in Geneva, in Scotland, in Holland, its rigorism had been
much softened by the spread of Arminianism and by a variety of procedures
of theological accommodation or mediation between the life of grace and
the life of this sinful world. On the Continent, Jansenists were still
expounding a severe rigorism. But Jansenist rigorism was not "orthodox."
Though not as extreme as Mandeville's rigorism, it had repeatedly been
condemned by Catholic authorities as "_rigorisme outre_."[15]

[15] Cf. Denziger-Bannwart, _Enchiridion Symbolorum_. (See index
of any edition under "Baius," "Fenelon," "Iansen," "Iansenistae,"
"Quesnell.")

To take seriously Mandeville's rigorism, the narrowness with which he
defines "virtue," the broadness with which he defines "vice," his
failure to recognize any intermediate ground between "virtue" and
outright "vice," or any shades or degrees of either, the positiveness
with which he assigns to eternal damnation all who depart in any degree
from "virtue" as he defines it, is therefore to accept Mandeville as a
genuine exponent of a rigorism too austere and too grim not only for
the ordinary run of orthodox Anglicans or Catholics of his time but
even for St. Augustine (at times), for the Calvinists, and for the
Jansenists.

Kaye justifiably puts great stress on the extent of Mandeville's
indebtedness to Pierre Bayle. There is not the space here to elaborate,
but it could be shown, I believe, that Mandeville was also indebted
greatly, both indirectly through Bayle and directly, to the Jansenist,
Pierre Nicole, and that Mandeville's rigorism was a gross distortion
of, while Bayle's was essentially faithful to, Nicole's system.[16]
Nicole insisted that "true virtue" in the rigorist sense was necessary
for salvation, but at the same time expounded the usefulness for
society of behavior which theologically was "sinful." But it was the
"sinful" behavior of _honnetes hommes_, of citizens conforming to the
p