provided only that it should not be subject to
clear and unambiguous demonstration. By lumping together the "vices" of
the knave and the honest man, Mandeville could without serious risk of
civil or ecclesiastical penalties make rigorism of any degree seem
ridiculous and thus provide abundant amusement for himself and for
like-minded readers; he could then proceed to undermine all the really
important systems of morality of his time by applying more exacting
standards than they could meet. Against a naturalistic and sentimental
system, like Shaftesbury's, he could argue that it rested on an
appraisal of human nature too optimistic to be realistic. Against
current Anglican systems of morality, if they retained elements of
older rigoristic doctrine he could level the charge of hypocrisy, and
if they were latitudinarian in their tendencies he could object that
they were expounding an "easy Christianity" inconsistent with Holy Writ
and with tradition.

Mandeville clearly did not like clergymen, especially hypocritical
ones, and there still existed sufficient pulpit rigorism to provide him
with an adequate target for satire and a substantial number of readers
who would detect and approve the satire. As Fielding's Squire Western
said to Parson Supple when the latter reproved him for some misdeed:
"At'nt in pulpit now? when art a got up there I never mind what dost
say; but I won't be priest-ridden, nor taught how to behave myself by
thee." Only if it is read as a satire on rigorist sermons can there be
full appreciation of the cleverness of the "parable of small beer"
which Mandeville, with obvious contentment with his craftsmanship,
reproduces in the _Letter to Dion_ (pp. 25-29) from _The Fable of the
Bees_. Here the standard rigorist proposition that there is sin both in
the lust and in the act of satisfying it is applied to drink, where the
thirst and its quenching are both treated as vicious.[20]

[20] Kaye in a note to this parable, _Fable of the Bees_, I. 238,
cites as relevant, _I Cor. x. 31_; "Whether therefore ye eat, or
drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Even
more relevant, I believe, is _Deut. xxix. 19_, where, in the King
James version, the sinner boasts: "I shall have peace, though I
walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to
thirst."

Mandeville, as Kaye interprets him, resembles the "_Jansenistes du
Salon_" who prided themselve