The Jesuits had undertaken the task of making Christianity easy, of finding a compromise between worldliness and religion, and they flooded the world with a casuistic literature designed for this purpose.
Ex opinionum varietate jugum Christi suavius deportatur.

The doctrine of Jansenius was directed against this corruption of faith and morals.
He maintained that there can be no compromise with the world; that casuistry is incompatible with morality; that man is naturally corrupt; and that in his most virtuous acts some corruption is present.
Now the significance of these two forces--the stern ideal of the Jansenists and the casuistry of the Jesuit teachers--is that they both attempted to meet, by opposed methods, the wave of libertine thought and conduct which is a noticeable feature in the history of French society from the reign of Henry IV.

to that of Louis XV.

[Footnote: For the prevalence of "libertine" thought in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century see the work of the Pere Garasse, La Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps ou pretendus tels, etc.

(1623).
Cp.