The Church must preach to the bourgeois on his duties, must reveal to him values that were more especially his own, must set the seal of divine appro… - Bernard Groethuysen

“Scripture and the Fathers recognize only two principles of all human actions,” says Bishop Colbert, “charity, the principle of all good actions; cupidity, the principle of all bad ones. The Jesuits, on the contrary, introduce a host of principles of human actions.” There would thus be actions which were neither good nor evil, “an innumerable multitude of indifferent actions, of no consequence either for good or for ill.” ... Thus man would have constituted for himself a sphere where there was no longer any question between himself and God either of sin or of virtue. ... God, at the last judgment, would not ask him to account for actions which were unrelated to his salvation and which did not concern the divinity. In that area, the Christian would enjoy a legitimate freedom, without fear of constantly sinning; he would be a sinner only when the occasion of sin arose, in specific cases. The rest of the time he would live between heaven and hell, between charity and concupiscence.

The bourgeois, for his part, possessed neither of the inordinate ambitions of the great nor of the patience of the poor, would seem to have to remain ignorant both of the sins of whose who exalted themselves and of the merits of those who humbled themselves. Bossuet, speaking of this world, complains that the "license of great fortunes exceeds all bounds." This, he says, leads to "those prevailing sins which are not satisfied to be tolerated, or even excused, but which seek even to be applauded."

We might easily pursue these contrasts between bourgeois of the Jansenist school and those of the Jesuit school. One, of upright and rigid character, was himself in the various occupations of daily life; the other had the personality of his state, which would make of him less a moral personality than a socially determined being, subject to rules which it would be improper and unChristian not to observe, the "first duty of probity" always being, as Père Bourdaloue puts it, to "submit to authority." So that while the disciple of the Jesuit Fathers might be a reliable man, who most probably would always remain prudently within the confines of mediocrity, the disciple of the Jansenists might sometimes indulge in eccentricities. He was less reliable; he might take the counsels of perfection literally, and not be so docile. Under a middle-class exterior, he might often conceal a romantic spirit, preserving a predilection for the heroic feats of olden times.