Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/259

, Jansenius roundly declared that the whole system accepted by Catholic divines of his day was a perversion of the truth. The great reformer Calvin had founded his edifice upon the same base, and to make room for it had demolished the authority of the Pope. Naturally Jansenists were accused of sympathising with that abominable heresiarch, and, strongly as they denied the consequence, of being logically bound to abandon either their doctrines or their loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine's authority, of course, might not be openly assailed; how then did the doctrines of Calvin and of Jansenius—professedly applications of Augustine's—differ from it and from each other and from the accepted system? Such problems presented a wide field for the subtlety of theologians, and they were not slow to take advantage of the opening and to pile up libraries of distinctions and confutations and interpretations. Beneath the technical phrases lay the real question. What is virtue? Undoubtedly, according to the theologian, it means conformity to a divine law, and it implies the divine grace which disposes the heart to conformity. But which is the ultimate standing-point? Shall we