[2] Antipathy to the Jesuits brought Jansen no nearer to Protestantism; on the contrary, he yearned to beat them with their own weapons, chiefly by showing them that Roman Catholics could interpret the Bible in just as mystical and pietistic a manner.

In its appendix, titled Erroris Massiliensium, et opinionis quorumdam recentiorum parallelon et statera, he harshly condemned the Jesuits, in particular Luis de Molina, Gabriel Vasquez and Leonardus Lessius.

He looked forward to a time when Flanders would throw off the Spanish yoke and become an independent Catholic republic, possibly even Flemish-ruled, according to the model of the Protestant United Provinces.

These ideas became known to his Spanish rulers, and to assuage them he wrote a philippic called the Mars gallicus (1635), a violent attack on French ambitions generally, and on Cardinal Richelieu's indifference to international Catholic interests in particular.

[2] Opposed to Jansenism, a little group of theological doctors from the Sorbonne extracted 8 propositions of Jansenius's Augustinus, later reduced to 5, treating of the problems concerning the relation between nature and grace.

The Jesuits, who then enjoyed predominant political and theological power (including a personal confessor to the King of France), then persuaded the Pope to force all Jansenists to sign a formulary leading them to admit the papal bull and to confess to their errors.

Although ostensibly obeying Papal authority, they added that the condemnation would only be sensible if the 5 allegedly heretical propositions were in fact found in Jansenius' Augustinus, and claimed that they did not figure there.

This in turn led to the further radicalization of the King and of the Jesuits, and in 1661 the Convent of Port-Royal was closed and the Jansenist community dissolved – it would be ultimately razed in 1710 on orders of Louis XIV.