  Owing to their largely individualist conception of ethics—and in keeping with late Renaissance tradition, the libertins tended to avoid political theory and larger social issues, focusing instead on self-governance and morality understood in terms of character. Gassendi generally follows this conception in his ethics (Sarasohn 1996), though he also outlines a broader political theory (Paganini, 1989-1990). Aside from elements of his ethics and rhetoric, it is an open question as to how much effect Gassendi's association with the libertins had on his views—or for that matter, how much influence he may have had on them. In one area in particular—obeisance to the Church and its teachings—he diverges significantly from his libertin counterparts. Gassendi routinely emphasizes the sacred nature of Holy Writ and the necessity (as well as benefits) of amending Epicurean thought to meet strictures of accepted dogma. This adherence suggests that Gassendi's interests in personal responsibility, empirical investigation, and the underlying nature of matter did not signal a consummate atheistic humanism, denial of spiritual activity, or materialism. If anything, one might suppose that his innovative ethics, scientific method, and physics were artificially constrained by his canonical beliefs. A more accurate reading is that he trod a line between Church orthodoxies and the most radical alternatives associated with the mechanical philosophy and early modern ethics, such as we find in Hobbes. Gassendi was a moderate modern thinker, promoting the new against a background of opposition the potential of which he knew quite well.