And certainly, VI. it was not lawful to expect another and diverse doctrine from that author who had proposed to himself that the following be shown and confirmed: a) to establish the universal amplitude of the salvific will from the universal amplitude of divine gifts.
It is rationally1 and piously believed that God wills all men to be saved and has always willed it; and this is shown from no other source than from those benefits which the providence of God expends commonly and indiscriminately upon all generations.
b) It was settled for him to persuade his readers that the destruction and ruin of men proceed not from God, who denies his gifts, but from men themselves, who spurn them.
Although these2 benefits brought no remedy and amendment to the hardened, they nevertheless prove that their aversion was not of divine constitution but of their own will.
And3 again:
This assistance of grace is applied to all through innumerable modes, whether hidden or manifest; and that it is rejected by many belongs to their own wickedness, but that it is received by many belongs both to divine grace and to human will.
Then elsewhere4, after adducing the words of Paul5, “The invisible things of God are beheld, being understood through the things that are made,” he commemorates those
who, “not giving thanks to God nor confessing that he was the Author of this faculty for them, but saying that they were wise”—that is, glorying not in God but in themselves, as though they had approached the sight of truth by their own studies and rational powers—“became vain in their thoughts”; and they lost through blinding pride that which they had found through the illuminating grace of God, falling back from the heavenly light into their own darkness, that is, from the immutable and eternal good to mutable and corruptible nature.
c) He applied himself to this: that from universal gifts he might seek a testimony by which he would disclose both the goodness of God toward all men and the perverse will of very many men.
A certain measure6 of heavenly doctrine was always applied to all men which, although it was of a more scanty and hidden grace, nevertheless sufficed, as the Lord judged, for some unto remedy and for all unto testimony.
Finally, d) he had this before his eyes: that he might show that nothing was lacking of itself to general grace by which all men might be assisted in seeking and finding the true God.
For gifts of this kind7 were and are so general that by their testimony men could be assisted in seeking the true God; and upon these gifts, which throughout all ages proclaim their Author, the largess of special grace has been poured forth.
But which one of the heads of doctrine of this kind can in any manner be composed either 1) with a particular salvific will, or 2) with gifts of internal grace which are bestowed only upon some? Not even one, since the individual heads require both the universal amplitude of the salvific will and interior grace always dispensed to all men.
Therefore, the doctrine of the Anonymous author of On the Calling comes to this: a) that there is in God, so great is his native goodness, a universal salvific will; b) that this will is fruitful and active, and that consequently gifts of interior and exterior grace flow from it, by which the whole race of men is assisted toward the knowledge of the true Divinity,
the sincere worship of the same, and the attainment of everlasting beatitude; whence c) nothing is more vehemently abhorrent from his mind and opinion than that the order of divine providence which reforms and repairs is circumscribed and particular.