But the sentence by which Prosper opposes the difficulty of the Gauls and embraces the orthodox faith reads thus1:
He who says that the Savior was not crucified for the redemption of the whole world regards not the power of the sacrament but the portion of the unbelieving; since the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is the price of the whole world. Those are alien from this price who, either delighted with captivity, were unwilling to be redeemed, or, after redemption, returned to the same servitude. For the word of the Lord has not fallen, nor has the redemption of the world been made void. For although the world did not know God in the vessels of wrath, nevertheless the world knew God in the vessels of mercy, which God, with no good merits of theirs preceding, rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son of his love.
But those words by which he refutes2 the Vincentian calumny that our Lord Jesus Christ did not suffer for the salvation and redemption of all men agree well with these. He says:
Against the wound of original sin, by which in Adam the nature of all men was corrupted and put to death, and from which the disease of all concupiscences took root, the death of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is the true and powerful and singular remedy. He, free from the debt of death and alone without sin, died for sinners and debtors to death.
Therefore, as regards the magnitude and power of the price, and as regards the one cause of the human race,
the blood of Christ is the redemption of the whole world. But those who pass through this age without faith in Christ and without the sacrament of regeneration are alien from redemption.
Therefore, since on account of the one nature of all and the one cause of all truly assumed by our Lord, all are rightly said to have been redeemed, and nevertheless not all have been rescued from captivity, the property of redemption undoubtedly belongs to those concerning whom the prince of the world has been cast out, and who are now no longer vessels of the devil but members of Christ. His death was not bestowed upon the human race in such a way that even those who were not to be regenerated would belong to his redemption; but in such a way that what was done for all through a single exemplar would be celebrated in individuals through an individual sacrament.
For the cup of immortality, which was prepared from our weakness and the divine power, has indeed within itself the capacity to benefit all; but if it is not drunk, it does not heal.