Since these things are so, I judge it worthwhile to inquire singly what things can rightly be required in order that I. the salvific will of God may be believed universal, and that II. the state of the human race may be judged not to have been fallen and lost before it was raised and repaired. For when each head has been defined as is fitting, the treatment which we have in hand will shine forth more splendidly by a new accession of light.
And now, that I may begin from the first, no one except by erring will deny that the salvific will of God is rightly judged universal if a) it extends as far as the innate clemency and benignity of God extends, while b) this passes over no one, adorns everyone with its benefits, and advances everyone toward the attainment of salvation. For either these are the indications which demonstrate its universal amplitude, or all indications and all signs from which its universality can be discovered are lacking. Moreover, the Gallican Fathers confirm with one voice a) that the salvific will proceeds from the innate benignity and clemency of God, and b) that it is contained by no other boundaries than those which circumscribe the altogether universal and infinite benignity and clemency of God. They testify, therefore, that universality is eminent among those endowments by which the salvific will of God is commended and shines.
But from this endowment of it there is gathered with plainly no difficulty what ought to be judged concerning that which we proposed for ourselves to inquire in the second place: namely, of what sort the state in which Adam’s posterity and the human race are situated ought to be judged. For it ought altogether to be judged that this state is indeed from itself fallen and lost, but by the mercy of God—
—raised and repaired. For just as fall and destruction cohere with Adam’s transgression, so reparation and medicine cannot be torn or separated from the universal salvific will. The Gallican Fathers unanimously teach this with such weight of sentences and such perspicuity of words that nothing stronger and nothing more evident ought to be desired.
For they teach that God, incited and moved by a merciful and salvific will, decreed that a) the Only-begotten should assume the prostrate and ruined nature of men and should free the nature assumed from the twofold servitude of sin and death. And that he should b) so free it from each servitude that he should vindicate it in turn into a twofold freedom: first, into the freedom of justice, by which Adam’s posterity might possess the faculty of restoring the divine likeness which they had squandered; and then into the freedom of life, by which they might strive toward incorruption and blessed immortality. That c) that order was therefore divinely selected in which original transgression would harm only those who neglected the protections of reparation. To this assuredly return the things which Phoebadius, Hilary, Salvian, Sidonius, Valerian, Avitus, Sedulius, and Caesarius of Arles teach and confirm by testimonies of Scripture and by arguments drawn from the divine nature itself. Yet these things are such as either are wholly devoid of all sense, or most certainly convey this doctrine: that the twofold death both of body and soul, which the human race brought upon itself by a most unhappy transgression, was repaired through Christ by the intervention of divine mercy, and that men therefore exist in that state which ought to be called and believed a state of reparation and salvation.