Section CXXXIII

Concerning this sincere will of God, most inclined toward the salvation of absolutely all men, those things finally ought not to be passed over in silence which the bishops of Gaul, on the occasion of the error disseminated by the presbyter Lucidus, signified by a solemn judgment¹.

For when they themselves—and² by name Auxanius, Faustus, Paul, Eutropius, Pragmatius, Patiens, Euphronius, Megethius, Claudius, Leucadius, and Julian—confirmed by their authority the epistle of Faustus to Lucidus and fortified it, after it had been read again, by their subscription, nothing is more evident than that their common judgment is rightly gathered and established from it. Moreover, in it anathema is said in order³: a) to him who says that through the foreknowledge of God a man is pressed down into death; b) to him who says that one who perishes did not receive that whereby he could be saved, that is, concerning a baptized person, or concerning a pagan of that age who was able to believe and was unwilling; c) to him who says that a vessel of dishonor cannot rise so as to be a vessel unto honor; and likewise d) to him who says that Christ did not die for all and does not will all men to be saved.

Then in the name of all it is added⁴:

But we, through the illumination of Christ, truly and confidently assert both that he who perishes through fault could have been saved through grace if he had not denied to grace itself the obedience of servile labor; and that he who through grace arrives at the boundaries of a good consummation by obedient service could have fallen through sloth and perished through fault.

These things are immediately⁵ confirmed by the following:

For we turn a grave odium back upon the author if we say that he was unwilling to give the possibility of embracing salvation to him who sought it—to him, that is, who can now possess freedom of choice—since we can in no way deny that he will condemn the transgressor of the commandment in the examination of his judgment. For he who is not liable concerning what he received, I do not know how he can be liable concerning what he lost. And thus, sinning against God, whose grace we asserted too incautiously in the first things, in the last things we shall appear to impugn his justice.

Thus, therefore, the order of providence by which the human race is administered and governed ought to be believed disposed: that a), with mercy giving aid, the possibility of embracing salvation is denied to no one who is in possession of reason and freedom, by which possibility it comes about that one who perished through fault could have been saved through grace; and then b) that, with justice distributing, no one is condemned who by his own fault did not cast away that which he divinely received as adapted to attaining salvation.

Lucidus both approved these things and professed them as so many necessary truths, whether when⁶ after all the bishops he subscribed to the letter issued by Faustus, or when⁷, in the suppliant little book which he offered to the most blessed lords and most reverend fathers in Christ, Bishops Leontius, Euphronius, Fonteius, Viventius, Mamertus, Patiens, Verianus⁸, Auxanius, Faustus, Paul, Megethius, Graecus, Eutropius, Leontius, Claudius, Marcellus, Crocus, Basil, Claudius, Ursinus, Praetextatus, Pragmatius, Theoplastus, Leocadius, Viventius, Julian, Amicalis, John, Opilio, and Licinius, he openly condemned: a) him who says that the foreknowledge of God violently compels a man to death, or that those who perish perish by the will of God; b) him who says that some are assigned to death, others predestined to life; c) him who says that from Adam unto Christ none from the nations were saved unto the advent of Christ through the first grace of God, that is, through the law of nature; and d) him who says that Christ our Savior did not undergo death for the salvation of all.

“For all these things,” he proceeds⁹, “I condemn as impious and filled with sacrileges.”

But I so assert the grace of God that I always join the exertion and endeavor of man to grace, and pronounce that the freedom of the human will has not been extinguished, but attenuated and weakened—

—and that he who is saved is in danger, and he who perished could have been saved. I also pronounce that Christ our God and Savior, insofar as pertains to the riches of his goodness, offered the price of death for all; and because he wills no one to perish, who is the Savior of all, especially of the faithful, rich toward all who invoke him. And because in matters of such importance conscience must be satisfied, I remember that I formerly said that Christ had come only for those whom he foreknew would believe, following the dominical sayings in which he speaks thus: “The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his soul as a redemption for many”; and that saying: “This is the chalice of my blood of the new testament, which shall be poured out for many unto the remission of sins”; or that saying of the Apostle: “As it is appointed for men once to die, so also Christ was once offered to exhaust the sins of many.” But now, by the authority of the sacred testimonies which are found abundantly throughout the expanses of the divine Scriptures, the reason having been disclosed from the doctrine of the elders, I gladly confess that Christ came even for the lost, because they perished when he was unwilling. For it is not lawful to confine the riches of immense goodness and the divine benefits to those alone who appear to have been saved. For if we say that Christ brought remedies only to those who were redeemed, we shall appear to absolve the unredeemed, whom it is established are to be punished for redemption contemned. I also assert that, according to the rationale and order of the ages, some were saved in the hope of Christ’s advent by the law of grace, others by the law of Moses, others by the law of nature which God wrote in the hearts of all; yet from the beginning of the world they were not absolved from the original bond except by the intercession of the sacred blood.