COROLLARY XXXVIII.
Just as there are chiefly two characters of the restored state, so there are chiefly two things which are joined with them by an inward and most close nexus. First, the universality of grace is joined with them; then, the theorem than which none is more pleasing: that there is no adult who is necessarily condemned on account of the original transgression and the guilt contracted from it. And in very truth, that I may begin from the universality of grace, which Christian—
—antiquity confirmed with such perspicuity of statements1, I would have readers consider within their minds that neither can the necessity of perishing be removed nor the faculty of attaining salvation be conferred unless grace is dispensed from heaven, by which diseases are healed, the bonds of servitude are broken, and powers are imparted by which those things can be performed which pertain to the order of piety and salvation. For what the conjunction of the soul with the body is within the limits of the natural order, that very thing the intercourse of man with God through grace claims for itself with respect to the supernatural order. Whence there is no more need of that conjunction in order that man may be judged exempt from the necessity of dying and endowed with all those things without which the offices of the natural order cannot be fulfilled, than there is need of this intercourse lest man be subjected to the necessity of perishing and lack all those things without which the things comprehended within the compass of the supernatural order cannot even be attained. If, therefore, to the characters of the restored state pertain, on the one side, immunity from the necessity of perishing and, on the other, the faculty of attaining salvation, the universal amplitude of grace will also pertain to that same state. Once this has been admitted and proved, that also follows which we proposed in the second place as cohering with the state of restoration. For if, by the innate account of the restored state, grace is universal, and if all men live in the state of restoration, certainly all adults, although infected with the original stain, nevertheless have grace ready at hand, by which, either immediately or by certain degrees, they may wipe away the stain, wash away defilements, and obtain the dignity of adoption. But who does not perceive that it is wholly impossible to reconcile with this opportunity and presence of grace the view that even one of the adults necessarily perishes on account of original guilt? Who does not perceive the doctrine of the Fathers to be most true, that the original transgression harms only those among adults who spurn the benefits received from God2? And who does not perceive that they handed down with the highest truth that abundant provision was made by the merciful God, through the obedience of the second Adam, for absolutely all the evils inflicted upon humanity by the transgression of the first Adam—
—and foreseen? It must therefore remain ratified and fixed that the universal amplitude of grace is associated by the closest bonds with the state of restoration; but that it is most especially alien to the account and character of that same state that even one who is master of himself and endowed with the use of reason should perish on this account, and necessarily perish, because he contracted the original stain.