COROLLARY LIX.
To his doctrine concerning the salvific will of God, Quesnel subjoins those things which are referred to the redemption procured by the blood of Christ, and concerning these he establishes the following in four consecutive propositions1: “I. All whom God wills to save through Christ are infallibly saved. II. The desires of Christ always have their effect. III. Jesus Christ delivered himself to death to free forever by his blood the firstborn, that is, the elect, from the hand of the destroying angel. IV. Alas! How greatly must one have renounced earthly goods and oneself in order that one may have confidence in appropriating to oneself, so to speak, Christ Jesus, his love, death, and mysteries! As Saint Paul does when he says: ‘Who loved me and delivered himself for me.’”
By these things, however, it is clearly and lucidly declared: a) that the redemption procured by the death of Christ is not universal; b) that it is altogether circumscribed and pertains to the elect alone; c) that a manifest argument for this is held from the fact that neither the salvific will of God through Christ nor the desire of Christ himself to save men can be separated from the effect of salvation obtained by him; and consequently, d) that it is not open to all to exclaim with Paul, “Who loved me and delivered himself for me”—
—But what is the account of these things, and of what kind must they be judged? They must plainly be judged discordant with those things which the orthodox Fathers most constantly taught. For their unanimous judgment2 was always: 1) that the redemption procured by the blood of Christ poured forth is bounded by no other limits than those within which the human race is contained; 2) that this amplitude of redemption bound by no limits is handed down in the divine writings, confirmed by the prayers of the Church, and established by the proper economy of the restored state; 3) that the will by which Christ offered himself upon the altar of the cross extends much more widely than the number of those who attain salvation; 4) that indeed no one is saved for whom Christ did not undergo death, but that many fall away from salvation for whom Christ most sincerely breathed forth his soul; 5) that the chief cause of condemning the reprobate returns to this: that, ungrateful and proud, they contemned the benefit of redemption offered; and 6) that all can and indeed ought to repeat with Paul, “Who loved me and delivered himself for me.” Therefore, the greatest thanks must be rendered to Clement XI because, having rejected the propositions of Quesnel, he took upon himself the guardianship of Christian tradition; and equal thanks must be rendered to Innocent X, who declared the fifth proposition of Jansenius, “It is Semipelagian to say that Christ died, or shed his blood, for absolutely all men,” to be false, rash, and scandalous; and, understood in the sense that Christ died for the salvation only of the predestined, to be impious, blasphemous, injurious, derogatory to divine piety, and heretical.