CCLXVIII. Corollary LXIV

COROLLARY LXIV.

Just as the Jansenists nowhere explained their doctrine concerning the amplitude of grace more distinctly than in the Synod of Pistoia, so the Roman Church nowhere declared and subtly circumscribed its own faith more articulately than in the Constitution issued by Pius VI. Indeed, I. concerning the condition of man in the state of nature, the men of Pistoia affirmed¹: “After the fall of Adam, God announced the promise of a future Liberator and willed to console the human race through the hope of salvation which Jesus Christ was to bring; nevertheless, God willed the human race to pass through various states before the fullness of time should come; and first, that in the state of nature man, left to his own lights, should learn to distrust his blind reason, and from his wanderings should move himself to desire the aid of a higher light.” But the Pontiff pronounced his judgment concerning this sentence² in these words: “The doctrine—

—as it stands, is captious; and understood of a desire for the aid of a higher light in the order of salvation promised through Christ, for conceiving which man, left to his own lights, is supposed to have been able to move himself, it is suspect and favorable to the Semipelagian heresy.” II. Concerning the condition of man under the law, the men of Pistoia taught³: “Man under the law, since he was powerless to observe it, became a transgressor—not indeed through the fault of the law, which was most holy, but through the fault of man, who under the law without grace became more and more a transgressor; but the law, if it did not heal the heart of man, caused him to know his evils and, convicted of his infirmity, to desire the grace of the Mediator.” But the Pontiff decreed⁴: a) that the doctrine of the synod, “insofar as it generally intimates that man became a transgressor through the nonobservance of a law which he was powerless to observe—as though he who is just could have commanded something impossible, or he who is merciful were to condemn man for what he could not avoid⁵—is false, scandalous, impious, and condemned in Baius.” But⁶ b) insofar as “it is given to be understood that man under the law without grace could conceive a desire for the grace of the Mediator ordered to the salvation promised through Christ, as though grace itself did not cause [the Mediator] to be invoked by us⁷, the proposition, as it stands, is captious, suspect, and favorable to the Semipelagian heresy.” III. Concerning illuminating and exciting grace, it seemed good to the men of Pistoia to say⁸: “The light of grace, when it is alone, furnishes nothing except that we know the unhappiness of our state and the gravity of our evil; grace in such a case produces the same effect which the law produced; therefore, it is necessary that God create holy love in our heart and inspire a holy delight contrary—

—to the love dominant in us; that this holy love, this holy delight, is properly the grace of Jesus Christ, the inspiration of charity by which we may do the things known with holy love; that this is the root from which good works germinate; that this is the grace of the New Testament, which frees us from the servitude of sin and constitutes us sons of God.” But the Pontiff decreed⁹ that a proposition of this kind, accepted so as to signify that “only that is properly the grace of Jesus Christ which creates holy love in the heart and causes us to act, or also by which man, liberated from the servitude of sin, is constituted a son of God; and that the grace by which the heart¹⁰ of man is touched through the illumination of the Holy Spirit is not also properly the grace of Christ; and that no true interior grace of Christ is given which is resisted—is false, captious, inducing into the error condemned as heretical in the second proposition of Jansenius, and renewing it.” Lastly, IV. concerning faith as the first grace, the men of Pistoia judged¹¹: “That faith from which the series of graces begins, and through which, as through the first voice, we are called to salvation and to the Church, is that very excellent virtue of faith by which men are called and are faithful.” But the Pontiff defined¹² that this proposition, understood “as though there were not a prior grace, that which, just as it precedes the will, so also precedes faith¹³, is suspect of heresy and savors of another proposition condemned in Quesnel as erroneous.”

To this, therefore, the chief heads of doctrine which the Roman Church willed to be established and fixed against the Jansenists manifestly return: 1) that human nature, permitted to itself and to its own powers, possesses absolutely no faculty by which it can desire and aspire to those things which conduce to the attainment of eternal salvation; 2) that God, as just and merciful, could neither command impossible things nor condemn men because they did things which they could not avoid; 3) that, in the threefold state of nature, law, and grace, in which men are customarily considered, the necessary—

—aids of grace by which they might both perform the things commanded and abstain from the things forbidden and prohibited were never lacking to them; and 4) that the aids of grace neither derive their origin from that faith by which we are called and are faithful, nor are of such a nature that they always have the assent of the human will joined to them. But did the Roman Church establish this norm of thinking and believing rightly or wrongfully? Since that must be judged to have been done with the best right whereby antiquity is asserted against novelty, and whereby the tradition of all ages and of the whole Catholic name is vindicated from the impious temerity of factions, there is certainly reason for us to judge the prescriptions of the Roman Church not only equitable but also necessary. For the tradition of all ages and of the whole Catholic name¹⁴ pertains to this: a) that men, deprived in Adam of the gifts they had received, fell into the necessity of perishing and a complete ἀδυναμίαν, inability, to obtain salvation; b) that God, aroused by his merciful goodness at so great a ruin of humanity, came to its aid and substituted a state of universal restoration for the state of universal destruction; c) that men therefore never lived in any state other than that of restoration; d) that in this state of restoration they lived in those stages which are called the stage of nature and that of law, and that they live in this present stage, which is called that of grace κατ’ ἐξοχήν, par excellence; e) that these stages of humanity differ not because in any one of them men lacked the necessary aid of grace, but because, according to the difference of the stages, the manner of providence, both exterior and interior, existed as manifold and varied; and f) that nothing can therefore be established which represents the doctrine of constant tradition more excellently than if it be repeated with Cyril¹⁵:

οὐ ἐπαύσαντο πώποτε τῶν θείων δωρεῶν αἱ πηγαὶ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὰ ἀγαθὰ ἀναβλύζουσαι, “the fountains of divine gifts never ceased pouring forth good things to men.”