CCLXXIV. Corollary LXX

COROLLARY LXX.

A system of doctrine which can neither be constructed nor explained except by assumed hypotheses which either immediately betray their own falsity or strongly introduce a suspicion of error is deservedly numbered among those which ought to be set aside and indeed rejected and disapproved. For that which is joined with error, and which, in order to be consistent with itself, needs hypotheses which display an affinity and association with error, cannot be judged worthy of assent. Now of this kind is the account of those systems which, in order that they might be brought forth into the light, required their authors to depart from those things which we established concerning the merciful benignity of God, restoration through Christ, the universal amplitude of grace, the mutual relation between the order of clemency and that of justice, predestination, reprobation, and the first and second will. For all these, in order that they might persuade themselves and others of their tenets and opinions, ask, indeed demand, that among those things which ought to be posited as fixed and indubitable we number the following: 1) that the principal and supreme norm for judging the instituted order of salvation must be derived from no other source than the absolute dominion and absolute power of God; 2) that no other instituted order can be believed except one from which the absolute justice and absolute mercy of God shine forth more splendidly—

—3) that the institution of that order must therefore be maintained in which election and predestination to the crown admit no conditions dependent upon men excited and aided by grace; 4) that faith, good works, and final perseverance proceed from election to glory as from the first and original cause; but that foreseen perseverance even unto the end is in no way the condition and merit of election to glory; whence 5) the manner in which the execution of the eternal purpose, which occurs in time, is constituted is plainly diverse from that in which predestination to glory was decreed from eternity.

These hypotheses are common to the Calvinists and Jansenists; and upon these same hypotheses, more or less tempered and softened, all those also rely who defend election to glory and the crown as detached from foreknowledge¹. But of what kind ought these hypotheses to be judged? Approved and received by the consensus and suffrage of the Fathers and of Tradition, or rather disapproved and proscribed by the same? Let the decision and judgment² belong to those who, having read the things which we have collected and illustrated with the greatest zeal we could, know well that the doctrine and judgment of Christian tradition, drawn and taken from the divine writings, are comprised altogether in these heads: a) that only those judge the account of the instituted salvific order according to the exact rule of divine revelation who assign to it no other origin and no other fountain than χάριν, φιλανθρωπίαν—

—ἔλεον, χρηστότητα καὶ ὑπερβάλλοντα πλοῦτον τῆς χάριτος, grace, love for men, mercy, kindness, and the surpassing riches of grace; b) that the chosen order of salvation is of such a kind that mercy dominates and reigns in it and does not permit justice its own place before the effects of benignity have come to naught; c) that God of himself wills salvation for all, destined and sent a Redeemer for all, and imparts to all the things which are necessary and sufficient for attaining salvation; d) that nothing proceeds absolutely from God toward the human race restored through Christ and in Christ unless it is a fruit of mercy and displays benignity and clemency; e) that damnation and whatever is joined with damnation are both decreed and inflicted only hypothetically; f) that the hypothesis is the foreseen contempt of mercy; g) that both the eternal decree of bestowing the crown and imparting perseverance, and the temporal execution of each, depend upon a hypothesis; h) that the hypotheses are, on the one hand, foreseen perseverance, and, on the other, free cooperation with those graces by whose aid perseverance is obtained; therefore, i) that in the same manner in which the execution of the eternal decree, which occurs in time, is constituted, the election to glory itself, which was made from eternity, is also constituted; so that just as actual justice is the cause of actual salvation, so foreseen final justice is the cause of predestined salvation.