De gratia Redemptoris

The Baian ideas and tendencies did not cease after the condemnation.

Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, stood in a close relation to the supporters of these ideas¹. According to his view, very many had ceased to set forth the true doctrine of St Augustine on grace, either by receding from his doctrine or by explaining it falsely; for that reason he wished to set forth the genuine and true doctrine of the doctor of grace; to this end he studied his works for many years, and the fruit of that study is the work “Augustinus, seu doctrina S. Augustini de humanae naturae sanitate, aegritudine, medicina adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses” (Augustinus, or the doctrine of St Augustine on the health, sickness and medicine of human nature against the Pelagians and Massilians), in the composing of which he laboured to the end of his life, and whose publication he had to leave to his friends. But he submitted the opinions set out in it to the judgment of the Holy See². The work consists of three volumes, in the first of which “the heresies and morals of Pelagius against the health, sickness and medicine of human nature are reviewed from St Augustine and refuted”.

In the second volume “the genuine opinion of St Augustine on the state and powers of human nature as standing, as fallen, and as pure is drawn out and explained”.

In a single book he treats of the grace of the first man and of the angels. Adam was created in grace and holiness (cap. 1), without any movement of concupiscence (cap. 2); before sin no movements or temptations of excellence, of praise or of pride, whether small or great, could in any way have existed in him (cap. 3); and the first man was immortal (cap. 4).

Adam had free will (cap. 6). “And so Adam was free in a changeable way through that love of the creator, so that he could fall away; and could remain in it, if he wished: and thus, placed as it were on a borderland of life and death, so that whichever of the two he should choose, life or death, that same should be rendered to him eternal, and thereby eternal liberty or slavery likewise: since nothing can be more just than that each one should hold inamissibly for enjoyment what he chose for himself to love by his free will. In this indeed the most just account of merit and reward is established. To either side therefore, that is, to good and evil, to life and death, to the love of the Creator and of the creature, as Augustine most often teaches, that first liberty was indifferent”³.

By the powers of free will he could live justly (cap. 7), he could persevere in justice (cap. 8); but for this he needed the help of grace (cap. 10). “Wherefore just as in the preceding we have heard Augustine most confidently affirming that the holy angels stood in the truth through free will, and that the first man could stand in it through the same free will, which after the fall is conferred on men only through grace: so now, in turn, according to the doctrine handed down by him and according to the Catholic faith explained by him, we say that neither the angels nor the first man could in any way stand in the truth, that is, persevere in the justice received, without the assistance of helping grace”⁴.

This grace was necessary not only for persevering but for each good act (cap. 11). But the ground of this necessity does not come from some peculiar difficulty of persevering or of the good act, but from the impotence of free will, “because (free will) can do nothing for good without the help of the almighty good”⁵, which he explains by a comparison of St Augustine: “For as the eye of the body is not helped by the light so as to withdraw from that light when closed and turned away; but to see it is helped by it, and cannot do this at all unless that light help it; so God, who is the light of the inner man, helps the gaze of our mind, that we may do something good not according to our own justice but according to his”⁶.

But this help was not habitual grace, nor the concurrence of God as operating, that is, God's concomitant operation, but something actual, prior to the action (cap. 12; 13). Cap. 14 asks: “What this help was as regards the manner of operating”. He answers: “For the kind of help is twofold, and consequently the manner of helping is twofold: one is the help by which; the other that without which it is not. That is, one is that by which something is done; the other that without which it is not done. The matter is to be illustrated by examples. Sight is a help, so that you may see; but it helps in such a way that, once it is posited, you see at once, which has its place in all formal causes. In efficient causes, however, such a help is that simultaneous cooperation of God: for once that is given, the operation follows at once without delay; which if it is not given, will never take place. But feet are a help for walking, a ship for sailing, not however that by which, but that without which it is not. For it is not the case that if feet or a ship are present, walking or sailing at once takes place; yet without them it cannot take place”⁷. “For some things help the power in such a way that by the very fact of being given they draw it from potency into act, and actually posit the effect itself; others help in such a way that they indeed prepare, strengthen and assist the power, yet the drawing of the power into second act, or its application and determination to act, must be awaited from elsewhere than from themselves: of this kind is the help of light for seeing, of species and knowledge for understanding, of habit for acting, of feet for walking, of a ship for sailing, of external persuasion for acting, and countless similar things. For all such things indeed prepare, assist and strengthen the power of acting; yet unless the impulse to act come from elsewhere, nothing will be done. The reason of this is manifest, because these helps are of the same order as the power, in aid of whose weakness they are given. For from the helps themselves and from the power there is constituted one perfect and complete faculty of acting, which remains so thoroughly subject to the command of the will, whose office it is to use both itself and all the powers, as if the power were alone and destitute of all helps. From which it follows that however much helps of this kind were increased to infinity, the effect would still never be produced on that account, but could only be produced more completely; it is produced, however, when this power is actually impelled to act, and is not produced when it is not impelled”⁸.

“These things being thus established, Augustine clearly teaches and diligently inculcates again and again that the help of Adam, whose necessity he had recommended so greatly in many places, was not the help by which but the help without which it is not: that is, it was not such a help that by which it should come about that Adam persevered or willed, but by which he could persevere if he willed, and without which he could not persevere: namely in such a way that that help bestowed the full power or sufficiency of persevering, without which he could not persevere; yet did not confer the use of that help, or the very will to persevere; inasmuch as that was left to his free will, on whose most free inclination and nod God willed to make it depend whether he would use that help or not, and so whether he would actually persevere or fall”⁹. “That this help of grace which was given to Adam and the angels was no other than what the school everywhere calls sufficient. For from this very fact that through it he could live justly and persevere in justice, and without it could not, and that it conferred not the act of the power but the power of the act, it follows most openly that it must be called nothing other than sufficient”¹⁰.

There follow 4 books on the state of fallen nature, in the first of which he treats of original sin, which is concupiscence itself; the cause of the transmission of this sin is carnal concupiscence. Book 2 is on the punishments of original sin, where chap. 7 ff. treats of concupiscence.

“That concupiscence, or lust, or cupidity, or pleasure, or delight, whichever of these names you prefer to use, is nothing other than a certain habitual weight by which the soul is inclined to enjoy creatures, or, as Augustine says, things inferior”¹¹. The movements of concupiscence “are nothing other than certain inclinations, impulses, concupiscences, appetences, appetites, cupidities, loves and desires; by all these names, and many others besides, Augustine is wont to call them; sometimes also delights, inasmuch as delight, after the Platonic fashion, is taken for the acts of concupiscence”¹². Their object is whatever is not God; they tend to the enjoyment of things; but it is lawful only to use creatures; hence consent is not to be given to the movements of concupiscence, but they are to be ordered by reason (cap. 23).

Free will remains after sin (Lib. 3, cap. 1). But liberty “of some action does not exclude help, although it does not of itself require it either. For we can freely see when the light is present and the eyes sound, and not see; although seeing requires that aid of light, not seeing does not ... He is therefore free with respect to some good act who has it in his power, so that it is present if he wills and not present if he does not will, namely in such a way that this depends on the nod of his own will; just as a man, with the light present and his eyes sound and unveiled, is free to see: for he becomes seeing as soon as he wills to open them: but if they have been gravely injured, the liberty of seeing has perished, however much light floods around, and nothing of the wonted help is lacking ... Wherefore liberty for good is not opposed to help or to divine grace, but to slavery and captivity to evil. For between those two there is a direct repugnance. For it is impossible that a free will, in order to will and work good, should be at the same time a slave and captive under evil; as the sense of all men declares. For he is not a captive, or bound by the fetters of slavery, who, whenever he pleases, can leap out free at his own mere nod: but only he who is held down under a depressing weight, so that he cannot rise to the good will itself, and much less to doing good, at his own nod. For there can be given in the will's own choice certain impediments, or bonds of the will, by which it comes about that its apex, whose office it is to consent or dissent, is bound as if by a certain delightful glue to creatures, which it can in no way break by its own powers; but must be dissolved from heaven by the most powerful grace inspiring the contrary effect. And as long as God has not done this — and he does it when he wills — the will is not free to work or to will good; but, pressed down under the affection of evil or of sin, it is possessed as captive and slave ... This, then, is what the Catholic faith proclaims, that such a will is not only to be helped by grace, that it may will and do good, but also to be freed, that it may be able to will and to do. For these differ greatly, to be helped and to be freed ... The sentence of Augustine, therefore, which the Pelagians so greatly detested, is no other than this: that the choice of the will after the fall of the first man, before it is visited by divine grace, that is, before it receives the Christian faith whence grace begins, is so closely held captive under earthly desires that that liberty of the will, as if bound with iron fetters, can in no way rise to will or do good; but only turns about in an evil movement as a captive. For which reason free will during all that time is not so much free as slave, that is, free with respect to justice and slave with respect to sin, the proximate indifference to good and evil being utterly removed”¹³.

But not only the liberty of doing good perished, but also that of abstaining from sin: “And so the most holy and most profound Doctor Augustine, not content to have declared that man after the fall is deprived of all liberty of doing any good work, teaches with the same confidence the other part also, that it is no longer free for him to abstain from sins; but that by sinning he has fallen into a necessity of sinning, from which the grace of Christ the Saviour alone can free him”¹⁴.

Cap. 11 he wishes to show that in place of the liberty of abstaining from sin there has been introduced a necessity of sinning. But this doctrine does not disagree with the Catholic faith, according to which man has free will for evil and for good (cap. 13). “From all these you may rightly gather that in no other sense does there remain to us after the fall, before reparation, a liberty of choice for good, than because the will is only capable of good, that is, because, when God repairs what was lost, it can receive the actual liberty of doing good”¹⁵.

This doctrine on the lost liberty of doing good and of abstaining from sin is to be understood not only of the works of true piety and of works meritorious of eternal life, but of every morally good act which is not a sin, whether it contributes to eternal life or not (cap. 14). “And so in this question we judge it undoubted that it is that opinion of St Augustine and of his disciples which we have just stated, namely that no good work, not even a morally good one, can be done by the human will except through grace — not any grace whatever, but that by which it is freed through faith: so that accordingly, before faith, it is not free for it to abstain from sin while it meditates on acting here and now, but whichever way it turns, it is held by a certain necessity of sinning that human powers cannot loose”¹⁶.

No middle course is given between charity and culpable cupidity (cap. 19). Hence everything that is not of faith is sin (Lib. 4, cap. 1). The mere absence of faith suffices for all the works of unbelievers to be true sins (cap. 3). But (cap. 19) “if there is no liberty of abstaining from sin, but a necessity of sinning in the will, then sin will no longer be sin. For what is necessary is by that very fact not a sin, inasmuch as it must be voluntary”¹⁷. “It is answered that this argument, as necessity of sinning and liberty of abstaining are understood by the Scholastics, has no force at all against the opinion of Augustine. For they call necessity of sinning that by which one is so determined to this sin, which is perpetrated here and now, that he cannot abstain from it: but they call liberty that by which he can do this thing and abstain from doing it. But a necessity of doing of this sort Augustine neither attributes to free will nor takes from it a liberty of abstaining of this sort: but this is the necessity which Augustine professes was brought in by sin, that free will is so captive to the desire of earthly things, before it is freed by faith in the Creator and by charity, that whichever way it turns, it must act badly in the generic sense; yet in such a way that in the particular case it perpetrates no sin so necessarily that it cannot abstain from it: but by abstaining from that one it falls into another, which it could likewise have guarded against by doing something else. This necessity has regard to sin in general only, not to individual sins in particular: nor does it take away that indifference of free will which the more recent Scholastics require ... For it will be free as to exercise, as they say; and necessitated as to specification”¹⁸. Cap. 25 ff. he tries to show that this doctrine was not condemned by the propositions proscribed by Pius V and Gregory XIII.

In 3 books “On the state of pure nature” he shows that such a state is impossible; he says that “without a supernatural love of God a rational creature cannot be created innocent”¹⁹.

After he has spoken in volume 2 of the sickness of the human race, he now treats in volume 3 of the medicine. Since free will is held captive, it must be freed. “If anyone wishes to know what that liberation of the will is, he must know what its slavery and captivity is. And since this is in no way a stain of sin, or a guilt of fault or of punishment, but a certain depression of the will beneath the concupiscence of created things, under which its consent is so held captive that it cannot extricate itself from it by its own powers, and raise itself to loving justice; hence consequently the liberation of the will is not the remission of sin, but a certain delightful loosening of that concupiscential bond, or of a certain pestilential sweetness of creatures, to which the soul, bound fast, serves without ceasing, until by grace, with heavenly sweetness infused and the knot of that cupidity broken, it is transferred to loving things above”²⁰.

The efficient cause of this liberation is grace. The will is to be freed by grace so that it may perform acts not only supernatural but also morally good (cap. 4). By its natural powers the will can do nothing towards obtaining that grace. To one who does what is in him by the powers of nature, grace is not given by any fixed law (cap. 5). Grace is either of the intellect or of the will; the grace of the intellect again is either external (preaching, exhortation, etc.) or internal (knowledge of the truth). Both are usually called law or doctrine (cap. 6). This cannot free the will so that it may will and work justice (cap. 7). The grace therefore which frees the will is the grace of the will. But one is the grace of the sound will, and another that of the sick will (Lib. 2, cap. 1 et 2).

The difference between them appears from the distinction between the free will and the enslaved will (cap. 4). “For it lies in this, that the help of that first integrity so helped the will as to work together with it, if it willed; now however the help itself makes it will. That is, before the ruin the help was such that the influx of the help, equally with that of the will, into the work depended on the nod of the free will itself, and so that indifferent liberty, flexible to either side, remained safe: now however after the ruin it is such as to make the will consent, and to influence it, and to will. For it is to be observed that the helps of the will are of two kinds; for one is of such a sort that without it the will cannot will, yet in such a way that to will and not to will, to use or not to use the help, is left to its free choice: the other is that by which it comes about that the will wills determinately. For it is of that nature that by the very fact that it is given to the will, the will at once wills ... by the very fact that it is given, the use of it and the influx of the power are given at the same time. For it is this very thing which by its own efficacy makes the faculty flow into act, and is not subject to the free choice of the faculty itself, but invincibly brings it about that the will chooses and wills this or that”²¹. “The other kind of help is that by which, as soon as it has been given, the effect takes place, and if it is not given will never take place. For it is of such necessity that without it the effect cannot take place, and of such efficacy that by the very fact that it is given, it takes place at once. For it gives both to be able and to act at once”²².

No help is therefore given after the fall that is not at the same time efficacious; in other words, no truly and merely sufficient grace is given (Lib. 3, cap. 1 ff.). There is a certain weakness of the will, by which it cannot overcome certain temptations, and the grace by which they might be overcome is not present, nor the spirit of prayer, by which powers might be obtained (cap. 13). “All these things therefore most fully and most plainly demonstrate that nothing is more certain and more firmly grounded in the doctrine of St Augustine than that there are certain precepts which are impossible for men — not only for unbelievers, blinded and hardened, but also for the faithful and the just, who will and strive according to the present powers they have; and that the grace by which they might become possible is also lacking: for this is daily manifest by the example of St Peter and many others, who are tempted beyond what they can bear: nor does that difficulty of fulfilling such precepts arise from this, that the act of fulfilling them must be supernatural or meritorious, or anything of the like (which never came into Augustine's mind), but from this, that the powers of the will are weak, because of concupiscence drawing it back from willing good; by whose resistance it comes about that the powers of the will are distracted, and so a man does not will fully, does not will integrally, does not will with his whole will. But such a will is not fit to overcome the other, strengthened by age, because through it a man cannot yet will as much as suffices for him to act by willing; but he will be able when he has a great and robust will. To attribute this to himself, however, is not within human power but belongs to the grace of God alone, which we therefore assiduously invoke by faith”²³, “From which it is concluded that the saying that God does not command impossible things is true in no other sense than that whatever he commands can be done by man's will aided by the omnipotent grace of God”²⁴.

Cap. 20 explains how the words of St Paul are to be understood: “God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”, and cap. 21 in what way Christ is the redeemer of all, crucified and dead for all. “From which it is clear that, in the judgment of Augustine, Christ gave himself as a redemption for all, or is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, in no other sense than that he is the redemption and propitiation for the sins of all the faithful, from whom the one Catholic Church is constituted. Nor, unless I am mistaken, is there a place in all the works of Augustine where he teaches that Christ is a propitiation for the sins of unbelievers who remain in unbelief, or that he gave himself as a redemption for them”²⁵. “For neither according to the doctrine of the Ancients did Christ suffer or die for all men absolutely, nor did he shed his blood for all men absolutely and so generally, since they teach that this is rather to be rejected as an error abhorrent from the Catholic faith: but to all those for whom he shed his blood, and insofar as he shed it for them, he also gives a sufficient help, by which they not only can, but also in fact will and do, that which he decreed should be willed and done by them. For by those most secretly just and most justly secret counsels of his, he predestined to give to some men faith, charity, and perseverance in it to the end, whom we call absolutely predestined, elect and to be saved; to others charity without perseverance, to others faith without charity. For men of the first kind, as his true sheep, as his true people to be saved absolutely, he gave and delivered himself up; for their sins to be utterly blotted out and buried in eternal oblivion he is the propitiation; for these to be brought to life for ever he died; for these to be freed from every evil he asked his Father, not for the rest, who failing from faith and charity die in iniquity. For for these he died, and for these he is a propitiation for sins, and for these he asked his Father, in the measure in which they are to be adorned with certain temporal effects of divine grace”²⁶.

What, then, is that medicinal help of Christ in its substance? He answers in lib. 4, cap. 1: “that this medicinal grace of Christ the Saviour, which the school calls efficacious, is nothing other than a certain heavenly and ineffable sweetness, or spiritual delight, by which the will is preveniently moved and bent to will and do whatever God has determined it to will and do”²⁷. “From these it is now clearly understood that this grace of divine delight is so necessary when we struggle with the temptations and delights of earthly things, that unless it is greater than the earthly delight by which our affection is held, it cannot but be that we are conquered by the weakness of our own will. For a greater delight will never, surely, be overcome by a lesser delight, but the mind will follow that one which has held it more by delighting it with sweetness”²⁸.

But the necessity of heavenly delight for willing and acting well does not arise from the nature of the will, but from its punishment (cap. 9). “The true reason therefore why heavenly delight is necessary for good acts must be sought from the nature of the medicine, that is, of the medicinal help. For the will through the sin of the first man has been cast down into the empire of lusts, from which it comes about that in all actions before grace, with a certain libidinous delight going before and titillating, it is provoked, and by consenting to it, sins; as we have shown in its place by very many testimonies of Augustine, as a thing certain from him, and with experience agreeing. For this empire of lusts is not the natural constitution of man, who before enjoyed his own goods in full liberty and peace, but the punishment of the condemned”²⁹.

Lib. 6, cap. 6: necessity is twofold for Augustine, of coercion, and simple or voluntary. The former, not the latter, is repugnant to liberty. Lib. 7, cap. 2: there is something besides the bare faculty of the will, which places the act of the will too in the power of choice and makes it will. And this is delight itself (cap. 3). “Since therefore the true cause why the will is moved to desire something is the delight by which it is soothed inwardly in the will itself, hence it is that Augustine consequently teaches that both in desiring sin and in omitting it the will is made free by delight. For since for Augustine that is free which is in our power, or which is done when we will, it is necessary that that very thing which has been the cause of willing and not willing for the will should also be the cause of liberty”³⁰. “And hence it is born that as sorrow is opposed to delight, and displeasure to complacency, so also, according to the mind of Augustine, liberty is opposed to the coerced. For that to which someone is drawn by coercion is done with displeasure, and conversely, what is done with displeasure is said to be drawn by coercion, not to go freely; and in equal measure, the greater the displeasure, the more it is coerced, and the lesser, the less”³¹.

Lib. 8, cap. 3: “These things, although they are so³², and although the discrepancy between physical predetermination, as the Scholastics are wont to defend it, and the medicinal help of Christ is so great, in this nonetheless, as we have said, the medicinal help agrees with it, that the office of physically predetermining the will truly belongs to it, and that by that word, taken not abstractly but concretely, it can deservedly be so called. For by this very fact that, according to the principles of St Augustine, the true grace of Christ is a help by which it comes about that one wills and perfects, as it is distinguished from the help without which it is not; and likewise is not a potential help, by which we can will and act if we will, but a help of the will and of the action, by which God brings it about that we in fact will and act, as these things have been demonstrated at length in their places; it is plainly clear that this help is such as to draw the will, constituted in potency together with any other grace whatever, to the act, not in such a way that the act follows only if it wills (as was proper to the grace of Adam and of the angels, with which they in fact stood in the truth), but by most efficaciously furnishing it so that it wills. For it does not wait for the will to flow in with it, as happened in the help of the angels, even the holy ones, whose will was so strong that, as, and when, and insofar as it willed, it used or did not use the help; but it makes the will flow in with it, applying it to will and do whatever God has determined should be willed and done through it”³³.

“Nevertheless it may deservedly be doubted whether Augustine understood liberty to remain unimpaired in that way, and so held that the influx of grace was to be reconciled with free will in this sense, that under its efficacy determining the will to will and act, the power should at the same time remain not to will and not to act: namely that he should judge the choice of the will to be free under grace for this reason, that it always so wills and acts through grace as at the same time to be able neither to will nor to act”³⁴. He wishes to demonstrate “that Augustine, in answering the Pelagians, who complained that liberty was violated by grace, never touched upon this manner of reconciling them, namely that the will so wills through grace as to be able not to will, but always the other, namely that with grace operating we are carried to good not like a trunk which God moves, but that grace makes not anyone else but ourselves will what is good”³⁵. And at the end of the chapter he says: “nor does Augustine defend free will, and hand down the concord of the two, in any other way than because it is not grace alone that works in man, but the will also, from unwilling and resisting is made willing, and by willing does something together with grace”³⁶. Cap. 19: “Wherefore Augustine and his disciples did not have regard to those conceptions of free will of certain more recent writers, when, reconciling grace with free will, they say that it does not therefore take away free will, because it brings it about that free will is not idle like a stone and does nothing, nor is forced unwilling to good, but that it also wills and acts. But they looked to that principle which Augustine explained and most frequently inculcated: that is free which is in our power; and that is in our power which is done when we will, or, as he says elsewhere, which someone does if he wills, and does not do if he does not will. But by this definition, which Augustine holds as the rule of an immovable and most certain truth, and which all his disciples held, every will or rational volition whatsoever is free, because as it is impossible that it not be done when we will, and be done when we do not will, so consequently it is impossible that it not be in our power, and by this very fact free”³⁷.

Immediately after the publication of the book “Augustinus” controversies arose concerning the doctrine contained in it, which led to the condemnation of 5 propositions (Innocent X, by the Constitution “Cum occasione”, 31 May 1653; Denz 1092 ff.).

Prop. 1: “Some of God's precepts are impossible to just men who will and strive according to the present powers they have: the grace is also wanting to them by which they might become possible”. Declared and condemned as rash, impious, blasphemous, to be condemned with anathema, and heretical.

The sense is: a just man can be found in such conditions in which he cannot fulfil some precept of God: the powers of the will have been weakened after sin, and the heavenly victorious delight is not present, by which the opposing cupidity might be overcome; grace is wanting, the help by which is wanting. But if the Jansenists object that this impotence is from a defect of the will — for the will could, if it willed — in their system this is nothing; for the will cannot will good unless the grace is present, the victorious delight which gives the power to will and to act. This impotence follows from original sin. Truly and merely sufficient grace is denied in the present order.

Prop. 2: “Interior grace in the state of fallen nature is never resisted”. Declared and condemned as heretical.

Since interior grace in the state of fallen nature is a help by which, it always has its effect. If the heavenly delight is greater than the cupidity, the good act itself is had: for it makes the will will strongly. But if it is lesser, it has the whole effect which it can have in the conflict with a greater earthly cupidity, and for which it is given in such a case, namely it makes the will will faintly. The will can never resist and impede the effect of grace.

Prop. 3: “For meriting and demeriting in the state of fallen nature there is not required in man liberty from necessity, but liberty from coercion suffices”. Declared and condemned as heretical.

This proposition follows from the doctrine of Jansen, that the will necessarily follows the greater delight. If the heavenly delight is greater, the will necessarily follows it, performs a good and meritorious act; if the earthly cupidity is greater, the will necessarily follows it, performs an evil, demeritorious act. But the act remains free, because according to Jansen, if the will truly wills, by that very fact it wills freely (he understands this of the acts of the will which follow knowledge, not of indeliberate acts). But coercion destroys liberty and impedes merit, because what we do under coercion we do not will, and therefore do not do freely. If Jansen sometimes concedes to the will of the wayfarer a certain indifference, this is not an active indifference (with which there would be liberty from necessity), but a passive indifference, that is: the same will which is now necessitated to the good act by the victorious heavenly delight can, if the opposite delight is victorious, be determined to the opposite act, and necessarily performs the evil act.

Prop. 4: “The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of interior prevenient grace for individual acts, even for the beginning of faith; and in this they were heretics, that they wished that grace to be such as the human will could resist and obey”. Declared and condemned as false and heretical.

In the first part it is affirmed that the Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of internal grace for all acts, even for the beginning of faith; therefore their opinion is not heretical for this, that, as is commonly said, they denied the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith; but their heresy lay in this, that they thought falsely about the nature of interior grace (the second part). If therefore the Semi-Pelagians were heretics for that reason, it would be Catholic doctrine that the human will cannot resist or obey this interior grace. This part of the proposition therefore again establishes the Jansenist doctrine of the grace of fallen nature as a help by which (cf. prop. 2). The qualification “heretical” seems to be applied precisely to this second part of the proposition. Therefore the true doctrine is: the human will can resist or obey interior grace.

Prop. 5: “It is Semi-Pelagian to say that Christ died or shed his blood for all men absolutely”. Declared and condemned as false, rash, scandalous, and, understood in the sense that Christ died only for the salvation of the predestined, impious, blasphemous, contumelious, derogating from the divine goodness, and heretical.

Jansen lays down the principle: to all those for whom Christ shed his blood, and insofar as he shed it for them, he also gives the help by which they will and do what he has decreed should be willed and done by them. Hence he died for the salvation of the predestined only, since he decreed to save them alone absolutely. For those reprobate to whom he decreed to give faith and charity without perseverance, or faith alone without charity, he died insofar as he decreed those effects of grace to them; but nothing for the unbelievers who remain in unbelief. In that sense therefore Christ is positively to be said to have died for the salvation not only of the predestined, inasmuch as by his death he also merited for others the helps by which they can be saved.

As has already been said above, Jansen submitted his opinions to the judgment of the Church; he himself therefore is not a heretic.

Among the principal Jansenists must be numbered first of all Jansen's friend, Ioannes Vergerius, abbot of St Cyran (a monastery of Poitiers), whence he was called Sancyranus. He strenuously championed the Jansenist doctrines, and infected also the nuns of Portus Regius (Port Royal), whom he governed, with these errors, so much so that Port Royal became a principal seat of Jansenism. After his death (1643) Antonius Arnaldus succeeded in his place (the author of the book on frequent communion), who died in 1694; him followed Paschasius Quesnel, priest of the Bérullian Oratory. From his work 101 propositions were collected, which were condemned by Clement XI, in the Bull “Unigenitus”, 8 Sept. 1713. And when the synod of Pistoia restored the Jansenist errors, it was condemned by Pius VI, 28 August 1794, in the Constitution “Auctorem fidei”; Denz. 1501.