Theological Theses · §1711 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Pure nature defined negatively: nothing added, good or bad, beyond what is owed

Jansenius, already mentioned, reports and explains the scholastics' view on this in book 1, chapter 1 of On the State of Pure Nature. On their account nature is called pure by a negative purity: nothing is added to it, good or bad, beyond what is owed to it. It has neither sin, nor the punishment that goes with sin, nor any gift of grace beyond nature.

Latin

XVIII. Nam ut mentem Scholasticorum hac in parte refert & explicat jam dictus Jansenius, de statu naturae purae libro primo capite primo, juxta illos, pura natura dicitur puritate negativa, quia scilicet, nihil habet superadditum sive bonum, sive malum, quod ei debitum non sit: ita neque peccatum habeat, poenamque peccati comitem, neque ullum gratiae naturam superantis donum.

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About this text

Louis Le Blanc, a Reformed professor at Sedan, sets out theology in theses argued against Rome: Scripture, faith, grace, free choice, good works and the saints.

This volume holds the Theses on Theology I–XLIII and On Faith I–XXII, in eighteen sections.

Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu (1614–1675) was minister and professor of theology at the Academy of Sedan, the Reformed school on France's eastern border. His Theses were disputed by students over many years and collected in a London folio (1675).

The Theological Theses range across the whole Reformed system — Scripture, God, predestination, grace, and justifying faith — in the crisp thesis-and-proof form of the seventeenth-century schools.

Date1675 AD (Sedan theses; London collection)

No modern English.

Reference

ESTC R17887; Wing L802. IA bub_gb_eOkHAW4G0-wC (+ EEBO 1675 for gap leaves).

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