Theological Theses · §1892 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Safer definitions of free choice: those of Alvarez and of Bellarmine

So, rather than the familiar description of free choice as 'a faculty by which, given everything required beforehand for acting, a person can act and not act, do this or that', it is safer to use the one Alvarez put in its place: 'Free choice is a faculty of will and reason for acting or not acting, as one pleases, and for doing one thing or the other.'

Or else Bellarmine's: 'Free choice is a free power, given or granted for the great glory of God, to choose one thing over another among the things that lead to some end, or to reject or accept one and the same thing as we decide.'

Latin

XLIII. Itaque vulgata illa descriptione Liberi Arbitrii per quam definitur facultas qua positis omnibus ad agendum praerequisitis, potest aliquis agere & non agere, hoc aut illud agere, tutior est ea quam substituit Alvarez, Liberum arbitrium est facultas voluntatis & rationis ad utrum libet agendum vel non agendum & agendum unum vel alterum. Aut etiam illa Bellarmini, Liberum arbitrium est libera potestas ex his quae ad finem aliquem conducunt unum prae alio eligendi, aut unum & idem respuendi vel acceptandi pro arbitrio nostro, ad magnam Dei gloriam attributa vel concessa.

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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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Translated from Latin (Pitt 1675) (Latin)
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