Theological Theses · §2661 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Differences on the nature of efficacious grace are scholastic

Thesis LXXIX. There are differences between the Thomists and Jansenius, and among the teachers of the Reformed school themselves, over how to explain the nature of efficacious grace and in what to place it.

The Thomists place it in a certain motion with power in it, present in the will as an impetus is present in a thing that is driven; Jansenius in feelings of love and longing for the heavenly and spiritual good, by which the human soul is gently swept upward; Camero's disciples in a most powerful enlightening and persuading of the mind, which sweeps the will and affections along with it; others in an all-powerful and most effective working of God, by which a new source of spiritual life is put into the heart of the person called and he is at the same time roused to perform the acts of this life.

All this belongs to purely scholastic debate, on which learned men may speak and think one way or another; and what most learned men put forward here seems to call for reconciling rather than setting against each other.

Latin

LXXIX. Quod vero discrimen est inter Thomistas atque Jansenium, & inter ipsos Scholae Reformatae Doctores, in explicanda natura gratiae efficacis, & definiendo qua in re illa constituenda sit, dum illam ponunt Thomistae in motione quadam virtuosa, quae est in voluntate per modum quo impetus in re quae impellitur, Jansenius in affectibus amoris & desiderii boni coelestis & spiritualis, quibus suaviter sursum rapitur animus humanus, discipuli Cameronis in potentissima mentis illuminatione & persuasione quae voluntatem & affectus secum rapit, alii in omnipotenti & efficacissima Dei operatione qua novum principium spiritualis vitae cordi hominis vocati inditur, & homo simul excitatur ad hujus vitae actus eliciendos, res est quae ad disputationem mere Scholasticam pertinet, & de qua viris doctis sic & sic loqui, & opinari licet: & quae hic plerique viri docti proferunt componenda potius quam opponenda videntur.

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