Cap. II opens: Placeus was not condemned — first probable argument (no prior charge)

Chapter Two. That Placeus's judgment was not condemned by that Decree is shown by seven probable arguments.

That Placeus's judgment was not condemned by that Decree we can prove by many arguments, some of them highly probable, others plainly necessary.

First: before that National Synod no writing of Placeus on the imputation of the first sin by which Adam fell had come out, except the Theses on the state of fallen man before grace, disputed publicly in February 1640 — five years before that Decree was made — and sent the same year to all those pastors who in the neighboring provinces were charged with examining books for publication; and also offered, in Placeus's name, by his most distinguished colleague Amyraut, Anjou's delegate, to the Synod of Poitou held that same year at Châtellerault. Through that whole five years no one had stirred a suit against Placeus over those Theses, no one had accused him, nor had the cause been agitated in any way in the Academy's Senate, or in the church's session, or in the Synod of Anjou to which he himself belongs, or (so far as he could learn before that National Synod) in any other synod. So under the shield of Art. XXXI, Cap. V of the Ecclesiastical Discipline — which twenty-seven national synods had confirmed — and of the Decree of the National Synod of Alençon convened in 1637, which forbids accusations of that kind about doctrine to be carried straight to a National Synod, and orders that the man who seems to need accusing be first admonished, and that the cause be heard and debated in the provincial synod to which he is subject, he slept secure. For he understood that he could not be accused in a National Synod unless those Decrees were violated — Decrees he thought every pastor and provincial synod ought to hold sacrosanct and inviolable. Since, then, it is not likely that anyone, least of all a pastor, would have such a craving — not to say itch — to accuse Placeus (who had never injured him) that he would knowingly and deliberately rather violate such venerable Decrees than keep himself from accusing: it is also not likely that Placeus was accused by anyone; and if he was not accused, he was certainly not condemned.

Someone will object in vain that those who once set an order must sometimes, for necessary causes, depart from the order once constituted. Who, then, had set that order? Who had made those Decrees? National Synods. Was the National Synod itself, then, Placeus's accuser? Or if he was accused, was he not accused either by some provincial synod, or by some delegate of a provincial synod — neither of them the author of that order, both of them subject to the National Synod's authority and Decrees? Next: those who set an order do not leave an order once wisely constituted except for necessary causes. What necessary causes, then, were there for leaving an order so wisely instituted, and for violating Decrees so equitable and so necessary? I look for them in vain. None appear. Perhaps a growing evil had to be met that way. What evil? Placeus's opinion? In it there are two things: what he believes, and what he does not believe. Whatever he believes, everyone who is not a Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian has always believed. What he does not believe has never been established by any public authority, and he rejects it only because it is new, and alien to the Word of God, to the doctrine of the Protestant churches, and to right reason. So nothing evil was to be feared from that rejection.

But grant that there was an evil that had to be met. Did it have to be met by violating those laws and decrees by which National Synods had most wisely prescribed how such an evil, if it ever arose, should be met? What is more: would not that upside-down way of meeting it have been better fitted to increase the evil than to remove it? For since God is a God of order, and wills that everything in the church be done according to order and decently, an accusation of a brother by a brother that violates the order rightly constituted in the church of God could more probably have been ascribed to some human disturbance than to the Spirit of God — and how many opportunities would it have given Placeus to complain, and to defend and spread his opinion, if he had chosen to use the occasion?

What necessary cause, then, could there finally have been for violating an order set with so much authority and wisdom? Someone will perhaps answer that those who brought the matter to the National Synod were shut out by the narrowness of time from being able to obey the constitution once laid down. As if, through the "narrowness" of four or five years, the accusers could not carry their complaints to the Synod of Anjou! But that Synod in Upper Occitania at which this business was first laid out was held only in September, and the national assembly at Charenton was to be convened the following December. Be it so. Yet first: why was that provincial synod nearest the National waited for? Why was this business not laid out in some earlier one? Ignorance of Placeus's theses in that province cannot be excused. For five years earlier, as I said, they had been published, and sent by Placeus himself to Delon, pastor of the church of Montauban. Why, then, was the accusation of those theses so long delayed, if indeed they were accused? Next: why at least through that whole trimester between that provincial synod and the National was nothing written to Placeus, so that he might at least in some measure satisfy the order? Why was he not admonished of error? Why was a clearer explanation of his opinion not asked of him? Why at least was nothing about that coming accusation written to him, or to the Academic Senate, or to the church of Saumur, or made known in some other way? For he can swear in good faith that he had heard nothing whatever of that coming accusation, except I know not what from an uncertain rumor — and that when the National Synod was already said to be dissolved, or about to be dissolved. For neither before it met, nor while it sat, was a single word about that coming accusation written by the delegates of the Upper Occitania Synod either to Placeus himself or to his colleagues then at Saumur. To what could that have tended, except that Placeus, absent, unwarned, and unaware, might be accused and crushed? And is it not a matter of conscience for you, pious reader, even to suspect — much less to believe — that of that provincial synod and of its delegates?