Cap. 7 Quartum Rat. 7: death as medium tracks God’s diverse saving will
Ratio 7. Christ’s death and merit is the means God ordained to carry out his eternal counsel for human salvation. If God’s will stands differently toward effecting people’s salvation, then Christ’s death is likewise intended and applied differently toward that end. Means always serve the end, and the mode of application follows the agent’s intention. All sound theologians confess that God does not will everyone’s salvation in the same mode in which he wills some people’s. Therefore he did not will the means—Christ’s death—applied to all as it is applied to some. So for those for whom God by efficacious will decreed salvation, Christ’s death was destined so that by its merit everything needed to produce salvation infallibly would flow to them; for those for whom he did not so decree salvation, Christ’s death was not destined in that same mode. From the Father’s special intention in ordaining that sacrifice, and from Christ’s self-offering conformed to the Father’s will, the death is understood as destined and applied one way to the elect, whom God decreed to save infallibly through it, and another way to the rest, whom he allows to perish by their own fault even with this death. Whoever denies that discrimination in the offering and application can as easily deny that the wisest and most powerful God knows how—or is able—to intend and fit the means he instituted to different people as his will’s different reason requires.
Latin
Rat. 7. Christi mors meritumque est medium a Deo ordinatum ad exequendum & implendum aeternum Dei consilium de salute hominum. Si igitur Dei voluntas diversimode se habeat ad salutem hominum efficiendam, tum & mors Christi ab eodem diversimode intendetur in salutem humanam, diversimode applicabitur. Media siquidem semper adhibentur in ordine ad finem: & juxta intentionem agentis erit modus applicationis. Jam certum est & in confesso apud omnes sanos Theologos, Deum non eo modo velle salutem omnium quo vult salutem aliquorum: Ergo neque medium quo salutem humanam procurandam decrevit, scilicet mortem Christi, ita omnibus applicatum voluit sicut aliquibus. Unde liquet iis quibus Deus efficaci voluntate salutem decrevit, Christi mortem fuisse ita destinatam, ut merito ejusdem omnia ad salutem infallibiliter producendam necessaria ex eadem ad eos redundarent: Et e contra, quibus tali voluntate salutem minime decrevit, iis neque mortem Christi fuisse ad eundem modum destinatam. Mors igitur Christi ex speciali intentione Dei Patris illud sacrificium ad salutem hominum ordinantis, & Christi seipsum offerentis, ac Paternae voluntati conformantis, aliter electis destinata & applicata intelligitur, quos Deus decrevit per hanc mortem infallibiliter servare, aliter ceteris, quos Deus non impedit quin hac morte permittit suo vitio perire. Quisquis negat mortem Christi hoc discrimine oblatam pro hominibus, & applicatam ipsis hominibus, ille eadem opera negare potest Deum sapientissimum & potentissimum aut nosse aut posse media a se instituta, prout diversa ratio voluntatis suae exigit, diversimode diversis hominibus intendere & accommodare.