Theological Theses · §1725 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Rambour: original righteousness natural as native, not as flowing from nature's powers, like natural knowledge of God

Finally Abraham Rambour, in the Syntagma of Sedan Theses, disputation on the image of God in man and original righteousness, thesis 27, gives his view on the question in these words: "We hold that original righteousness includes the whole integrity and holiness of man, and that it was natural to him. Loving God and obeying him were planted in Adam's nature from the moment it existed, and man excelled in this gift from the moment he was made.

"We do not want this to be taken as though this holiness flowed from the powers of nature, but in the sense that this integrity was native to man, so that in him, by nature as God made him and while he stood in that state, there were no disordered movements. In the same way we call some knowledge of God natural, since nothing is so natural as what is so lodged in nature that it cannot be removed without, so to speak, nature's renouncing it on oath. This righteousness, then, shone in Adam as soon as he came into being, and he felt nothing in himself that resisted it."

Latin

XXXII. Denique Ramburtius in Sedanensium Thesium Syntagmate Disputatione de imagine Dei in homine, & justitia Originali. Thesi vigesima septima sic de hac quaestione sententiam suam pronunciat, Nos statuimus justitiam Originalem complecti totam hominis integritatem & sanctitatem, eamque homini fuisse naturalem: ita ut in Adae natura, simul atque extitit, insitum fuerit diligere Deum, eique obtemperare, hocque dono excelluisse hominem statim atque conditus est. Quod ita non volumus accipi ac si ex naturae viribus profluxerit haec sanctitas; sed quod nativa fuerit homini haec integritas: ita ut in eo per naturam, ut a Deo conditus est, & in hoc statu substitit, nulli fuerint motus inordinati: quemadmodum naturalem dicimus esse aliquam cognitionem Dei, quatenus nihil est tam naturale, quam quod ita naturae insidet, ut sine ejus, ut sic dicam, ejuratione non possit amoveri. Haec igitur justitia fulsit in Adamo simul ac exortus est, nihilque huic justitiae tepugnans expertus est.

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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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