Theological Theses · §2153 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Free choice not extinguished but weakened (Trent, Session 6, canon 5)

So they maintain that free choice, even with respect to saving good, was not extinguished and lost through sin, but only weakened, wounded and diminished. Here they follow the teaching of the Synod of Trent, whose canon on this point is the fifth of the sixth session:

'If anyone says that man's free choice was lost and extinguished after Adam's sin, or that it is a thing in name only, indeed a name without a reality, in short a fiction brought into the Church by Satan: let him be anathema.'

Latin

VI. Itaque pertendunt Liberum arbitrium, respectu boni ipsius salutaris, per peccatum extinctum & amissum non esse, sed solum debilitatum, fauciatum & attenuatum. Qua in re sequuntur doctrinam Synodi Tridentinae, cujus hic quoque Canon est quintus Sessionis sextae. Si quis liberum hominis arbitrium post Adae peccatum amissum & extinctum esse dixerit, aut rem esse de solo titulo, imo titulum sine re, figmentum denique a Satana invectum in Ecclesiam: anathema sit.

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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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Also checked pdftotext of De Theologia pages (Latin)
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We have not yet re-checked this work against its source. We made this study translation with AI help. No scholar has yet certified it as faithful and complete. Open Latin on any section, or the Latin source link, to see the source text. It is not a critical edition.

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