Theological Theses · §2211 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

The stricter Roman sense of moral good: the natural law kept without rising above nature

Protestants often use 'moral good' in this sense, as can be seen above all in the Saumur theses. In this dispute, however, the theologians of the Roman School take it a little more strictly. They set moral good not only against the good of nature, or physical good, but also against supernatural good.

So they do not include under moral good the theological or infused virtues and the acts that flow from them, which belong to the supernatural order. They include only what agrees with right reason and the law of nature without rising above nature. On their view the whole of that good consists in keeping the law written by nature on the human heart, which God summed up in the Decalogue and which is nothing other than the dictate of right reason.

Latin

IV. Hoc sensu bonum morale a Protestantibus frequenter usurpatur, ut praesertim videre est in thesibus Salmuriensibus. In hac vero disputatione Scholae Romanae Theologi bonum morale paulo strictius sumunt. Nam bonum morale opponunt non tantum bono naturae seu Physico, sed etiam bono supernaturali. Adeoque sub bono morali non comprehendunt virtutes Theologicas, sive infusas, & actus inde promanantes qui sunt ordinis supernaturalis; sed solum omne illud quod rectae rationi & legi naturae conforme est, & tamen supra naturam non assurgit. Ac proinde totum illud bonum positum est in observatione legis illius, quae naturaliter cordi hominis est inscripta, quam Deus in Decalogo summatim comprehendit, & quae non est aliud quam rectae rationis dictamen.

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