Theological Theses · §2390 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Grace mostly means God's favour, sometimes his created gifts

Thesis I. In the common understanding of the doctors of the Reformed school, grace usually means God's own love and favour, with which he pursues us though we do not deserve it. Sometimes, though, it also means certain created gifts and effects of that favour.

So Tilenus, in the first disputation of his theses on the various names of the divine will (thesis 20), teaches that God's grace is taken both actively and passively. In the first sense, he says, it means God's kind and well-disposed will, which, far from acting out of our merit or as a debt, rather bestows everything generously and freely. In the second it means some gift given freely.

Latin

THESIS I. JUXTA communem Doctorum Scholae Reformatae sensum Gratia ut plurimum designat ipsum Dei amorem & favorem quo nos immerentes prosequitur, aliquando vero etiam quaedam ejus dona & effecta creata. Sic Tilenus thesibus de variis divinae voluntatis nominibus disputatione prima thesi 20. docet Dei gratiam sumi active & passive. Ac prior, inquit, significatio benignam & propensam Dei voluntatem omnia liberaliter & gratis, non ex merito nostro, vel ex debito, imo largientem. Posterior donum aliquod gratis datum declarat.

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