Cap. 5 first member close: Reconciliable versus reconciled; no Semipelagian lottery

Solution. I answer that the consequence is vicious; God is reconciliable through the death of Christ to any human being about to believe: Therefore he is not reconciled through Christ to any believer, but will still be only reconciliable. Rather we profess that God is reconciliable to any human being about to believe through and because of Christ; that he is also reconciled to any believing human being through and because of Christ; and finally that he has given this condition of faith, by whose intervening actual reconciliation is acquired through and because of the same Christ. In vain therefore and invalidly do they argue from the position of a universal benefit, namely of reconciliability under the condition of faith to be performed, to the removal or negation of particular benefits, for example of reconciliation and salvation; since both are fetched from the death and merit of Christ; although those general ones are carried through without any intervening act of ours, those particular ones not without some act of ours, although not because of any act of ours.

Objection 2. Second, this also is objected (which seems to be of greater moment): If by the death of Christ we posit God made so placable and reconciliable to any human being that he is ready to receive any into grace if he believes, yet actually reconciled to no one before he believes; then we seem to posit that the virtue of the death of Christ according to itself stands equally for all, that God himself also stands indifferently toward all, and as it were waits for the determination of a lower cause, so that the death of his Son may turn out for human beings either fruitful or fruitless: which is nothing other than, with the Semipelagians, to suspend the salvation or perdition of singular human beings from the proper free choice of each one, either apprehending or repelling Christ by faith.

I answer: Let it be granted that by the death of Christ God was made so far placated or placable to the human race that he will receive any into grace if he has believed, with no discrimination of persons (which is the very voice of the Gospel); yet it does not thence follow that this very discrimination of believers and non-believers, of the reconciled and the non-reconciled, finally of the saved and the lost, is to be recalled to the uncertain dice of human free choice. For he who promulgated this universal Evangelical decree, Whoever has believed will be saved, nonetheless reserved to himself the special privilege of giving faith to some by his singular mercy, of not giving it to others by his freest and most just will, and by their manifest unworthiness. By the virtue of the death of Christ God obligated himself to enter into reconciliation with any human being if he has believed; but he did not obligate himself to pour into every human being that efficacious grace by which it is infallibly effected that he believe. We therefore hold both: namely both that God is so far placated by the death of Christ that he is already ready to receive any into grace if they do penitence and believe in Christ; and that the same God who under the condition of faith is ready to indulge the grace of remission to all equally is nonetheless not so disposed that he stands equally toward all as to producing this condition of faith in them. A merchant is said ready to sell his wares if someone wills to buy them: but that, one being unwilling, another wills to buy, the merchant himself does not effect, but it depends on the free choice of each one. The matter does not so stand between God and us. For although by the virtue of the death of Christ he is already ready to give remission and to enter into reconciliation with any human being if he wills to believe in Christ, yet God has this peculiar thing, that he himself inspires in all believers this very will of believing. We do not therefore vote with the Semipelagians, but we say with the Fathers of Orange, Canon 6: If anyone says that mercy is conferred on us believing, willing, desiring, and knocking without the grace of God, and does not confess that it is done Divinely in us by the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit that we believe and will, he resists the Apostle saying, By the grace of God I am what I am. So much concerning the first member of our thesis.

I come to the other member, which is formed in this manner. The death of Christ considered as a general cause of human salvation frees none of adults from the guilt and weight of their sins, constitutes none actually reconciled to God — in a word, places none in the state of grace and salvation — before faith applied to the Gospel.