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Handout #167 |
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Jansenism |
| Sin grace and predestination are
the great themes of Jansenism. Saint Cyran does not talk about
predestination very differently from Calvin.
Predestination is none other than the eternal love which God bears to certain children of Adam, having seen them all fall into damnation by the sin of their father. Some he leaves in sin and ordains for them none other than the hell which they have deserved. But for the others, for the sake of the love that he bears willingly, he ordains the eternal bliss of paradise, as for his children and his friends. Here you see the obligation which those who have been saved have to God, for having separated them before they were born from the company of other men with whom the were in the same damnation. Those who have entered the church after having heard the preaching of the word of God and having received baptism, which are the two prime means by which we must be holy, not knowing whether they are of the number of those whom God has loved eternally, must not disquiet themselves, but simply do precisely what God has ordained for them by Jesus Christ to save them. |
