The five propositions, which were professed to be extracted from Jansen’s book, and as such were condemned by the Papal Bull of 31st May 1653, are so intimately connected with the ‘Provincial Letters’ as to claim a place in our pages. They are as follows:—
I. There are divine commandments which good men, although willing, are unable to obey; and the grace by which these commandments are possible is also wanting in them. II. No person, in the state of fallen nature, is able to resist internal grace. III. In order to render human actions meritorious or otherwise, liberty from necessity is not required, but only liberty from constraint. IV. The semi-Pelagians, while admitting the necessity of prevenient grace—or grace preceding all actions—were heretics, inasmuch as they said that this grace was such as man could, according to his will, either resist or obey. V. The semi-Pelagians also erred in saying that Christ died or shed His blood for all men universally.
page 113It would be needless for us to touch these propositions, even by way of explanation. We have endeavoured to state them from the original Latin as clearly as we can, so that they may bear some definite meaning even to the non-theological reader. But their very statement bristles with controversy, and the half-extinct meanings of old questions that go to the root of Christian thought lie hid in their language. All the propositions were condemned without reserve, but two points were left unsettled. It was not asserted that the propositions were to be found in the ‘Augustinus,’ and that they were condemned in the sense in which Jansen held them, and in no other. The course of the controversy and the fate of Port Royal in the end mainly turned upon these points.