XII.

The Mystery of Election

God sovereignly chooses those whom He will save, demonstrating His mercy and justice while acknowledging our total inability to come to Him apart from His grace.

XII. We believe that from this general corruption and condemnation in which all people are plunged, God draws out those whom, in his eternal and unchangeable counsel, he has elected by his goodness and mercy alone in our Lord Jesus Christ, without regard to their works, leaving the others in that same corruption and condemnation in order to display his justice in them, just as in the former he makes the riches of his mercy shine. For some are no better than others until God distinguishes them according to his unchangeable counsel, which he determined in Jesus Christ before the creation of the world; and no one could bring himself into such a good by his own strength either, seeing that by our nature we cannot have a single good movement, or affection, or thought, until God has gone before us and prepared us for it.¹²

Read the original French

XII. Nous croyons que de cette corruption et condamnation générale, en laquelle tous les hommes sont plongés, Dieu retire ceux lesquels en son conseil éternel et immuable il a élus par sa seule bonté et miséricorde en notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, sans considération de leurs œuvres, laissant les autres en cette même corruption et condamnation, pour démontrer en eux sa justice, comme aux premiers il fait luire les richesses de sa miséricorde. Car les uns ne sont point meilleurs que les autres, jusqu’à ce que Dieu les discerne, selon son conseil immuable qu’il a déterminé en Jésus-Christ devant la création du monde; et nul aussi ne se pourrait introduire à un tel bien de sa propre vertu, vu que de notre nature nous ne pouvons avoir un seul bon mouvement, ni affection, ni pensée, jusqu’à ce que Dieu nous ait prévenus et nous y ait disposés.

Notes

1 ↩prévenus names prevenience: God comes first, before any good motion of ours. Rendered “gone before us,” not the archaic “prevented.”
2 ↩vertu here is ability/power (virtus), not moral excellence; rendered “strength.”

French Confession of Faith (Confession de La Rochelle / Gallican Confession) companion

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