The issue of free will and predestination also played a key role in the series of disputes that occurred between the Jansenists, followers of the Flemish Catholic theologian Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638) and members of the Jesuit order. In the Dutch Republic those who dissented from official church teachings had done so with the aim of broadening the national church, that is, they had desired to make it more inclusive and palatable to the laity by adopting the "free will" position. In France, by contrast, the dissenting Jansenists wished to narrow.....
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