Abstract

Some humanist theologians within the French Reformed Church in the 17th century developed the notion that a disability of the intellect could exist in nature independently of any moral defect, freeing its possessors from any obligations of natural law. Sharpened by disputes with the church leadership, this notion began to suggest a species-type classification that threatened to override the importance of the boundary between elect and reprobate in the doctrine of predestination. This classification seems to look forward to the natural history of mind that emerged later in the century