Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/Concerning Man's Perfection in Righteousness/Chapter 4

by Philip Schaff et al.

(3.) The Third Breviate.

III. “Again we must ask,” he says, “what sin is,—natural? or accidental? If natural, it is not sin; if accidental, it is separable;^[1] and if it is separable, it can be avoided; and because it can be avoided, man can be without that which can be avoided.” The answer to this is, that sin is not natural; but nature (especially in that corrupt state from which we have become by nature “children of wrath”^[2]) has too little determination of will to avoid sin, unless assisted and healed by God’s grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Footnotes

1. [An accident “is a modification or quality which does not essentially belong to a thing, nor form one of its constituent or invariable attributes: as motion in relation to matter, or heat to iron.”—Fleming: Vocabulary of Philosophy.—W.]
2. Eph. ii. 3.