Sacred Texts Christianity Early Church Fathers Index Previous Next
III. “Again we must ask,” he says, “what sin is,—natural? or accidental? If natural, it is not sin; if accidental, it is separable; 1369 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” 1370 ) has too little determination of will to avoid sin, unless assisted and healed by God’s grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.
[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.]
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