{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050345.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050345.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050345.htm","text":"Chapter IV.\u2014(9.) The Ninth Breviate.\nIX. \u201cThe next question we shall require to be solved,\u201d says he, \u201cis this: By what means is it brought about that man is with sin?\u2014by the necessity of nature, or by the freedom of choice? If it is by the necessity of nature, he is blameless; if by the freedom of choice, then the question arises, from whom he has received this freedom of choice. No doubt, from God. Well, but that which God bestows is certainly good. This cannot be gainsaid. On what principle, then, is a thing proved to be good, if it is more prone to evil than to good? For it is more prone to evil than to good if by means of it man can be with sin and cannot be without sin.\u201d The answer is this: It came by the freedom of choice that man was with sin; but a penal corruption closely followed thereon, and out of the liberty produced necessity. Hence the cry of faith to God, \u201cLead Thou me out of my necessities.\u201d 1380 With these necessities upon us, we are either unable to understand what we want, or else (while having the wish) we are not strong enough to accomplish what we have come to understand. Now it is just liberty itself that is promised to believers by the Liberator. \u201cIf the Son,\u201d says He, \u201cshall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.\u201d 1381 For, vanquished by the sin into which it fell by its volition, nature has lost liberty. Hence another scripture says, \u201cFor of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.\u201d 1382 Since therefore \u201cthe whole need not the physician, but only they that be sick;\u201d 1383 so likewise it is not the free that need the Deliverer, but only the enslaved. Hence the cry of joy to Him for deliverance, \u201cThou hast saved my soul from the straits of necessity.\u201d 1384 For true liberty is also real health; and this would never have been lost, if the will had remained good. But because the will has sinned, the hard necessity p. 162 of having sin has pursued the sinner; until his infirmity be wholly healed, and such freedom be regained, that there must needs be, on the one hand, a permanent will to live happily, and, on the other hand, a voluntary and happy necessity of living virtuously, and never sinning.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: A Treatise Concer...","type":"page"}