Thread by @potamopotos

PIOUS PROSPER AGAINST THE SEMI-PELAGIANS

Consequently, they teach that no one is saved gratuitously but only in justice, because all men are able by natural means to discover the truth if they wish, and grace is given freely to all who beg for it.
This statement, not to speak

now of what is really meant by grace, may be able to show some sort of pretence in the case of adults who have the use of their free will. But for infants who lack altogether the merit of a will to do good and who, just like all other mortals, are wounded with original sin, they

can offer no explanation whatever. Why are some of them regenerated in baptism and saved, while others fail to be reborn and are lost? How can this happen in spite of the Providence and omnipotence of Him in whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the spirit of all flesh

of man and to whom was said, The days of man are short, and the number of his days is with Thee?But I do not think that these patrons of human liberty will so impudently misuse the simplicity of men as to assert that all this happens by chance, or that the unbaptised are not lost

For then they would show plainly that they either share the views of the pagans about fate, or deny with the Pelagians that Adam’s sin is transmitted to his posterity. But even the Pelagians could not say that it is due to fate that children happen not to receive baptism.

And when they ventured to assert that infants are free from sin, they were rightly condemned