How Men Lost the Grace They Were Given

For God has not only made us out of nothing; he also freely gave us, by the grace of the Word, a life in keeping with God. But men turned away from eternal things and, at the devil’s counsel, turned to the things of corruption, and so became the cause of their own corruption in death. As I said before, they were corruptible by nature, but by the grace that came from sharing in the Word they would have escaped their natural state, had they remained good. For because the Word was dwelling with them, even their natural corruption did not come near them. As Wisdom also says, “God made man for incorruption, and as an image of his own eternity; but through the envy of the devil death came into the world.” But once this had happened, men began to die, and from then on corruption prevailed against them. It gained even more than its natural power over the whole race, since, because of the transgression of the commandment, it had the threat of God as a further advantage against them. [a]

For even in their wrongdoing men did not stop at any set limits. Pressing on little by little, they went beyond all measure. To begin with, they were the inventors of wickedness and called down death and corruption on themselves. Later, turning aside to wrong and going beyond all lawlessness, stopping at no one evil but devising every kind of new evil one after another, they became insatiable in sinning. There were adulteries everywhere, and thefts, and the whole earth was full of murders and plunder. As for corruption and wrong, no one paid any attention to law; every crime was being committed everywhere, by individuals and by people acting together. Cities made war on cities, and nations rose up against nations. The whole earth was torn by civil strife and battles, each man vying with his neighbors in lawless deeds. Nor were even crimes against nature far from them. As the apostle and witness of Christ says: “For their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the women, burned in their lust toward one another, men with men committing shameless acts, and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error that was due.” [b]