Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XIII/Chapter 14

Chapter 14.—In What State Man Was Made by God, and into What Estate He Fell by the Choice of His Own Will.

For God, the author of natures, not of vices, created man upright; but man, being of his own will corrupted, and justly condemned, begot corrupted and condemned children.&#160; For we all were in that one man, since we all were that one man, who fell into sin by the woman who was made from him before the sin.&#160; For not yet was the particular form created and distributed to us, in which we as individuals were to live, but already the seminal nature was there from which we were to be propagated; and this being vitiated by sin, and bound by the chain of death, and justly condemned, man could not be born of man in any other state.&#160; And thus, from the bad use of free will, there originated the whole train of evil, which, with its concatenation of miseries, convoys the human race from its depraved origin, as from a corrupt root, on to the destruction of the second death, which has no end, those only being excepted who are freed by the grace of God.