2. The sin of Adam injured himself alone, and not the human race.
3. New-born children are in that state in which Adam was before his fall.
4. Neither by the death and sin of Adam does the whole race die, nor by the resurrection of Christ does the whole race rise.
5. The Law leads to the kingdom of heaven as well as the Gospel.
6. Even before the coming of the Lord there were men without sin.
(f) Pelagius. Confessio fidei. (MSL, 45:1716 f.) Hahn, § 209.
The confession of faith addressed to Innocent of Rome, but actually laid before Zosimus, in 417, consists of an admirably orthodox statement of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the incarnation, an expansion of the Nicene formula with reference to perversions of the faith by various heretics, and in conclusion a statement of Pelagius's own opinions regarding free will, grace, and sin. It is due to the irony of history that it should have been found among the works of both Jerome and Augustine, long passed current as a composition of Augustine, Sermo CCXXXVI, and should have been actually quoted by the Sorbonne, in 1521, in its articles against Luther. It also appears in the Libri Carolini, III, 1, as an orthodox exposition of the faith. The passages which bear upon the characteristic Pelagian doctrine are here given. Fragments of the confessions of other Pelagians, e.g., Cælestius, and Julius of Eclanum, are found in Hahn, §§ 210 and 211. For the proceedings in the East, see Hefele, § 118.
We hold that there is one baptism, which we assert is to be administered to children in the same words of the sacrament as it is administered to adults.…
We execrate also the blasphemy of those who say that anything impossible to do is commanded man by God, and the commands of God can be observed, not by individuals but by all in common, also those who with the Manichæans condemn first marriages or with the Cataphrygians condemn second marriages.… We so confess the will is free that we say that we always need the aid of God, and they err who with the Manichæans assert that man cannot avoid sins as well as those who with Jovinan say that man cannot sin; for both take away the liberty of the will. But we say that man can both sin and not sin, so that we confess that we always have free will.